Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dramatic Reading of Hannah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Totalitarianism”

in Film | May 13th, 2014

If you have watched any movie by Jean-Luc Godard you know that he’s nev­er been one to hide behind the façade of film nar­ra­tive. His movies are per­son­al. Sure they are also intel­lec­tu­al­ly demand­ing, unabashed­ly polit­i­cal, and occa­sion­al­ly impen­e­tra­ble but they are def­i­nite­ly per­son­al. This is a guy, after all, who made Pier­rot le Fou, a film that is, among oth­er things, a painful­ly hon­est inves­ti­ga­tion of the break­down of his mar­riage with Anna Kari­na star­ring Anna Kari­na.

But you wouldn’t think of Godard as a film­mak­er who would read­i­ly step in front of the cam­era like Orson Welles or (regret­tably) Quentin Taran­ti­no. But if you’ve been itch­ing to see Godard per­form an extend­ed mono­logue then check out the video above.

The piece is from the 1997 movie We’re Still Here (Nous sommes tous encore ici), direct­ed Anne-Marie Miéville who is Godard’s long­time cre­ative and roman­tic part­ner, and it shows the rum­pled, unshaven direc­tor quot­ing from Han­nah Arendt’s essay “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” The solil­o­quy, pre­sent­ed on a bare stage to an emp­ty the­ater, is about tyran­ny, iso­la­tion and free will and is deliv­ered with a sur­pris­ing amount of skill and emo­tion. You can read along below:

If it were true that eter­nal laws exist­ed, rul­ing every­thing, human in an absolute way and which only required of each human being com­plete obe­di­ence, the free­dom would only be a farce. One man’s wis­dom would be enough. Human con­tacts would no longer have any impor­tance, pre­served per­fect activ­i­ty alone would mat­ter, oper­at­ing with­in the con­text set up by this wis­dom which rec­og­nizes the Law. This is not the con­tent of ide­olo­gies, but the same log­ic which total­i­tar­i­an lead­ers use which pro­duces this famil­iar ground and the cer­tain­ty of the Law with­out excep­tion.

Log­ic, that’s to say pure rea­son with­out regard for facts and expe­ri­ence, is the real vice of soli­tude. But the vices of soli­tude are caused unique­ly by the despair asso­ci­at­ed with iso­la­tion. And the iso­la­tion which exists in our world, where human con­tacts have been bro­ken by the col­lapse of our com­mon home, again fol­low­ing the dis­as­trous con­se­quences of rev­o­lu­tions, them­selves a result of pre­vi­ous col­lapse.

This iso­la­tion has stopped being a psy­cho­log­i­cal ques­tion to which we can do jus­tice with the help of nice expres­sions devoid of mean­ing, like ‘intro­vert­ed’ and ‘extravert­ed’. Iso­la­tion as a result of absence of friends and of alien­ation is, from the point of view of man, the sick­ness which our world is suf­fer­ing from, even if it is true, we can notice few­er and few­er peo­ple than before who cling on to each oth­er with­out the slight­est sup­port. Those peo­ple do not ben­e­fit from com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods offered by a world with com­mon inter­ests. These help us escape togeth­er, from the curse of inhu­man­i­ty, in a soci­ety where every­one seems super­flu­ous and con­sid­ered as such by oth­ers.

Iso­la­tion is not soli­tude. In soli­tude, we are nev­er alone with our­selves. In soli­tude we are always two in one, and we become one, a com­plete indi­vid­ual with rich­ness and the lim­its of its exact fea­tures, only in rela­tion to the oth­ers and in their com­pa­ny. The big meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions, the search for God, lib­er­ty and immor­tal­i­ty, rela­tions between man and the world, being and noth­ing­ness or again between life and death, are always posed in soli­tude, when man is alone with him­self, there­fore, in the vir­tu­al com­pa­ny of all. The fact of being, even for a moment, divert­ed from one’s own indi­vid­u­al­i­ty allows it to for­mu­late mankind’s eter­nal ques­tions, which go beyond the ques­tions posed in dif­fer­ent ways by each indi­vid­ual.

