Watch a 1953 Animation of James Thurber’s “Unicorn in the Garden,” Voted One of the Best Animations Ever

in Animation, Literature, Magazines | March 3rd, 2015

Humorist James Thurber nev­er tired of sub­ject­ing puny male mil­que­toasts to pow­er­ful female bul­lies.

In his view, mem­bers of the fair­er sex were nev­er femme fatales or fussy matrons, but rather bat­tle-lov­ing war­riors in sim­ple Wilma Flint­stone-esque frocks. They are immune to the tra­di­tion­al­ly fem­i­nine con­cerns of the period—hair, chil­dren, the liv­ing room drapes… they get their plea­sure dom­i­nat­ing Wal­ter Mit­ty and his ilk.

(Was he ter­ri­fied of Woman? Resent­ful of her? The sto­ry he stuck to was that he’d con­ceived of his com­ic por­tray­al for the sole pur­pose of “egging her on.”)

There is one mem­o­rable instance where the lit­tle guy was allowed to come out on top. “The Uni­corn in the Gar­den” is a sto­ry first pub­lished in The New York­er on Octo­ber 31, 1939. No spoil­ers, but there’s a close resem­blance to Har­vey, Mary Chase’s much-pro­duced play about a mild-man­nered gent whose devo­tion to a 6’ tall invis­i­ble rab­bit dri­ves his dom­i­neer­ing sis­ter around the bend.

The 1953 car­toon adap­ta­tion above brought Thurber’s draw­ings to life, whilst pre­serv­ing the dia­logue of the orig­i­nal in its entire­ty. The orig­i­nal sto­ry was pub­lished with only a sin­gle illus­tra­tion, but direc­tor William T. Hurtz’s had hun­dreds of New York­er car­toons to draw upon. Leg­end has it that Hurtz pur­pose­ful­ly assigned some of Unit­ed Pro­duc­tions of America’s least gift­ed ani­ma­tors to the project, hop­ing to dupli­cate Thurber’s ”nice, lumpy look.” The plan was for “The Uni­corn in the Gar­den” to be part of a full-length Thurber fea­ture, but alas, the stu­dio pulled the plug on Men, Women and Dogs before it could be com­plet­ed. Moral: Don’t count your boo­bies until they are hatched.

“A Uni­corn in the Gar­den” was lat­er vot­ed #48 of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of all time by mem­bers of the ani­ma­tion field. You can find more lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eudo­ra Wel­ty Writes a Quirky Let­ter Apply­ing for a Job at The New York­er (1933)

20 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Dos­to­evsky, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Victor Hugo’s Drawings Made with Coal, Dust & Coffee (1848–1851)

in Art | March 3rd, 2015

If you know of Vic­tor Hugo, you most like­ly know him as the man of let­ters who wrote books like Les Mis­érables and Notre-Dame de Paris (bet­ter known in Eng­lish as The Hunch­back of Notre-Dame). If you know some­thing else about him, it prob­a­bly has to do with his pol­i­tics: King Louis-Philippe grant­ed him peer­age in 1841, and he became a mem­ber of the French Par­lia­ment in 1848. This posi­tion gave him some­thing of a pul­pit from which to speak on his pet caus­es: abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, free­dom of the press, uni­ver­sal suf­frage and edu­ca­tion, and — lest any­one call the ambi­tions of his sec­ondary career minor — the end of pover­ty.

But this sen­si­bil­i­ty made Hugo no friend of Napoleon III, who took pow­er in 1851, and so the writer went into polit­i­cal exile in Guernsey. That year marked the end of a peri­od, begin­ning with his elec­tion to Par­lia­ment, dur­ing which Hugo put writ­ing aside in order to devote him­self ful­ly to pol­i­tics — well, almost ful­ly. Even as he laid down his writ­ing pen, he picked up his draw­ing pen, pro­duc­ing the images you see here and many, many more.

