David Lynch Presents the History of Surrealist Film (1987)

in Film | October 11th, 2013

What liv­ing direc­tor has drawn the descrip­tor “sur­re­al” more often than David Lynch? If you’ve seen, or rather expe­ri­enced, a few of his films — par­tic­u­lar­ly Eraser­head, Lost High­way, Mul­hol­land Dr., or Inland Empire, or even the first half of his tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks — you know he’s earned it. Like any sur­re­al­ist worth his salt, Lynch cre­ates his own ver­sion of real­i­ty, with its own set of often unfath­omable and inex­plic­a­bly but emo­tion­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly res­o­nant qual­i­ties. In 1987, the year after his break­through Blue Vel­vet opened in the­aters, the BBC appar­ent­ly thought him enough of an author­i­ty on the mat­ter of cin­e­mat­ic sur­re­al­ism to enlist him to present an episode of Are­na on the sub­ject.

And so we’ve high­light­ed, just above in two parts, the fruit of their col­lab­o­ra­tion, with apolo­gies for the straight-from-the-VHS qual­i­ty of the video. (I just think of the slight mud­dled­ness as adding anoth­er wel­come lay­er of unre­al­i­ty to the pro­ceed­ings.)

Lynch’s duties on the broad­cast include pro­vid­ing facts about the films and film­mak­ers excerpt­ed through­out to tell the his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ist film. (He also pro­vides sev­er­al choice opin­ions, as when he calls Philadel­phia “one of the sick­est, most cor­rupt, deca­dent, fear-rid­den cities that exists.”) We see bits and pieces of pic­tures like Luis Buñuel and Sal­vador Dali’s 1929 Un Chien Andalou (above), Jean Cocteau’s 1932 Blood of a Poet, Fer­nand Léger’s 1947 The Girl with the Pre­fab­ri­cat­ed Heart, and Chris Marker’s 1962 La Jetée. Not only does Lynch con­tex­tu­al­ize them, he dis­cuss­es their influ­ence on his own work. Casu­al film­go­ers who’ve caught a Lynch movie or two and tak­en them as the imag­in­ings of an enter­tain­ing weirdo will, after watch­ing this episode, come to under­stand how long a tra­di­tion they fit into — and they’ll no doubt want to see not just more of Lynch’s work, but his sources of inspi­ra­tion as well. (They may, how­ev­er, after hear­ing all he has to say here, still regard him as a weirdo.)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

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

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Watch Antoni Gaudí’s Unfinished Masterpiece, the Sagrada Família, Get Finally Completed in 60 Seconds

in Architecture, Religion | October 11th, 2013

In 1883, Antoni Gaudí, the great Cata­lan archi­tect, began work­ing on his mag­num opus, the Sagra­da Família, the church that has become one of the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tions in Barcelona. Before his death in 1925, Gaudí man­aged to com­plete the crypt, apse and part of the Nativ­i­ty facade. Work on the basil­i­ca slowed dur­ing the 1930s and 40s, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War, but picked up again in the 1950s. A series of archi­tects car­ried on Gaudí’s work, com­plet­ing new tow­ers and facades. In 2000, the cen­tral nave vault­ing was com­plet­ed, and, since then, mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy has put archi­tects on track to com­plete the church decades ahead of sched­ule. The new tar­get date is 2026 — the cen­te­nary of Gaudí’s death. Thanks to a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed video released by the Sagra­da Famil­ia Foun­da­tion, you can see what the basil­i­ca, almost 150 years in the mak­ing, will look like when it’s all done. You can also take a vir­tu­al tour of the inte­ri­or of the UNESCO land­mark here.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Joseph Stalin, a Lifelong Editor, Wielded a Big, Blue, Dangerous Pencil

in History | October 11th, 2013

history_of_cpsu_b

It seems only nat­ur­al that Joseph Stal­in, who presided over per­haps the most stag­ger­ing­ly vast era­sure of human beings, their prop­er­ty, their doc­u­ments and his­to­ries, should have also been a metic­u­lous edi­tor. Whether we know it or not, the invis­i­ble hand of an edi­tor intrudes between us and near­ly every­thing we read (even if it’s the writer as edi­tor), mak­ing eso­teric deci­sions, cre­at­ing alter­nate out­comes and delet­ing the past. In Stalin’s day, and still in many edi­to­r­i­al depart­ments today, the edi­tor wield­ed a col­ored pen­cil instead of a key­board, and hov­ered over man­u­scripts, not­ing adden­da, cor­rect­ing minu­tia, slash­ing through sen­tences, and scrib­bling inde­ci­pher­able com­ments in the mar­gins. Stalin’s pen­cil was blue, a col­or that was not vis­i­ble when pho­tographed.

