If Werner Herzog Reviewed Trader Joe’s on Yelp: “Madness Reigns. The First Challenge Your Soul Must Endure Is the Parking Lot”

in Comedy, Film, Life | September 21st, 2020

I like the Inter­net for var­i­ous things, but it’s lim­it­ed. I’m not on social media, but you will find me in the social media. There’s Face­book, there’s Twit­ters, but it’s all not me.

—Wern­er Her­zog in an inter­view with The Hol­ly­wood Reporter

The night before his 2016 doc­u­men­tary Lo and Behold: Rever­ies of the Con­nect­ed World pre­miered at Sun­dance, direc­tor Wern­er Her­zog declared him­self “still a lib­er­at­ed vir­gin” with regard to his reliance on the Inter­net:

I think we have to aban­don this kind of false secu­ri­ty that every­thing is set­tled now, that we have so much assis­tance by dig­i­tal media and robots and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. At the same time, we over­look how vul­ner­a­ble all this is, and how we are los­ing the essen­tials that make us human. That’s my advice … Cook a meal at least three times a week. Play a musi­cal instru­ment. Read books and trav­el on foot.

That said, he’s not immune to the reju­ve­nat­ing effects of ran­dom cat videos at the end of a tir­ing day, as he told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­sen dur­ing a pro­mo­tion­al vis­it for 2018’s Meet­ing Gor­bachev:

Per­haps guess­ing that Googling his own name is not one of Herzog’s pre­ferred online activ­i­ties, Ander­son took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hip his guest to come­di­an Paul F. Tomp­kins’ Teu­ton­ic-inflect­ed recita­tion of a noto­ri­ous Yelp review of Trad­er Joe’s in Sil­ver Lake.

To the untrained ear, Tomp­kins’ Her­zog is pitch per­fect.

The spoof’s sub­ject sug­gest­ed that the accent could use improve­ment, but agreed that the text is “very fun­ny.”

And it is, espe­cial­ly giv­en the pedes­tri­an tenor of the same Trad­er Joe’s oth­er 5‑star reviews:

This is the best Trad­er Joe’s loca­tion I’ve been to! Been com­ing here since I was a kid! (I’m 25 now) I’ve moved out of this area but still come to this loca­tion just because it beats the rest of them. — Deb­bie G

TJ is the best!! I’ve been com­ing here for many years, and the food is great!! The employ­ee’s are awe­some! Some of the many things I love to pur­chase here are: salmon balls, smooth­ies like the chia seed straw­ber­ry, pro­tein almond but­ter drinks, coconut smooth­ie, cashew yogurt, south west­ern sal­ad that comes in a bag is BOMB.COM! — Ray­mond M

Tomp­kins tapped Herzog’s fas­ci­na­tion with man’s ani­mal nature and the bru­tal­i­ty of exis­tence for anoth­er Yelp review, award­ing three stars to San Francisco’s Hotel Majes­tic and attribut­ing it to Wern­er H:

Tomp­kins clear­ly savors the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chan­nel Her­zog, log­ging 16 appear­ances for the char­ac­ter on the Com­e­dy Bang Bang pod­cast, includ­ing episodes where­in he dis­cuss­es work­ing with Tom Cruise and his desire to be cast as a clue­less sub­ur­ban hus­band in an appli­ance com­mer­cial. Find them all list­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

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

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The Life, Work & Philosophy of Bill Murray: Happy 70th Birthday to an American Comedy Icon

in Comedy, Film | September 21st, 2020

Image by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Bill Mur­ray is to me what cal­cu­la­tors are to math,” Jason Schwartz­man once said of his esteemed col­league. “I nev­er knew math before cal­cu­la­tors, and I nev­er knew life before Bill Mur­ray.” Hav­ing been born in the 1980s, a decade Mur­ray entered already well-known after three ear­ly sea­sons of Sat­ur­day Night Live, I could say the same. Through char­ac­ters like Nick the lounge singer and half a nerd cou­ple with Gil­da Rad­ner, Mur­ray estab­lished him­self on that show as a goof­ball, but a goof­ball of a high­er order. As the 80s got into full swing, Mur­ray got into the movies, and ever more promi­nent roles in the likes of Cad­dyshack, Stripes, and Ghost­busters assured him a per­ma­nent place in the pan­theon of Amer­i­can com­e­dy.

For those who cared to look, there has long been evi­dence of con­cen­trat­ed thought and feel­ing behind the dead­pan impul­sive­ness of Mur­ray’s onscreen per­sona: his sup­port­ing turn as Dustin Hoff­man’s lemon-eat­ing play­wright room­mate in Toot­sie, his pas­sion-project adap­ta­tion of Som­er­set Maugh­am’s The Razor’s Edge, his post-Ghost­busters escape to the Sor­bonne.

It was in Paris that Mur­ray stud­ied the work of the Gre­co-Armen­ian Sufi mys­tic G.I. Gur­d­ji­eff, who describes a path to enlight­en­ment called “the way of the sly man,” one who makes max­i­mum use of “the world, the self, and the self that is observ­ing every­thing.” This con­cept, accord­ing to the Wise­crack video above, has become inte­gral to Mur­ray’s dis­tinc­tive way of not just act­ing, but being.

That counts as just one of the the­o­ries advanced over the decades to explain the curi­ous phe­nom­e­non of Bill Mur­ray. The man has also been called upon to explain it him­self now and again, as when an inter­view­er at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val asked what it feels like to be him. His response takes the audi­ence into a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion meant to make every­one lis­ten­ing under­stand how it feels to be them­selves, right here, right now.

Main­tain­ing this sense of the moment, as Mur­ray lat­er explained to Char­lie Rose, is one of the goals of his own life — and pre­sum­ably not an easy goal to achieve for some­one who’s been so famous for so long, a con­di­tion he address­es in the 1988 inter­view ani­mat­ed for Blank on Blank below. “I’m just an obnox­ious guy who can make it appear charm­ing,” he says in sum­ma­tion of his appeal. “That’s what they pay me to do.”

That same year, they paid him $6 mil­lion for his role in Scrooged (play­ing, inci­den­tal­ly, the most obnox­ious char­ac­ter of his career). He’d already been cau­tioned against the dan­gers of such rapid­ly acquired wealth and fame by the fate of his fel­low Chicagoan and SNL alum­nus John Belushi, who by that time had already been dead for five years. Mur­ray had also, he says, under­gone a “spir­i­tu­al change” that showed him “there was some oth­er life to live. It changed the way that I worked,” giv­ing every­thing “a dif­fer­ent pres­ence, a dif­fer­ent ten­sion.” Onscreen, this change cul­mi­nat­ed in the roles he took on after putting broad come­dies behind him begin­ning with 1999’s Rush­more, the break­out fea­ture by an up-and-com­ing direc­tor named Wes Ander­son.

Cast­ing Mur­ray oppo­site the teenage Schwartz­man, Rush­more showed that he could be more affect­ing — and indeed fun­nier — in minor emo­tion­al keys. A few years lat­er, Sofia Cop­po­la’s Lost in Trans­la­tion took him to Japan, where he drew an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion with his per­for­mance from the depths of cul­tur­al and per­son­al dis­ori­en­ta­tion. Today, on Mur­ray’s 70th birth­day, his fans impa­tient­ly await his appear­ances in Ander­son­’s The Paris Dis­patch and Cop­po­la’s On the Rocks, both of which come out next month. Hav­ing long since become an insti­tu­tion (albeit an insis­tent­ly uncon­ven­tion­al and unpre­dictable one) unto him­self, Mur­ray can sure­ly look to the heav­ens and say what, with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic earnest­ness, he told his SNL audi­ence he want­ed to say 33 years ago: “Dad, I did it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Bill Mur­ray Explains How a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Paint­ing Saved His Life

Art Exhib­it on Bill Mur­ray Opens in the UK

Watch Bill Mur­ray Per­form a Satir­i­cal Anti-Tech­nol­o­gy Rant (1982)

Watch Dan Aykroyd & Bill Mur­ray Goof Off in a New­ly Unearthed Ghost­busters Pro­mo­tion­al Film (1984)

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Long, Guided Tour of New York City Captured in Original Color Film (1937)

in Current Affairs, Film, History, Travel | September 18th, 2020

So much clas­sic black and white footage has been dig­i­tal­ly col­orized recent­ly, it’s hard to remem­ber that the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny’s Kodachrome film debuted way back in 1935.

The above footage of New York City was shot by an unknown enthu­si­ast in and around 1937.

Dick Hoef­s­loot, the Nether­lands-based video­g­ra­ph­er who post­ed it to YouTube after tweak­ing it a bit for motion sta­bi­liza­tion and speed-cor­rec­tion, is not averse to arti­fi­cial­ly col­or­ing his­toric footage using mod­ern soft­ware, but in this case, there was no need.

It was shot in col­or.

If things have a green­ish cast, that’s owing to the film on which it was shot. Three-col­or film, which added blue to the red-green mix, was more expen­sive and more com­mon­ly used lat­er on.

Hoefsloot’s best guess is that this film was shot by a mem­ber of a wealthy fam­i­ly. It’s con­fi­dent­ly made, but also seems to be a home movie of sorts, giv­en the pres­ence of an old­er woman who appears a half dozen times on this self-guid­ed tour of New York sites.

There’s plen­ty here that remains famil­iar: the Wool­worth Build­ing and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, trussed up Christ­mas trees propped against makeshift side­walk stands, the New York Pub­lic Library’s lions, Patience and For­ti­tude.

Oth­er aspects are more a mat­ter of nos­tal­gia.

Over in Times Square, Bull­dog Drum­mond Comes Back star­ring John Bar­ry­more was play­ing at the Cri­te­ri­on (now the site of a Gap store), while the Para­mount The­ater, now a Hard Rock Cafe, played host to True Con­fes­sion with Bar­ry­more and Car­ol Lom­bard.

Oys­ters were still food for the mass­es, though records show that local­ly har­vest­ed ones had been deemed too pol­lut­ed for human con­sump­tion for at least a decade.

A bag of peanuts cost 15¢. A new Oldsmo­bile went for about $914 plus city tax.

Laun­dry could be seen strung between build­ings (still can be on occa­sion), but peo­ple dressed up care­ful­ly for shop­ping trips and oth­er excur­sions around town. Heav­en for­bid they step out­side with­out a hat.

Though the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty makes an appear­ance, the film doesn’t depict the neigh­bor­hoods where new and estab­lished immi­grants were known to con­gre­gate. Had the cam­era trav­eled uptown to the Apol­lo—by 1937, the largest employ­er of black the­atri­cal work­ers in the coun­try and the sole venue in the city in which they were hired for back­stage positions—the over­all com­po­si­tion would have proved less white.

The film, which was uploaded a lit­tle over a year ago, has recent­ly attract­ed a fresh vol­ley of atten­tion, lead­ing Hoef­s­loot to reis­sue his request for view­ers to “refrain from (post­ing) polit­i­cal, reli­gious or racist-relat­ed com­ments.”

In this fraught elec­tion year, we hope you will par­don a New York­er for point­ing out the legion of com­menters flout­ing this polite request, so eager are they to fan the fires of intol­er­ance by express­ing a pref­er­ence for the “way things used to be.”

With all due respect, there aren’t many peo­ple left who were present at the time, who can accu­rate­ly recall and describe New York City in 1937. Our hunch is that those who can are not spend­ing such time as remains rab­ble-rous­ing on YouTube.

So enjoy this his­toric win­dow on the past, then take a deep breath and con­front the present that’s reveal­ing itself in the YouTube com­ments.

A chrono­log­i­cal list of New York City sites and cit­i­zens appear­ing in this film cir­ca 1937:

00:00 Low­er Man­hat­tan sky­line seen from Brook­lyn Heights Prom­e­nade

00:45 Stat­en Island steam fer­ry

01:05 RMS Carinthia

01:10 Old three-stack pass.ship, maybe USS Leviathan

01:28 One-stack pass.ship, name?

01:50 HAL SS Volen­dam or SS Veen­dam II

02:18 West­field II steam fer­ry to Stat­en Island, built 1862?

02:30 Floyd Ben­nett Air­field, North Beach Air Ser­vice inc. hangar

02:43 Hoey Air Ser­vices hangar at  F.B. Air­field

02:55 Ladies board mono­plane, Stin­son S Junior, NC10883, built 1931

03:15 Fly­ing over New York: Cen­tral Park & Rock­e­feller Cen­ter

03:19 Empire State Build­ing (ESB)

03:22 Chrysler build­ing in the dis­tance

03:26 Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty island

03:30 Air­craft, Waco ZQC‑6, built 1936

03:47 Reg.no. NC16234 becomes read­able

04:00 Arrival of the “Fly Eddie Lyons” air­craft

04:18 Dutch made Fokker 1, packed

04:23 Dou­glas DC3 “Dako­ta”, also packed, new

04:28 Green mono- or tri-engine air­craft, type?

04:40 DC3 again. DC3’s flew first on 17 Dec.1935

04:44 Back side of Wool­worth Build­ing

05:42 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green

05:12 Brook­lyn across East Riv­er, view from Pier 11

05:13 Water plane, Grum­man G‑21A Goose

05:38 Street with bus, Stan­dard Oil Build­ing ®

05:40 Truck, mod­el?

05:42 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green

05:46 Old truck, “Engels”, mod­el?

05:48 Flag USA with 48 stars!

05:50 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green, DeSto­to Sun­shine cab 1936

05:52 Truck, “Bier Mard Bros”, mod­el?

05:56 Ford Mod­el AA truck 1930

05:58 Open truck, mod­el?

06:05 Stan­dard Oil Build­ing

06:25 Bus 366 & Ford Mod­el A 1930

06:33 South Street & Coen­ties Slip

06:35 See 07:19, Black car?

06:45 Cities Ser­vice Build­ing at 70 Pine St. right. Left: see 07:12

06:48 Small ves­sels in the East Riv­er

06:50 Owned by Har­ry F. Rear­don

07:05 Shack on Coen­ties Slip, Pier 5

07:12 City Bank-Farm­ers Trust Build­ing, 20 Exchange Place

07:15 Oys­ter bar, near Coen­ties Slip

07:19 South Street, look­ing North towards the old Seaman’s Church Insti­tute

07:31 Hol­land Amer­i­ca Line, Volendam‑I, built 1922

07:32 Chrysler Ply­mouth P2 De Luxe

07:34 Oys­ter ven­dor

08:05 Ven­dor shows oys­ter in pot

08:16 Wall st.; Many cars, mod­els?

08:30 Look­ing down Wall st.

08:52 More cars, mod­els?

09:00 Near the Erie Fer­ry, 1934/35 Ford s.48 De Luxe

09:02 Rows of Christ­mas tree sales, loca­tion?

09:15 Erie Rail­road build­ing, loca­tion? Quay 21? Taxi, mod­el?

09:23 1934 Dodge DS

09:25 See 09:48

09:27 Bal­ti­more and Ohio (B&O) Rail­road

09:29 Clyde Mal­lo­ry Lines

09:48  South end of West Side High­way

09:49, 10:08, 10:11, 10:45 Loca­tion?

10:25 Hen­ry Hud­son Park­way

11:30 George Wash­ing­ton Bridge with­out the Low­er Lev­el

12:07 Pres­by­ter­ian Hos­pi­tal, Wash­ing­ton Heights

12:15 Rock­e­feller Insti­tute of Med­ical Research

12:49 New York Hos­pi­tal at 68th St. & East Riv­er

13:14 dit­to

13:35 dit­to

13:42 Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

14:51 Rock­e­fel­la Plaza & RCA build­ing

16:33 Saint Patrick­’s Cathe­dral

16:50 Pub­lic Library

17:24 Panoram­ic view, from ESB

17:45 RCA Build­ing, 30 Rock­e­feller Plaza

18:16 Orig­i­nal Penn Sta­tion

19:27 Movie True Con­fes­sion, rel. 24 Dec.1937

19:30 Slop­py Joes

20:12 Neon lights & Xmas

26:34 Her­ald Square

29:48 Police Emer­gency Ser­vice (B&W)

31:00 SS Nor­mandie, French Line, Pier 88

32:06 RMS Queen Mary, White Star Line, Pier 92

32:43 Depar­ture Queen Mary

33:45 Ital­ian Line, Pier 84, Ter­mi­nal, dd.1935

34:00 SS Con­te Di Savoia, Ital­ian Line, Pier 84

34:25 Peanut sell­er, near the piers

34:35 Feed­ing the pid­geons

34:52 SS Nor­mandie, exte­ri­or & on deck

35:30 View from Pier 88

35:59 Inte­ri­or

37:06 From Pier 88

37:23 North­ern, East­ern, South­ern or West­ern Prince, built 1929

37:32 Tug, William C. Gaynor

38:20 Depar­ture

38:38 Blue Riband!

39:15 Tugs push Nor­mandie into fair­way

39:50 Under own steam.

40:00 Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty

40:15 SS Nor­mandie leaves NYC

View more of Dick Hoefsloot’s his­toric uploads on his YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

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

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Free Jazz Musicians Intentionally Play Terrible Music to Drown Out the Noise of a Danish Far-Right Politician

in Music, Politics | September 18th, 2020

Art makes a way where pol­i­tics fail. I don’t mean that in any mawk­ish sense. Sure, art brings peo­ple togeth­er, encour­ages empa­thy and com­mon val­ues. Those can be won­der­ful things. But they are not always nec­es­sar­i­ly social goods. Vio­lent nation­al­ism brings peo­ple togeth­er around com­mon val­ues. Psy­chopaths can feel empa­thy if they want to.

When faced with fas­cism, or neo-fas­cism, or what­ev­er we want to call the 21st cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lent of fas­cism, those who pre­sume good faith in their oppo­nents pre­sume too much. Val­ues like respect for human rights or rules of log­i­cal debate or use of force, for exam­ple, are not in play. Direct con­fronta­tion usu­al­ly pro­vokes more vio­lence, and cor­re­spond­ing state repres­sion against anti-fas­cists.

Cre­ative thinkers have devised oth­er kinds of tactics—methods for meet­ing spec­ta­cle with spec­ta­cle, dis­rupt­ing and scat­ter­ing con­cen­trat­ed fear and hate by use of what William S. Bur­roughs called “mag­i­cal weapons.” Bur­roughs meant the phrase lit­er­al­ly when he aimed his occult audio/visual mag­ic at a gen­tri­fy­ing Lon­don cof­fee bar. But he used the very same ideas in his nov­els and man­u­als for over­throw­ing cor­rupt gov­ern­ments.

One might say some­thing sim­i­lar about the pio­neers of free jazz, a prod­uct of Black Pow­er pol­i­tics expressed in music. Coltrane drew on Mal­colm X when he divest­ed him­self of west­ern musi­cal con­straints; Ornette Cole­man estab­lished “har­molod­ic democ­ra­cy” in place of Euro­cen­tric struc­tures. These were inher­ent­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary forms, respond­ing to repres­sive times in new lan­guages. They were not, as many peo­ple thought then, just jazz played bad­ly.

But, as it turns out… free jazz delib­er­ate­ly played bad­ly makes quite an effec­tive rejoin­der to fas­cism, too. So a group of Dan­ish jazz musi­cians dis­cov­ered when they began crash­ing the staged events of far-right politi­cian Ras­mus Palu­dan, founder of the Stram Kurs (Hard Line) par­ty. As Vice reports:

[Palu­dan] is noto­ri­ous for organ­is­ing “demon­stra­tions” in neigh­bour­hoods with large immi­grant pop­u­la­tions, where he burns, throws, and stomps on Qurans behind walls of police offi­cers. A self-pro­claimed “guardian of free­dom” and “light of the Danes,” Palu­dan con­sid­ers immi­grants and Islam ene­mies of the Dan­ish peo­ple, as well as the country’s val­ues, tra­di­tions and gen­er­al way of life.

Does one respect­ful­ly argue with such a per­son? Try to breach the line of cops and knock them out? Hear out their point of view as they inspire acts of vio­lence? Or show up “armed with trum­pets, bon­go drums and sax­o­phones” and play right in his face, or at least “loud­ly enough to drown out his voice or draw atten­tion away from him”?

The col­lec­tive “Free Jazz Against Palu­dan” takes the mag­i­cal weapon of Sit­u­a­tion­ist free jazz pub­lic and rad­i­cal­izes har­molod­ic democ­ra­cy (done very, very obnox­ious­ly bad­ly on pur­pose, we must empha­size) for street action. “We’re fight­ing noise with noise,” one sax­o­phon­ist and self-described “old man turned activist” says. “I’m of the opin­ion that rhetoric like his should not be ignored. You have to protest against it, but in a way that is not destruc­tive and vio­lent.” Except that it is destructive—to Paludan’s weaponized igno­rance. [Palu­dan was recent­ly sen­tenced to jail on racism and defama­tion.] The revolv­ing col­lec­tive of activist musi­cians makes this plain, stat­ing on their Face­book page, “Any­one can join, with the excep­tion of just him. He can­not.”

What gives them the right to exclude him! one might cry indig­nant­ly. That’s the game Palu­dan wants to play. “What he wants is to get beat­en up by some immi­grants, get some close-ups of a soap eye or a bro­ken arm—that’d be great for him,” says pro­tes­tor Jørn Tol­strup. “So this is great, because here we have an idiot who won’t shut up, and now we’ve found a way to take his foot off the ped­al.” It’s cre­ative de-esca­la­tion and redi­rec­tion. And, we might say, not so much a pub­lic “can­celling” as the free expres­sion of oppos­ing ideas.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ornette Cole­man Freed Jazz with His The­o­ry of Har­molod­ics

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs’ Man­i­festo for Over­throw­ing a Cor­rupt Gov­ern­ment with Fake News and Oth­er Prophet­ic Meth­ods: It’s Now Pub­lished for the First Time

How Music Unites Us All: Her­bie Han­cock & Kamasi Wash­ing­ton in Con­ver­sa­tion

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

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High-Resolution Walking Tours of Italy’s Most Historic Places: The Colosseum, Pompeii, St. Peter’s Basilica & More

in History, Travel | September 18th, 2020

The glob­al tourism indus­try has seen bet­ter days than these. In regions like west­ern Europe, to which trav­el­ers from all parts have long flocked and spent their mon­ey, the coro­n­avirus’ cur­tail­ment of world trav­el this year has sure­ly come as a severe blow. This goes even more so for a coun­try like Italy, whose stock of his­toric struc­tures, both ruined and immac­u­late­ly pre­served, has long assured it touris­tic pre­em­i­nence in its part of the world. So much the worse, then, when Italy became one of the coun­tries hard­est hit by the virus this past spring. But its recov­ery is well under­way, as is Europe’s reopen­ing to trav­el­ers.

Or at least Europe is reopen­ing to cer­tain trav­el­ers: much of the con­ti­nent has remained closed to those from cer­tain afflict­ed coun­tries, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Of course, the U.S. has also banned entry to trav­el­ers who have recent­ly been in many of those Euro­pean coun­tries, and how­ev­er you look at it, this sit­u­a­tion will take some time to untan­gle.

Until that hap­pens, those of us who’ve had to indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend our planned trips to Italy — or even those of us who’d nev­er con­sid­ered going before the option was removed from the table — can con­tent our­selves with this set of high-res­o­lu­tion jour­neys on foot from the Youtube chan­nel ProWalk Tours, all shot at length in real tourist spots amid vis­i­tors and locals alike.

Whether the Colos­se­um and Pala­tine Hill in Rome, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca in Vat­i­can City, and the towns of Pom­peii (in two parts) and Her­cu­la­neum both ruined and pre­served by Mt. Vesu­vius, ProWalk’s videos show you all you’d see on an in-per­son wak­ing tour. But they also include fea­tures like maps, marks in the time­line denot­ing each impor­tant site, and onscreen facts and expla­na­tions of the fea­tures of these his­toric places. Com­bine these with the immer­sive vir­tu­al muse­um tours pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, as well as the recre­ations of ancient Rome in its prime and Pom­peii on the day of Vesu­vius erup­tion, and you’ll have the kind of under­stand­ing you could­n’t get in per­son — and with no dan­ger of being whacked by your fel­low tourists’ self­ie sticks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Rare Footage of Jimi Hendrix Performing “Voodoo Child” in Maui, Plus a Trailer for a New Documentary on Jimi Hendrix’s Legendary Maui Performances (1970)

in Film, Music | September 17th, 2020

In June of 1969, the orig­i­nal Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence, the band that intro­duced the six­ties to its reign­ing gui­tar god, dis­band­ed for good with the depar­ture of Noel Red­ding fol­low­ing a messy Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val appear­ance. The sto­ry of that gig sounds so apocalyptic—involving hero­in, riots, and tear gas—that it reads like cos­mic fore­shad­ow­ing of the tragedy to come: the decades’ great­est psych-rock­ers go out in a haze of smoke. A lit­tle over one year lat­er, Jimi is dead.

But if he seemed burned out in Den­ver, accord­ing to his band­mates, it was no indi­ca­tion at all of where his music was head­ed. Much of the ten­sion in the band came from Hendrix’s readi­ness to embark on the next phase of his evo­lu­tion. After Red­ding left, he was imme­di­ate­ly replaced by Bil­ly Cox, who played with Hen­drix at Wood­stock in the first incar­na­tion of the Band of Gyp­sys, with whom Hen­drix record­ed “Machine Gun,” described by musi­col­o­gist Andy Ale­dort as “the pre­miere exam­ple of his unpar­al­leled genius as a rock gui­tarist.”

In wild­ly impro­visato­ry per­for­mances, Hen­drix strove to incor­po­rate the rad­i­cal moves of Coltrane. He had “tran­scend­ed the medi­um of rock music,” writes Ale­dort, “and set an entire­ly new stan­dard for the poten­tial of elec­tric gui­tar.” The drugs inter­vened, again, and after a dis­as­trous gig at Madi­son Square Gar­den in Jan­u­ary 1970, the Band of Gyp­sys broke up. Then, the Expe­ri­ence reformed, with Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, and began record­ing and tour­ing the U.S.

When Jimi wasn’t too high to play, he deliv­ered some of the most blis­ter­ing per­for­mances of his career, includ­ing two leg­endary sets in Hawaii in July, at the foot of Haleakala vol­cano, that would end up being his final con­cert appear­ances in the U.S. These sets were not, in fact, sched­uled tour stops but over 50 min­utes of per­for­mance for a semi-fic­tion­al psy­che­del­ic film called Rain­bow Bridge, noto­ri­ous for mak­ing lit­tle sense and for cut­ting almost all of the promised live footage of Hendrix’s per­for­mance, anger­ing every­one who saw it.

The film’s promised sound­track nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, and fans have long cov­et­ed these record­ings, espe­cial­ly the sec­ond set, “a test­ing ground,” one fan writes, “for his new direc­tion.” Now, they’re final­ly get­ting an offi­cial release, on CD, Blu-Ray, and LP on Novem­ber 20th. (See a full track­list of the two sets here.) This is no out­takes & rar­i­ties cash grab, but an essen­tial doc­u­ment of Hen­drix at the height of his pow­ers, one year after the Expe­ri­ence seemed to crash and burn. See for your­self in the clip of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” at the top.

It’s too bad that this high point of Hendrix’s final year has been over­shad­owed by the dis­mal fail­ure of the film that made it hap­pen. But a new doc­u­men­tary, Music, Mon­ey, Mad­ness… Jimi Hen­drix in Maui aims to restore this episode of Hen­drix his­to­ry. Com­ing out on the same day as the live record­ings, Novem­ber 20th, the film (see trail­er above) includes more live Hen­drix footage than appeared in Rain­bow Bridge, and tells the sto­ry of how a ter­ri­ble movie got made around the great­est rock musi­cian of the day. The per­for­mances that did­n’t make the cut tell anoth­er story—about how Hen­drix was, again, doing things with the gui­tar that no one had ever done before.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Hear the Last Time the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Ever Played Togeth­er: The Riotous Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val of 1969

See a Full Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Con­cert on Restored Footage Thought Lost for 35 Years

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

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

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A Side-by-Side, Shot-by-Shot Comparison of Denis Villeneuve’s 2020 Dune and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune

in Film | September 17th, 2020

As a long­time fan of all things Dune, there’s no liv­ing direc­tor I’d trust more to take over the “prop­er­ty” than Denis Vil­leneuve. But why remake Dune at all? Oh, I know, the orig­i­nal film—directed (in sev­er­al cuts) by “Alan Smithee,” also known as David Lynch—is a dis­as­ter, so they say. Even Lynch says it. (Maybe the nicest thing he’s ever said about the movie is, “I start­ed sell­ing out on Dune.”) Crit­ics hat­ed, and large­ly still hate, it; the film’s mar­ket­ing was a mess (Uni­ver­sal pro­mot­ed it like a fam­i­ly-friend­ly Star Wars clone); and the stu­dio felt it nec­es­sary to hand glos­saries to ear­ly audi­ences to define terms like Kwisatz Hader­ach, gom jab­ber, and sar­daukar.

But when I first saw David Lynch’s Dune, I did not know any of this. I hard­ly knew Lynch or his fil­mog­ra­phy and had yet to read Frank Herbert’s books. I was a young sci­ence fic­tion fan who saw in the movie exact­ly what Lynch said he intend­ed: “I saw tons and tons of pos­si­bil­i­ties for things I loved, and this was the struc­ture to do them in. There was so much room to cre­ate a world.” I did not know to be upset about his devi­a­tions from the books in the grotesque imag­in­ing of the Third Stage Guild Nav­i­ga­tor or the deci­sion to cov­er Baron Harkon­nen in bloody, ooz­ing pus­tules. The film’s impen­e­tra­bil­i­ty seemed like a fea­ture, not a bug. This was a world, total­ly alien and yet uncan­ni­ly famil­iar.

In hind­sight, I can see its many flaws, though not its total fail­ure, but I still find it mes­mer­iz­ing (and what a cast!). Vil­leneuve, I think, was in a very dif­fi­cult posi­tion in updat­ing such a divi­sive work of cin­e­ma. Should he appeal to fans of the books who hate Lynch’s film, or to fans of the clas­sic film who love its imagery, or to the kinds of the­ater­go­ers Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios feared would need a glos­sary to make it through the movie? Add to this the pres­sures of film­mak­ing dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, and you can imag­ine he might be feel­ing a lit­tle stressed.

But Vil­leneuve seems per­fect­ly relaxed in a recent inter­view above for the Shang­hai Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the trail­er for the new film has so far passed muster with every­one who’s seen it, gen­er­at­ing excite­ment among all of the above groups of poten­tial view­ers. As you can see in the video at the top, which match­es shots from the pre­view with the same scenes from the 1984 film, the new Dune both does its own thing and ref­er­ences Lynch’s dis­put­ed clas­sic in inter­est­ing ways.

No direc­tor should try to please every­one, but few adap­ta­tions come laden with more bag­gage than Dune. Maybe it’s a good idea to play it safe, anchor­ing the film to its trou­bled past while bring­ing it in line with the cur­rent size and scope of Hol­ly­wood block­busters? Not if you ask the direc­tor of the Dune that nev­er was. Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky intend­ed to bring audi­ences the most epic Dune of all time, and was relieved to find that Lynch’s adap­ta­tion was “a shit­ty pic­ture.” By con­trast, he pro­nounces the Vil­leneuve trail­er “very well done” but also com­pro­mised by its “indus­tri­al” need to appeal to a mass audi­ence. “The form is iden­ti­cal to what is done every­where,” he says, “The light­ing, the act­ing, every­thing is pre­dictable.”

Maybe this is inevitable with a sto­ry that film­go­ers already know. Maybe Villeneuve’s movie has sur­pris­es even Jodor­owsky won’t see com­ing. And maybe it’s impossible—and always has been—to make the Dune that the cult Chilean mas­ter want­ed (though break­ing it into two parts, as Vil­leneuve has done, is sure­ly a wise choice). Herbert’s vision was vast; every Dune is a compromise—“Nobody can do it. It’s a leg­end,” says Jodor­owsky. But every great direc­tor who tries leaves behind indeli­ble images that bur­row into the mind like shai-hulud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

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

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Good Movies as Old Books: 100 Films Reimagined as Vintage Book Covers

in Books, Design, Film | September 17th, 2020

At one time paper­back books were thought of as trash, a term that described their per­ceived artis­tic and cul­tur­al lev­el, pro­duc­tion val­ue, and utter dis­pos­abil­i­ty. This changed in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, when cer­tain paper­back pub­lish­ers (Dou­ble­day Anchor, for exam­ple, who hired Edward Gorey to design their cov­ers in the 1950s) made a push for respectabil­i­ty. It worked so well that the sig­na­ture aes­thet­ics they devel­oped still, near­ly a life­time lat­er, pique our inter­est more read­i­ly than those of any oth­er era.

Even today, graph­ic design­ers put in the time and effort to mas­ter the art of the mid­cen­tu­ry paper­back cov­er and trans­pose it into oth­er cul­tur­al realms, as Matt Stevens does in his “Good Movies as Old Books” series. In this “ongo­ing per­son­al project,” Stevens writes, “I envi­sion some of my favorite films as vin­tage books. Not a best of list, just movies I love.”

These movies, for the most part, date from more recent times than the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Some, like Jor­dan Peele’s Us, the Safdie broth­ers’ Uncut Gems, and Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, came out just last year. The old­est pic­tures among them, such as Alfred Hitch­cock­’s The Birds, date from the ear­ly 1960s, when this type of graph­ic design had reached the peak of its pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Suit­ably, Stevens also gives the retro treat­ment to a few already styl­ized peri­od pieces like Steven Spiel­berg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Joe John­ston’s The Rock­e­teer, and Andrew Nic­col’s Gat­taca, a sci-fi vision of the future itself imbued with the aes­thet­ics of the 1940s. Each and every one of Stevens’ beloved-movies-turned-old-books looks con­vinc­ing as a work of graph­ic design from rough­ly the decade and a half after the Sec­ond World War, and some even include real­is­tic creas­es and price tags. This makes us reflect on the con­nec­tions cer­tain of these films have to lit­er­a­ture, most obvi­ous­ly those, like David Fincher’s Fight Club and Stephen Frears’ High Fideli­ty, adapt­ed from nov­els in the first place.

More sub­tle are Rian John­son’s recent Knives Out, a thor­ough­go­ing trib­ute to (if not an adap­ta­tion of) the work of Agatha Christie; Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner, which hybridizes a Philip K. Dick novel­la with pulp detec­tive noir; and Wes Ander­son­’s Rush­more, a state­ment of its direc­tor’s intent to revive the look and feel of the ear­ly 1960s (its books and oth­er­wise) for his own cin­e­mat­ic pur­pos­es. Stevens has made these imag­ined cov­ers avail­able for pur­chase as prints, but some retro design-inclined, bib­lio­philic film fans may pre­fer to own them in 21st-cen­tu­ry book form. See all of his adap­ta­tions in web for­mat here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

Vin­tage Book & Record Cov­ers Brought to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­mat­ed Video

When Edward Gorey Designed Book Cov­ers for Clas­sic Nov­els: See His Iron­ic-Goth­ic Take on Dick­ens, Con­rad, Poe & More

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers Dur­ing Our Trou­bled Times: “Under Pres­sure,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” “Shel­ter from the Storm” & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Short Introduction to Manga by Pretty Much Pop #60 with Professor Deborah Shamoon from the National University of Singapore

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | September 17th, 2020

One of our goals on Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast has been to look into not just our favorite cre­ators and gen­res but into things that get a lot of buzz but which we real­ly don’t know any­thing about. Man­ga is a great exam­ple of a “look what these crazy kids are into today” kind of area for many (old­er) Amer­i­cans.

Deb­o­rah Shamoon, an Amer­i­can who teach­es Japan­ese stud­ies at the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Sin­ga­pore and  has loved man­ga since ado­les­cence, here schools man­ga noobs Mark Lin­sen­may­er and Bri­an Hirt–along with Eri­ca Spyres, who also does­n’t read man­ga but at least has a com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry with ani­me. What are the bar­ri­ers for Amer­i­cans (whether comics read­ers or not) to appre­ci­ate man­ga? For some of us, man­ga is actu­al­ly eas­i­er to appre­ci­ate than ani­me giv­en the lat­ter’s sound and pac­ing.

We talk about man­ga’s pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry, how fast to read man­ga, and its use of iconog­ra­phy to depict sound and move­ment. Deb­o­rah gives us the truth about the famed Osamu Tezuka’s place as “god of comics”; we dis­cuss his Metrop­o­lis, Astro Boy and Princess Knight, which is not as you may have been told the first “sho­jo” man­ga, mean­ing aimed at girls. Sho­jo man­ga is Deb­o­rah’s spe­cial­ty: She wrote a book called Pas­sion­ate Friend­ship: The Aes­thet­ics of Girls’ Cul­ture in Japan. We dis­cuss The Heart of Thomas, Sailor Moon, and how Tezu­ka actu­al­ly copied that big-eye style from Hideko Mizuno’s Sil­ver Petals. Do you need to get a han­dle on these old clas­sics to appre­ci­ate the new­er stuff that’s made such a dent in Amer­i­ca like Death Note? Prob­a­bly not, though some Aki­ra would­n’t hurt you.

A few of the arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

We also looked at some “best of” lists to know what titles to try to look at:

Deb­o­rah rec­om­mends the Japan­ese Media and Pop­u­lar Cul­ture Site from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo for aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing on man­ga. She wrote an arti­cle on sho­jo man­ga for that site that sums up the his­to­ry con­veyed in her book. She’s also been inter­viewed for the Japan Sta­tion and Mei­ji at 150 pod­casts.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts

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Debbie Harry Demonstrates the Punk Pogo Dance for a U.S. Audience (1978)

in Music | September 16th, 2020

Each gen­er­a­tion takes what it needs from ear­ly punk and dis­cards what it does­n’t, so that count­less sub­gen­res have descend­ed from a small, eccen­tric col­lec­tion of punk bands from the late 1970s. The speed and brute sim­plic­i­ty of the Ramones took over in the 80s. The Clash’s stri­dent, reg­gae-inflect­ed anthems guid­ed much of the 90s. The angu­lar art rock and new wave dis­co of Tele­vi­sion, Talk­ing Heads, and Blondie defined the 2000s.

But some things became almost ter­mi­nal­ly passé, or ter­mi­nal­ly stu­pid, after punk’s first wave: like sign­ing to major labels or wear­ing swastikas, iron­i­cal­ly or oth­er­wise. Already out of fash­ion by 1978, the first punk dance, the pogo, was so trag­i­cal­ly unhip that Deb­bie Har­ry pro­nounced it dead on arrival in the U.S. on famed Man­hat­tan cable access show TV Par­ty, above. She offers to demon­strate it any­way as a “his­tor­i­cal” arti­fact.

Her com­men­tary seems like both a sar­cas­tic rip on the ridicu­lous spread of trends and a gen­uine warn­ing to those who might try to make this, like, a thing in New York. Don’t bring a creaky pogo stick with you to the club. Do pour beer over your head after a sweaty half-hour of what­ev­er dance you do. There was so much to learn about punk eti­quette even then. Unless you hap­pened to be Sid Vicious, or in the audi­ence of the first Sex Pis­tols shows. Then it was all fair game.

The pogo orig­i­nat­ed, so the lore goes, with Sid. As Steve Sev­erin of Siouxsie and the Ban­shees remem­bers it, “We first met [Sid] at one of the con­certs. He began bounc­ing around the dance floor, the so called leg­end of the pogo dance. It was mere­ly Sid jump­ing up and down, try­ing to see the band, leap­ing up and down because he was stuck in the back some­where.” Just as every­one who saw the Sex Pis­tols start­ed their own band, every­one who saw Sid bounce around start­ed to pogo.

What at first looks like harm­less fun, espe­cial­ly com­pared to the bru­tal mosh pits that took over for the pogo, was any­thing but. “Pogo­ing was very vio­lent and very painful,” one eye­wit­ness remem­bers. “Peo­ple were not quite crushed to death, but seri­ous injuries occurred.” We might rethink Men With­out Hats’ “The Safe­ty Dance,” the 80s hit writ­ten in defense of pogo­ing. Lead singer Ivan Doroschuk penned the tune after he was kicked out of a club for doing the pogo. “I think peo­ple can relate to the empow­er­ing kind of mes­sage of ‘The Safe­ty Dance,’” he says.

“The Safe­ty Dance” would not have been the empow­er­ing world­wide smash it was had it been called “Pogo Danc­ing,” a minor hit for the Vibra­tors in 1976. Not near­ly as icon­ic, and over­shad­owed by a hip­per dance of the same name in the 80s, was the robot, ele­gized by The Saints in “Doing the Robot.” This dance was “both more expres­sive and less spon­ta­neous,” as cul­tur­al the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge describes it in Sub­cul­ture: The Mean­ing of Style, con­sist­ing of “bare­ly per­cep­ti­ble twitch­es of the head or hands or more extrav­a­gant lurch­es (Frankenstein’s first steps?) which were abrupt­ly halt­ed at ran­dom points.” Hard­ly as prac­ti­cal as the pogo, but prob­a­bly a lot safer.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Learned to Deal With Super­fi­cial, Demean­ing Inter­view­ers

A Short His­to­ry of How Punk Became Punk: From Late 50s Rock­a­bil­ly and Garage Rock to The Ramones & Sex Pis­tols

The 100 Top Punk Songs of All Time, Curat­ed by Read­ers of the UK’s Sounds Mag­a­zine in 1981

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

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The Pentagon Created a Plan to Defend the US Against a Zombie Apocalypse: Read It Online

in Film, Life, Television | September 16th, 2020

For keen observers of pop cul­ture, the flood­tide of zom­bie films and tele­vi­sion series over the past sev­er­al years has seemed like an espe­cial­ly omi­nous devel­op­ment. As social unrest spreads and increas­ing num­bers of peo­ple are uproot­ed from their homes by war, cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe, and, now, COVID-relat­ed evic­tion, one won­ders how advis­able it might have been to prime the pub­lic with so many sce­nar­ios in which heroes must fight off hordes of infec­tious dis­ease car­ri­ers? Zom­bie movies seem intent, after all, on turn­ing not only the dead but also oth­er liv­ing humans into objects of ter­ror.