Hugo, writes The Paris Review’s Dan Piepen­bring, “made some four thou­sand draw­ings over the course of his life. He was an adept drafts­man, even an exper­i­men­tal one: he some­times drew with his non­dom­i­nant hand or when look­ing away from the page. If pen and ink were not avail­able, he had recourse to soot, coal dust, and cof­fee grounds.” The Tate’s Christo­pher Turn­er writes of rumors “that he used blood pricked from his own veins in his many draw­ings.” What­ev­er liq­uid sub­stance he used, in the draw­ing at the top we can see “a giant, men­ac­ing octo­pus, fash­ioned from a sin­gle stain [that] con­torts its suck­ered limbs into the ini­tials VH.”

A bold sig­na­ture indeed, but then, Hugo hard­ly played the shrink­ing vio­let in any domain. And yet, so as not to dis­tract from the rest of his career, he sel­dom showed his draw­ings to any­one but fam­i­ly and friends, com­ing no clos­er to pub­lish­ing any­thing any of his art than the hand-drawn call­ing cards he hand­ed vis­i­tors in his peri­od of exile. No less a painter than Eugène Delacroix, when he saw these draw­ings, thought that if Hugo had­n’t become a writer, he could have become one of the 19th cen­tu­ry’s great­est artists instead. I’d cer­tain­ly like to see what Andrew Lloyd Web­ber would have adapt­ed that octo­pus into.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

The Draw­ings of Jean-Paul Sartre

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Wes Anderson’s Cinematic Influences: Video Series Reveals His Roots in Truffaut, Welles, Scorsese & More

in Film | March 3rd, 2015

Matt Zoller Seitz is eas­i­ly one of the finest film crit­ics work­ing today. Over the years, he has done quite a lot of work unpack­ing the dense visu­al world of film­mak­er Wes Ander­son, cul­mi­nat­ing in a gor­geous cof­fee table book called, apt­ly, The Wes Ander­son Col­lec­tion. Today you can explore a series of video essays that delve into the filmmaker’s work. Zoller Seitz argues that Anderson’s dis­tinc­tive look is not mere­ly emp­ty aes­thet­ics. Instead, he asserts that there is sub­stance to Anderson’s style.

The first video out­lines three of Anderson’s biggest cin­e­mat­ic influ­ences. The filmmaker’s love of vir­tu­ous cam­era moves and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with fall­en genius­es can be traced right back to Orson Welles. His focus on young peo­ple strug­gling to find peace in the adult world is influ­enced by Fran­cois Truf­faut, par­tic­u­lar­ly his mas­ter­piece 400 Blows. And the third, and per­haps most sur­pris­ing, influ­ence is Charles Schulz’s com­ic strip Peanuts.

In this sec­ond video, Zoller Seitz notes the styl­is­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ander­son and direc­tors Mike Nichols, Richard Lester, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. It’s not ter­ri­bly hard to see traces of The Grad­u­ate or Hard Day’s Night in Anderson’s movies, but Good­fel­las? Zoller Seitz makes a pret­ty con­vinc­ing argu­ment.

While the pre­vi­ous videos come close to hagiog­ra­phy, the third video com­pares Ander­son with anoth­er obvi­ous influ­ence Hal Ash­by. It’s just about impos­si­ble to imag­ine Anderson’s delight­ful­ly twee world and dead­pan humor with­out Ashby’s Harold and Maude. Like Ander­son, Ash­by too slipped effort­less­ly between dif­fer­ent tones and dif­fer­ent gen­res. But Anderson’s movies focus exclu­sive­ly on upper class white peo­ple, some­thing that he has been fre­quent­ly crit­i­cized for. Ashby’s movies, on the oth­er hand, cast a much wider socio-eco­nom­ic net. After watch­ing this video, you get the sense that Ash­by might be the bet­ter film­mak­er.

The fourth video lays out how Anderson’s ten­den­cy of defin­ing char­ac­ters through their wardrobe goes right back to writer J.D. Salinger.