This col­or becomes a metaphor for Stalin’s invis­i­bil­i­ty in a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on Stal­in as edi­tor by Hol­ly Case, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty. Before Stal­in was Stal­in, he was Joseph Dju­gashvili, rev­o­lu­tion­ary bol­she­vik and sem­i­nary dropout, “a ruth­less per­son, and a seri­ous edi­tor.” Stal­in reject­ed 47 of Lenin’s arti­cles to Prav­da (and sup­pressed Lenin’s warn­ings about his pro­tégée after the for­mer’s death). And once he assumed pow­er as head of the Sovi­et state in the mid-twen­ties, Stal­in con­tin­ued in this capac­i­ty, heav­i­ly rewrit­ing doc­u­ments and man­u­scripts, and scrawl­ing notes and revi­sions over  hun­dreds of offi­cial par­ty doc­u­ments. “For Stal­in,” Case writes, “edit­ing was a pas­sion that extend­ed well beyond the realm of pub­lished texts.” She com­ments on the para­dox of the dictator’s inescapable pub­lic pres­ence and his intru­sive, yet invis­i­ble, edi­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies:

Stal­in always seemed to have a blue pen­cil on hand, and many of the ways he used it stand in direct con­trast to com­mon assump­tions about his per­son and thoughts. He edit­ed ide­ol­o­gy out or played it down, cut ref­er­ences to him­self and his achieve­ments, and even exhib­it­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty of mind, revers­ing some of his own pri­or edits.

So while Stal­in’s voice rang in every ear, his por­trait hung in every office and fac­to­ry, and bobbed in every chore­o­graphed parade, the Stal­in behind the blue pen­cil remained invis­i­ble. What’s more, he allowed very few details of his pri­vate life to become pub­lic knowl­edge, lead­ing the Stal­in biog­ra­ph­er Robert Ser­vice to com­ment on the remark­able “aus­ter­i­ty” of the “Stal­in cult.”

We should not mis­take Stalin’s “self-efface­ment,” Case writes, for mod­esty. She quotes the enig­mat­ic street artist Banksy to make the point: “invis­i­bil­i­ty is a super­pow­er.” Stal­in applied the pow­er of his pen­cil to thou­sands of offi­cial doc­u­ments and pieces of pro­pa­gan­da, even com­plete­ly rewrit­ing the 1938 Sovi­et bible, The Short Course on the His­to­ry of the All-Union Com­mu­nist Par­ty (Bol­she­viks). Com­mis­sioned for a team of authors in 12 chap­ters, Stal­in found it nec­es­sary to “fun­da­men­tal­ly revise 11 of them” (see the first edi­tion title page above).

stalinkillList

Stalin’s blue pen­cil also inter­vened in more direct, and chill­ing ways. The doc­u­ment at left shows a list of peo­ple held by the NKVD, fore­run­ners to the KGB. The blue hand­writ­ing scrawled over the list is Stalin’s. It reads “Exe­cute every­one.”

We have anoth­er exe­cu­tion order below, this time in the form of a 1940 let­ter writ­ten by Stalin’s secret police chief Beria and rec­om­mend­ing “exe­cu­tion by shoot­ing” for around 20,000 pris­on­ers, most of them Pol­ish offi­cers, at a camp in Katyn, a mas­sacre the Sovi­ets blamed on the Nazis. Beria’s let­ter (below) bears the sig­na­tures, in blue pen­cil, of Stal­in and sev­er­al Polit­buro mem­bers.

stalin_letter466

In addi­tion to heav­i­ly edit­ing pro­pa­gan­da and sign­ing mass death war­rants, Stal­in used his pen­cil to deface draw­ings by 19th cen­tu­ry Russ­ian painters, scrawl­ing “crude and omi­nous cap­tions” beneath them in red or blue. He left his mark on 19 pic­tures, all of them nudes, most of them male. He slashed through their tor­sos and oth­er body parts with the pen­cil (below) and wrote on one of the draw­ings, “Radek, you gin­ger bas­tard, if you hadn’t pissed into the wind, if you hadn’t been so bad, you’d still be alive.” Karl Radeck was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary activist in the 20s that his­to­ri­ans believe Stal­in had killed in 1939. His­to­ri­an Niki­ta Petrov—who believes Stal­in defaced the draw­ings between 1939 and 1946—says of them: “These cap­tions show Stal­in was­n’t just mali­cious and prim­i­tive, but that he was also very dan­ger­ous.” It is indeed deeply unset­tling for an edi­tor to see Stalin’s ruth­less hand move freely from the vio­lence of his slash-and-burn tex­tu­al changes to that of his mass exe­cu­tion orders and crude, “loutish” debase­ment of human forms.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