Zom­bies them­selves have a com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry; like many New World mon­sters, their ori­gins are tied to slav­ery and colo­nial­ism. The first zom­bies were not flesh-eat­ing can­ni­bals; they were peo­ple robbed of free­dom and agency by Voodoo priests, at least in leg­ends that emerged dur­ing the bru­tal twen­ty-year Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion of Haiti in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. The first fea­ture-length Hol­ly­wood zom­bie film, 1932’s White Zom­bie, was based on occultist and explor­er William Seabrook’s 1929 book The Mag­ic Island and starred Bela Lugosi as a Hait­ian Voodoo mas­ter named “Mur­der,” who enslaves the hero­ine and turns her into an instru­ment of his will.

Sub­tle the film is not, but no zom­bie film ever war­rant­ed that adjec­tive. Zom­bie enter­tain­ment induces max­i­mum fear of a relent­less Oth­er, detached, after White Zom­bie, from its Hait­ian con­text, so that the undead horde can stand in for any kind of inva­sion. The genre’s his­to­ry may go some way toward explain­ing why the U.S. gov­ern­ment has an offi­cial zom­bie pre­pared­ness plan, called CONOP 8888. The doc­u­ment was writ­ten in April 2011 by junior mil­i­tary offi­cers at the U.S. Strate­gic Com­mand (USSTRATCOM), as a train­ing exer­cise to for­mu­late a non­spe­cif­ic inva­sion con­tin­gency plan.

Despite the use of a “fic­ti­tious sce­nario,” CONOP 8888 explic­it­ly states that it “was not actu­al­ly designed as a joke.” And “indeed, it’s not,” All that’s Inter­est­ing assures us, quot­ing the fol­low­ing from the plan’s intro­duc­tion:

Zom­bies are hor­ri­bly dan­ger­ous to all human life and zom­bie infec­tions have the poten­tial to seri­ous­ly under­mine nation­al secu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties that sus­tain our way of life. There­fore hav­ing a pop­u­la­tion that is not com­posed of zom­bies or at risk from their malign influ­ence is vital to U.S. and Allied Nation­al Inter­ests.

Sub­sti­tute “zom­bies” with any out­group and the ver­biage sounds alarm­ing­ly like the rhetoric of state ter­ror. The plan, as you might expect, details a mar­tial law sce­nario, not­ing that “U.S. and inter­na­tion­al law reg­u­late mil­i­tary oper­a­tions only inso­far as human and ani­mal life are con­cerned. There are almost no restric­tions on hos­tile actions… against path­o­gen­ic life forms, organ­ic-robot­ic enti­ties, or ‘tra­di­tion­al’ zom­bies,’” what­ev­er that means.

This all seems dead­ly seri­ous, until we get to the reports’ sub­sec­tions, which detail sce­nar­ios such as “Evil Mag­ic Zom­bies (EMZ),” “Space Zom­bies (SZ),” “Veg­e­tar­i­an Zom­bies (VZ),” and “Chick­en Zom­bies (CZ)” (in fact, “the only proven class of zom­bie that actu­al­ly exists”). It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see a mil­i­tary doc­u­ment absorb the many com­ic per­mu­ta­tions of the genre, from George Romero’s sub­ver­sive satires to Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies. No mat­ter how fun­ny zom­bies are, how­ev­er, the genre seems to require hor­rif­ic vio­lence, gore, and siege-like sur­vival­ism as key the­mat­ic ele­ments.

Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Daniel W. Drezn­er, author of The­o­ries of Inter­na­tion­al Pol­i­tics and Zom­bies, has read the Pentagon’s zom­bie plan close­ly and dis­cov­ered some seri­ous prob­lems (and not only with its zom­bie clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem). While the plan assumes the neces­si­ty of “bar­ri­cad­ed counter-zom­bie oper­a­tions,” it also admits that “USSTRATCOM forces do not cur­rent­ly hold enough con­tin­gency stores (food, water) to sup­port” such oper­a­tions for even 30 days. “So… maybe 28 days lat­er,” Drezn­er quips, sup­plies run out? (We’ve all seen what hap­pens next….) Also, alarm­ing­ly, the plan is “trig­ger-hap­py about nuclear weapons,” adding the pos­si­bil­i­ty of radi­a­tion poi­son­ing to the like­li­hood of starv­ing (or being eat­en by the starv­ing).

It turns out, then, that just as in so many mod­ern zom­bie sto­ries, the zom­bies may not actu­al­ly be the worst thing about a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. Not to be out­done, the CDC decid­ed to cap­i­tal­ize on the zom­bie craze—rather late, we must say—releas­ing their own mate­ri­als for a zom­bie pan­dem­ic online in 2018. These include enter­tain­ing blogs, a poster (above), and a graph­ic nov­el full of use­ful dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness tips for ordi­nary cit­i­zens. The cam­paign might be judged in poor taste in the COVID era, but the agency assures us, in the event of a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse, “Nev­er Fear—CDC is Ready.” I leave it to you, dear read­er, to decide how com­fort­ing this promise sounds in 2020.

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Zom­bies Come From: A Video Essay on the Ori­gin of the Hor­ri­fy­ing, Satir­i­cal Mon­sters

How to Sur­vive the Com­ing Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse: An Online Course by Michi­gan State

Watch Night of the Liv­ing Dead, the Sem­i­nal Zom­bie Movie, Free Online

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

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