And with the fifth and final video, Zoller Seitz pulls togeth­er all of his argu­ments by anno­tat­ing the pro­logue to arguably Anderson’s best and most influ­en­tial movie, The Roy­al Tenen­baums.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Free eBook: Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Brontë’s Grave

in e-books, Travel | March 2nd, 2015

Worth a quick note: Every month, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press makes avail­able a free ebook, which you can read online. This mon­th’s pick is Freud’s Couch, Scot­t’s But­tocks, Bron­të’s Grave, by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Clas­sics pro­fes­sor Simon Gold­hill, who dou­bles as the direc­tor of the Cam­bridge Vic­to­ri­an Stud­ies group. The press describes the book as fol­lows:

If you have toured the home of a famed writer, seen the desk at which they worked, or vis­it­ed their grave, you are a lit­er­ary pil­grim, par­tak­ing in a form of tourism first pop­u­lar in the Vic­to­ri­an era. In our free e‑book for March, Freud’s Couch, Scott’s But­tocks, Brontë’s Grave, Simon Gold­hill makes a pil­grim­age to Sir Wal­ter Scott’s baro­nial man­sion, Wordsworth’s cot­tage in the Lake Dis­trict, the Bron­të par­son­age, Shakespeare’s birth­place, and Freud’s office in Hamp­stead. He game­ly nego­ti­ates dis­trac­tions rang­ing from bro­ken bicy­cles to a flock of gig­gling Japan­ese school­girls, as he tries to dis­cern what our fore­bears were look­ing for at these sites, as well as what they have to say to the mod­ern pil­grim. Take your lit­er­ary pil­grim­age in our free e‑book, Freud’s Couch, Scott’s But­tocks, Brontë’s Grave.

The book, which got a warm review in The Wall Street Jour­nal, can be accessed via The U. Chica­go site.  Count­less more free ebooks (down­load­able ones!) can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa: A Wonderful Sand Animation of the Classic Kafka Story (1977)

in Film, Literature | March 2nd, 2015

At home I often watch EBS, essen­tial­ly Kore­a’s equiv­a­lent of PBS, which often airs short inter­sti­tial seg­ments drawn in sand to fill the time between pro­grams. Only recent­ly have I learned that sand actu­al­ly has a gen­uine his­to­ry as a medi­um for ani­ma­tion, one that has pro­duced a work as strik­ing as Car­o­line Leaf’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa back in 1977. Astute (or even not-very-astute) Kaf­ka fans will rec­og­nize this as an adap­ta­tion of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, far and away the writer’s best-known sto­ry, in which the young sales­man Gre­gor Sam­sa wakes up trans­formed into a giant bug. Find it in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

We see this bug writhing his way out of bed before we see any oth­er action in Leaf’s ten-minute sand short, whose (yes) ever-shift­ing visu­al tex­ture lends itself well to the theme of the tale. Not that this con­ver­gence of form and sub­stance came eas­i­ly: “What makes [Leaf’s] work stand out is the con­trol of the mate­r­i­al,” writes John­ny Chew, About Tech’s ani­ma­tion expert. “The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa is an awe­some short film on its own, and a great adap­ta­tion of the Kaf­ka work, but when you con­sid­er the style in which it was made and the con­trol that would have to go into each frame, it’s unbe­liev­able.”

“The medi­um of ani­ma­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly cer­tain ani­mat­ed tech­niques, offer an abil­i­ty to faith­ful­ly repro­duce in part both the con­tent and the per­cep­tu­al expe­ri­ence of a lit­er­ary work,” writes Geof­frey Beat­ty in his paper “The Prob­lem of Adap­ta­tion Solved!.” In it, he quotes the ani­ma­tor on why she chose this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry: “ ‘Kafka’s sto­ries give this kind of room to invent,’ she says. This was an impor­tant val­ue for Leaf as she was estab­lish­ing a body of work based on a unique visu­al approach. The Meta­mor­pho­sis, sug­gest­ed to her by a friend and men­tor, was a good fit, as her own ‘black and white sand images had the poten­tial to have a Kaf­ka-esque feel – dark and mys­te­ri­ous.’ ”