The risk in soli­tude is always of los­ing one­self. It could be said that this is a pro­fes­sion­al risk for the philoso­pher. Since he seeks out truth and pre­oc­cu­pies him­self with ques­tions, which we describe as meta­phys­i­cal but which are indeed the only ques­tions to pre­oc­cu­py every­one. The philosopher’s solu­tion has been to notice that there is appar­ent­ly in the human mind itself one ele­ment capa­ble of com­pelling the oth­er and thus cre­at­ing pow­er. Usu­al­ly we call this fac­ul­ty Log­ic, and it inter­venes each time that we declare that a prin­ci­ple or an utter­ance pos­sess­es in itself a con­vinc­ing force, that is to say a qual­i­ty which real­ly com­pels the per­son to sub­scribe to it.

Recent­ly we real­ized that the tyran­ny, not of rea­son but argu­men­ta­tion, like an immense com­pul­sive force exer­cised on the mind of men can serve specif­i­cal­ly polit­i­cal tyran­ny. But this truth also remains that every end in his­to­ry nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tains a new begin­ning. This begin­ning is the only promise, the only mes­sage which the end can ever give. St Augus­tine said that man was cre­at­ed so that there could be a begin­ning. This begin­ning is guar­an­teed by each new birth, it is, in truth, each man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick (1971)

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.

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Featuring Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

in Film, Sci Fi | May 13th, 2014

Rumor has it that promi­nent place­ment in a sci­ence-fic­tion movie can put a kind of “curse” on a brand: wit­ness the fates, for instance, of Atari, Bell, and Pan Amer­i­can World Air­ways, all of which went south after appear­ing in Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner in 1982. (Even the appar­ent­ly unstop­pable Coca-Cola, its logo flash­ing so bright­ly on the future Los Ange­les sky­line, sub­se­quent­ly put the infa­mous New Coke to mar­ket.) Pan Am, then less than a decade from dis­so­lu­tion, had pre­vi­ous­ly played a high-pro­file part in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of mono­liths, Jupiter mis­sions, and too-intel­li­gent arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence came out in 1968, the tail end of Amer­i­ca’s mid­cen­tu­ry Space Age of the imag­i­na­tion. At that time, Pan Am enjoyed a rep­u­ta­tion as the pre­ferred air­line of the new “jet-set” — the nat­ur­al trans­porta­tion provider, I sup­pose, for their seem­ing­ly inevitable (and inevitably glam­orous) hol­i­days in out­er space. But who would pro­vide the lodg­ing so far from Earth? Why, Howard John­son’s, of course.

The hotel-restau­rant chain, Amer­i­ca’s largest in the 1960s and 70s, lent its name to the “earth­light room” built into 2001’s space sta­tion. It also offered a spe­cial chil­dren’s menu (pro­duced by the Amuse-a-Menu Com­pa­ny of Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts) fea­tur­ing a com­ic retelling not of the film itself, but of the expe­ri­ence of attend­ing the film’s pre­miere. Many of its pan­els man­age impres­sive recre­ations of 2001’s then-as-now-impres­sive visu­als, though I sus­pect the writer and artist had to work with few plot details — they make no men­tion at all, for instance, of the icon­i­cal­ly malev­o­lent super­com­put­er (and arguably 2001’s star) HAL 9000.

The full menu, which you can browse at Dreams of Space, offers the kids of 1968 an activ­i­ty page, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase a 50-cent birth­day-themed 45-RPM record, and a host of bland dish­es. Born well after 2001’s pre­miere — and indeed after Blade Run­ner’s, though I did hear when Pan Am went under — I nev­er­the­less remem­ber eat­ing all these stan­dards from chil­dren’s menus every­where: spaghet­ti, hot dogs, peanut-but­ter-and-jel­ly sand­wich­es. While I rarely dream of a future where we’ve devel­oped a space­far­ing jet set, I often dream of the even less plau­si­ble one where we’ve come up with appe­tiz­ing food for the under-ten set.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1966 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

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.

