The Cover of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Censored with Wear & Tear

in Design | February 14th, 2024

1984 before

In 2013, Pen­guin released in the UK a series of new cov­ers for five works by George Orwell, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bold cov­er design for Orwell’s best-known work, 1984. Accord­ing to Cre­ative Review, the design­er, David Pear­son, made it so that the book’s title and Orwell’s name were debossed, then almost com­plete­ly obscured by black foil­ing, leav­ing just “enough of a dent for the title to be deter­mined.” No doubt, the design plays on the whole idea of cen­sor­ship, “ref­er­enc­ing the rewrit­ing of his­to­ry car­ried out by the novel’s Min­istry of Truth.”

Years lat­er, you’ll have dif­fi­cul­ty buy­ing new copies of Pear­son­’s design. They’re in pret­ty short sup­ply. But any­one with a well-worn copy of the book might dis­cov­er what one Red­di­tor has also observed–that the cov­er design “becomes less cen­sored with wear.” Com­pare the “before” image above to the “after” image down below. Was this all part of Pear­son­’s long-range mas­ter plan? Or some­thing of a design flaw? We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know. But if you’re look­ing for a book that gets bet­ter with age, then this is one to add to your list.

1984 after

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Free Down­load: A Knit­ting Pat­tern for a Sweater Depict­ing an Icon­ic Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

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10 Biggest Threats to the World in 2024, Ranked by Ian Bremmer

in Current Affairs | February 13th, 2024

At the start of each year, Ian Brem­mer, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and pres­i­dent of Eura­sia Group, cre­ates a list that ranks the great­est threats to our world. In 2024, Brem­mer puts his fin­ger on Ungoverned AI, a Par­ti­tioned Ukraine, a volatile Mid­dle East, and a sput­ter­ing Chi­nese econ­o­my. But the biggest threat? A divid­ed Unit­ed States where the right and left con­sid­er each oth­er an exis­ten­tial threat, where polit­i­cal can­di­dates threat­en their rivals, where pow­er does­n’t get tran­si­tioned peace­ful­ly, and where for­eign nations look to fur­ther sow the seeds of inter­nal divi­sion. You can read Brem­mer’s full report here.

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!

 

 

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Black History in Two Minutes: Watch 93 Videos Written & Narrated by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

in History | February 13th, 2024

We’re near­ly halfway through Feb­ru­ary, which the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca also knows as Black His­to­ry Month. Per­haps there are rel­e­vant sub­jects on which you’ve been mean­ing to catch up, but you haven’t quite got around to it yet. If so, nev­er fear: in the next cou­ple of weeks, you’ll have plen­ty of time to binge-watch the Youtube series Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes. Writ­ten and nar­rat­ed by his­to­ri­an Hen­ry Louis Gates Jr., it has so far cov­ered every­thing from Har­ri­et Tub­man and Sojourn­er Truth to the Civ­il War and eman­ci­pa­tion to the civ­il rights move­ment and school inte­gra­tion.

Those of us who went to school in the US — and espe­cial­ly those of us who did so after the insti­tu­tion of Black His­to­ry Month, in 1970 — will remem­ber those sub­jects hav­ing been dis­cussed in the class­room. But even with­in the brief con­fines of two min­utes (some­times sprawl­ing out to three min­utes and change), Gates intro­duces facts most of us will nev­er have heard.

For instance, the very first under­ground rail­road in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry ran not from the south of the coun­try to the north, but the oth­er way around, Span­ish Flori­da hav­ing then been “a sanc­tu­ary for slaves who fled south from Eng­lish rule” — though the free­dom it offered did require con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism.

Also among the near­ly 100 videos Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes has so far pro­duced are a wealth of bite-sized treat­ments of move­ments and fig­ures impor­tant to not just black cul­ture but the whole of Amer­i­can cul­ture. These include Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Maya Angelou, the 1893 World’s Fair, the births of jazz and hip hop, and Negro league base­ball. The show also encom­pass­es episodes of his­to­ry well with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, such as the Los Ange­les riots and the elec­tion of Barack Oba­ma — as well as the ear­li­er, pio­neer­ing pres­i­den­tial run of Jesse Jack­son. And in light of Jack­son’s cam­paign T‑shirts’ hav­ing made a fash­ion come­back in Korea, where I live, it now seems to say that the cul­ture that has arisen out of black his­to­ry isn’t just vital to the cul­ture of Amer­i­ca, but of the world.