Any worth­while artis­tic medi­um impos­es lim­i­ta­tions — and sand, as you’d imag­ine, impos­es some pret­ty seri­ous ones. Work­ing with it, Leaf “would not be able to cre­ate high­ly detailed images [such as] the fes­ter­ing wound on Gregor’s back or his over­all dete­ri­o­ra­tion and decay. How­ev­er, this lim­i­ta­tion was not nec­es­sar­i­ly a prob­lem. ‘I think that the lim­i­ta­tions of draw­ing in sand, the sim­pli­fi­ca­tions that it requires, made me inven­tive in the sto­ry­telling in the ways I men­tioned above. Sand forced me to adapt the sto­ry to sand, which is inter­est­ing.’ ”

Those read­ers who apply the word “Kafkan” to any point­less­ly dif­fi­cult task (like, say, get­ting out the door to work when you’ve become a giant bug) might also use it to describe Leaf’s labor-inten­sive sand ani­ma­tion process. But unlike a tru­ly Kafkan labor, Leaf’s gen­er­at­ed a result — and a delight­ful one at that. Now if only the next gen­er­a­tion of sand ani­ma­tors would step foward to adapt the rest of Kafka’s oeu­vre. Maybe we could inter­est PBS in air­ing it?

Find more lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Dos­to­evsky, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Franz Kafka’s It’s a Won­der­ful Life: The Oscar-Win­ning Film About Kaf­ka Writ­ing The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth Rocker, Read From Her New Memoir, Girl in a Band

in Audio Books, Music | March 2nd, 2015

I’ll admit it. I have a thing for lis­ten­ing to rock biogra­phies and auto­bi­ogra­phies on Audi­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­oirs nar­rat­ed by the author him or her­self. Look in my per­son­al Audi­ble library and you’ll find Pat­ti Smith read­ing Just Kids. Kei­th Richards read­ing sec­tions of his best­seller Life. And Pete Town­shend nar­rat­ing his 18-hour tome Who Am I. That’s just nam­ing a few.

Right now, I’m get­ting start­ed with Girl in a Band, the new mem­oir released by Kim Gor­don, the co-founder of the influ­en­tial indie rock band, Son­ic Youth. And it looks like you can do the same with me. Rough Trade has made avail­able online five audio clips, start­ing with Gor­don read­ing from Chap­ter 1. Togeth­er, they amount to almost an hour of free audio. Find them all below.

Mean­while, if you want to down­load the entire mem­oir for free, you can go here, and then click on the “Try Audi­ble Free” but­ton in the upper right cor­ner. Just real­ize that you’re sign­ing up for Audi­ble’s 30-Day Free Tri­al pro­gram, which lets you down­load two free audio­books and try out the ser­vice for 30 days. If you so choose, you can can­cel before a fee kicks in. Please make sure you read all of the fine print before you sign up.

Chap­ter 1:

Writ­ing About New York Is Hard

The Way The Band Com­posed Songs

First Time See­ing Nir­vana

Fash­ion in New York

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Son­ic Youth Gui­tarist Thurston Moore Teach­es a Poet­ry Work­shop at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty: See His Class Notes (2011)

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Miles Davis’ Entire Discography Presented in a Stylish Interactive Visualization

in Music | March 2nd, 2015

Peo­ple can, and do, spend life­times track­ing down and cat­a­logu­ing all of the var­i­ous releas­es of their favorite bands—studio, stage, boot­leg, and oth­er­wise. Cer­tain groups—the Grate­ful Dead, nat­u­ral­ly (hear 9,000 Dead shows here)—encour­age this more than oth­ers. And if a rock band can send com­pletists on life­long scav­enger hunts, how much more so a pro­lif­ic jazz artist such as, say, Miles Davis? Like the musi­cal form itself, jazz artists are mer­cu­r­ial by nature, spend­ing years as jour­ney­men for any num­ber of oth­er band­lead­ers before break­ing off to form their own quar­tets, quin­tets, sex­tets, etc. Add to the pro­fu­sion of dif­fer­ent groups the ten­den­cy of jazz play­ers to record the same songs—but nev­er in the same way—dozens, hun­dreds, of times, and you’ve got discogra­phies that num­ber well into dou­ble-dig­it page lengths.