Short Film Takes You Inside the Recovery of Andy Warhol’s Lost Computer Art

in Art, Technology | May 12th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks back, we told you how Carnegie Mellon’s Com­put­er Club used its tech savoir-faire to recov­er near­ly 30 paint­ings that Andy Warhol made on the Ami­ga com­put­er back in the 1980s. It involved restor­ing some Ami­ga hard­ware housed at the Andy Warhol Muse­um and then per­form­ing acts of “foren­sic retro­com­put­ing,” which meant reverse-engi­neer­ing the “com­plete­ly unknown file for­mat” in which Warhol saved his images. The Hill­man Pho­tog­ra­phy Ini­tia­tive cap­tured the whole process on film, and cre­at­ed a short movie called Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Ami­ga Exper­i­ments. It pre­miered Sat­ur­day, May 10 at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library Lec­ture Hall and it’s also now online. Watch it above. One inter­est­ing thing you’ll learn along the way: Steve Jobs orig­i­nal­ly asked Warhol to make his paint­ings on an ear­ly Mac. But the artist opt­ed for the Com­modore Ami­ga instead. Below, you can actu­al­ly see Warhol paint Deb­bie Har­ry on the Ami­ga.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art Found on 30-Year-Old Flop­py Disks

Find Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Ami­ga Exper­i­ments on our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part  of our larg­er col­lec­tion: 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Such Sweet Thunder: Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn’s Musical Tribute to Shakespeare (1957)

in Music | May 12th, 2014

The great Duke Elling­ton and his long­time musi­cal part­ner Bil­ly Stray­horn per­formed such musi­cal feats of strength togeth­er over the course of near­ly three decades that they can seem to dwarf many of their con­tem­po­raries. The two co-com­posers had a knack for turn­ing pop­u­lar music—jazz, rag­time, the blues—into high art, then trans­mut­ing it right back into pop again, via three-minute blasts of swing like their most famous tune “Take the A Train.” In some respects, Elling­ton and Stray­horn’s com­po­si­tions are like that of writ­ers who har­mo­nize hip ver­nac­u­lar, pop­u­lar idiom, and The Great Tra­di­tion into works that feel thrilling­ly fresh and time­less all at once. And so it makes per­fect sense that Elling­ton and Stray­horn would com­pose a suite of songs based on scenes from William Shake­speare, that most skill­ful of lit­er­ary alchemists, and that it would turn out to be, in the words of poet and music crit­ic A.B. Spell­man, “one of the most remark­able orches­tral pieces in all of Amer­i­can music.”

That piece, Such Sweet Thun­der, found its impe­tus in Shakespeare’s most mag­i­cal play, A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, notably in a line that so well cap­tures the har­mo­nious clash­ing of styles and lan­guages in both the Duke and the Bard: “I nev­er heard so musi­cal a dis­cord, such sweet thun­der.” Dan­ger­ous Minds quotes Elling­ton, who called the piece his “attempt to par­al­lel the vignettes of some of the Shake­speare­an char­ac­ters in miniature—sometimes to the point of car­i­ca­ture.” The suite of songs pre­miered at New York’s Town Hall in April, 1957, at a con­cert called “Music for Mod­erns.” Its final num­ber had yet to be writ­ten. Soon after, at the Ravinia Music Fes­ti­val out­side Chica­go, Elling­ton intro­duced the first broad­cast per­for­mance, which you can hear in full above. See below for the titles of each song and list of soloists.

1:48 Son­net For Sis­ter Kate [solo: Quentin Jack­son]
4:53 Up And Down. Up And Down [solo: Clark Ter­ry]
8:04 Star-Crossed Lovers [solo: John­ny Hodges]
12:38 Mad­ness In Great Ones [solo: Cat Ander­son]
16:25 Half The Fun [solo: John­ny Hodges]
20:42 Cir­cle Of Fourths [solo: Paul Gon­salves]
23:23 Jam With Sam [solos: Willie Cook, Paul Gon­salves, Britt Wood­man, Rus­sell Pro­cope, Cat Ander­son]

