Why R.E.M.‘s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Politically Important Album” Ever

in Music, Politics | July 25th, 2014

Raise your hand if you bought your first music on cas­sette tapes. No, not those detourned objects of nos­tal­gia cir­ca 2013, but the “this is the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and that’s that” kin­da thing. Okay, you in the back there, remem­ber when the CD came to town? Yeah, and remem­ber those box­es—all that ridicu­lous pack­ag­ing, with the long card­board box twice as long as the prod­uct? What was that all about? The rest of you, keep up: It was a dif­fer­ent time. Okay, since we all still know what vinyl looks like when hand­some­ly placed on store shelves (maybe you’ve seen this at your local Urban Out­fit­ters), we know that record sleeves are big and square and CD cas­es are small and square. And the prob­lem for those record stores when the CDs came to replace tapes—but not the pre­cious vinyl—was that the main dis­plays were for the big squares, and the stores didn’t wan­na change ‘em. Thus the long CD box: two of them side by side equaled the area of one record.

Prob­lem solved? Not for spoil­sports like R.E.M. who (you in the back, remem­ber?) released that album Green in ’88 and went on end­less­ly about “think glob­al, act local” enviro—blah blah. Why they cared so much about the lives of shade-giv­ing, wish-grant­i­ng trees I’ll nev­er know, but they did, and it both­ered them, these waste­ful box­es. So, enter Tip­per Gore. Wait, what? Who? How? A short his­to­ry: Some time ago, Al Gore’s wife Tip­per and many oth­ers were upset by raunchy lyrics—espe­cial­ly by the 2 Live Crew fellows—and lob­bied for those “Parental Advi­so­ry” stick­ers to get stuck on explic­it CDs, and some music was cen­sored, and Gore and her coali­tion of most­ly right-wing friends found a con­ve­nient boogey­man in pop­u­lar music. (Are you googling? It’s spelled “PMRC”). A lot of this agi­ta­tion over explic­it lyrics came from gen­uine­ly con­cerned par­ents. A lot of it came from polit­i­cal oppor­tunists and peo­ple who like using leg­is­la­tion to enforce their reli­gious moral­i­ty.

Where in Stipe’s name is this going? It ties togeth­er through one man, Jeff Gold, Warn­er Brother’s exec dur­ing the release of the band’s 1991 album Out of Time. Gold need­ed the long box for this CD, and he want­ed the then-new Rock the Vote project to reg­is­ter mil­lions of young music buy­ers, who would then, he rea­soned, vote out the pols who did the cen­sor­ship. Gold and Rock the Vote founder and Vir­gin records co-founder Jeff Ayeroff con­vinced the band to do the long box thing by mak­ing half the box a Rock the Vote peti­tion for the Motor Vot­er Bill, which would allow vot­ers to reg­is­ter through their local DMV. And that, accord­ing to radio show 99% Invis­i­ble, is how REM became the face of Rock the Vote and the Motor Vot­er Bill in 1993. Mar­ket­ing! And envi­ron­men­tal­ism. See that sen­si­tive activist at the top of the post? That’s Michael Stipe mak­ing a Rock the Vote pitch. See that pic­ture above? (Click to embiggen.) That’s the dor­sal side of Out of Time’s CD long box pack­age. The card at the bot­tom address­es itself to the young record buyer’s Sen­a­tor. It says,

Dear Sen­a­tor:

I sup­port the Motor Vot­er Bill. Accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­sus, in the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion 78% of 18–29 year olds who were reg­is­tered to vote vot­ed. We aren’t as apa­thet­ic as some peo­ple think. It’s just that the laws make it hard for many of us to reg­is­ter.

I hope I can say my Sen­a­tor sup­ports the Motor Vot­er Bill.

Your Con­stituent

In no small part because of R.E.M.’s lob­by­ing, the Motor Vot­er Bill was passed. Many did not like it then and do not like it now. They say it encour­ages vot­er fraud, which you might think would be ram­pant and com­plete­ly out of con­trol by now, but is not in the least. In any case, the law remains unrea­son­ably con­tro­ver­sial, as do many, many laws that make it eas­i­er for all kinds of cit­i­zens to vote. But you prob­a­bly know that sto­ry already.