That’s the sit­u­a­tion with Miles, for sure—even the most stud­ied of his col­lec­tors couldn’t pos­si­bly call to mind all of his immense cat­a­log with­out some handy ref­er­ence guide. Per­haps “Scaled in Miles” can help. Con­dens­ing an incred­i­ble amount of musi­cal his­to­ry into a very con­cise and attrac­tive form, “Scaled in Miles,” as it’s called—a huge online inter­ac­tive discog­ra­phy—“tries to make sense of Davis’s sto­ried career by visu­al­iz­ing each of the 577 artists he col­lab­o­rat­ed with over 405 record­ing ses­sions.” That descrip­tion comes from Fast Com­pa­ny, who fea­ture a few close-ups of the relat­ed “Scaled in Miles” poster, which they describe as resem­bling NASA’s “Gold­en Record.” The inter­ac­tive visu­al­iza­tion allows you to lis­ten to the tunes as you learn the musi­cians who cre­at­ed them and the wheres and whens of their record­ings.

Some­thing about Miles’ music lends itself par­tic­u­lar­ly well, I have to say, to the very stream­lined, clean design of this impres­sive catalog’s online inter­face. Were some­one enter­pris­ing enough to make one for the Grate­ful Dead, I’m guess­ing it would look less like a gold­en record in space and more like anoth­er, messier kind of spaced-out voy­age. That’s not to sug­gest that Davis and the Dead have lit­tle in com­mon but their vast record­ed out­put. They did, after all, once share a stage at the Fill­more West in 1970. No need to go dig­ging in the vaults to find that one; see the per­son­nel from that night at the top of the post and stream the whole thing right here.

via Moses Hawk

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Hedge Maze from The Shining Gets Recreated by Mythbuster’s Adam Savage

in Creativity, Film | March 2nd, 2015

Like myself, Adam Sav­age went to the trav­el­ing Stan­ley Kubrick exhi­bi­tion at LACMA last year and stayed sev­er­al hours, just absorb­ing all the genius, from the scripts to the slates to the blue­prints and the cos­tumes to the props. Unlike myself, he went back two more times, that lucky man! Because the Myth­buster noticed that the Hedge Maze prop in The Shin­ing sec­tion did not look like the one in the film in any way. In fact, it looked kin­da cheap. So, being Adam Sav­age, a man for whom prop-mak­ing is one of a series of child­hood obses­sions turned jobs, he set out to accu­rate­ly recre­ate the maze mod­el from the film.

In this fas­ci­nat­ing video (top) from his YouTube series Test­ed, we get a step-by-step walk­through of the process. The LACMA mod­el used plas­tic foam; Sav­age goes for a stur­dy par­ti­cle board, made to look like hedges through spray paint and flock­ing. His atten­tion to detail goes down to the crowns at the tops of the out­er maze wall, a news­pa­per kiosk and minia­ture map of the maze. He even geeks out (in the best way, of course!) about the scale mod­el fig­ures (at $4 a pop) he buys to pop­u­late the maze. (Strange­ly, there’s no rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Jack, Wendy, Dan­ny or even Hal­lo­ran to be seen.)
Savage’s ener­gy is infec­tious and if some of us had the time (55 hours total) and income to do this–and an under­stand­ing spouse–wouldn’t a lot of us love to trav­el down this rab­bit hole?

The film ends with a nice sur­prise that I won’t spoil, but let’s just say the uni­verse gets set right for once.

P.S. Does any­body know what is writ­ten on Savage’s work­sheet? Is it his ver­sion of “All Work and No Play…”?