Elling­ton, the CBS radio announc­er at the begin­ning informs us, was first spurred by his atten­dance at the Strat­ford Ontario Shake­speare Fes­ti­val in 1956. But he had been a devo­tee of the­ater, and of Shake­speare, for many years. Stray­horn, it seems, was even more so. Spell­man tells us that Stray­horn “was deep into Shake­speare […] could quote whole sec­tions of plays [….], vast num­bers of son­nets from mem­o­ry, at the drop of a hat.” Immersed not only in the­ater, but in clas­si­cal music, Strayhorn’s first ambi­tion was to become a clas­si­cal com­pos­er. While the col­or bar­ri­er sti­fled that dream, his move into jazz was cer­tain­ly no com­pro­mise. Stray­horn and Elling­ton “were so attuned to one anoth­er musi­cal­ly,” writes a biog­ra­phy com­pan­ion to Ken Burn’s Jazz, “that it is now impos­si­ble to estab­lish the exact extent of the former’s con­tri­bu­tion to Ellington’s oeu­vre.” (Elling­ton called Stray­horn “my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head.”) Giv­en Strayhorn’s deep knowl­edge of Shakespeare’s work, it’s prob­a­bly fair to assume that his con­tri­bu­tion to Such Sweet Thun­der was sig­nif­i­cant. Above, see selec­tions from a 1959 per­for­mance in Switzer­land, and just below, see a 1960 avant-garde bal­let chore­o­graphed to Elling­ton and Strayhorn’s Shake­speare suite by Mau­rice Béjart, anoth­er artist with a par­tic­u­lar tal­ent for bring­ing high art themes and styles to pop­u­lar audi­ences.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Duke Elling­ton Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

Thelo­nious Monk Plays Duke Elling­ton: Solo Piano, Berlin 1969

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

Watch a Restored Version of Un Chien Andalou: Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Film (1929)

in Film | May 12th, 2014

When we talk about exper­i­men­tal film, we talk, soon­er or lat­er, about Un Chien Andalou. One can hard­ly over­state the for­ma­tive impact that Luis Buñuel and Sal­vador Dalí’s short film had on all cin­e­ma, whether “alter­na­tive,” “artis­tic,” or oth­er­wise askew. Loosed upon the unsus­pect­ing film­go­ing world back in 1929, it’s 16 to 21 min­utes (depend­ing on the ver­sion) of pure sur­re­al­i­ty have been viewed by many, even those of us with no patience for the avant-garde. For the most part, we’ve seen ver­sions of bad­ly infe­ri­or qual­i­ty. Infe­ri­or to what, you might ask, and I would direct you to the supe­ri­or ver­sion at the top of the post, a 21st-cen­tu­ry restora­tion by the Fil­mote­ca Españo­la, which offers an Un Chien Andalou not quite like those you’ve seen before, whether in a film stud­ies class, on late-night tele­vi­sion, or in some cor­ner or anoth­er of the inter­net.

Video artist and blog­ging cinephile Blake Williams had that impres­sion, find­ing what he calls “a marked­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of this clas­sic than what I came to know on Youtube.” The film “plays in ‘actu­al time’, slow­ing down the hyper, 16 min­utes cut to a more delib­er­ate­ly paced 21+ min­utes” with visu­als “less con­trast-blown than any ver­sion I have seen, not to men­tion that it is no longer heav­i­ly cropped. The score, too, is dif­fer­ent, drop­ping the now icon­ic tan­go back-and-forth with Wag­n­er.” If you’ve long since grown used to all the images in Un Chien Andalou’s once-shock­ing pro­ces­sion — the drag­ging piano, the ants in the palm, the rot­ting don­keys, the immor­tal eye­ball slice — pre­pare to feel at least sur­prised by them once again. Though they have become much clean­er, they’ve also become no less trou­bling for it.

For more clas­sic films, please see our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

(H/T: Israel Nava, who worked on the restora­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Watch the Great­est Silent Films Ever Made in Our Col­lec­tion of 101 Free Silent Films Online

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 Evolution of London: 2,000 Years of Change Animated in 7 Minutes

in Animation, History | May 12th, 2014

Give “The Lon­don Evo­lu­tion Ani­ma­tion” sev­en min­utes, and it will show you the his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment of Lon­don over the course of 2,000 years. The ani­ma­tion moves from the Roman port city of Lon­dini­um (cir­ca 50 AD) through the Anglo-Sax­on, Tudor, Stu­art, Ear­ly Geor­gian, Late Geor­gian, Ear­ly Vic­to­ri­an and Late Vic­to­ri­an peri­ods. It then brings you through the Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry and into Post­war Lon­don. Devel­oped by The Bartlett Cen­tre for Advanced Spa­tial Analy­sis, the ani­ma­tion was made with his­tor­i­cal data about Lon­don’s road net­works and build­ings. The video recent­ly appeared at the “Almost Lost” Exhi­bi­tion in Lon­don, an exhi­bi­tion that con­tem­plat­ed how dig­i­tal maps can help us rethink the past, present and future of great cities.

