Mythology Expert Reviews Depictions of Greek & Roman Myths in Popular Movies and TV Shows

It’s safe to say that we no longer believe in the gods of the ancient world — or rather, that most of us no longer believe in their lit­er­al exis­tence, but some of us have faith in their box-office poten­tial. This two-part video series from Van­i­ty Fair exam­ines a vari­ety of movies and tele­vi­sion shows that have drawn on Greek and Roman myth since the mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry, includ­ing Jason and the Arg­onautsClash of the Titans, Troy, and Dis­ney’s Her­cules. Offer­ing com­men­tary on their faith­ful­ness to the source mate­r­i­al is Peter Mei­neck, Pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics in the Mod­ern World at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

Not that he insists on hold­ing these enter­tain­ments to rig­or­ous stan­dards of accu­ra­cy. “I would not use the term ‘accu­ra­cy’ at any point in Xena: War­rior Princess, because it’s fan­tas­tic,” he says at one point. But then, when it comes to the sto­ries told by ancient Greeks and Romans, we’re deal­ing with rather fan­ta­sy-rich mate­r­i­al from the start.

Height­ened, aug­ment­ed, refined, and syn­cretized over many gen­er­a­tions, they’ve come down to us in forms that reflect more or less eter­nal­ly human notions about the forces that gov­ern real­i­ty and its vicis­si­tudes — ready made, in some cas­es, to incor­po­rate into the lat­est twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry super­hero spec­ta­cle.

Pos­sessed of dis­tinc­tive phys­i­cal traits, tem­pera­ments, super­hu­man pow­ers, and even grudges, the many gods of the poly­the­is­tic antiq­ui­ty were, in their way, the com­ic-book heroes of their time. And just as we have dif­fer­ent “uni­vers­es” of char­ac­ters to choose from, dif­fer­ent eras and cul­tures had their own line­ups of deities, none quite the same as any oth­er. “At the pin­na­cle of this teem­ing numi­nous uni­verse were the Olympians, the twelve gods head­ed by Zeus and Hera,” says ancient-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan in the Told in Stone video above. “The Greeks influ­enced Roman reli­gion vir­tu­al­ly from the begin­ning. By the time Rome emerged into the full light of his­to­ry, the Roman gods had been assim­i­lat­ed to their Greek coun­ter­parts.”

Hence our rec­og­niz­ing Greek Olympians like Posei­don, Artemis, Athena, and Diony­sus, but also their Roman equiv­a­lents Nep­tune, Diana, Min­er­va, and Bac­chus. “There seems to have been lit­tle doubt in Romans’ minds that their chief gods were the same as those of the Greeks,” Ryan says. “The Greeks, for their part, gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that the Romans wor­shipped their gods under dif­fer­ent names — while also being “eager col­lec­tors of exot­ic deities,” many of which could be found with­in their own vast empire. The result was a bewil­der­ing pro­fu­sion of gods for every occa­sion, Greek-inspired or oth­er­wise: an omen of the more-is-bet­ter ethos that the Hol­ly­wood block­buster would embrace a cou­ple of mil­len­nia lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

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

The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Painful Lessons of the 20th Century

From Rick Steves comes a thought-pro­vok­ing doc­u­men­tary that revis­its the rise of fas­cism in Europe, remind­ing us of how charis­mat­ic fig­ures like Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni and Adolf Hitler came to pow­er by promis­ing to cre­ate a bet­ter future for their frus­trat­ed, eco­nom­i­cal­ly depressed countries–a future that recap­tured the glo­ry of some mythol­o­gized past. Once in pow­er, these fas­cist lead­ers replaced democ­ra­cy with a cult of per­son­al­i­ty, steadi­ly erod­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and truth, ratch­eted up vio­lence, and found scape­goats to victimize–something facil­i­tat­ed by the spread of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and pro­pa­gan­da through mod­ern media. They would lead their nations into war, and ulti­mate­ly ruin, but not before cre­at­ing a play­book for oth­er charis­mat­ic auto­crats who entice vot­ers with sim­plis­tic solu­tions to com­plex prob­lems.

Orig­i­nal­ly aired on tele­vi­sion, Steves has released the doc­u­men­tary on YouTube, hop­ing that 21st-cen­tu­ry cit­i­zens can “learn from the hard lessons of 20th-cen­tu­ry Europe.” The text accom­pa­ny­ing his doc­u­men­tary reads as fol­lows:

In this one-hour spe­cial, Rick trav­els back a cen­tu­ry to learn how fas­cism rose and then fell in Europe — tak­ing mil­lions of peo­ple with it. We’ll trace fas­cis­m’s his­to­ry from its roots in the tur­bu­lent after­math of World War I, when mass­es of angry peo­ple rose up, to the rise of charis­mat­ic lead­ers who manip­u­lat­ed that anger, the total­i­tar­i­an soci­eties they built, and the bru­tal mea­sures they used to enforce their ide­ol­o­gy. We’ll see the hor­rif­ic con­se­quences: geno­cide and total war. And we’ll be inspired by the sto­ries of those who resist­ed. Along the way, we’ll vis­it poignant sights through­out Europe relat­ing to fas­cism, and talk with Euro­peans whose fam­i­lies lived through those times. Our goal: to learn from the hard lessons of 20th-cen­tu­ry Europe, and to rec­og­nize that ide­ol­o­gy in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism (which will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries) is rec­om­mend­ed for stu­dents and adults alike. With World War II fad­ing from liv­ing mem­o­ry, we could use a good reminder, says Steves, of how “nation­al­ism can be chan­neled into evil, and how our free­doms and democ­ra­cies are not indestructible…in fact, they are frag­ile.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rick Steves’ Europe: Binge Watch 9 Sea­sons of America’s Favorite Trav­el­er Free Online

Are You a Fas­cist?: Take Theodor Adorno’s Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty Test Cre­at­ed to Com­bat Fas­cism (1947)

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Wal­ter Ben­jamin Explains How Fas­cism Uses Mass Media to Turn Pol­i­tics Into Spec­ta­cle (1935)

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

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Marcus Aurelius’ 9 Rules for Living a Stoic Life

This week, the Guardian’s Zoe Williams pro­filed Ryan Hol­i­day, a one-time pub­lic-rela­tions whiz-kid who’s rein­vent­ed him­self over the past decade as a speak­er for the dead: specif­i­cal­ly Epicte­tus, Seneca, and above all Mar­cus Aure­lius, the fig­ure­heads of the ancient school of phi­los­o­phy we now know as Sto­icism. It “cen­ters on four virtues: courage, tem­per­ance, jus­tice and wis­dom,” Williams writes. “Mar­shal­ing these will give you com­plete self-con­trol, enabling you to react with equa­nim­i­ty to all out­side stim­uli, and not whine about stuff.” Wealth “should mean noth­ing to the sto­ic, which makes it iron­ic that some of the rich­est peo­ple on Earth claim to live by sto­icism.”

That last line comes as an obvi­ous jab at Hol­i­day’s pop­u­lar­i­ty among not just sports stars and celebri­ties but big mon­ey-mak­ers in Sil­i­con Val­ley as well. But then, Sto­icism was meant to work for any­one, no mat­ter their socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus: Epicte­tus was a slave, after all, while Mar­cus Aure­lius ruled over the Roman Empire. And it is Mar­cus’ col­lect­ed writ­ings the Med­i­ta­tions (avail­able free as an eBook or audio­book) that inspired Hol­i­day’s video above from his Youtube chan­nel Dai­ly Sto­ic. In it, he presents “nine Sto­ic rules for a bet­ter life,” open­ing with an exhor­ta­tion that “life is short: do every­thing as if it was the thought or action of a dying per­son.”

The rules begin with “put peo­ple first,” which Mar­cus once demon­strat­ed as a leader by sell­ing off the impe­r­i­al palace’s fin­ery dur­ing the eco­nom­ic hard­ships of the Anto­nine Plague. Sec­ond, “anoth­er path is always open” — or, as expressed in the title of Hol­i­day’s first book about Sto­icism, “the obsta­cle is the way.” Even if you feel stuck, “you always have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice virtue, prac­tice excel­lence, to change in some form or anoth­er based on what’s hap­pen­ing.” Third, “take it step by step”: famil­iar advice, per­haps, but a wel­come reminder that what stops us from begin­ning a project or process of change is nev­er a lack of infor­ma­tion, but a sim­ple lack of action.