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Saul Bass’ Reject­ed Poster Con­cepts for The Shin­ing (and His Pret­ty Excel­lent Sig­na­ture)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

The Linguistics Behind Kevin Spacey’s Southern Accent in House of Cards: A Quick Primer

in Language Lessons | March 1st, 2015

Let’s take Kevin Spacey’s south­ern accent on the Net­flix series House of Cards, and use it as a spring­board for explor­ing the lin­guis­tics of that often times charm­ing region­al accent, shall we? In the video above, cre­at­ed by Vox, we learn all about “ay-unglid­ding.” And “r‑dropping,” that ever dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of the South­ern accent that orig­i­nat­ed in Eng­land.

The clip was made with the help of uni­ver­si­ty lin­guists — Den­nis Pre­ston at Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty; Robin Dodsworth at North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty; and Kirk Hazen at West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty. To learn more about how well Kevin Spacey mas­ters the accent (and where he falls short), head over to Vox.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nine Imper­son­ations by Kevin Spacey in Six Min­utes

The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky: An Intro­duc­tion to His The­o­ries on Lan­guage & Knowl­edge (1977)

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Leonard Nimoy Recites Famous Soliloquy from Hamlet in Yiddish: “To Be or Not To Be”

in Life, Sci Fi, Television | February 28th, 2015

Leonard Nimoy’s death yeste­day at the age of 83 is an enor­mous loss to fans across the world who loved and respect­ed the actor. Nimoy may have nev­er tran­scend­ed his Star Trek char­ac­ter Spock, though he tried, but he seemed to have made his peace with that, sign­ing his many wise tweets in the last few months of his life with the acronym “LLAP,” or “live long and pros­per,” the Vul­can farewell. The actor and his most famous char­ac­ter were very famil­iar to even non-fans of the show; Spock has come to rep­re­sent an arche­type of the dis­pas­sion­ate and ratio­nal, and Nimoy even­tu­al­ly immersed him­self in the Star Trek uni­verse, pen­ning Star Trek nov­els and con­tin­u­ing to star in the franchise’s many films (and in good natured car ads with his replace­ment). He was an ambas­sador for sci­ence fic­tion, and an ambas­sador for sci­ence fact, as a major donor to NASA and nar­ra­tor of sev­er­al films about astron­o­my.

Nimoy also had sev­er­al oth­er non- Trek endeav­ors of note, includ­ing his work as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and nar­ra­tor of audio­books about, for exam­ple, whales. And while Spock fans watched the actor inhab­it the half-Vul­can, half-human character’s exis­ten­tial strug­gles with his iden­ti­ty, Nimoy the actor had his own dis­tinc­tive back­ground as the son of Ukrain­ian Jew­ish immi­grants. His par­ents escaped the town of Zaslav in what was then Sovi­et Rus­sia and emi­grat­ed to Boston’s West End, a neigh­bor­hood rough­ly 60 per­cent Ital­ian and 25–30 per­cent Jew­ish. It was a place—Nimoy says in the engag­ing 10 minute excerpt above from an inter­view with Christa Whitney—where the Ital­ians spoke Yid­dish and the Jews spoke Ital­ian (Nimoy speaks some Yid­dish, some famous lines from Ham­let!, above).

Nimoy remem­bers his per­son­al his­to­ry, his par­ents’ bemuse­ment with Spock, and his own iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the famous char­ac­ter: “Spock is an alien wher­ev­er he is,” says Nimoy, “not total­ly at home in the Vul­can cul­ture… not total­ly at home in the human cul­ture. And that alien­ation is some­thing that I had learned in Boston… so I under­stood that aspect of the char­ac­ter.” The inter­view was taped in Octo­ber of 2013 as part of the Yid­dish Book Center’s Wexler Oral His­to­ry Project. As we grieve the loss of Nimoy-as-Spock, it’s a fit­ting way to get to know much more about the man him­self. Hear much more of Nimoy’s Yid­dish and much more about his life in the full, two-hour inter­view below. You can find basic Yid­dish lessons in our col­lec­tion, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem