Animated Films Made During the Cold War Explain Why America is Exceptionally Exceptional

in Animation, History, Politics | June 25th, 2014

The CIA fought most of the Cold War on the cul­tur­al front, recruit­ing oper­a­tives and plac­ing agents in every pos­si­ble sphere of influ­ence, not only abroad but at home as well. As Fran­cis Ston­er Saun­ders’ book The Cul­tur­al Cold War: the CIA and the World of Arts and Let­ters details, the agency fund­ed intel­lec­tu­als across the polit­i­cal spec­trum as well as pro­duc­ers of radio, TV, and film. A well-financed pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign aimed at the Amer­i­can pub­lic attempt­ed to per­suade the pop­u­lace that their coun­try looked exact­ly like its lead­ers wished to see it, a well-run cap­i­tal­ist machine with equal oppor­tu­ni­ty for all. In addi­tion to the agency’s var­i­ous for­ays into jazz and mod­ern art, the CIA also helped finance and con­sult­ed on the pro­duc­tion of ani­mat­ed films, like the 1954 adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm we recent­ly fea­tured. We’ve also post­ed on oth­er ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da films made by gov­ern­ment agen­cies, such as A is for Atom, a PR film for nuclear ener­gy, and Duck and Cov­er, a short sug­gest­ing that clean­li­ness may help cit­i­zens sur­vive a nuclear war.

Today we bring you three short ani­ma­tions fund­ed and com­mis­sioned by pri­vate inter­ests. These films were made for Arkansas’ Hard­ing Col­lege (now Hard­ing Uni­ver­si­ty) and financed by long­time Gen­er­al Motors CEO Alfred P. Sloan. The name prob­a­bly sounds famil­iar. Today the Alfred P. Sloan Foun­da­tion gen­er­ous­ly sup­ports pub­lic radio and tele­vi­sion, as well as med­ical research and oth­er altru­is­tic projects. In the post-war years, Sloan, wide­ly con­sid­ered “the father of the mod­ern cor­po­ra­tion,” writes Karl Cohen in a two-part essay for Ani­ma­tion World Net­work, sup­pos­ed­ly took a shine to the boot­strap­ping pres­i­dent of Hard­ing, George S. Ben­son, a Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary and cru­sad­ing anti-Com­mu­nist who used his posi­tion to pro­mote God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try. Accord­ing to Cohen, Sloan donat­ed sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars to Hard­ing as fund­ing for “edu­ca­tion­al anti-Com­mu­nist, pro-free enter­prise sys­tem films.” Con­tract­ed by the col­lege, pro­duc­er John Suther­land, for­mer Dis­ney writer, made nine films in all. As you’ll see in the title card that opens each short, these were osten­si­bly made “to cre­ate a deep­er under­stand­ing of what has made Amer­i­ca the finest place in the world to live.” At the top, watch 1949’s “Why Play Leap Frog?” and just above, see anoth­er of the Hard­ing films, “Meet King Joe,” also from 1949.

Just above, watch a third of the Hard­ing pro­pa­gan­da films, “Make Mine Free­dom,” from 1948. Each of these films, call­ing them­selves “Fun and Facts about Amer­i­ca,” present sim­plis­tic patri­ot­ic sto­ries with an author­i­ta­tive nar­ra­tor who patient­ly explains the ins and outs of Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism. “Why Play Leapfrog?” tells the sto­ry of Joe, a dis­grun­tled doll-fac­to­ry work­er who learns some impor­tant lessons about the sup­ply chain, wages, and prices. He also learns that he’d bet­ter work hard­er to increase his pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (and coop­er­ate with man­age­ment) if he wants to keep up with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing. “Meet King Joe” intro­duces us to the “king of the work­ers of the world,” so called because he can buy more stuff than the poor schlubs in oth­er coun­tries. Joe, “no smarter” and “no stronger than work­ers in oth­er lands” has such advan­tages only because of, you guessed it, the won­ders of cap­i­tal­ism. “Make Mine Free­dom” reminds view­ers of their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights before intro­duc­ing us to a snake oil char­la­tan sell­ing “ism,” a Com­mie-like ton­ic, to a group of U.S. labor disputants—if only they’ll sign over their rights and prop­er­ty. The assem­bled crowd jumps at the chance, but then along comes John Q. Pub­lic, who won’t give up his free­dom for “some import­ed dou­ble-talk.”