If you find it dif­fi­cult to read the text in the ani­ma­tion, you can view the video in a larg­er for­mat here.

And in case you’re won­der­ing, the enlarg­ing yel­low dots show “the posi­tion and num­ber of statu­to­ri­ly pro­tect­ed build­ings and struc­tures built dur­ing each peri­od.” More infor­ma­tion on the ani­ma­tion can be found here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

Syn­chro­nized, Time­lapse Video Shows Train Trav­el­ing from Lon­don to Brighton in 1953, 1983 & 2013

Download 55 Free Online Literature Courses: From Dante and Milton to Kerouac and Tolkien

in Education, Literature | May 9th, 2014

Here at Open Cul­ture, we don’t just fea­ture edu­ca­tion in your rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly serv­ings of cul­tur­al­ly wide-rang­ing video, audio, text, and image — we also fea­ture it in a form that goes deep: whole cours­es you can down­load to your com­put­er or mobile device of choice and expe­ri­ence at your own pace. If you nev­er quite stud­ied all the lit­er­a­ture you want­ed to — or if you sim­ply can’t get enough study of the stuff — pay a vis­it to our col­lec­tion of over 50 free lit­er­a­ture cours­es online. Some of them may even cov­er the same tex­tu­al ground as the class­es you felt curi­ous about tak­ing in col­lege but could nev­er quite fit into your sched­ule: “Dante in Trans­la­tion” (Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio - Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als), for instance, or “Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture” (Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio – Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als), or “Intro­duc­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture (Free Online Video).

Our col­lec­tion offers cours­es with rel­a­tive­ly broad lit­er­ary sub­ject mat­ter, such as “Amer­i­can Pas­sages: A Lit­er­ary Sur­vey” (Free Online Video) and “Con­tem­po­rary Lit­er­a­ture” (Free Online Video – Free Video Down­load), and oth­ers spe­cif­ic to one peri­od or even one writer, like “Oscar Wilde” (Free Online Audio ). and the Allen Gins­berg-taught “Jack Ker­ouac” (Free Online Audio Part 1 and Part 2). Oth­er offer­ings in our col­lec­tion more close­ly resem­ble the cours­es you may have always want­ed to take, but nev­er found offered, like these from “Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Corey Olsen:

• The Hob­bit – Free iTunes Video — Free Online Audio — More
• Lord of the Rings I: The Road Goes Ever On — Free iTunes Video & Audio
• Lord of the Rings II: The Two Tow­ers — Free Tunes Video & Audio — Free Online Video & Audio
• Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King — Free iTunes Video & Audio — Free Online Video & Audio

And yes, for those tru­ly intent on con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion in Mid­dle-Earth, Olsen also offers a “Sil­mar­il­lion Sem­i­nar” (Free Online Video & Audio). If none of these appeal to your own intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, how­ev­er, do vis­it the col­lec­tion’s page for more options from exis­ten­tial­ism to George Eliot to Shake­speare. (Nor should you miss our com­plete list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, which includes oth­er sub­jects like phi­los­o­phy, com­put­er sci­ence, psy­chol­o­gy, physics, reli­gion and more.) And if you feel like some­thing lighter, might I sug­gest John Green’s crash course on lit­er­a­ture?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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.

Golden Apples of the Sun: 2 Hours of Dramatized Ray Bradbury Stories

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | May 9th, 2014

In 1953, Ray Brad­bury pub­lished The Gold­en Apples of the Sun, an anthol­o­gy of 22 short sto­ries. The title (if it sounds famil­iar) takes inspi­ra­tion from the final stan­za of W. B. Yeats’ 1899 poem “The Song of Wan­der­ing Aen­gus”:

Though I am old with wan­der­ing
Through hol­low lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dap­pled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The sil­ver apples of the moon,
The gold­en apples of the sun.

Some year lat­er, in 1991, the BBC dra­ma­tized eight sto­ries from Brad­bury’s col­lec­tion. Adapt­ed by Lawrence Gilbert, the sto­ries were per­formed by a full cast and aired on the radio. The audio, run­ning almost two hours, can be streamed below thanks to Archive.org. It’s oth­er­wise housed in our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Audio Books. Enjoy.