For more on why Out of Time is pos­si­bly “the most polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant album of all time,” lis­ten to the first episode of new pod­cast Pitch below, and vis­it their site for a tran­script of their detailed inter­view with Jeffs Gold and Ayeroff. And for Stipe’s sake, get your­self reg­is­tered and get to the polls this Novem­ber.

via 99% Invis­i­ble

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris Gives Us “11 Excel­lent Rea­sons Not to Vote?”

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Three Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments by Frank Zap­pa: Vote, Brush Your Teeth, and Don’t Do Speed

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

Watch The Reality of the Virtual: 74 Minutes of Pure Slavoj Žižek (2004)

in Film, Philosophy | July 25th, 2014

Slavoj Žižek must make a tempt­ing doc­u­men­tary sub­ject; you have only to fire up the cam­era and let him do his thing. Or at least the Sloven­ian aca­d­e­m­ic provo­ca­teur and intel­lec­tu­al per­for­mance artist, in films like The Per­vert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma, The Per­vert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy, and Žižek!, has giv­en the impres­sion that he can effort­less­ly car­ry a film all by him­self. The direc­tors of those afore­men­tioned movies did a bit more than sit Žižek down before a rolling cam­era, but Ben Wright, mak­er of The Real­i­ty of the Vir­tu­al, seems to have tak­en the man’s raw ora­tor­i­cal val­ue as the very premise of his project. This 74-minute doc­u­men­tary — if even the word “doc­u­men­tary” suits such a rad­i­cal­ly sim­pli­fied form — sim­ply has Žižek sit at a table, in front of some book­shelves, and talk, osten­si­bly about “real effects pro­duced by some­thing which does not yet ful­ly exist,” as he iden­ti­fies them in the realms of psy­cho­analy­sis, pol­i­tics, soci­ol­o­gy, physics, and pop­u­lar cul­ture.

“Shot by Ben Wright over the course of a sin­gle day,” writes the New York Times’ Nathan Lee, “here is the apoth­e­o­sis of the talk­ing-head movie, made up entire­ly of sev­en long, sta­t­ic takes of Mr. Žižek,” ani­mat­ed only by his own “habit­u­al reper­to­ry of twitch­es, spasms and uncon­trolled per­spi­ra­tion, an alarm­ing fren­zy of exu­ber­ance that con­tributes to his rep­u­ta­tion as a rock star of phi­los­o­phy.” The theme at hand, which cer­tain­ly has some­thing to do with belief and truth, pos­si­bil­i­ty and impos­si­bil­i­ty, the real­i­ty with­in the unre­al and the unre­al with­in real­i­ty, takes him through the widest pos­si­ble range of asso­ci­at­ed sub­jects. Those who appre­ci­ate Žižek pri­mar­i­ly as a mas­ter of focused digres­sion — and I have to imag­ine his fan base con­tains many such peo­ple — will find no pur­er expres­sion of that par­tic­u­lar skill. Then again, to tru­ly expe­ri­ence Žižek, maybe you have to take an actu­al class taught by him. If The Real­i­ty of the Vir­tu­al inspires you to do so, count your­self as braver than I.

Find many more heady films on our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Žižek!: 2005 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star” and “Mon­ster” of a Man

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

Map Showing Where Today’s Countries Would Be Located on Pangea

in Maps | July 25th, 2014

The super­con­ti­nent of Pangea formed some 270 mil­lion years ago, dur­ing the Ear­ly Per­mi­an Peri­od, and then began to break up 70 mil­lion years lat­er, even­tu­al­ly yield­ing the con­ti­nents we inhab­it today. Pangea was, of course, a peo­ple­less place. But if you were to drop today’s nations on that great land mass, here’s what it might look like. (Click on the image to view it in a much larg­er, high res­o­lu­tion for­mat.) The map’s cre­ator is Mas­si­mo Pietrobon, some­one who play­ful­ly describes him­self as “a famous explor­er and car­tog­ra­ph­er of Atlantis,” and who has tak­en on oth­er exper­i­ments with maps in the past. When some­one claimed that the scale of cer­tain coun­tries was­n’t exact­ly right, Mas­si­mo was quick to con­fess on his blog, “Yes, it’s just a tri­al, it can be bet­ter.” But it’s a cre­ative start.

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!

via Pick­over’s Real­i­ty Car­ni­val

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Theodor Adorno’s Philosophy of Punctuation

in Philosophy, Writing | July 24th, 2014

Ger­man crit­i­cal the­o­rist Theodor Adorno is known for many things, but a light touch isn’t one of them. His work includes despair­ing post-fas­cist ethics and a study on the soci­ol­o­gy and psy­chol­o­gy of fas­cism. Those who dig deep­er into his cat­a­log may know his rig­or­ous­ly philo­soph­i­cal Neg­a­tive Dialec­tics or dense, opaque Aes­thet­ic The­o­ry. Giv­en the seri­ous­ly heavy nature of these books, you might be sur­prised, as I was, to read the para­graph below:

An excla­ma­tion point looks like an index fin­ger raised in warn­ing; a ques­tion mark looks like a flash­ing light or the blink of an eye. A colon, says Karl Kraus, opens its mouth wide: woe to the writer who does not fill it with some­thing nour­ish­ing. Visu­al­ly, the semi­colon looks like a droop­ing mous­tache; I am even more aware of its gamey taste. With self-sat­is­fied peas­ant cun­ning, Ger­man quo­ta­tion marks («> >) lick their lips.

The skill­ful deploy­ment of apho­rism seems typ­i­cal; the play­ful­ness not so much. But Adorno’s short essay, “punc­tu­a­tion marks,” takes a sober turn short­ly there­after, and for good rea­son. Punc­tu­a­tion is seri­ous busi­ness. Sound­ing much more like the Adorno I know, the dour Marx­ist writes, “His­to­ry has left its residue in punc­tu­a­tion marks, and it is his­to­ry, far more than mean­ing or gram­mat­i­cal func­tion, that looks out at us, rigid­i­fied and trem­bling slight­ly, from every mark of punc­tu­a­tion.” Okay.

Well, Adorno would just hate what I’m about to do, but—hey—this is the inter­net; who has the time and con­cen­tra­tion to tra­verse the rocky course of thought he carves out in his work? Maybe you? Good, read the full essay. Not you? See below for some bite-sized high­lights.

Punc­tu­a­tion as music: “punc­tu­a­tion marks,” Adorno writes, “are marks of oral deliv­ery.” As such, they func­tion like musi­cal nota­tion. “The com­ma and the peri­od cor­re­spond to the half-cadence and the authen­tic cadence.” Excla­ma­tion points are “like silent cym­bal clash­es, ques­tion marks like musi­cal upbeats.” Colons are like “dom­i­nant sev­enth chords.” Adorno, a musi­col­o­gist and com­pos­er him­self, heard things in these sym­bols most of us prob­a­bly don’t.

The semi­colon: There is no mark of punc­tu­a­tion that Adorno rejects out­right. All have their place and pur­pose. He does decry the mod­ernist ten­den­cy to most­ly leave them out, since “then they sim­ply hide.” But Adorno reserves a spe­cial pride of place for the semi­colon. He claims that “only a per­son who can per­ceive the dif­fer­ent weights of strong and weak phras­ings in musi­cal form” can under­stand the dif­fer­ence between semi­colon and com­ma. He dif­fer­en­ti­ates between the Greek and Ger­man semi­colon. And he express­es alarm “that the semi­colon is dying out.” This, he claims, is due to a fear of “page-long paragraphs”—the kind he often writes. It is “a fear cre­at­ed by the marketplace—by the con­sumer who does not want to tax him­self.” Right, I told you, he would hate the inter­net, though he seems to thrive—posthumously—on Twit­ter.