Fourth, “dis­card your anx­i­ety,” which may feel caused by out­side cir­cum­stances, but in Mar­cus’ view, comes whol­ly from inside our­selves; Hol­i­day speaks of Mar­cus’ dec­la­ra­tion that he “dis­card­ed anx­i­ety because it was with­in me.” Fifth, “well begun is half done” — or as they put it in Korea, where I live, “the start is half.” No mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, you can put into prac­tice Hol­i­day’s prac­ti­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of this rule: get up ear­ly in the morn­ing so as to “own the day from the begin­ning,” just as Mar­cus did. Sixth, “be strict with your­self,” even as you remain tol­er­ant with oth­ers: “leave every­one else and their mis­takes and their way of doing things to them.”

Sev­enth, “don’t resent peo­ple,” even if, like Mar­cus, you don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like them. Your ene­mies offer you a hid­den oppor­tu­ni­ty to “be good in spite of oth­er peo­ple, to be just in the face of injus­tice, to be tem­per­ate in the face of intem­per­ance that’s being reward­ed. Eighth, “ask your­self, ‘Is this essen­tial?’ ” Whether you’re a Roman emper­or or a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry “knowl­edge work­er,” life tends to fill up with press­ing but not ulti­mate­ly impor­tant tasks, at least with­out con­stant vig­i­lance about how much they real­ly mat­ter. Ninth, keep these three mantras in mind: “Amor fati,” or “embrace your fate”; “It’s about what you do for oth­er peo­ple”; and “Memen­to mori,” or “remem­ber that death is inevitable.” The orig­i­nal Sto­ics have been gone for com­ing on two mil­len­nia now, but they still set an exam­ple for us today. How many of us can fore­see the same for our­selves?

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Is Sto­icism? A Short Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Phi­los­o­phy That Can Help You Cope with Our Hard Mod­ern Times

The Sto­ic Wis­dom of Roman Emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Short Videos

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

How to Be a Sto­ic in Your Every­day Life: Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci Explains

Three Huge Vol­umes of Sto­ic Writ­ings by Seneca Now Free Online, Thanks to Tim Fer­riss

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

Destino: The Salvador Dalí — Walt Disney Animation That Took 57 Years to Complete

In 2003, Dis­ney released a six minute ani­mat­ed short called Des­ti­no, final­ly bring­ing clo­sure to a project that began 57 years ear­li­er. The sto­ry of Des­ti­no goes way back to 1946 when two very dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al icons, Walt Dis­ney and Sal­vador Dalí, decid­ed to work togeth­er on a car­toon. The film was sto­ry­board­ed by Dalí and John Hench (a Dis­ney stu­dio artist) over the course of eight months. But then, rather abrupt­ly, the project got tabled when The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny ran into finan­cial prob­lems.

Now fast for­ward 53 years, to 1999. While work­ing on Fan­ta­sia 2000, Walt Dis­ney’s nephew redis­cov­ered the project and 17 sec­onds of orig­i­nal ani­ma­tion. Using this clip and the orig­i­nal sto­ry­boards, 25 ani­ma­tors brought the film to com­ple­tion and pre­miered it at The New York Film Fes­ti­val in 2003. Des­ti­no would receive an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film, among oth­er acco­lades from crit­ics.

The clip runs 6+ min­utes and fea­tures music writ­ten by Mex­i­can song­writer Arman­do Dominguez and per­formed by Dora Luz. In our archive, we also have anoth­er ver­sion that fea­tures a sound­track by Pink Floyd.

NPR has more on the Dis­ney-Dalí col­lab­o­ra­tion. Lis­ten to their audio report here.

Note: this video orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2011.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the Greatest Animations (1965)

For obvi­ous rea­sons, most art pro­duced under oppres­sive regimes comes off as painstak­ing­ly inof­fen­sive. For equal­ly obvi­ous rea­sons, the rare works that crit­i­cize the regime tend to do so rather oblique­ly. This was­n’t so much the case with The Hand, the most famous short by Czech artist and stop-motion ani­ma­tor Jiří Trn­ka, “the Walt Dis­ney of East­ern Europe.” In its cen­tral con­flict between a hum­ble har­le­quin who just wants to sculpt flower pots and a giant, inva­sive gloved hand that forces him to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions of itself, one sens­es a cer­tain alle­go­ry to do with the dynam­ic between the artist and the state.

“Trnka’s per­son­al expe­ri­ence of total­i­tar­i­an­ism under the com­mu­nist regime is pro­ject­ed and reartic­u­lat­ed in the mean­ing and knowl­edge he trans­mits through his short,” writes Renée-Marie Piz­zar­di in an essay at Fan­ta­sy Ani­ma­tion. “The state-run stu­dios had the pow­er to approve or cen­sor cer­tain top­ics and con­trol fund­ing accord­ing­ly. Trn­ka was thus depen­dent on their fund­ing, yet resis­tant to their pol­i­tics, and this ambi­gu­i­ty lim­it­ed the free­dom of expres­sion in his work.”

In the har­le­quin, “Trn­ka crafts a char­ac­ter through which he not only por­trays him­self as the artist, but any free-think­ing indi­vid­ual who gets robbed of their agency and induced into fol­low­ing and act­ing accord­ing to an ide­ol­o­gy and regime.”

Com­plet­ed in 1965, The Hand would turn out to be Trnka’s final film before his death four years lat­er, by which time the rulers in pow­er were hard­ly eager to have his ani­mat­ed indict­ment in cir­cu­la­tion. 1968 had brought the “Prague Spring” under Alexan­der Dubček, a peri­od of lib­er­al­iza­tion that turned out to be brief: about a year lat­er, Dubček was replaced, his reforms reversed, and the Czechoslo­vak Social­ist Repub­lic “nor­mal­ized” back to the ways of the bad old days. Banned after Trn­ka died in 1969, The Hand would remain not legal­ly view­able in his home­land for two decades. But today, it’s appre­ci­at­ed by ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts the world over, and its expres­sion of yearn­ing for cre­ative free­dom still res­onates. In the late six­ties or here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, fear the gov­ern­ment that fears your pup­pets.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch The Idea, the First Ani­mat­ed Film to Deal with Big, Philo­soph­i­cal Ideas (1932)

The Hob­bit: The First Ani­ma­tion & Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolkien’s Clas­sic (1966)

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

4 Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Watch Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

An Archive of 20,000 Movie Posters from Czecho­slo­va­kia (1930–1989)

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

The Isolated Bass Grooves of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (RIP)

This past Fri­day, the bassist of The Grate­ful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost imme­di­ate­ly the trib­utes poured in, most rec­og­niz­ing that Lesh was­n’t your ordi­nary bassist. As Jon Par­e­les wrote in the New York Times, Phil Lesh held songs “aloft.” His “bass lines hopped and bub­bled and con­stant­ly con­versed with the gui­tars of Jer­ry Gar­cia and Bob Weir. His tone was round­ed and unassertive while he eased his way into the coun­ter­point, almost as if he were think­ing aloud. [His] play­ing was essen­tial to the Dead’s par­tic­u­lar grav­i­ty-defy­ing lilt, shar­ing a col­lec­tive mode of rock momen­tum that was teas­ing and prob­ing, nev­er blunt­ly coer­cive.”

My first encounter with the Grate­ful Dead came when I was 16 years old. I vivid­ly remem­ber the guy who played bon­gos on my friend’s head when we arrived at the show. I also remem­ber the spin­ners trip­ping on acid, danc­ing down the halls and short-cir­cuit­ing my lit­tle mind. But the con­cert itself remains only a hazy mem­o­ry. And cer­tain­ly the artistry of Lesh, Gar­cia, Weir, and the drum­mers was lost on me. Only years lat­er, did it all start to click. That’s when I dialed into the Bar­ton Hall con­cert at Cor­nell (May 8, 1977) and encoun­tered Lesh’s bass lines at the start of “Scar­let Bego­nias.” Once you hear them, they’re hard to shake. The video above zooms into that per­for­mance, explor­ing the devel­op­ment of Lesh’s bass play­ing through­out the spring of ’77. The next video down lets you hear the com­plete Bar­ton Hall per­for­mance of “Scar­let Bego­nias” in all of its glo­ry.

When oth­ers try to cap­ture what made Phil, Phil, they’ll fea­ture anoth­er beloved show–Vene­ta, OR (6/27/72). Below, you can hear iso­lat­ed tracks of Phil’s bass work on “Bertha” and “Chi­na Cat Sun­flower/I Know You Rid­er.” (Click the links in the pri­or sen­tence to hear Lesh and the band per­form­ing the songs together–so you can hear how the bass ties in.) Trained in free jazz and avant-garde clas­si­cal music, Lesh infused rock with the influ­ences of Coltrane, Min­gus, and Stravinsky–not to men­tion oth­ers. And, with that, the bass was nev­er the same.

For any­one want­i­ng to get fur­ther into the Phil Zone, read his excel­lent mem­oir Search­ing for the Sound: My Life with the Grate­ful Dead.

Bertha

Chi­na Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rid­er

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

The Grate­ful Dead Pays Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Con­cert: Hear “Raven Space”

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

 

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When 20,000 Americans Held a Pro-Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden

Above, two-time Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nee Mar­shall Cur­ry presents A Night at The Gar­den, a film that revis­its a night in Feb­ru­ary 1939 when “20,000 Amer­i­cans ral­lied in New York’s Madi­son Square Gar­den to cel­e­brate the rise of Nazism — an event large­ly for­got­ten from U.S. his­to­ry.” As we described it back in 2017, the film doc­u­ments the fol­low­ing scene:

What you’re look­ing at is the 1939 “Pro-Amer­i­can Ral­ly” (aka Pro-Nazi Ral­ly) spon­sored by the Ger­man Amer­i­can Bund at Madi­son Square Gar­den on George Washington’s 207th Birth­day. Ban­ners embla­zoned with such slo­gans as “Stop Jew­ish Dom­i­na­tion of Chris­t­ian Amer­i­cans,” “Wake Up Amer­i­ca. Smash Jew­ish Com­mu­nism,” and “1,000,000 Bund Mem­bers by 1940” dec­o­rat­ed the great hall.

New York City May­or Fiorel­lo LaGuardia—an Epis­co­palian with a Jew­ish mother—considered can­cel­ing the event, but ulti­mate­ly he, along with the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Com­mit­tee and the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Com­mit­tee decreed that the Bund was exer­cis­ing its right to free speech and free assem­bly.

A crowd of 20,000 filled the famous sports venue in mid-town Man­hat­tan to capac­i­ty. 1,500 police offi­cers were present to ren­der the Gar­den “a fortress impreg­nable to anti-Nazis.” An esti­mat­ed 100,000 counter-demon­stra­tors were gath­er­ing out­side.…

The most dis­turb­ing moment in the short film comes at the 3:50 mark, when anoth­er secu­ri­ty force—the Bund’s Ord­nungs­di­enst or “Order Ser­vice” pile on Isidore Green­baum, a 26-year-old Jew­ish work­er who rushed the podi­um where bun­des­führer Fritz Julius Kuhn was fan­ning the flames of hatred. Valentine’s men even­tu­al­ly pulled them off, just bare­ly man­ag­ing to save the “anti-Nazi” from the vicious beat­ing he was under­go­ing.

Made entire­ly from archival footage filmed that night, A Night at The Gar­den “trans­ports audi­ences to this chill­ing gath­er­ing and shines a light on the pow­er of dem­a­goguery and anti-Semi­tism in the Unit­ed States.” You can learn more about the film and the 1939 ral­ly at Mar­shall Cur­ry’s web site.

Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to actu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or oth­er xeno­pho­bic ral­lies being held this week­end in Madi­son Square Gar­den is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal, of course.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 10 Tac­tics of Fas­cism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Vic­tim­hood and More

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

Fas­cism!: The US Army Pub­lish­es a Pam­phlet in 1945 Explain­ing How to Spot Fas­cism at Home and Abroad

Rick Steves Tells the Sto­ry of Fascism’s Rise & Fall in Ger­many

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Hear 2.5 Hours of the Classical Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Liszt, Beethoven, Janáček, and More

Haru­ki Murakami’s hit nov­el 1Q84 fea­tures a mem­o­rable scene in a taxi­cab on a grid­locked free­way whose radio is play­ing Leoš Janáček’s Sin­foni­et­ta. “It is, as the book sug­gests, tru­ly the worst pos­si­ble music for a traf­fic jam,” writes Sam Ander­son in a New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file of the nov­el­ist: “busy, upbeat, dra­mat­ic — like five nor­mal songs fight­ing for suprema­cy inside an emp­ty paint can.” Muraka­mi tells Ander­son that he “chose the Sin­foni­et­ta because that is not a pop­u­lar music at all. But after I pub­lished this book, the music became pop­u­lar in this coun­try… Mr. Sei­ji Oza­wa thanked me. His record has sold well.”

In addi­tion to being a world-famous con­duc­tor, the late Oza­wa was also, as it hap­pens, a per­son­al friend of Murakami’s; the two even pub­lished a book, Absolute­ly on Music, that tran­scribes a series of their con­ver­sa­tions about the for­mer’s voca­tion and the lat­ter’s avo­ca­tion, a dis­tinc­tion with an unclear bound­ary in Murakami’s case.

“I have lots of friends who love music, but Haru­ki takes it way beyond the bounds of san­i­ty,” writes Oza­wa, and indeed, Muraka­mi has always made music a part of his work, both in his process of cre­at­ing it and in its very con­tent. His books offer numer­ous ref­er­ences to West­ern pop (espe­cial­ly of the nine­teen-six­ties), jazz, and also clas­si­cal record­ings — fif­teen of which you can hear in the video from NTS radio above.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured NTS, the Lon­don-based online radio sta­tion known for its deep dives on themes from spir­i­tu­al jazz to Hunter S. Thomp­son, for its “Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day” broad­cast of music from his nov­els. Open­ing with Le mal du pays from Franz Liszt’s Années de pèleri­nage, the NTS Guide to Clas­si­cal Music from Muraka­mi Nov­els con­tin­ues on to “Vogel als Prophet” from Robert Schu­man­n’s Wald­szenen, and there­after includes  Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 7 In A Major, Mendelssohn’s Cleve­land Quar­tet, Wag­n­er’s Der Fliegende Hol­län­der, and much else besides. You may not be able to recall where you’ve seen all of these pieces men­tioned in Murakami’s work right away, but you’ll sure­ly rec­og­nize the Sin­foni­et­ta the moment it comes along.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 26-Hour Playlist Fea­tur­ing Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Lat­est Nov­el, Killing Com­menda­tore

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

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

A Short Visual History of America, According to the Irreverent Comic Artist R. Crumb

As a founder of the “under­ground comix” move­ment in the 1960s, R. Crumb is either revered as a pio­neer­ing satirist of Amer­i­can cul­ture and its excess­es or reviled as a juve­nile pur­vey­or of painful­ly out­mod­ed sex­ist and racist stereo­types. Crumb doesn’t apol­o­gize. He keeps work­ing, and his fans are grate­ful. He has par­layed his sex­u­al obses­sions and out­sider rela­tion­ship to black cul­ture into an intrigu­ing vision of the coun­try that reflects its own fix­a­tions as much as those of the artist/author of comics like Zap and Weirdo.

But Crumb’s work—permeated by drug use, pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences, skirt-chas­ing over­sexed men, very specif­i­cal­ly shaped (and always sex­u­al­ly avail­able) women, and all sorts of creepy under­ground characters—has anoth­er side: an almost sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment to purist Amer­i­cana from the late-nine­teen­th/ear­ly-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Most notably Crumb is an anti­quar­i­an col­lec­tor of old-time music—country, jazz, rag­time, the blues—as well as a musi­cal inter­preter of the same. One of my favorites of his books col­lects a series of trad­ing cards he made into R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try, a rev­er­en­tial set of illus­tra­tions of folk musi­cians, accom­pa­nied by a CD of Crumb-curat­ed music.

Crumb’s love for sim­pler times is more than the pas­sion of an afi­ciona­do. It is the flip side of his satire, a genre that can­not flour­ish as a cri­tique of the present with­out a cor­re­spond­ing vision of a gold­en age. For Crumb, that age is pre-WWII, pre-indus­tri­al, rural—a time, as he has put it in an inter­view, when “peo­ple could still express them­selves.” His expe­ri­ence with the slop of Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture was decid­ed­ly less idyl­lic. Ian Buru­ma writes in The New York Review of Books:

Crumb, like his broth­ers, soaked up the TV and comics cul­ture of the 1950s: Howdy Doo­dyDon­ald DuckRoy RogersLit­tle Lulu, and the like. While on LSD, in the 1960s, Crumb thought of his mind as “a garbage recep­ta­cle of mass media images and input. I spent my whole child­hood absorb­ing so much crap that my per­son­al­i­ty and mind are sat­u­rat­ed with it. God only knows if that affects you phys­i­cal­ly!”

Crumb’s com­ic art—which he has described in almost ther­a­peu­tic terms as an emp­ty­ing of his “garbage recep­ta­cle” unconscious—is bal­anced by his more sober and nos­tal­gic illus­tra­tions, the coun­ter­weight to the “crap” of his child­hood media expo­sure. One might even think of Crumb’s con­sump­tion of old-time music and imagery as a kind of cul­tur­al health food diet. One of the most pop­u­lar of his nos­tal­gic works is “A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca” (1979), a series of pan­els show­ing the shift from open coun­try­side, to the town set­tle­ments brought by the rail­roads, to the gross overde­vel­op­ment of the late-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. The only text besides the title (and the bur­geon­ing bill­boards and street signs) is a coda at the bot­tom-right-hand of the last pan­el ask­ing, “What next?!!!” You can see the com­ic ani­mat­ed above (top), set to an old-time piano piece. Anoth­er fit­ting ver­sion of his vision of the country’s growth (or ruina­tion) is above, in col­or, scored by Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yel­low Taxi.” See the full series of images here and here, and be sure to check out Crum­b’s three epi­logue spec­u­la­tions on what’s next.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

R. Crumb Shows Us How He Illus­trat­ed Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

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

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The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes

The video above from YouTu­ber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen more than a few of them. Bat­tle­ship PotemkinDum­boRear Win­dowDr. NoThe God­fa­therE. T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­alTop GunBrave­heartGlad­i­a­torIncep­tion: we’re not talk­ing about obscu­ri­ties here. Whether or not you count them among your per­son­al favorites, these motion pic­tures have all become near-uni­ver­sal­ly known for good (and/or Oscar-relat­ed) rea­sons, some of which may come back to mind as you watch the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma visu­al­ly retold through a fea­ture-length string of their espe­cial­ly rec­og­niz­able scenes.

Though genre pic­tures dom­i­nate, “I have not select­ed those films that marked the devel­op­ment of a genre or film stream,” Day writes. “I have select­ed the most pop­u­lar and bet­ter known ones by peo­ple. That’s why I’ve includ­ed so many Amer­i­can movies and less of oth­er coun­tries, because a lot of the most famous movies through­out his­to­ry are from the U.S.” (Hence, for exam­ple, the absence of Hideo Nakata’s influ­en­tial piece of “J‑horror” Ringu and the pres­ence of Ringu, its Hol­ly­wood remake from a few years lat­er.) No mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, a ref­er­ence to RockyBack to the Future, or Home Alone — or any work of Steven Spiel­berg, a major pres­ence in the video — can go a sur­pris­ing­ly long way.

No mat­ter how pop­u­lar these movies are, it would be the rare view­er indeed who could claim famil­iar­i­ty with each and every one of them. Almost inevitably, the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this video turns into a game of seen-it-or-not, which sheds light on the most inten­sive peri­ods of your life in film­go­ing. For my part, I must have watched almost every movie includ­ed from around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when I was just com­ing of age as a cinephile (and when even main­stream cin­e­ma, coin­ci­den­tal­ly or oth­er­wise, was in an espe­cial­ly inven­tive peri­od). It recent­ly gave me pause to hear that Amer­i­can Psy­cho is now being remade — but then, hav­ing come out near­ly a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, it’s pre­sum­ably set­tled into its place in cin­e­ma his­to­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

100 Years of Cin­e­ma: New Doc­u­men­tary Series Explores the His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma by Ana­lyz­ing One Film Per Year, Start­ing in 1915

The Most Beau­ti­ful Shots in Cin­e­ma His­to­ry: Scenes from 100+ Films

Take a 16-Week Crash Course on the His­to­ry of Movies: From the First Mov­ing Pic­tures to the Rise of Mul­ti­plex­es & Net­flix

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

Hol­ly­wood: Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

Cin­e­ma His­to­ry by Titles & Num­bers

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

B.B. King Changes a Broken Guitar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, and Doesn’t Miss a Beat (1985)

The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attend­ed by a crowd of 80,000 peo­ple. The song is “How Blue Can You Get.” And the key moment comes at the 3:10 mark, when the blues leg­end B.B. King breaks a gui­tar string, then man­ages to replace it before the song fin­ish­es min­utes lat­er. All the while, he keeps the song going, nev­er miss­ing a beat and singing the blues. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

B.B. King Plays “The Thrill is Gone” with Slash, Ron Wood & Oth­er Leg­ends

 

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