Below we have some oth­er radio drama­ti­za­tions of sci-fi/dystopi­an clas­sics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Revis­it Orson Welles’ Icon­ic ‘War of the Worlds’ Broad­cast

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

in Animation | May 8th, 2014

David Lynch’s cult mas­ter­piece Eraser­head freaked me out the first time I watched it back in high school. Few movies I’ve seen man­aged to oper­ate so pure­ly on dream log­ic, and few­er still had such an abil­i­ty to stir the murky waters of my sub­con­scious. And though the movie gave me night­mares, I was strange­ly drawn to the film. So I watched it again. And again. By the tenth or so view­ing, I found myself laugh­ing as if I were watch­ing a Will Fer­rell movie. Eraser­head might evoke all kinds of half-under­stood pri­mal fears but it is also pret­ty damned fun­ny.

That thread of black com­e­dy extends in one form or anoth­er through all of Lynch’s work, from Frank Booth’s pro­fane insis­tence on Pab­st Blue Rib­bon in Blue Vel­vet to the bum­bling hit­man who acci­den­tal­ly shoots a woman in the ass in Mul­hol­land Dri­ve. Lynch, like Hitch­cock before him, real­ized that the hor­ri­ble and the hilar­i­ous are, depend­ing on your per­spec­tive, a hair’s width apart.

After the Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, Lynch became dis­en­chant­ed with mak­ing movies while at the same time he grew intrigued by the pos­si­bil­i­ties offered by cheap dig­i­tal cam­eras and the inter­net. In 2002, he made the ani­mat­ed series Dum­b­land, which Lynch him­self called “very stu­pid, very crude.” Indeed, the sim­ple black and white line draw­ings of Dum­b­land make Beav­is and Butthead look like some­thing out of Hayao Miyaza­ki. Lynch did every­thing him­self, includ­ing all the voic­es.

Each short, which lasts around 3 min­utes, cen­ters on Randy — a semi-fer­al, prodi­gious­ly flat­u­lent beast of a man who is just as like­ly to shout pro­fan­i­ties at you as punch you in the face. Basi­cal­ly, think Homer Simp­son meets Frank Booth. He lives with his unnamed wife, who looks like she’s always on the brink of men­tal col­lapse, and his young son. And since this is a David Lynch pro­duc­tion, motives are unex­plained, the atmos­phere is filled with men­ace, and the dia­logue is preg­nant with a sub­text that is utter­ly obscure.

The first episode, which you can see above (and be warned, there is a lot of swear­ing), shows Randy star­ing cov­etous­ly at his neighbor’s shed before bark­ing at a heli­copter hov­er­ing over­head. His reedy neigh­bor reveals that he’s miss­ing a limb and has some unusu­al sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties. The episode is absurd, dis­qui­et­ing and pret­ty fun­ny. You can see the rest of the series here. You can watch it all in about a half hour.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

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.

Mark Twain Writes a Rapturous Letter to Walt Whitman on the Poet’s 70th Birthday (1889)

in Letters, Literature | May 8th, 2014

May 31, 1889, Walt Whitman’s sev­en­ti­eth birth­day, occa­sioned a cel­e­bra­tion of the poet in his home­town of Cam­den, New Jer­sey, with a sev­er­al course din­ner called “The Feast of Rea­son” fol­lowed by a pro­gram called “The Flow of Soul,” a suc­ces­sion of tes­ti­mo­ni­al speech­es and read­ings by promi­nent politi­cians and a few minor lit­er­ary fig­ures. Whit­man him­self was in ill health, but he man­aged to attend dur­ing dessert, deliv­er a brief response, then stay for over two hours after­ward (see the event’s orig­i­nal pro­gram, with menu, here). While the event itself, writes Ed Fol­som in the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review, was intend­ed as a “local cel­e­bra­tion of Camden’s most famous per­son­al­i­ty,” the occa­sion prompt­ed admir­ers world­wide to send birth­day wish­es by wire and let­ter. Some of the famous lit­er­ary fig­ures who wrote includ­ed John Adding­ton Symonds, William Dean How­ells, John Green­leaf Whit­ti­er, and Mark Twain.

Twain’s let­ter (first page above) is not only a deeply heart­felt appre­ci­a­tion of the great­est liv­ing Amer­i­can poet, it is also, as Let­ters of Note puts it, “a love let­ter to human endeav­or.” Twain enu­mer­ates with awe the astound­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advances Whit­man has wit­nessed in his life­time, from steam pow­er to pho­tog­ra­phy to elec­tric light. The let­ter is char­ac­ter­is­tic of the opti­mism of the age—so per­fect­ly cap­tured a lit­tle over a decade lat­er in Hen­ry Adams’ mem­oir chap­ter “The Dynamo and the Vir­gin.” Twain, hard­ly a reli­gious man, evinces an almost rap­tur­ous faith in progress, con­clud­ing with a Bib­li­cal allu­sion and a some­what obscure ref­er­ence to an apoc­a­lyp­tic figure—“him for whom the earth was made”—who would appear in thir­ty years time. One can’t help but think, in hind­sight, of Yeats’ 1919 occult med­i­ta­tion on the loss of that Vic­to­ri­an cer­tain­ty in “The Sec­ond Com­ing.” As Marc L. Roark observes at The Lit­er­ary Table, “Twain was cor­rect — thir­ty years from the let­ter would see tech­nol­o­gy like the world nev­er knew.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that tech­nol­o­gy was that of war.”

Hart­ford, May 24/89

To Walt Whit­man:

You have lived just the sev­en­ty years which are great­est in the world’s his­to­ry & rich­est in ben­e­fit & advance­ment to its peo­ples. These sev­en­ty years have done much more to widen the inter­val between man & the oth­er ani­mals than was accom­plished by any five cen­turies which pre­ced­ed them.

What great births you have wit­nessed! The steam press, the steamship, the steel ship, the rail­road, the per­fect­ed cot­ton-gin, the tele­graph, the phono­graph, the pho­to­graph, pho­to-gravure, the elec­trotype, the gaslight, the elec­tric light, the sewing machine, & the amaz­ing, infi­nite­ly var­ied & innu­mer­able prod­ucts of coal tar, those lat­est & strangest mar­vels of a mar­velous age. And you have seen even greater births than these; for you have seen the appli­ca­tion of anes­the­sia to surgery-prac­tice, where­by the ancient domin­ion of pain, which began with the first cre­at­ed life, came to an end in this earth for­ev­er; you have seen the slave set free, you have seen the monar­chy ban­ished from France, & reduced in Eng­land to a machine which makes an impos­ing show of dili­gence & atten­tion to busi­ness, but isn’t con­nect­ed with the works. Yes, you have indeed seen much — but tar­ry yet a while, for the great­est is yet to come. Wait thir­ty years, & then look out over the earth! You shall see mar­vels upon mar­vels added to these whose nativ­i­ty you have wit­nessed; & con­spic­u­ous above them you shall see their for­mi­da­ble Result — Man at almost his full stature at last! — & still grow­ing, vis­i­bly grow­ing while you look. In that day, who that hath a throne, or a gild­ed priv­i­lege not attain­able by his neigh­bor, let him pro­cure his slip­pers & get ready to dance, for there is going to be music. Abide, & see these things! Thir­ty of us who hon­or & love you, offer the oppor­tu­ni­ty. We have among us 600 years, good & sound, left in the bank of life. Take 30 of them — the rich­est birth-day gift ever offered to poet in this world — & sit down & wait. Wait till you see that great fig­ure appear, & catch the far glint of the sun upon his ban­ner; then you may depart sat­is­fied, as know­ing you have seen him for whom the earth was made, & that he will pro­claim that human wheat is worth more than human tares, & pro­ceed to orga­nize human val­ues on that basis.

Mark Twain

See Let­ters of Note for the remain­ing images of Twain’s let­ter. You can peruse all of the speech­es, let­ters, and telegrams addressed to Whit­man on his 70th birth­day in the col­lec­tion Camden’s Com­pli­ment to Walt Whit­man, pub­lished that same year.

For many more fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal let­ters, be sure to check out Let­ters of Note’s new book, Let­ters of Note: Cor­re­spon­dence Deserv­ing of a Wider Audi­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Walt Whit­man (Maybe) Read­ing the First Four Lines of His Poem, “Amer­i­ca” (1890)

Mark Twain Writes a “Gush­ing,” “Self-Dep­re­cat­ing” Wed­ding Announce­ment to His Fam­i­ly (1869)

Mark Twain Drafts the Ulti­mate Let­ter of Com­plaint (1905)

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