Quo­ta­tion marks: While Adorno accepts every punc­tu­a­tion mark as mean­ing­ful, he does not accept all uses of them. In the case of the quo­ta­tion mark, his advice is pre­cise­ly what I have received, and have passed on to over­ly glib and thought­less stu­dents. Quo­ta­tion marks, he writes, should only be used for direct quotes, “and if need be when the text wants to dis­tance itself from a word it is refer­ring to.” This can include writ­ing words as words (the word “word” is a word…). Adorno rejects quo­ta­tion marks as an “iron­ic device.” This usage presents “a pre­de­ter­mined judg­ment on the sub­ject”; it offers a “blind ver­dict.”

The ellip­sis: On this mark, Adorno becomes very prick­ly, par­tic­u­lar, and, well… ellip­ti­cal. Three dots “sug­gests an infini­tude of thoughts and asso­ci­a­tions.” Two is the mark of a hack. I leave it to you to parse his rea­son­ing.

The dash: First, we have “the seri­ous dash,” in which “thought becomes aware of its frag­men­tary char­ac­ter.” Dash­es may sig­nal “mute lines into the past, wrin­kles on the brow” of the text, ”uneasy silence.” Dash­es need not con­nect thoughts. The “desire to con­nect every­thing,” Adorno writes, is the mark of “lit­er­ary dilet­tantes.” Thus the “mod­ern dash” is debased, a symp­tom of “the pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tion of lan­guage.” It pre­pares us “in a fool­ish way for sur­pris­es that by that very token are no longer sur­pris­ing.” Adorno also prefers anoth­er use of dashes—more below.

Paren­the­ses: Par­en­thet­i­cal phras­es (like this) cre­ate “enclaves” and admit the “super­flu­ous­ness” of their con­tents, which is why many style­books frown upon them. Their use in this way “capitulate[s] to pedan­tic philis­tin­ism.” The “cau­tious writer”—writes punc­til­ious­ly cau­tious Adorno—will place par­en­thet­i­cals between dash­es, “which block off par­en­thet­i­cal mate­r­i­al from the flow of the sen­tence with­out shut­ting it up in a prison.” The paren­the­ses do have their place, as do all marks of punc­tu­a­tion in Adorno’s lex­i­cal the­o­ry. But prob­a­bly only if you are Proust.

Read­ing Adorno—on punc­tu­a­tion and any­thing else—can be intim­i­dat­ing. His eru­di­tion, his dis­dain for care­less­ness, mid­dle­brow expe­di­en­cy, and the crude forms of expres­sion giv­en birth by com­merce of all kinds: these are atti­tudes that can seem at times like over­bear­ing elit­ism. And yet, Adorno under­stands the bur­den­some nature of writ­ing pre­scrip­tions. “The writer,” he admits, “is in a per­ma­nent predica­ment when it comes to punc­tu­a­tion marks: if one were ful­ly aware while writ­ing, one would sense the impos­si­bil­i­ty of ever using a mark of punc­tu­a­tion cor­rect­ly and would give up writ­ing alto­geth­er.” Far too many have done so. We “can­not trust in the rules,” nor can we ignore them. What to do? Err on the side of the abstemious says our pok­er-faced Ger­man Strunk; to avoid slop­pi­ness or rote mis­use, fol­low an Epi­cure­an mean: “bet­ter too few than too many.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

The Curi­ous His­to­ry of Punc­tu­a­tion: Author Reveals the Begin­nings of the #, ¶, ☞, and More

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

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

The Baffler Makes Its Back Issues All Free to Read Online

in Magazines | July 24th, 2014

The New York­er was­n’t the only mag­a­zine that relaunched its web site this week. The Baf­fler did the same. They got a new look and feel. And they made plen­ty of loy­al read­ers hap­py by mak­ing 25 years of back issues freely avail­able online. The edi­tors of the mag­a­zine — that “loose col­lec­tive of dis­af­fil­i­at­ed cul­ture crit­ics, knowl­edge work­ers, poets, illus­tra­tors, and clos­et utopi­ans” — write:

Well, when The Baf­fler was born in 1988, we nev­er could have fore­seen this #inno­va­tion, but here we are. Please enjoy this new and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly shiny iter­a­tion of The Baf­fler online—featuring not only our new issue (no. 25, “The None and the Many”), but also, for the first time ever, all of our dig­i­tized archives in one place.