You can watch the com­plete playlist of videos at the top, or vis­it the Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes web­site here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take Free Online Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

30,000 Pho­tographs of Black His­to­ry & Cul­ture Are Avail­able Online in a New Get­ty Images Archive

How African-Amer­i­can Explor­er Matthew Hen­son Became the First Per­son to Reach the North Pole, Then Was For­got­ten for Almost 30 Years

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

W.E.B. Du Bois Cre­ates Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, Artis­tic Data Visu­al­iza­tions Show­ing the Eco­nom­ic Plight of African-Amer­i­cans (1900)

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Incompetent People Think They’re Competent: The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Explained

in Psychology | February 12th, 2024

When sur­veyed, eighty to nine­ty per­cent of Amer­i­cans con­sid­er them­selves pos­sessed of above-aver­age dri­ving skills. Most of them are, of course, wrong by sta­tis­ti­cal def­i­n­i­tion, but the result itself reveals some­thing impor­tant about human nature. So does anoth­er, less­er-known study that had two groups, one com­posed of pro­fes­sion­al come­di­ans and the oth­er com­posed of aver­age Cor­nell under­grad­u­ates, rank the fun­ni­ness of a set of jokes. It also asked those stu­dents to rank their own abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy fun­ny jokes. Nat­u­ral­ly, the major­i­ty of them cred­it­ed them­selves with an above-aver­age sense of humor.

Not only that, explains the host of the After Skool video above, “those who did the worst placed them­selves in the 58th per­centile on aver­age. They believed that they were bet­ter than 57 oth­er peo­ple out of 100. Their real score? Twelfth per­centile.” Here we have an exam­ple of the cog­ni­tive bias where­by “peo­ple with a lit­tle bit of knowl­edge or skill in an area believe that they are bet­ter than they are,” now com­mon­ly known as the Dun­ning-Kruger effect. It’s named for social psy­chol­o­gists David Dun­ning and Justin Kruger, who con­duct­ed the afore­men­tioned joke-rank­ing study as well as oth­ers in var­i­ous domains that all sup­port the same basic find­ing: the incom­pe­tent don’t know how incom­pe­tent they are.

“When you’re incom­pe­tent, the skills you need to pro­duce a right answer are exact­ly the skills you need to rec­og­nize what a right answer is,” Dun­ning told Errol Mor­ris in a 2010 inter­view (the first of a five-part series on anosog­nosia, or the inabil­i­ty to rec­og­nize one’s own lack of abil­i­ty). “In log­i­cal rea­son­ing, in par­ent­ing, in man­age­ment, prob­lem solv­ing, the skills you use to pro­duce the right answer are exact­ly the same skills you use to eval­u­ate the answer.” What’s more, “even if you are just the most hon­est, impar­tial per­son that you could be, you would still have a prob­lem — name­ly, when your knowl­edge or exper­tise is imper­fect, you real­ly don’t know it. Left to your own devices, you just don’t know it. We’re not very good at know­ing what we don’t know.”

This brings to mind Don­ald Rums­feld’s much-mocked remark about “unknown unknowns,” which Dun­ning actu­al­ly con­sid­ered “the smartest and most mod­est thing I’ve heard in a year.” (Mor­ris, for his part, would go on to make a doc­u­men­tary about Rums­feld titled The Unknown Known.) But whether you’re the Sec­re­tary of Defense, a cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­er, a Youtu­ber, an essay­ist, or any­thing else, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly been afflict­ed with the Dun­ning-Kruger effect. But if we can make a habit of sub­ject­ing our­selves to brac­ing objec­tive assess­ment, we can — at least, at cer­tain times and cer­tain domains — break free of what T. S. Eliot called the end­less strug­gle to think well of our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Amaz­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son from David Dun­ning (of the Famous “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect”)

Bertrand Rus­sell: The Every­day Ben­e­fit of Phi­los­o­phy Is That It Helps You Live with Uncer­tain­ty

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (Oth­er­wise Known as the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

24 Com­mon Cog­ni­tive Bias­es: A Visu­al List of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sys­tems Errors That Keep Us From Think­ing Ratio­nal­ly

Errol Mor­ris Makes His Ground­break­ing Series First Per­son Free to Watch Online: Binge Watch His Inter­views with Genius­es, Eccentrics, Obses­sives & Oth­er Unusu­al Types

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Ten of the Most Expensive Arts & Art Supplies in the Worlds: Japanese Bonsai Scissors & Calligraphy Brushes, Tunisian Dye Made from Snails and More

in Art | February 12th, 2024

A few years ago, we fea­tured a $32,000 pair of bon­sai scis­sors here on Open Cul­ture. More recent­ly, their mak­er Yasuhi­ro Hira­ka appeared in the Busi­ness Insid­er video above, a detailed 80-minute intro­duc­tion to ten of the most expen­sive arts and art sup­plies around the world. It will come as no sur­prise that things Japan­ese fig­ure in it promi­nent­ly and more than once. In fact, the video begins in Nara Pre­fec­ture, “where for over 450 years, the com­pa­ny Kobaien, has been mak­ing some of the world’s most sought-after cal­lig­ra­phy ink” — the sumi you may know from the clas­si­cal Japan­ese art form sumi‑e.

But even the most painstak­ing­ly pro­duced and expen­sive­ly acquired ink in the world is no use with­out  brush­es. In search of the finest exam­ples of those, the video’s next seg­ment takes us to anoth­er part of Japan, Hiroshi­ma Pre­fec­ture, where an arti­san named Yoshiyu­ki Hata runs a work­shop ded­i­cat­ed to the “no-com­pro­mise crafts­man­ship” of cal­lig­ra­phy brush­es. One of his top-of-the-line mod­els, made with rig­or­ous­ly hand-select­ed goat hair, could cost the equiv­a­lent of $27,000 — but for an equal­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing mas­ter cal­lig­ra­ph­er, mon­ey seems to be no object.

How­ev­er ded­i­cat­ed its crafts­men and prac­ti­tion­ers, by no means does the Land of the Ris­ing Sun have a monop­oly on expen­sive art sup­plies. This video also includes Tyr­i­an pur­ple dye made in Tunisia the old-fash­ioned way — indeed, the ancient way — by extract­ing the glands of murex snails; the sơn mài lac­quer paint­ing unique to Viet­nam that requires tox­ic tree resin; long-last­ing ultra-high-qual­i­ty oil paints rich with rare pig­ments like cobalt blue; and Kolin­sky’s Series 7 sable water­col­or brush, which is made from hairs from the tails of Siber­ian weasels, and whose process of pro­duc­tion has remained the same since it was first cre­at­ed for Queen Vic­to­ria in 1866.

This world tour also comes around to non-tra­di­tion­al art forms and tools. One oper­a­tion in Ohio turns the muck of indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion — “acid mine drainage,” to get tech­ni­cal — into pig­ments that can make vivid paints. The stratos­pher­ic prices com­mand­ed by cer­tain works of “mod­ern art,” broad­ly con­sid­ered, have long inspired satire, but here we get a clos­er exam­i­na­tion of the con­nec­tion between the nature of the work and the cost of pur­chas­ing it. “What looks sim­ple can be the cul­mi­na­tion of a life­time’s work,” one exam­ple of which is Kazmir Male­vich’s Black Square, “the result of twen­ty years of sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and devel­op­ment.” If you don’t know any­thing about that paint­ing, it will seem to have no val­ue; by the same token, if you don’t know any­thing about those $32,000 bon­sai scis­sors, you’ll prob­a­bly use them to open Ama­zon box­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Makes the Art of Bon­sai So Expen­sive?: $1 Mil­lion for a Bon­sai Tree, and $32,000 for Bon­sai Scis­sors

How Ink is Made: The Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Behold a Book of Col­or Shades Depict­ed with Feath­ers (Cir­ca 1915)

Why Renais­sance Mas­ters Added Egg Yolk to Their Paints: A New Study Sheds Light

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

Watch Artist Shep­ard Fairey Pre­tend to Work in an Art Sup­ply Store

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How an Unscheduled, Last Minute Performance of “Fast Car” Shot Tracy Chapman to Stardom in 1988

in Music | February 9th, 2024

And the award for the first Black song­writer to win Song of the Year at the Coun­try Music Awards goes to Tra­cy Chap­man …for a tune that trans­fixed mil­lions of row­dy con­cert­go­ers when she sang it at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um 35 years ear­li­er (see above.)

At the time of that per­for­mance, Chap­man was just 24, near­ly a decade younger than 33-year-old Luke Combs, the coun­try super­star whose recent cov­er was a mas­sive hit.

“Fast Car” was not just a star-mak­ing turn at Wem­b­ley. It was a last minute, unsched­uled one.

Chap­man had already per­formed her 3‑song set at that day’s celebri­ty-stud­ded Nel­son Man­dela 70th Birth­day Trib­ute con­cert, sand­wiched between Stephen Fry and Hugh Lau­rie’s com­e­dy act and pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly 80s Scot­tish soft rock­ers Wet Wet Wet.

Her 3‑song set list was in keep­ing with the nature of the event, which helped speed the anti-apartheid activist and future South African pres­i­dent’s release from prison, and was described by music jour­nal­ist Robin Denselow, as “a more polit­i­cal ver­sion of Live Aid, with the aim of rais­ing con­scious­ness rather than just mon­ey:”

Why?

Behind the Wall

Talkin’ Bout a Rev­o­lu­tion

The audi­ence got to hear “Fast Car” thanks to the unwit­ting involve­ment of sur­prise guest Ste­vie Won­der.

The R&B great went to Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um straight from the air­port, unaware that his syn­clavier’s hard disc, con­tain­ing all the syn­the­sized music for his act, had not made the trip.

This colos­sal over­sight was only dis­cov­ered when he was head­ing toward the stage. Unwill­ing, or pos­si­bly too over­whelmed to come up with a workaround, he declined to go on, leav­ing orga­niz­ers scram­bling for an artist who could hus­tle to the mic to fill time.

Chap­man and her solo gui­tar must have struck them as a tech­ni­cal­ly uncom­pli­cat­ed solu­tion.

No one can fault her for seem­ing a bit breath­less at first. How often is an emerg­ing singer-song­writer called upon to save the day by step­ping into a legend’s shoes?

With­in a year, Chap­man was named Best New Artist at the Gram­my Awards, and “Fast Car,” which she per­formed at the cer­e­mo­ny, earned her “Best Pop Vocal Per­for­mance Female”. (Song of the Year went to Bob­by McFerrin’s “Don’t Wor­ry Be Hap­py,” a cul­tur­al jug­ger­naut of a dif­fer­ent stripe.)


A few days ago, Chap­man reprised “Fast Car” at the 2024 Gram­mys as a duet with Combs, an inter­pre­ta­tion that impressed the New York Times’ pop music crit­ic Lind­say Zoladz as “wel­com­ing and expan­sive enough to hold every sin­gle per­son (the song) had ever touched, regard­less of the mark­ers of iden­ti­ty that so often divide us:”

It was a rare reminder of music’s unique abil­i­ty to oblit­er­ate exter­nal dif­fer­ences. “Fast Car” is about some­thing more inter­nal and uni­ver­sal. It is a song about the wants and needs that make us human: the desire to be hap­py, to be loved, to be free.

That’s cer­tain­ly one inter­pre­ta­tion, but per­haps the artist who wrote it should have the final word:

I nev­er had a Fast Car, it’s just a sto­ry about a cou­ple, how they are try­ing to make a life togeth­er and they face chal­lenges…At the time that I wrote the song, I actu­al­ly didn’t real­ly know who I was writ­ing about. Look­ing back at it, and this hap­pens with oth­er songs as well, that I feel like I under­stand it only lat­er… I think that it was a song about my par­ents… And about how when they met each oth­er they were very young and they want­ed to start a new life togeth­er and my moth­er was anx­ious to leave home. My par­ents got mar­ried and went out into the world to try to make a place for them­selves and it was very dif­fi­cult going.

My moth­er didn’t have a high school diplo­ma and my father was a few years old­er. It was hard for him to cre­ate the kind of life that he dreamed of… With the edu­ca­tion that he had…. With the oppor­tu­ni­ties that were avail­able to him… In a sense I think they came togeth­er think­ing that togeth­er they would have a bet­ter chance at mak­ing it.

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday. Over and out. 

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Is Consciousness an Illusion?? Five Experts in Science, Religion & Technology Explain

in Neuroscience, Philosophy, Religion | February 9th, 2024

Even among non-neu­ro­sci­en­tists, deter­min­ing the ori­gin and pur­pose of con­scious­ness is wide­ly known as “the hard prob­lem.” Since its coinage by philoso­pher David Chalmers thir­ty years ago, that label has worked its way into a vari­ety of con­texts; about a decade ago, Tom Stop­pard even used it for the title of a play. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it’s also ref­er­enced in the episode of Big Think’s Dis­patch­es from the Well above, which presents dis­cus­sions of the nature of con­scious­ness with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Christof Koch, Vedan­ta Soci­ety of New York min­is­ter Swa­mi Sar­vapriyanan­da, tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neur Reid Hoff­man, San­ta Fe Insti­tute Davis Pro­fes­sor of Com­plex­i­ty Melanie Mitchell, and math­e­mat­i­cal physi­cist Roger Pen­rose.

Koch describes con­scious­ness as “what you see, it’s what you hear, it’s the pains you have, the love you have, the fear, the pas­sion.” It is, in oth­er words, “the expe­ri­ence of any­thing,” and for all their sophis­ti­ca­tion, our mod­ern inquiries into it descend from René Descartes’ propo­si­tion, “Cog­i­to, ergo sum.” Sar­vapriyanan­da, too, makes ref­er­ence to Descartes in explain­ing his own con­cep­tion of con­scious­ness as “the light of lights,” by which “every­thing here is lit up.”

Mitchell con­ceives of it as a con­tin­u­um: “I’m more con­scious when I’m awake,” for exam­ple, and “cer­tain species are more con­scious than oth­er species.” And per­haps it could devel­op even in non-bio­log­i­cal enti­ties: “I don’t think that we have any machines that are con­scious in any inter­est­ing sense yet,” Mitchell says, but “if we ever do, they’ll be part of that spec­trum.”

The ques­tion of whether a machine can attain con­scious­ness nat­u­ral­ly aris­es in host Kmele Fos­ter’s con­ver­sa­tion with Hoff­man, who’s made seri­ous invest­ments in arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence research. As impres­sive as AI chat­bots have late­ly become, few among us would be will­ing to deem them con­scious; nev­er­the­less, attempt­ing to cre­ate not just intel­li­gence but con­scious­ness in machines may prove a fruit­ful way to learn about the work­ings of the “gen­uine arti­cles” with­in us. Pen­rose’s the­o­ry holds that con­scious­ness aris­es from as-yet-unpre­dictable quan­tum process­es occur­ring in the micro­tubules of the brain. Per­haps, as Koch has sug­gest­ed, it actu­al­ly exists to one degree or anoth­er in all forms of mat­ter. Or maybe — to quote from a song in heavy rota­tion on my child­hood Walk­man — it’s just what you make of your­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Neu­ronal Basis of Con­scious­ness Course: A Free Online Course from Cal­tech

John Sear­le Makes A Force­ful Case for Study­ing Con­scious­ness, Where Every­thing Else Begins

Real­i­ty Is Noth­ing But a Hal­lu­ci­na­tion: A Mind-Bend­ing Crash Course on the Neu­ro­science of Con­scious­ness

The Sim­u­la­tion The­o­ry Explained In Three Ani­mat­ed Videos

What Is High­er Con­scious­ness?: How We Can Tran­scend Our Pet­ty, Day-to-Day Desires and Gain a Deep­er Wis­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold a Surreal 1933 Animation of Snow White, Featuring Cab Calloway & Betty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Greatest Cartoon of All Time

in Animation, Film | February 8th, 2024

Of the three col­lab­o­ra­tions jazz singer Cab Cal­loway made with cute car­toon leg­end Bet­ty Boop, this 1933 Dave Fleis­ch­er-direct­ed “Snow White” is prob­a­bly the most suc­cess­ful. It cer­tain­ly is the most strange—more hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry than the first in the series “Min­nie the Moocher”, and less slap­stick-dri­ven than “The Old Man of the Moun­tain.” It is a sin­gu­lar mar­vel and right­ly deserves being deemed “cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Unit­ed States Library of Con­gress and select­ed for preser­va­tion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry in 1994. It was also vot­ed #19 of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of all time in a poll of lead­ing ani­ma­tors.

When she made her debut in 1930, Bet­ty Boop would have been rec­og­niz­able to audi­ences as the embod­i­ment of the flap­per and the sex­u­al free­dom of the Jazz Age that was cur­rent­ly in free-fall after the Wall Street crash of 1929. Only a few years before her pre­miere, Boop would have been the mas­cot of the age; now she was a bit­ter­sweet reminder of a time that had already passed. With a cham­pagne bub­ble of a voice, kiss curls, dar­ing hem­line, plung­ing neck­line, and the ever present garter belt, she was a car­toon char­ac­ter def­i­nite­ly not designed for kids. That her best films are col­lab­o­ra­tions with Cab Cal­loway attest to that. Cal­loway would make sure his Bet­ty Boop car­toons would screen in a city a week or two before he would play a gig. His “advance woman” as he called her helped sell more tick­ets.

Accom­pa­ny­ing her in this film are the Fleischer’s orig­i­nal char­ac­ter Koko the Clown and Bim­bo the Pup, which for this film are sort of emp­ty ves­sels: they pro­tect Bet­ty, they get knocked out, and Koko gets inhab­it­ed by the spir­it of Cab Cal­loway, who then turns into a ghost, all legs and head, no tor­so. (The ghost is ani­mat­ed through roto­scop­ing over Cal­loway’s own film footage.) The Queen, whose talk­ing mir­ror changes his mind over “the fairest in the land” once see­ing Bet­ty Boop, sen­tences her to death, and then chas­es her through the under­world before turn­ing into a drag­on. At the end, Boop and her gang turn the drag­on inside out like a sock, a gross gag not seen again (I’m going to guess) until one of the Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Spe­cials.

In the mid­dle of all this boun­cy, sur­re­al may­hem is Calloway’s ghost singing “St. James Infir­mary Blues,” a mourn­ful tale of a dead girl­friend and the singers plans for the funer­al. The ori­gin of the song is shroud­ed in mys­tery, pos­si­bly a folk bal­lad by way of New Orleans jazz. What­ev­er the source, Koko/Cab sings it to the now frozen and entombed Bet­ty Boop, with the sev­en dwarves as pall­bear­ers. Koko/Cab turns into a num­ber of objects dur­ing his dance, includ­ing a bot­tle of booze and a coin on a chain.

This Snow White does in fact take place dur­ing win­ter and writer Anne Blake­ley makes the case that the flap­per, the snow, the ice, the pas­sage through the under­world, and Calloway’s song allude to a fall from grace, inno­cence to expe­ri­ence, through drug abuse—in par­tic­u­lar the very snowy cocaine. (I mean, could be! But the film is so odd as to refute any defin­i­tive read­ing.)

The ani­ma­tion was designed and com­plet­ed by one man: Roland Cran­dall, pos­si­bly as a reward from Fleis­ch­er for not leav­ing for the sun­ny west coast and the more prof­itable Dis­ney. Cran­dall worked half a year on the project and that’s real­ly what gives it its one of a kind nature. Every ele­ment, whether ani­mat­ed or in the back­ground, has been lov­ing­ly ren­dered. Fore­ground and back­ground fight for your atten­tion, and when the film fin­ish­es, you want to start all over again to see what you missed.

Last­ly, let’s praise the vibe of this film, which places its “star” on ice for half the film, and seems none the worse for it. “Snow White”—four years before Disney’s fea­ture version—is a hypno­gog­ic vision, a half-remem­bered day­dream that takes place while the radio is turned down imper­cep­ti­bly low.

The ani­ma­tion will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Beethoven’s 5th: Watch an Animated Graphical Score

in Animation, Music | February 8th, 2024

Stephen Mali­nows­ki is a self-described “Music Ani­ma­tion Machine,” with a pen­chant for cre­at­ing ani­mat­ed graph­i­cal scores. Above, he does his thing with the first move­ment of Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny 5.

How does he make this mag­ic? Mali­nows­ki writes: “There were a lot of steps; here’s a short sum­ma­ry. I found a record­ing I could license and made the arrange­ments to use it. I found a MIDI file that was fair­ly com­plete, and import­ed that into the nota­tion pro­gram Sibelius. I com­pared it to a print­ed copy of the score from my library and fixed things that were wrong… Then, I lis­tened to the record­ing and com­pared that to the score, and mod­i­fied the score so that the tim­ings were more like what the orches­tra was actu­al­ly play­ing. I export­ed this as a MIDI file and ran it through my cus­tom frame-ren­der­ing soft­ware. Then, I made a “reduc­tion” of the score and col­ored it to match the col­ors I was plan­ning to use in the bar-graph score. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when I squished the bar-graph score enough to make room for the nota­tion score, too much detail was lost, so I end­ed up decid­ing not to use the nota­tion. Then I put all the pieces (ren­dered frames, audio, titles) togeth­er in Adobe Pre­miere and export­ed the movie as a Quick­Time file. Then, I used On2 Flix to con­vert the final file into Flash for­mat (so that YouTube’s con­ver­sion to their Flash for­mat would­n’t change it in unpre­dictable ways), and uploaded the result.”

Enjoy!

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Watch Dziga Vertov’s Soviet Toys: The First Soviet Animated Movie Ever (1924)

in Animation, History | February 7th, 2024

Dzi­ga Ver­tov is best known for his daz­zling city sym­pho­ny A Man with a Movie Cam­era, which was ranked by Sight and Sound mag­a­zine as the 8th best movie ever made. Yet what you might not know is that Ver­tov also made the Sovi­et Union’s first ever ani­mat­ed movie, Sovi­et Toys.

Con­sist­ing large­ly of sim­ple line draw­ings, the film might lack the verve and visu­al sophis­ti­ca­tion that marked A Man with a Movie Cam­era, but Ver­tov still dis­plays his knack for mak­ing strik­ing, pun­gent images. Yet those who don’t have an inti­mate knowl­edge of Sovi­et pol­i­cy of the 1920s might find the movie — which is laden with Marx­ist alle­gories — real­ly odd.

Sovi­et Toys came out in 1924, dur­ing Lenin’s New Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy (NEP), which gave some mar­ket incen­tives to small farm­ers. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the farm­ers start­ed pro­duc­ing a lot more food than before, and soon a whole new class of mid­dle­man traders formed — the reviled “NEP­men.”

The movie opens with a NEP­man — a bloat­ed car­i­ca­ture of a Cap­i­tal­ist (who coin­ci­den­tal­ly looks vague­ly like Niki­ta Khrushchev) — devour­ing a mas­sive heap of food. He’s so stuffed that he spends much of the rest of the movie sprawled out on the floor, much in the same way one might imag­ine Jamie Dimon after Thanks­giv­ing din­ner. Then he belch­es rich­es at a woman who is can-can­ning on his dis­tend­ed bel­ly. I said this film is odd.

Lat­er, as a cou­ple of squab­bling Russ­ian Ortho­dox priests look on, a work­er tries to extract mon­ey from the NEP­man by cut­ting his gut with a huge pair of scis­sors. When that fails, the work­er and a pass­ing peas­ant fuse bod­ies to cre­ate a two-head­ed being that stomps on the Capitalist’s bel­ly, which pops open like a piña­ta filled with cash. Then mem­bers of the Red Army pile togeth­er and form a sort of human pyra­mid before turn­ing into a giant tree. They hang the Cap­i­tal­ist along with the priests. The end.

Some of the ref­er­ences in this movie are clear: The work­er’s use of scis­sors points to the “Scis­sors Cri­sis” – an attempt by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to cor­rect the price imbal­ance between agri­cul­ture and indus­tri­al goods. And the phys­i­cal meld­ing of the peas­antry and the pro­le­tari­at is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the nev­er quite real­ized dream of the Bol­she­viks. Oth­er images are as obscure as they are weird — the leer­ing close ups of the Cap­i­tal­ist, the NEP­man’s girl­friend who dis­ap­pears into his stom­ach, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary film­mak­er who has the eyes of a cam­era lens and the mouth of a cam­era shut­ter. They feel like some­thing out of a Marx­ist fever dream.

Sovi­et Toys can be found in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Named the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

A Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion of Stephen King’s Short Sto­ry “Bat­tle­ground” (1986)

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.

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A Cultural Tour of Istanbul, Where the Art and History of Three Great Empires Come Together

in Art, History, Travel | February 7th, 2024

Imag­ine a grand tour of Euro­pean muse­ums, and a fair few des­ti­na­tions come right to mind: the Rijksmu­se­um, the Pra­do, the Uffizi Gallery, the Lou­vre. These insti­tu­tions alone could take years to expe­ri­ence ful­ly, but it would be an incom­plete jour­ney that did­n’t ven­ture far­ther east — much far­ther east, in the view of Great Art Explained cre­ator James Payne. In his lat­est Great Art Cities video, he makes the case for Istan­bul, adduc­ing such both artis­ti­cal­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly rich sites as the İst­anb­ul Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­um, the Basil­i­ca Cis­tern, the Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, Istan­bul Mod­ern, and of course — as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — the unig­nor­able Hagia Sophia.

Payne intro­duces Istan­bul as hav­ing been “the cap­i­tal of three great empires, Roman, Byzan­tine, and Ottoman.” In the con­ti­nent-strad­dling metrop­o­lis as it is today, “both ancient and mod­ern art blend ele­ments from Europe, Asia, and the Mid­dle East, reflect­ing its geo­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal posi­tion­ing as a bridge between the East and the West.”

The works on dis­play in the city con­sti­tute “a visu­al embod­i­ment of its com­plex his­to­ry,” from the Hel­lenis­tic to the Roman to the Islam­ic to the styles and media of the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies, with all of which “mod­ern-day Turkey is now cre­at­ing its own artis­tic lega­cy.”

That lega­cy is also deeply root­ed in the past. Vis­it the Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­um and you can see the Alexan­der Sar­coph­a­gus from the fourth cen­tu­ry BC, whose aston­ish­ing­ly detailed carv­ings include “the only exist­ing depic­tion of Alexan­der the Great cre­at­ed dur­ing his life­time.” The under­ground Basil­i­ca Cis­tern, built in the sixth cen­tu­ry, counts as much as a large-scale work of Byzan­tine art as it does a large-scale work of Byzan­tine engi­neer­ing. From there, it’s a short tram ride on the Gala­ta Bridge across the Gold­en Horn to the brand-new, Ren­zo Piano-designed Istan­bul Mod­ern, which has paint­ings by Cihat Burak, Fahrel­nis­sa Zeid, Bedri Baykam. You may not know those names now, but if you view their work in the unique cul­tur­al con­text of Istan­bul — in which so many eras and civ­i­liza­tions are man­i­fest — you’ll nev­er for­get them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ancient World Comes to Life in an Ani­ma­tion Fea­tur­ing Istanbul’s Islam­ic, Ottoman, Greek & Byzan­tine Art

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

Watch Dig­i­tal Dancers Elec­tri­fy the Streets of Istan­bul

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

How Lon­dini­um Became Lon­don, Lute­tia Became Paris, and Oth­er Roman Cities Got Their Mod­ern Names

Great Art Cities: Vis­it the Fas­ci­nat­ing, Less­er-Known Muse­ums of Lon­don & Paris

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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