His­to­ry Declas­si­fied: New Archive Reveals Once-Secret Doc­u­ments from World Gov­ern­ments

Leon Trot­sky: Love, Death and Exile in Mex­i­co

Learn Russ­ian from our List of Free Lan­guage Lessons

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Rocky’s Famous Trip up the Art Museum Steps Spoofed by the Pranksters of Improv Everywhere

in Comedy, Film, Theatre, Travel | October 11th, 2013

I believe some movies are so clas­sic, they should be con­sid­ered untouch­able, an opin­ion I wish more Broad­way pro­duc­ers shared.

Brace your­self. Rocky, Sylvester Stal­lone’s heart­warm­ing tale about a small-pota­toes box­er in 1970s Philadel­phia, has been turned into a musi­cal.

No! Why!? Adri­an!!!

It’s like­ly not as bad as I fear. Stal­lone him­self is co-pro­duc­ing, young direc­tor Alex Tim­bers is deserved­ly hot, and lyri­cist Lynn Ahrens is respon­si­ble, in large degree, for School­house Rock.

All the same, prank col­lec­tive Improv Every­where’s take on one of Rock­y’s most icon­ic scenes falls more square­ly with­in my com­fort zone. The first install­ment in the group’s week­ly Movies in Real Life series, this Rocky fea­tures looka­like come­di­an Dan Black run­ning through the streets of Philly, a crowd of kids tail­ing him on the final leg. (“So, uh, you have par­ents?” he gasps, atop the art muse­um steps.)

As with the annu­al No-Pants Sub­way Ride and many oth­er Improv Every­where stunts, a great deal of fun comes from the reac­tions of unsus­pect­ing passers­by. Some of my favorites are view­able in the prank’s Mis­sion Report, a fol­low up with less need to stick to the script. Still in char­ac­ter, Black demands roy­al­ty checks from street ven­dors sell­ing Rocky t‑shirts and screws with tourists pos­ing in front of the famed Rocky stat­ue. Small won­der Improv Every­where’s mot­to is “we cause scenes.”

For those in need of refresh­ment, here is the orig­i­nal:

The most recent Movies in Real Life fea­tures a boul­der chas­ing Indi­ana Jones through Cen­tral Park to the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. Tune in to the col­lec­tive’s Youtube chan­nel every Tues­day this fall for anoth­er fresh but faith­ful take on a famil­iar film.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra

The Do’s and Don’ts of Improv Com­e­dy with Liam Nee­son, Ricky Ger­vais, Tina Fey, and Del Close

Whose Line Is It Any­way? The Com­plete Improv Series Now Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s most recent book is the graph­ic nov­el, Peanut . Fol­low her@AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Free Online: 10 of the Greatest Silent Films of All Time

in Film | October 10th, 2013

Silent films had a respectable show­ing, as it were, on Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s last big crit­ics poll. The votes, cast to deter­mine the great­est motion pic­tures of all time, placed three silents among the top ten over­all: F.W. Mur­nau’s Sun­rise, Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man with a Movie Cam­era, and Carl Theodor Drey­er’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. These, of course, also rank at the top of Sight & Sound’s sep­a­rate list of the ten great­est silent films of all time, which came out as fol­lows:

  1. Sun­rise (F.W. Mur­nau, 1927)
  2. Man with a Movie Cam­era (Dzi­ga Ver­tov, 1929)
  3. The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Drey­er, 1928)
  4. Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (Sergei Eisen­stein, 1925)
  5. The Gen­er­al (Buster Keaton, 1926)
  6. Metrop­o­lis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
  7. City Lights (Char­lie Chap­lin, 1931)
  8. Sher­lock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
  9. Greed (Erich von Stro­heim, 1923)
  10. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1928) and Intol­er­ance (D.W. Grif­fith, 1916)

Though all of these pic­tures came out with­in the seem­ing­ly short 15-year span between 1916 and 1921, they rep­re­sent a wide cin­e­mat­ic diver­si­ty: in form, in theme, in genre, in place of ori­gin (of both the films and the film­mak­ers), in sen­si­bil­i­ty, in aes­thet­ics. You prob­a­bly rec­og­nize all of their names, espe­cial­ly if you’ve tak­en a film stud­ies course, and you may think of them all as famil­iar, but how many have you watched? Even we avowed cinephiles have a way of trick­ing our­selves into believ­ing we’ve seen all the most impor­tant movies in their entire­ty, when in real­i­ty we know only about, albeit some­times a lot about, their place in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma and their cur­rents of influ­ence that flow into films made today.

But thanks to the inter­net, we can catch up with ease. Giv­en the age of works from the silent era, most of them have passed into the pub­lic domain. You can there­fore watch almost all of the top ten great­est silent films of all time, as select­ed by the 2012 Sight & Sound crit­ics poll, for free, online, right now. Some you can even watch right here, with­out leav­ing Open Cul­ture: at the top of the post, you’ll find Sun­rise. Just above, we’ve fea­tured Man with a Movie Cam­era. Below, The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. To watch the oth­ers, sim­ply click their linked titles on the list. After you’ve enjoyed every­thing from Mur­nau’s Ger­man-Expres­sion­ist-by-way-of-Hol­ly­wood romance to Keaton’s epic com­e­dy to Buñuel’s sur­re­al­ist pro­ces­sion of still-trou­bling visions, you’ll not just know where many mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques came from, you’ll feel how they’ve evolved over the decades. All of the films list­ed above appear on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

100 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics 

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

535 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Lorne Michaels Introduces Saturday Night Live and Its Brilliant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

in Comedy, Television | October 10th, 2013

Sat­ur­day Night Live, now in its 39th sea­son, has become more notable late­ly for its takes on such unin­ten­tion­al­ly (and too often painful­ly) fun­ny polit­i­cal fig­ures as Sarah Palin and Michele Bach­mann, rather than for its actu­al sketch­es. The show’s had some rough years, and though I can’t count myself among its cur­rent fans, for per­haps an eight-year peri­od, from the late 80s to the mid 90s, I tried to catch every episode. Occa­sion­al­ly, I would have to endure what every fan of the long-run­ning show must bear: a long nos­tal­gic rant from my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion about how ter­ri­ble the show had become and how it would nev­er be as fun­ny as it was in their day. But they may have just been right, since they watched it live in its infan­cy in the mid-sev­en­ties, when the show fea­tured such comedic giants as Dan Aykroyd, Steve Mar­tin, John Belushi, Bill Mur­ray, and Gil­da Rad­ner. Although the top­i­cal humor of those ear­ly episodes is bad­ly dat­ed, the raw ener­gy radi­at­ing from peo­ple who would go on to cre­ate such endur­ing clas­sics as Ani­mal House, The Blues Broth­ers, The Jerk, and Cad­dyshack sets the bar very high for every­one who fol­lowed.

Debut­ing on Octo­ber 11, 1975, the brain­child of Lorne Michaels and Dick Eber­sol was orig­i­nal­ly just called the show Sat­ur­day Night to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from an ABC show called Sat­ur­day Night Live with Howard Cosell. But from its incep­tion, the hall­mark ele­ments were in place: the open­ing sketch end­ing in “Live from New York, it’s Sat­ur­day Night!” (orig­i­nal­ly uttered each time by Chevy Chase); the live stu­dio audi­ence; the celebri­ty guest host (pio­neered by George Car­lin in the first episode); and the live musi­cal guests (the first were Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian). The orig­i­nal cast con­sist­ed of Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Gar­rett Mor­ris, Gil­da Rad­ner, John Belushi, and Laraine New­man. In the video at the top you can see a very young Lorne Michaels intro­duce the eight orig­i­nal cast mem­bers before the first show aired in an inter­view on The Tomor­row Show with Tom Sny­der. Asked by Sny­der about the for­mat of the show, Michaels jok­ing­ly replies, “we’ve got eight, and we’re hop­ing for two to real­ly work. Not all of these peo­ple will become stars.” The cast laughs ner­vous­ly. There’s no way any of them could have known how much the show would func­tion as a star-mak­ing machine, but that is exact­ly what it became, even in its first sea­son.

We are lucky to have screen tests from two of the first cast’s biggest stars-to-be, John Belushi (above) and Dan Aykroyd (below). In his audi­tion, Belushi wag­gles his famous eye­brows, does a cou­ple of bril­liant Bran­do impres­sions, and gen­er­al­ly hams it up. Aykroyd plays it straight, engag­ing in the smart satire of cur­rent events and pop cul­ture that he did so well and pulling off a very cred­i­ble Louisiana accent.

While some of the most famous come­di­ans of sea­son one, includ­ing Belushi and Aykroyd, are well known even to the raw youth of today, Lorne Michael’s first hire, the fab­u­lous Gil­da Rad­ner, has sad­ly fad­ed from pop cul­ture mem­o­ry, and there are pre­cious few clips of her SNL work online. But Rad­ner was a sin­gu­lar artist whose stand-up rou­tines and Broad­way shows are absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal, and still hold up today. You can see her below from her 1979 show “Gil­da Live” doing a char­ac­ter called Can­dy Slice, her take on Pat­ti Smith (who was nev­er so wast­ed, I think). Notice a young Paul Scha­ef­fer on the drums and SNL’s G.E. Smith, Radner’s first hus­band, on gui­tar. Radner’s trag­ic death from ovar­i­an can­cer in 1989 cast her late life in somber tones, but see­ing her below, before her ill­ness, offers but a glimpse of the tremen­dous phys­i­cal ener­gy and com­mit­ment she brought to her every mem­o­rable char­ac­ter on the show.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Tom Davis, Orig­i­nal Sat­ur­day Night Live Writer, “De-ani­mates” at 59

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Famous Philosophers Imagined as Action Figures: Plunderous Plato, Dangerous Descartes & More

in Creativity, Education, Philosophy | October 10th, 2013

toyaristotle

Amer­i­cans do not live in a cul­ture that val­ues phi­los­o­phy. I could go on about the deep veins of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism that run under the coun­try like fault lines or nat­ur­al gas deposits, but I won’t. Let’s just say that we favor more obvi­ous dis­plays of prowess: feats of strength, agili­ty, and phys­i­cal vio­lence, for exam­ple, of the super­hero vari­ety. With this fact in mind, first-year grad­u­ate stu­dent Ian Van­de­walk­er decid­ed he “want­ed to do some­thing that would bring a dis­ci­pline that is often seen as dif­fi­cult, eso­teric, and even irrel­e­vant, into new light—especially in the eyes of young peo­ple.” Remem­ber­ing a poster he once saw of “an action fig­ure of Adam Smith with Invis­i­ble Hand action,” Van­de­walk­er decid­ed he would com­bine his own love of toys and phi­los­o­phy into a philoso­pher action fig­ure series he called “Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers!” Here are just a few of Vandewalker’s cre­ations, designed some­what like pro­fes­sion­al wrestlers, with their var­i­ous leagues and range of epi­thets.

He begins at the tra­di­tion­al begin­ning, with fig­ures of “Plun­der­ous Pla­to” and “Arro­gant Aris­to­tle” (above), “The Angry Ancients.” Aris­to­tle, known as the “peri­patet­ic” philoso­pher, has only one pow­er: “walk­ing.” His qual­i­ty is attest­ed by a rather cir­cu­lar syl­lo­gism: “All Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers fig­ures are total­ly awe­some. This toy is a Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers fig­ure. There­fore, this toy is total­ly awe­some.” Like much of Aristotle’s deduc­tive rea­son­ing, the argu­ment is air­tight, pro­vid­ed one accept the truth of its premis­es.

toydescartes

In the cat­e­go­ry of “Con­tu­me­lious Con­ti­nen­tal Ratio­nal­ists,” who began the revolt against those Aris­totelian “Mer­ci­less Medievals,” we have “Dan­ger­ous Descartes.” René Decartes may have claimed to doubt everything—every prin­ci­ple that Aris­to­tle took for granted—but he fell prey to his own errors, hence his action figure’s weak­ness, the “Carte­sian cir­cle.” Decartes’ method of doubt pro­duced its own brand of dual­is­tic cer­tain­ty about his own exis­tence as a “think­ing thing,” and the exis­tence of God, hence “cer­tain­ty” is one of his action figure’s strengths.

toyhegel

Skip­ping ahead over a cen­tu­ry, we have the lone fig­ure in “The Abom­inable Absolute Ide­al­ist” series, “Hate­ful Hegel.” Hegel is the ulti­mate sys­tem­atiz­er whose embrace of con­tra­dic­tion can seem mad­den­ing­ly inco­her­ent, unless we believe his meta­physic of “Absolute Spir­it.” Giv­en his dialec­tic of every­thing, Hegel’s pow­er is that “he is infi­nite.” His weak­ness? “He is finite,” of course. Giv­en Hegel’s tele­o­log­i­cal the­o­ry of his­to­ry, peo­ple who pur­chase his action fig­ure “can expect them to become more and more valu­able as time pass­es.”

toywittgenstein

The most amus­ing of “The Antag­o­nis­tic Ana­lyt­ic Philoso­phers” is Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, who was him­self an amus­ing­ly eccen­tric indi­vid­ual. Known for his ter­ri­ble tem­per, which would often dri­ve him to ver­bal­ly abuse and strike those poor stu­dents who couldn’t grasp his abstruse con­cepts, “Vin­dic­tive Wittgen­stein” has the pow­er of “pok­er wield­ing abil­i­ty.” His weak­ness, nat­u­ral­ly, is his “teach­ing abil­i­ty.” I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the “notes” sec­tion of the fig­ure’s descrip­tion:

Wittgen­stein fig­ures come in two vari­a­tions: the ear­ly mod­el’s record­ed mes­sages include non­sense about lan­guage being a “pic­ture” of the world, while the lat­er mod­el’s mes­sages include non­sense about games and their “fam­i­ly resem­blances” to one anoth­er. It’s fun to com­mu­ni­cate! (Doll does not actu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate. Chil­dren who claim that Wittgen­stein fig­ures talk to them with their own “pri­vate lan­guage” are mis­tak­en or lying and should be severe­ly beat­en by their teach­ers.)

You can see the whole set at the Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers site. It is prob­lem­at­ic that we only get dead white men rep­re­sent­ed, but this is not sole­ly the fault of Van­de­walk­er but also a prob­lem of his­to­ry and the tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry of ideas. One would hope that the con­cept is clever enough that it might make phi­los­o­phy appeal­ing to peo­ple who find it dull or unap­proach­able. That may be too lofty a goal, but these fig­ures are sure to amuse the already philo­soph­i­cal­ly-inclined, and per­haps spur them on to learn more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10th Graders Draw Pic­tures Imag­in­ing Philoso­phers at Work

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

What Do Most Philoso­phers Believe? A Wide-Rang­ing Sur­vey Project Gives Us Some Idea

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” Performed on a Guzheng, an Ancient Chinese Instrument

in Music | October 10th, 2013

The guzheng was born in Chi­na over 2500 years ago. Orig­i­nal­ly made out of bam­boo and silk strings, the instru­ment became very pop­u­lar in the impe­r­i­al court dur­ing the Qin peri­od (221 to 206 BCE), and by the Tang Dynasty (618 CE to 907 CE), it was per­haps the most pop­u­lar instru­ment in Chi­na. Accord­ing to the San Fran­cis­co Guzheng Music Soci­ety, it remained pop­u­lar through the late Qing dynasty (1644 A.D. — 1911 A.D.) and into the 20th cen­tu­ry, when, in 1948, “the renowned musi­cian Cao Zheng estab­lished the first uni­ver­si­ty lev­el guzheng pro­gram” in the coun­try, and the “old silk strings were replaced with nylon strings, which are still being used today.”

That’s not the only thing that’s hap­pen­ing today. Young musi­cians like Michelle Kwan are tak­ing West­erns hit and per­form­ing them adept­ly on the Guzheng. Above, we have a pret­ty remark­able per­for­mance of Guns N’ Ros­es’ 1987 hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” It just gets bet­ter as it goes along. In the past, we’ve also fea­tured the Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments, includ­ing the Guzheng. Plus we’ve shown you Jimi Hen­drix’s “Voodoo Chile” and Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing”, both played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an instru­ment direct­ly relat­ed to the Guzheng. They’re all worth watch­ing.

via Devour

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and make us part of your dai­ly social media diet.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Comedian Ricky Gervais Tells a Serious Story About How He Learned to Write Creatively

in Creativity, Writing | October 9th, 2013

Ricky Ger­vais, the cre­ator of The Office, rarely gets out of his com­ic per­sona. It’s usu­al­ly  laughs, schtick, and more laughs. But when Fast Com­pa­ny pinned him down and asked him about “the sin­gle biggest influ­ence on his cre­ative process,” he turned seri­ous (after a few more laughs) and talked about a for­ma­tive moment with a child­hood Eng­lish teacher. The teacher taught him this: you’re bet­ter off writ­ing … Nev­er mind, I’ll let Ricky tell the tale. It’s his sto­ry after all.