That’s 25 issues, 432 con­trib­u­tors, 277 salvos, 450 graph­ics, 172 poems, 73 sto­ries, 3,396 pages made of 1,342,785 words. You can click on indi­vid­ual pieces or flip through entire issues page by page, if you so desire.

You can flip through the spo­rad­i­cal­ly-pub­lished back issues and rev­el in the icon­o­clas­tic mag­a­zine that “ridicules respectable busi­ness lead­ers, laughs at pop­u­lar con­sumer brands as sou­venirs of the cul­tur­al indus­try, and debunks the ide­ol­o­gy of free-mar­ket nin­com­poops in the media and on the cam­pus­es.” Or, if you’re look­ing for some more direc­tion, you can head to the The Paris Review, where Dan Piepen­bring makes some rec­om­men­da­tions, start­ing with his “per­son­al favorite, Steve Albini’s “The Prob­lem with Music,” a terse, caus­tic cri­tique of the record indus­try at the height of yup­pie-ism and major-label excess.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York­er Web Site is Entire­ly Free This Sum­mer (Until It Goes Behind a Pay­wall This Fall)

The Pop­u­lar Sci­ence Dig­i­tal Archive Lets You Explore Every Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy-Filled Edi­tion Since 1872

The Entire Archives of Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Fou­cault, Alain Badiou, Judith But­ler & More (1972–2018)

A Quick Animated Tour of Iconic Modernist Houses

in Architecture | July 23rd, 2014

From Ital­ian graph­ic design­er Mat­teo Muci comes “a two-minute ani­mat­ed voy­age through some of the most icon­ic mas­ter­pieces of mod­ern archi­tec­ture: Ville Savoye by Le Cor­busier, Rietveld Schröder House by Ger­rit Rietveld, Farnsworth House by Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, Glass House by Philip John­son and Falling­wa­ter by Frank Lloyd Wright.” Illus­tra­tions of the hous­es can be viewed and freely down­loaded here.

H/t goes to Ian M. for send­ing this quick visu­al treat our way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Tour of Falling­wa­ter, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Cre­ations

Alain de Botton’s Quest for The Per­fect Home and Archi­tec­tur­al Hap­pi­ness

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 99 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Stanley Kubrick Faked the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in 1969, Or So the Conspiracy Theory Goes

in Film, History | July 23rd, 2014

This week is the anniver­sary of the Apol­lo 11 jour­ney to the moon. And while most peo­ple will cel­e­brate the event by acknowl­edg­ing the abil­i­ties and courage of Neil Arm­strong and com­pa­ny in this land­mark of human endeav­or, a small, though vocal, group of peo­ple will decry the moon land­ing as a fraud.

In that spir­it, French film­mak­er William Karel spins an elab­o­rate tale of intrigue in Dark Side of the Moon. (See out­takes above.) The 2002 film posits that the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing was staged by none oth­er than Stan­ley Kubrick. How else did the direc­tor get his hands on a super advanced lens from NASA to shoot those gor­geous can­dle-lit scenes in Bar­ry Lyn­don? The film is slick­ly pro­duced and fea­tures an impres­sive array of inter­vie­wees from Hen­ry Kissinger, to Buzz Aldrin to Chris­tiane Kubrick. Some of the oth­er peo­ple inter­viewed include Jack Tor­rance and David Bow­man. If that’s not a tip off that the whole movie is fake, then the bloop­er reel at the end dri­ves the point home. Only a lot of peo­ple didn’t get the joke. Con­spir­a­cy enthu­si­asts Wayne Green cit­ed the movie as fur­ther proof that the moon land­ing was faked.

Moon hoax­ers like to point to The Shin­ing as a con­fes­sion by Kubrick that he was forced into a Big Lie. In the doc­u­men­tary Room 237, Jay Wei­d­ner claims as much. And Michael Wys­mier­s­ki argues the same in The Shin­ing Code 2.0, a fea­ture length video that you can watch below. Or get right to the meat of things here.

And just in case you get swept up in Wysmierski’s loony log­ic, film­mak­er S. G. Collins makes the very com­pelling argu­ment that the tech­nol­o­gy sim­ply didn’t exist to fake the moon land­ing in 1969. Case closed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

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.

Dante’s Divine Comedy Illustrated in a Remarkable Illuminated Medieval Manuscript (c. 1450)

in Art, Literature, Poetry | July 23rd, 2014

Few writ­ers have inspired so many artists, so deeply and for so long, as Dante Alighieri. His epic poem the Divine Com­e­dy (find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) has received strik­ing illu­mi­na­tions at the hands of Gus­tave Doré, San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Alber­to Mar­ti­ni, and Sal­vador Dalí — to name only those we’ve fea­tured before here on Open Cul­ture. The names Pri­amo del­la Quer­cia and Gio­van­ni di Pao­lo may mean rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle to you right now, but they’ll mean much more once you’ve tak­en a look at the illus­tra­tions fea­tured here and at The World of Dante, which come from an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script of the Divine Com­e­dy at the British Library known as Yates Thomp­son 36. Pro­duced in Siena around 1450 for an unknown orig­i­nal patron, “the codex belonged to Alfon­so V, king of Aragon, Naples, and Sici­ly,” and includes “110 large minia­tures and three his­to­ri­at­ed ini­tials.” (See all here.) Del­la Quer­cia illus­trat­ed the Infer­no and Pur­ga­to­rio and all three his­to­ri­at­ed ini­tials; di Pao­lo illus­trat­ed Par­adiso.

“This makes for two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent styles,” con­tin­ues The World of Dan­te’s page. “Pri­amo’s work reflects the more real­is­tic style of late fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Flo­ren­tine paint­ing, an influ­ence which is par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able in his use of con­tours and out­lines in the depic­tion of nudes. Gio­van­ni di Paolo’s style is clos­er to that of late four­teenth-cen­tu­ry Sienese artists,” pro­duc­ing results “great­ly admired for their visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the poem: the artist does­n’t just tran­scribe Dan­te’s words but seeks to ren­der their mean­ing.”

The British Library’s medieval man­u­scripts blog describes it as “cer­tain­ly a lav­ish pro­duc­tion” that “must have been an expen­sive under­tak­ing,” giv­en the sta­tus of the men doing the illu­mi­nat­ing as “two of the pre­em­i­nent artists of the day.” But when it came to visu­al­iz­ing Dan­te’s jour­ney, quite lit­er­al­ly, to hell and back in 15th-cen­tu­ry Italy, no artist ranked too high­ly. Even today, I can’t imag­ine any artist read­ing the Divine Com­e­dy, illu­mi­nat­ed or no, with­out get­ting a few vivid ideas of their own.

More images can be found on the British Library web site (scroll down the page). A Yale course entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to Dante appears in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

The First Animations of Mike Judge, Creator of Beavis and Butt-head & Office Space (1991)

in Animation, Comedy | July 22nd, 2014

Mike Judge first became famous for cre­at­ing the crude and crude­ly drawn car­toon series Beav­is and Butt-head (find com­plete episodes online here). The show was about two high school burnouts whose run­ning com­men­tary on the lat­est music videos was so bone­head­ed and bald­ly vul­gar that you couldn’t help but laugh. Pris­sy cul­ture war­riors point­ed to the show as yet anoth­er symp­tom of America’s decline while legions of stoned col­lege stu­dents glee­ful­ly tuned in. In 1998, Judge made the jump to live action fea­tures with Office Space, a hilar­i­ous, if uneven, take on the banal­i­ties of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate cul­ture. It’s one of those movies that no one saw in the the­ater but, thanks to cable, every­one of a cer­tain age can quote. (“If you can come in on Sat­ur­day, that would be great.”) Cur­rent­ly, he is the cre­ator for the hit HBO series Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Judge start­ed in ani­ma­tion after work­ing for a spell as first a com­put­er pro­gram­mer and then a blues bassist. After see­ing an ani­ma­tion cel on dis­play in a local movie the­ater in 1989, he ran out and bought a Bolex 16mm cam­era and start­ed mak­ing movies. Two years lat­er, he was pro­duc­ing odd, thor­ough­ly unpol­ished ani­mat­ed shorts that made the rounds in film fes­ti­vals, even­tu­al­ly launch­ing a career in Hol­ly­wood.

Above is a short about Mil­ton, the neb­bish sta­pler-obsessed cubi­cle dweller who was the gen­e­sis for Office Space. Stephen Root played him in the movie. His boss is the same pas­sive-aggres­sive prick as in the movie though played with less unc­tu­ous zeal as Gary Cole’s per­for­mance. The short proved to be such a suc­cess that MTV’s Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion ordered more.

Next is The Honky Prob­lem, about an emo­tion­al­ly unbal­anced coun­try singer named ‘Inbred Jed.’ He wants you to know that he is real­ly, real­ly, real­ly hap­py to be play­ing at a remote trail­er park­er pop­u­lat­ed by a bunch of char­ac­ters out of a David Lynch movie. In fact, if it weren’t for the jokey voice over at the end, this short is creepy enough to almost pass for an episode of Lynch’s own ani­mat­ed series, Dum­b­land.

And there’s this short also from 1991 called sim­ply Huh?, which pits the shrill against the obliv­i­ous.

You can find more Ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dum­b­land, David Lynch’s Twist­ed Ani­mat­ed Series (NSFW)

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

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.

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats & Other Classic Poems (75 Minutes, 1955)

in Poetry | July 22nd, 2014

Not only did T.S. Eliot draw the cov­er for the first edi­tion of his Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, fea­tured yes­ter­day, he even read it aloud for the audio­book edi­tion. You may think the time of the audio­book, now a pop­u­lar form on dig­i­tal audio devices every­where, must have begun long after the time of Eliot had already end­ed. (Eliot died in 1965.) But as we know from hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their mid-1970s albums of Leonard Nimoy read­ing Ray Brad­bury, the record label Caed­mon posi­tioned them­selves well ahead of the audio­book game. Using record­ings made from read­ings giv­en in Lon­don in 1955, Caed­mon man­aged to release albums of Eliot speak­ing his own work aloud. Today we offer you T.S. Eliot Reads T.S. Eliot, made avail­able via Spo­ti­fy. The 18 tracks, run­ning some 75 min­utes, most­ly fea­tures Eliot read­ing from Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats. But he also recites a hand­ful of oth­er clas­sic poems. (If you need Spo­ti­fy, you can down­load the soft­ware here):

Oth­er audio edi­tions of Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (some includ­ing a score) would come out lat­er, but, for many Eliot enthu­si­asts, noth­ing else can quite match hear­ing the man him­self intro­duce the likes of Rum Tum Tug­ger, Mr. Mistof­felees, and Busto­pher Jones. Lis­ten­ers in most geo­gra­phies should be able to access the Spo­ti­fy playlist. But if you live in Cana­da and South Africa (where some read­ers have report­ed prob­lems) we can rec­om­mend that you lis­ten (or re-lis­ten) to Eliot’s read­ings of his mod­ernist mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, plus his Four Quar­tets. And if, by chance, you feel like hear­ing Eliot’s verse but not Eliot’s voice, how about let­ting Bob Dylan take over read­ing duties?

Eliot’s read­ing of Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.