You can read much more about the rela­tion­ship between Sloan and Ben­son and the oth­er films Suther­land pro­duced with Sloan’s mon­ey, in Cohen’s essay, which also includes infor­ma­tion on Cold War ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da films made by Warn­er Broth­ers and Dis­ney.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mal Farm: Watch the Ani­mat­ed Adap­ta­tion of Orwell’s Nov­el Fund­ed by the CIA (1954)

A is for Atom: Vin­tage PR Film for Nuclear Ener­gy

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poetry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musician Began)

in Poetry | June 25th, 2014

Many a singer-song­writer who first rose to promi­nence in the 1960s has tak­en the label of “poet,” usu­al­ly applied by ador­ing fans, no doubt to the objec­tion of a fair few seri­ous poet­ry enthu­si­asts. But who among them could deny Leonard Cohen’s sta­tus as a poet? Though best known as a musi­cian, Cohen has also racked up indis­putable writer­ly cre­den­tials, hav­ing pub­lished not just the nov­els Beau­ti­ful Losers and The Favorite Game but many books of poet­ry includ­ing Death of a Lady’s Man, Let Us Com­pare Mytholo­gies, and Flow­ers for Hitler. Some of them include not just poems writ­ten as poems but song lyrics — or per­haps works that began as songs but became poems. Sure­ly his albums con­tain songs that began as poems. Those inter­est­ed in fig­ur­ing out Cohen’s simul­ta­ne­ous devel­op­ment as a poet and song­writer would do well to lis­ten to his ear­ly poet­ry read­ings, like that of “Prayer for Mes­si­ah” at the top of the post.

Just above, you can hear Cohen read­ing sev­er­al more poems in the hal­lowed halls of New York’s 92nd Street Y in Feb­ru­ary 1966. Below, you can watch a tele­vi­sion clip from that same year in which the famous­ly Cana­di­an Cohen appears (nat­u­ral­ly) on the CBC in a seg­ment “con­sid­er­ing the poet­ic mind.”

He reads more of his verse and offers a bit of insight into his atti­tude toward the lega­cy of his own art — specif­i­cal­ly, that he pays no atten­tion to its lega­cy at all. Per­haps that more than any­thing allows him the free­dom to move as nec­es­sary between fields of cre­ative tex­tu­al endeav­or, retain­ing his inim­itable sen­si­bil­i­ty no mat­ter what shape his work takes at the end of the day. And, in any case, at least for my mon­ey, if pieces of his more mature work like “First We Take Man­hat­tan” don’t tran­scend their form, what does?

You can read a piece where Pico Iyer reflects on Cohen’s 92nd Y poet­ry read­ings here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Jorge Luis Borges: “Soccer is Popular Because Stupidity is Popular”

in Literature, Sports | June 24th, 2014

borges-libray of babel

Image by Grete Stern, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I will admit it: I’m one of those oft-maligned non-sports peo­ple who becomes a foot­ball (okay, soc­cer) enthu­si­ast every four years, seduced by the col­or­ful pageantry, cos­mopoli­tan air, nos­tal­gia for a game I played as a kid, and an embar­rass­ing­ly sen­ti­men­tal pride in my home coun­try’s team. I don’t lose all my crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties, but I can’t help but love the World Cup even while rec­og­niz­ing the cor­rup­tion, deep­en­ing pover­ty and exploita­tion, and host of oth­er seri­ous sociopo­lit­i­cal issues sur­round­ing it. And as an Amer­i­can, it’s sim­ply much eas­i­er to put some dis­tance between the sport itself and the jin­go­is­tic big­otry and violence—“sentimental hooli­gan­ism,” to use Franklin Foer’s phrase—that very often attend the game in var­i­ous parts of the world.

In Argenti­na, as in many soc­cer-mad coun­tries with deep social divides, gang vio­lence is a rou­tine part of fut­bol, part of what Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges termed a hor­ri­ble “idea of suprema­cy.” Borges found it impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the fan cul­ture from the game itself, once declar­ing, “soc­cer is pop­u­lar because stu­pid­i­ty is pop­u­lar.” As Shaj Math­ew writes in The New Repub­lic, the author asso­ci­at­ed the mass mania of soc­cer fan­dom with the mass fer­vor of fas­cism or dog­mat­ic nation­al­ism. “Nation­al­ism,” he wrote, “only allows for affir­ma­tions, and every doc­trine that dis­cards doubt, nega­tion, is a form of fanati­cism and stu­pid­i­ty.” As Math­ews points out, nation­al soc­cer teams and stars do often become the tools of author­i­tar­i­an regimes that “take advan­tage of the bond that fans share with their nation­al teams to drum up pop­u­lar sup­port [….] This is what Borges feared—and resented—about the sport.”

There is cer­tain­ly a sense in which Borges’ hatred of soc­cer is also indica­tive of his well-known cul­tur­al elit­ism (despite his roman­ti­ciz­ing of low­er-class gau­cho life and the once-demi­monde tan­go). Out­side of the huge­ly expen­sive World Cup, the class dynam­ics of soc­cer fan­dom in most every coun­try but the U.S. are fair­ly uncom­pli­cat­ed. New Repub­lic edi­tor Foer summed it up suc­cinct­ly in How Soc­cer Explains the World: “In every oth­er part of the world, soccer’s soci­ol­o­gy varies lit­tle: it is the province of the work­ing class.” (The inver­sion of this soc­cer class divide in the U.S., Foer writes, explains Amer­i­cans’ dis­dain for the game in gen­er­al and for elit­ist soc­cer dilet­tantes in par­tic­u­lar, though those atti­tudes are rapid­ly chang­ing). If Borges had been a North, rather than South, Amer­i­can, I imag­ine he would have had sim­i­lar things to say about the NFL, NBA, NHL, or NASCAR.

Nonethe­less, being Jorge Luis Borges, the writer did not sim­ply lodge cranky com­plaints, how­ev­er polit­i­cal­ly astute, about the game. He wrote a spec­u­la­tive sto­ry about it with his close friend and some­time writ­ing part­ner Adol­fo Bioy Casares. In “Esse Est Per­cipi” (“to be is to be per­ceived”), we learn that soc­cer has “ceased to be a sport and entered the realm of spec­ta­cle,” writes Math­ews: “rep­re­sen­ta­tion of sport has replaced actu­al sport.” The phys­i­cal sta­di­ums crum­ble, while the games are per­formed by “a sin­gle man in a booth or by actors in jer­seys before the TV cam­eras.” An eas­i­ly duped pop­u­lace fol­lows “nonex­is­tent games on TV and the radio with­out ques­tion­ing a thing.”

The sto­ry effec­tive­ly illus­trates Borges’ cri­tique of soc­cer as an intrin­sic part of a mass cul­ture that, Math­ews says, “leaves itself open to dem­a­goguery and manip­u­la­tion.” Borges’ own snob­beries aside, his res­olute sus­pi­cion of mass media spec­ta­cle and the coopt­ing of pop­u­lar cul­ture by polit­i­cal forces seems to me still, as it was in his day, a healthy atti­tude. You can read the full sto­ry here, and an excel­lent crit­i­cal essay on Borges’ polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy here.

via The New Repub­lic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Listen to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cassette Arts Magazine Featuring Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp & Many Others

in Art, Museums | June 24th, 2014

audio_arts_cassette_0

As a pod­cast­er, I’ve long since grown used to the idea of peri­od­i­cal­ly issu­ing audio con­tent. But the con­ve­nient record­ing, inter­net, and com­put­er, and mobile lis­ten­ing tech­nolo­gies that made such a medi­um pos­si­ble only real­ly con­verged in the ear­ly 2000s. How would I have gone about it had I want­ed to put out a “pod­cast,” say, 40 years ear­li­er? We have one such exam­ple in Audio Arts, a British con­tem­po­rary art “sound mag­a­zine” dis­trib­uted through the mail on audio cas­settes. “The sev­en­ties were the years of con­cep­tu­al art with text adding val­ue to the actu­al works,” co-cre­ator William Fur­long once said in an inter­view. “As an artist I was more inter­est­ed in ‘dis­cus­sion,’ the idea of lan­guage and the peo­ple that already worked in con­cep­tu­al fields in Great Britain. Soon I realised there weren’t mag­a­zines capa­ble of report­ing such mate­r­i­al inspired by con­ver­sa­tion, sounds and dis­cus­sions. The evoca­tive force of a voice is lost with the writ­ten word as it will only ever be a writ­ten voice.”

Fur­long, a sculp­tor, and Bar­ry Bark­er, a gal­lerist, began pub­lish­ing Audio Arts in 1973. Its run last­ed until, aston­ish­ing­ly, 2006, by which time its archives had come to 25 vol­umes of four issues each. Its list of sub­scribers includ­ed the for­mi­da­ble Tate, such fans that they actu­al­ly acquired the mag­a­zine’s mas­ter tapes, dig­i­tized them, and made them all pub­licly avail­able on their web site. No longer must you seek out nth-gen­er­a­tion dupli­cat­ed ana­log cas­settes and dig out your Walk­man; now you can sim­ply stream on your media play­er of choice every issue from Jan­u­ary 1973, “four cas­settes with con­tri­bu­tions from Car­o­line Tis­dall, Noam Chom­sky, James Joyce and W.B. Yeats,” to Jan­u­ary 2006, which caps every­thing off with con­tri­bu­tions by Gilbert & George and Jake and Dinos Chap­man. Oth­er notable artis­tic pres­ences include Mar­cel Duchamp in Vol­ume 2, Philip Glass in Vol­ume 6, and Andy Warhol in Vol­ume 8. Help­ful­ly, Tate has also put togeth­er a sec­tion with tools to explore Audio Arts’ high­lights — some­thing more than a few mod­ern-day pod­casts could no doubt use.

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Inter­views Alfred Hitch­cock (1974)

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse) 

Library of Con­gress Releas­es Audio Archive of Inter­views with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Vladimir Nabokov’s Script for Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita: See Pages from His Original Draft

in Film, Literature | June 24th, 2014

page1

The tag line for Stan­ley Kubrick’s sixth fea­ture was “How did they ever make a movie of Loli­ta?” And it’s a good ques­tion. Vladimir Nabokov’s infa­mous nov­el, first pub­lished in 1955, is a deliri­ous account of a mid­dle-aged sophisticate’s obses­sion with a 12 year-old “nymphet.” The book was both praised and pil­lo­ried when it came out. Gra­ham Greene called it one of the best books of the year while an Eng­lish news­pa­per called it “sheer unre­strained pornog­ra­phy.” With press like that, Loli­ta quick­ly became a best-sell­er.

So when Kubrick, along with his pro­duc­ing part­ner James B. Har­ris, bought the rights to the book in 1958, they first had to prove that it could be filmed in a way that could get past the cen­sors. The Hays code was still in effect in Hol­ly­wood, which sup­pressed any hint of sex between two adults. A love sto­ry between a pre­pu­bes­cent girl and a mid­dle-aged per­vert was going to be a tall order. “If I real­ized how severe the [cen­sor­ship] lim­i­ta­tions were going to be,” Kubrick stat­ed lat­er, “I wouldn’t have made the film.”

Even­tu­al­ly, Kubrick had to bow to real­i­ty; they changed Lolita’s age from 12 to 14, cast­ing the teenaged Sue Lyon for the part. As Richard Corliss not­ed in his study on Loli­ta, “The book is about child abuse; the movie is about the wiles a teenage girl might have learned in those two years: an aware­ness of her pow­er over men.”

The oth­er chal­lenge of adapt­ing Loli­ta was the book itself. There’s an old tru­ism in Hol­ly­wood that mediocre books make great movies and great books make for lousy films. After all, a nov­el like Mario Puzo’s The God­fa­ther is all about sto­ry, char­ac­ters and sus­pense – the same stuff as a good script. Authors like James Joyce, William Faulkn­er and Nabokov, on the oth­er hand, fore­ground ele­ments that are par­tic­u­lar to lit­er­a­ture — inte­ri­or mono­logues, unre­li­able nar­ra­tors, and a musi­cal­i­ty of lan­guage – ele­ments that are damned tricky to repro­duce on the sil­ver screen. If you don’t believe me, com­pare The Great Gats­by with its numer­ous dread­ful movie adap­ta­tions.

Doubt­less aware of such pit­falls, Kubrick approached Nabokov, the author him­self, to write the script. After their first meet­ing, Nabokov turned the offer down. “The idea of tam­per­ing with my own nov­el caused me only revul­sion,” Nabokov lat­er wrote in the fore­word to the pub­lished ver­sion of his Loli­ta script. Kubrick, how­ev­er, is not a per­son to be dis­suad­ed eas­i­ly. He sent Nabokov a telegram renew­ing the offer a few months lat­er, just as the author was begin­ning to regret pass­ing on the offer and its gen­er­ous pay­check.

So Nabokov trav­eled back to Los Ange­les to meet with Kubrick, begin­ning what he would char­ac­ter­ize as “an ami­able bat­tle of sug­ges­tion and coun­ter­sug­ges­tion on how to cin­e­m­ize the nov­el.” By the end of the sum­mer of 1960, Nabokov deliv­ered his first draft – a 400-page behe­moth. The script would require some seri­ous edit­ing. After that, Nabokov’s meet­ings with the direc­tor became more and more spo­radic.

True to form, Kubrick was secre­tive about the film. The author had lit­tle idea what shape the final movie was going to take until he saw it a cou­ple of days before the pre­miere in 1962. “I had dis­cov­ered that Kubrick was a great direc­tor, that his Loli­ta was a first-rate film with mag­nif­i­cent actors, and that only ragged odds and ends of my script had been used.” Kubrick took the script and stripped out all the back­sto­ry and most of the nar­ra­tion. He expand­ed the char­ac­ter of Quilty to give Peter Sell­ers more to do. While Nabokov was gen­er­al­ly com­pli­men­ta­ry about the film, he still had some com­plaints. “Most of the sequences were not real­ly bet­ter than those I had so care­ful­ly com­posed for Kubrick, and I keen­ly regret­ted the waste of my time while admir­ing Kubrick’s for­ti­tude in endur­ing for six months the evo­lu­tion and inflic­tion of a use­less prod­uct.”

Nonethe­less, Nabokov got a sin­gle screen­writer cred­it for the movie and he end­ed up get­ting an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Best Adapt­ed Screen­play. You can see some of Nabokov’s script of Loli­ta, com­plete with mar­gin notes, below. (The mar­gin notes appar­ent­ly don’t appear in the pub­lished ver­sion.) You can click on each image to view them in a larg­er for­mat. They come to us via Vice.

page2

page3

page4

page5

page6

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audible.com. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Fear and Desire: Stan­ley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Fea­ture Film (1953)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Routledge Gives Free Access to 6,000 eBooks in June (Including Philosophy & Cultural Studies Texts)

in e-books, Philosophy | June 24th, 2014

phenomenological mind

A quick note: After dig­i­tiz­ing over 15,000 books, Rout­ledge has made 6,000 of these e‑texts free for view­ing dur­ing the month of June. You can browse the com­plete list of titles in Rout­ledge’s e‑catalog by click­ing here. Once you have select­ed a title, you can then click the blue “View Inside this Book” but­ton to start read­ing the text. The col­lec­tion includes lots of works focused on Eco­nom­ics, Finance and Busi­ness; Pol­i­tics and Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions; and Phi­los­o­phy and Cul­tur­al Stud­ies.The lat­ter cat­e­go­ry will undoubt­ed­ly inter­est our many philo­soph­i­cal­ly-mind­ed read­ers. Among the texts you will find Fou­cault and Edu­ca­tion; Cul­tur­al Analy­sis The Work of Peter L. Berg­er, Mary Dou­glas, Michel Fou­cault, and Jür­gen Haber­mas; Hei­deg­ger and the Roman­tics: The Lit­er­ary Inven­tion of Mean­ing; The Note­books of Simone Weil; and A His­tor­i­cal Intro­duc­tion to Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy. The image above comes from The Phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal Mind by Shaun Gal­lagher and Dan Zahavi.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

170 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion

Read 9 Books By Noam Chom­sky Free Online

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Advice to Young Aspiring Artists from Patti Smith, David Byrne & Marina Abramović

in Creativity, K-12, Life, Music, Poetry | June 23rd, 2014

If you dream of becom­ing the next Dis­ney Chan­nel star, you’d do well to heed the advice of cast­ing direc­tor Judy Tay­lor, who uses “read” and “tal­ent” accord­ing to their indus­try def­i­n­i­tions, and seems unlike­ly to cut any­one slack for youth or inex­pe­ri­ence.

If, how­ev­er, you’ve got the soul of a poet, a painter, a musi­cal adven­tur­er, all three, or none of the above, I sug­gest falling to your knees and thank­ing Den­mark’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art for pro­vid­ing you with an alter­na­tive. The week­ly videos on art, lit­er­a­ture, design and archi­tec­ture for its Louisiana Chan­nel are a gold­mine of inspi­ra­tion for non-main­stream types both young and old, but cer­tain seg­ments speak explic­it­ly to those just embark­ing on the jour­ney.

As any num­ber of us geezers can attest, Pat­ti Smith and David Byrne speak with author­i­ty. It’s okay if you’ve nev­er heard of them. If you were three or four decades fur­ther along, you would have.

(As to Mari­na Abramović, go easy on your par­ents if they need to spend a moment or two dial­ing her up on Wikipedia. I’ll bet Pat­ti or David would­n’t peer down their noses at some­one for not rec­og­niz­ing one of the world’s great­est liv­ing per­for­mance artists. Excuse the dan­gling prepo­si­tion, but she’s def­i­nite­ly some­one worth find­ing out about.)

I real­ize I don’t speak for most of Amer­i­ca, but for me, these guys loom larg­er than Jay‑Z and Bey­once com­bined. I also real­ize that in terms of both wealth and name recog­ni­tion, there’s a sta­ble full of teen celebri­ties who leave them in the dust.

Inter­est­ing how all three resist the notion of tal­ent as some­thing to be com­mod­i­fied.

Abramović, above, speaks of artis­tic explo­ration in lit­er­al terms. In her view dif­fi­cult work should be pur­sued with the brav­ery of 17th-cen­tu­ry sailors who sal­lied forth, believ­ing that the world was flat. I sus­pect she’s a tougher cook­ie than cast­ing direc­tor Tay­lor. Wit­ness her dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between gar­den vari­ety artists and great artists, the month long rub­bish bas­ket task she assigned her stu­dents, and the rig­or­ous­ness of her own prac­tice.

Her fel­low trail­blaz­er Smith has a more mater­nal touch. The path she pro­motes is sim­i­lar­ly twisty, low-pay­ing, and hard, but coun­ter­bal­anced with “the most beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ences.”

Byrne tack­les some of the more prac­ti­cal aspects of com­mit­ting to the artis­tic way. To wit, there’s no shame in day jobs, even if it’s been eons since he was in a posi­tion to need one. He also makes some very valid points about tech­nol­o­gy, below, with nary a peep as to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of con­cen­trat­ing on one’s stud­ies when one is check­ing Twit­ter every two sec­onds. We all stand to ben­e­fit.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, includ­ing No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear the Earliest Known Talking Heads Recordings (1975)

in Music | June 23rd, 2014

We’ve fea­tured a fair few ear­ly Talk­ing Heads per­for­mances, from Dort­mund and Rome in 1980 to Syra­cuse in 1978 all the way back to CBGB in 1975. But you haven’t real­ly heard ear­ly Talk­ing Heads until you’ve heard the ear­li­est Talk­ing Heads. The same year of that CBGB show (one of many they played after their debut there open­ing for the Ramones), the trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Wey­mouth record­ed a series of demos at CBS stu­dios. Still unsigned and in their ear­ly twen­ties, this first con­fig­u­ra­tion of the Heads (after the band, new­ly arrived in New York, shed their iden­ti­ty as “The Artis­tics” from their days togeth­er at the Rhode Island School of Design) laid down the very first known record­ed ver­sions of such notable tracks as “Psy­cho Killer” above, “Thank You for Send­ing Me an Angel” below, and “I’m Not in Love” below.

You can find a fuller playlist, which includes more songs from these CBS ses­sions like “I Wish You Would­n’t Say That,” “Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions,” and “Stay Hun­gry,” here. We often hear these songs described as the defin­ing mate­r­i­al of a pio­neer­ing “post-punk” band like Talk­ing Heads, so the fact that all these tracks come from 1975 make them per­haps the first exam­ples of the genre ever record­ed. This way of play­ing slight­ly ahead of their time may actu­al­ly have kept the group from find­ing a label to sign them until 1977, when Sire picked up the now-quar­tet (with the addi­tion of mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Jer­ry Har­ri­son) and put out the immor­tal pair of LPs Talk­ing Heads: 77 and More Songs About Build­ings and Food. Yes, even though they’d record­ed these demos at CBS stu­dios, CBS Records passed up the chance to take them on. Sure­ly they lived it down more quick­ly than did Dec­ca Records after hav­ing reject­ed The Bea­t­les, but still, nobody every stayed atop the zeit­geist by turn­ing their back to the Talk­ing Heads.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

A Free Playlist of Music From The Works Of James Joyce (Plus Songs Inspired by the Modernist Author)

in Literature, Music | June 23rd, 2014

James_Joyce_in_1915

Last week we quot­ed a review that Carl Jung wrote of James Joyce’s Ulysses in which the psy­chol­o­gist called the labyrinthine mod­ernist nov­el an “aes­thet­ic dis­ci­pline.” Jung’s phrase can describe equal­ly the reader’s expe­ri­ence and Joyce’s own high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed artistry. The author him­self pro­duced a detailed schema of Ulysses’ struc­ture for his friend Stu­art Gilbert: in addi­tion to pri­ma­ry fields of ref­er­ence like human biol­o­gy and col­or sym­bol­ism, Joyce con­nects each chap­ter to a par­tic­u­lar “art”—theology, rhetoric, archi­tec­ture, and med­i­cine, to men­tion but a few. But for all this rig­or­ous schema­ti­za­tion of each episode, music spills out into every chap­ter and ful­ly per­me­ates the nov­el: adver­tis­ing jin­gles, hymns, sonorous high ora­to­ry, sen­ti­men­tal bal­lads, brood­ing folk songs…. Joyce heard music every­where.

And it’s no sur­prise, giv­en that the nov­el­ist once aspired to a career as a per­former. Joyce com­posed his own songs, played piano and gui­tar, sang in his high tenor, and cham­pi­oned the work of fel­low Irish­man and tenor John Sul­li­van. He was also, again unsur­pris­ing­ly, a schol­ar of music. Sun­phone Records, which released a two-vol­ume set called Music From the Works of James Joyce, remarks that he had an “ency­clo­pe­dic mas­tery of music of every type and genre, rival­ing his vast knowl­edge of world lit­er­a­ture. As a writer, he nev­er­the­less incor­po­rat­ed music into all his works in increas­ing­ly com­plex ways.” (For detailed info on the music that inspired Joyce, vis­it the Sun­phone Records site and click through the links.)

Music From the Works of James Joyce com­piles many of the songs Joyce allud­ed to in his poems, sto­ries, and nov­els (such as music-hall bal­lad “Finnegan’s Wake”). It also includes Joyce’s own work—his col­lec­tion of poems, Cham­ber Music—giv­en “musi­cal set­tings” by com­pos­er Ross Lee Finney. Inspired by this enlight­en­ing col­lec­tion of Joyce’s favorite music, blog­ger ulysse­s­tone of Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists com­piled the playlist above of all the songs avail­able to stream. This playlist includes not only songs that influ­enced the author, or were writ­ten by him; ulysse­s­tone also added sev­er­al songs that Joyce inspired, such as Syd Barrett’s “Gold­en Hair,” based on a poem from Cham­ber Music, Kate Bush’s “Flower of the Moun­tain,” based on Mol­ly Bloom’s final solil­o­quy, and Jef­fer­son Airplane’s “Rejoyce,” a “high­ly selec­tive cap of Ulysses.” John Cage’s Roara­to­rio appears, as does the work of sev­er­al oth­er Joyce-inspired clas­si­cal com­posers.

The playlist begins with the voice of James Joyce, not singing alas, but read­ing from Ulysses’ “Eolian” episode. DJ Spooky (alias of Paul D. Miller) mix­es the author’s voice with Erik Satie’s Gnossi­ennes. To hear the unadul­ter­at­ed Joyce read­ing, check out our post on the only two record­ings of his voice.

Note: If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy in order to hear the playlist, you can find/download the soft­ware here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Record­ings (1924/1929)

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Discover the Lost Films of Orson Welles

in Film | June 23rd, 2014

To know an artist, you must know all the work they ever made pub­lic. But to tru­ly, thor­ough­ly know an artist, you must also know all the work they nev­er made pub­lic. This notion, in our age of DVD delet­ed scenes, ded­i­cat­ed uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, and oth­er aids to com­pletist enthu­si­asm, has gained quite a lot of trac­tion. But how many cre­ators work­ing today give you the sense of only see­ing the tip of their pro­duc­tive ice­berg than did Orson Welles, whose rumored unseen or nev­er ful­ly devel­oped works some­times seem even to out­num­ber those in his impres­sive and (in the main) high­ly acclaimed canon? Sure, the man made War of the Worlds and Cit­i­zen Kane, but every­one knows those. What about The Dream­ers, The Deep, The Oth­er Side of the Wind — seen any of those? Now, thanks to Cinephil­ia and Beyond, you can see them, or at least parts of them, in 1995’s Orson Welles: The One-Man Band by Ger­man film­mak­er and seri­ous Welles fan Vas­sili Silovic.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the auteur’s long­time com­pan­ion Oda Kojar, Silovic digs into the Welles archives and bring to light evi­dence of all sorts of projects unre­al­ized, unfin­ished, or sim­ply unre­leased. The New York Times’ Stephen Hold­en writes that Silovic’s film “offers tan­ta­liz­ing excerpts from Welles’s lat­er works along with rem­i­nis­cences by Ms. Kodar of their nomadic life togeth­er. As Welles dashed about the globe pur­su­ing act­ing jobs and financ­ing for his projects, he tot­ed around a 16-mil­lime­ter edit­ing table and a giant suit­case of equip­ment that made him the film-mak­ing equiv­a­lent of a one-man band. Many of his small­er projects might be described as ambi­tious home movies filmed on the spot wher­ev­er he hap­pened to be.” We see bits and pieces of an incom­plete thriller, a clip from the pilot for a pro­posed tele­vi­sion talk show, some of “the sto­ry of an aging, fero­cious­ly inde­pen­dent film direc­tor (played by John Hus­ton) wrestling with the Hol­ly­wood estab­lish­ment to com­plete an icon­o­clas­tic work.” We even get a glimpse, as if you still need­ed evi­dence that Welles led a sto­ried life, of a chat he had with the Mup­pets.

You can find some icon­ic, com­plete films by Welles in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Cinephil­ia and Beyond

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch The Tri­al (1962), Orson Welles’ Worst or Best Film, Adapt­ed From Kafka’s Clas­sic Work

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

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

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Eddie Vedder Sings Disney’s “Let It Go” at Pearl Jam Concert in Italy

in Music | June 22nd, 2014

If you’re a par­ent of young girls, you can’t escape “Let It Go,” the song from Dis­ney’s 2013 ani­mat­ed film, Frozen. Not even Eddie Ved­der (father of daugh­ters born in 2004 and 2008) can shake it. Just wit­ness what hap­pened on Fri­day night when Ved­der per­formed Pearl Jam’s 1993 hit, “Daugh­ter,” live in Milan, Italy. You appar­ent­ly can’t think “Daugh­ter” with­out think­ing “Let It Go.” A longer ver­sion of the Pearl Jam per­for­mance can be viewed here.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Spring­steen Plays Lorde’s “Roy­als” & AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell” in Down Under Con­certs

Bill Mur­ray Croons a Soul­ful Cov­er of “The House of the Ris­ing Sun”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« 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