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ricky Ger­vais Presents “Learn Gui­tar with David Brent”

“Learn Eng­lish With Ricky Ger­vais,” A New Pod­cast Debuts (NSFW)

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Albert Camus Writes a Friendly Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Personal and Philosophical Rift

in Letters, Philosophy | October 9th, 2013

Camus letter to Sartre

As maître of the mid-cen­tu­ry French philo­soph­i­cal scene, Jean-Paul Sartre wield­ed some con­sid­er­able influ­ence in his home coun­try and abroad. His celebri­ty did not pre­vent him from work­ing under the edi­tor­ship of his friend and fel­low nov­el­ist, Albert Camus, how­ev­er. Camus, the younger of the two and the more rest­less and unset­tled, edit­ed the French resis­tance news­pa­per Com­bat; Sartre wrote for the paper, and even served as its post­war cor­re­spon­dent in New York (where he met Her­bert Hoover) in 1945. Accord­ing to Simone de Beau­voir, the two became acquaint­ed two years ear­li­er at a pro­duc­tion of Sartre’s The Flies. They were already mutu­al admir­ers from afar, Camus hav­ing reviewed Sartre’s work and Sartre hav­ing writ­ten glow­ing­ly of Camus’ The Stranger. Ronald Aron­son, a schol­ar and biog­ra­ph­er of the philoso­phers’ rela­tion­ship, describes their first meet­ing below, quot­ing from de Beauvoir’s mem­oir The Prime of Life:

“[A] dark-skinned young man came up and intro­duced him­self: it was Albert Camus.” His nov­el The Stranger, pub­lished a year ear­li­er, was a lit­er­ary sen­sa­tion, and his philo­soph­i­cal essay The Myth of Sisy­phus had appeared six months pre­vi­ous­ly. [Camus] want­ed to meet the increas­ing­ly well-known nov­el­ist and philosopher—and now playwright—whose fic­tion he had reviewed years ear­li­er and who had just pub­lished a long arti­cle on Camus’s own books. It was a brief encounter. “I’m Camus,” he said. Sartre imme­di­ate­ly “found him a most like­able per­son­al­i­ty.”

As the recent­ly dis­cov­ered let­ter above shows—from Camus to Sartre—the two were inti­mate friends as well as col­lab­o­ra­tors. Thought to have been writ­ten some­time between 1943 and 1948, the let­ter is famil­iar and can­did. Camus opens with “My dear Sartre, I hope you and Cas­tor [“the beaver,” Sartre’s nick­name for de Beau­voir] are work­ing a lot… let me know when you return and we will have a relaxed evening.” Aron­son com­ments that the let­ter “shows that despite what some writ­ers have said, Sartre and Camus had a close friend­ship.”

Aronson’s com­ment is under­stat­ed. The queru­lous falling out of Sartre and Camus has acquired almost leg­endary sta­tus, with the two some­times stand­ing in for two diver­gent paths of French post-war phi­los­o­phy. Where Sartre grav­i­tat­ed toward ortho­dox Marx­ism, and aligned his views with Stalin’s even in the face of the Sovi­et camps, Camus repu­di­at­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence and val­orized the trag­ic strug­gle of the indi­vid­ual in 1951’s The Rebel, the work that alleged­ly incit­ed their philo­soph­i­cal split. Andy Mar­tin at the New York Times’ “The Stone” blog writes a con­cise sum­ma­ry of their intel­lec­tu­al and tem­pera­men­tal dif­fer­ences:

While Sartre after the war was more than ever a self-pro­fessed “writ­ing machine,” Camus was increas­ing­ly grapho­pho­bic, haunt­ed by a “dis­gust for all forms of pub­lic expres­sion.” Sartre’s phi­los­o­phy becomes soci­o­log­i­cal and struc­tural­ist in its bina­ry empha­sis. Camus, all alone, in the night, between con­ti­nents, far away from every­thing, is already less the solemn “moral­ist” of leg­end (“the Saint,” Sartre called him), more a (pre-)post-structuralist in his greater con­cern and anx­i­ety about lan­guage, his empha­sis on dif­fer­ence and refusal to artic­u­late a clear-cut the­o­ry: “I am too young to have a sys­tem,” he told one audi­ence [in New York].

While Camus’ polit­i­cal dis­en­gage­ment and cri­tique of Com­mu­nist prax­is in The Rebel may have pre­cip­i­tat­ed the increas­ing­ly frac­tious rela­tion­ship between the two men, there may have also been a per­son­al dis­agree­ment over a mutu­al love inter­est named Wan­da Kosakiewicz, whom both men pur­sued long before their split over ideas. Mar­tin also tells that story—one per­haps more inter­est­ing in a dra­mat­ic sense than the abstract sum­ma­ry above—at The Tele­graph. The short doc­u­men­tary clip below also dra­ma­tizes their dis­agree­ment with inter­views, rare pho­tos, news­reel footage, and read­ings from The Rebel. There is no men­tion, how­ev­er, of Wan­da.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

Free Online Cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy from Great Uni­ver­si­ties 

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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

in Education, K-12, Literature | October 9th, 2013

As a pre­teen, I steered clear of “young adult” fic­tion, a form I resent­ful­ly sus­pect­ed would try too hard to teach me lessons. Then again, if I’d had a young adult nov­el­ist like John Green — not far out of ado­les­cence him­self when I entered the YA demo­graph­ic — per­haps I’d have active­ly hoped for a les­son or two. While Green has earned a large part of his fame writ­ing nov­els like Look­ing for Alas­ka, An Abun­dance of Kather­ines, and The Fault in Our Stars, a siz­able chunk of his renown comes from his pro­lif­ic way with inter­net videos, espe­cial­ly of the edu­ca­tion­al vari­ety, which also demon­strate his pos­ses­sion of seri­ous teach­ing acu­men. Last year we fea­tured his 40-week Crash Course in World His­to­ry, and today we offer you his col­lec­tion of crash cours­es in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture. At the top, you’ll find its first les­son, the sev­en-minute “How and Why We Read.” Green, in the same jokey, enthu­si­as­tic onscreen per­sona as before, fol­lows up his world his­to­ry course by remind­ing us of the impor­tance of writ­ing as a mark­er of civ­i­liza­tion, and then reveals his per­son­al per­spec­tive as a writer: “I don’t want to get all lib­er­al art­sy on you, but I do want to make this clear: for me, sto­ries are about com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We did­n’t invent gram­mar so that your life would be mis­er­able in grade school as you attempt­ed to learn what the Márquez a prepo­si­tion is. By the way, on this pro­gram I will be insert­ing names of my favorite writ­ers when I would oth­er­wise insert curse words.”

Those lines give you a sense of Green’s tone, as well as his objec­tive. If you felt mis­er­able not just study­ing gram­mar in grade school but study­ing actu­al lit­er­a­ture in high school, these lessons may well revi­tal­ize a few of the clas­sics with which you could­n’t engage in the class­room. Just above, we have Green’s crash course on F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s The Great Gats­by (part one, part two) which, ear­ly on, gets inter­rupt­ed by a famil­iar-look­ing young objec­tor: “Mr. Green, I hate every­thing about this stu­pid col­lec­tion of first-world prob­lems pass­ing for a nov­el, but my hatred of that Willa Cather-ing los­er Daisy Buchanan burns with the fire of a thou­sand suns.” This draws a groan from our host: “Ugh, me from the past. Here’s the thing: you’re not sup­posed to like Daisy Buchanan, at least not in the uncom­pli­cat­ed way you like, say, cup­cakes. I don’t know where you got the idea the qual­i­ty of a nov­el should be judged by the lik­a­bil­i­ty of its char­ac­ters, but let me sub­mit to you that Daisy Buchanan does­n’t have to be lik­able to be inter­est­ing. Fur­ther­more, most of what makes her unlik­able — her sense of enti­tle­ment, her lim­it­ed empa­thy, her inabil­i­ty to make dif­fi­cult choic­es — are the very things that make you unlik­able.” Green knows that many of us, no mat­ter how lit­er­ate, still fall back into the dis­ad­van­ta­geous read­ing strate­gies for which we set­tled in high school. He does his enter­tain­ing utmost to cor­rect them while explor­ing the deep­er themes of not just Gats­by, but oth­er such oft-assigned (and oft-ruined-for-kids) works as Romeo and Juli­et (part one, part two), the poet­ry of Emi­ly Dick­in­son, and, below, The Catch­er in the Rye (part one, part two):

A Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture will be added to our handy col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The 55 Strangest, Great­est Films Nev­er Made (Cho­sen by John Green)

Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast