The BBC Presents a New Dramatization of Orwell’s 1984, with Christopher Eccleston as Winston Smith

in Literature, Politics, Radio | February 15th, 2013


Like the idea of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, per­haps best artic­u­lat­ed by Han­nah Arendt in her post-war Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, George Orwell’s post-war scruti­ny of repres­sive gov­ern­ments has become a sta­ple, catch-all ref­er­ence for pun­dits on either side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­cepts of dou­ble­s­peak, dou­ble­think, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, and the hyper-intru­sive Big Broth­er, all from the 1949 nov­el 1984. In fact, few adjec­tives seem to get deployed with more fre­quen­cy in urgent polit­i­cal dis­course of all kinds than “Orwellian.” But the name George Orwell, pen name of jour­nal­ist Eric Blair, hides an enig­ma: Orwell iden­ti­fied him­self explic­it­ly as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist of a par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish bent (most notably in his essay “The Lion and the Uni­corn”), but his scathing cri­tiques of near­ly every exist­ing insti­tu­tion some­times make it hard to pin him down as a par­ti­san of any­thing but the kind of free­dom and open­ness that every­one vague­ly wants to advo­cate. That ambi­gu­i­ty is a strength; despite his stead­fast left­ist roots, Orwell would not be a par­ti­san hack—where he saw stu­pid­i­ty, avarice, and bru­tal inhu­man­i­ty, he called it out, no mat­ter the source.

The seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions and ironies that per­me­ate Orwell’s thought and fic­tion are also what keep his work peren­ni­al­ly inter­est­ing and worth reread­ing and revis­it­ing. He was a prob­ing and unsen­ti­men­tal crit­ic of the motives of pro­pa­gan­dists of all stripes, both left and right. Begin­ning in late Jan­u­ary, BBC Radio 4 launched a month-long series on Orwell, with the avowed­ly iron­ic name, “The Real George Orwell.” Part of the irony comes from the fact that Orwell (or Blair) once worked as a pro­pa­gan­dist for the BBC dur­ing WWII, and lat­er based the tor­ture area in 1984, Room 101, on a meet­ing room he recalled from his time there. His expe­ri­ences with the state broad­cast­ing net­work were not pleas­ant in his mem­o­ry. Nonethe­less, his for­mer employ­er hon­ors him this month with an exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive, includ­ing read­ings and drama­ti­za­tions of his essays and jour­nal­ism, his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal accounts Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and Homage to Cat­alo­nia, and his nov­els Ani­mal Farm and 1984.

In this lat­est drama­ti­za­tion of Orwell’s most famous nov­el, pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith is voiced by actor Christo­pher Eccle­ston, who has inhab­it­ed anoth­er key post-war char­ac­ter in Eng­lish fic­tion, Dr. Who (Pip­pa Nixon voic­es Julia). In a brief dis­cus­sion of what he takes away from the nov­el, Eccle­ston (above) draws out some of the rea­sons that 1984 appeals to so many peo­ple who might agree on almost noth­ing else. At the heart of the nov­el is the kind of human­ist indi­vid­u­al­ism that Orwell nev­er aban­doned and that he cham­pi­oned against Sovi­et-style state com­mu­nism and hard-right impe­ri­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism both. Win­ston Smith is an embod­i­ment of human dig­ni­ty, cel­e­brat­ed for his strug­gle to “love, remem­ber, and enjoy life,” as Eccle­ston says. “It’s the human sto­ry that means that we keep com­ing back to it and that keeps it rel­e­vant.” Lis­ten to a brief clip of the 1984 drama­ti­za­tion at the top of this post, and vis­it BBC Radio 4’s site to hear parts one and two of the full broad­cast, which is avail­able online for the next year. When Europe and Amer­i­ca both seem rent in two by com­pet­ing and incom­pat­i­ble social and polit­i­cal visions, it’s at least some com­fort to know that no one wants to live in the world Orwell fore­saw. Despite his novel’s deeply pes­simistic end­ing, Orwell’s own career of fierce resis­tance to oppres­sive regimes offers a mod­el for action against the dystopi­an future he imag­ined.

For oth­er free, online read­ings of Orwell’s work, you can vis­it our archives of Free Audio Books, where you’ll find

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Also find major works by Orwell in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Live: Watch NASA’s Coverage of Asteroid As It Buzzes By Earth

in Astronomy | February 15th, 2013

Writes NASA:

NASA Tele­vi­sion will pro­vide com­men­tary start­ing at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) on Fri­day, Feb. 15, dur­ing the close, but safe, fly­by of a small near-Earth aster­oid named 2012 DA14. NASA places a high pri­or­i­ty on track­ing aster­oids and pro­tect­ing our home plan­et from them. This fly­by will pro­vide a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.

The half-hour broad­cast from NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Pasade­na, Calif., will incor­po­rate real-time ani­ma­tion to show the loca­tion of the aster­oid in rela­tion to Earth, along with live or near real-time views of the aster­oid from obser­va­to­ries in Aus­tralia, weath­er per­mit­ting.

At the time of its clos­est approach to Earth at approx­i­mate­ly 11:25 a.m. PST (2:25 p.m. EST / 19:25 UTC), the aster­oid will be about 17,150 miles (27,600 kilo­me­ters) above Earth­’s sur­face.

The com­men­tary will be avail­able via NASA TV and streamed live online at: https://www.nasa.gov/ntv and https://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Or you can just watch above.…

Note: You can also watch footage of the mete­orite hit­ting Siberia this morn­ing here.

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David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Photographs at Paris Photo 2012

in Photography | February 15th, 2013

We don’t need to tell you, an Open Cul­ture read­er, about the rich­ness of David Lynch’s con­tri­bu­tion to motion pic­tures. But the auteur also has an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with still pho­tog­ra­phy which the past decade has seen emerge into pub­lic light. Years ago, I attend­ed an open­ing in Los Angeles—the city so thor­ough­ly cap­tured by Lynch’s surrealism—of an exhi­bi­tion of his own shots. Now, the Los Ange­les Review of Books presents Lynch’s com­men­tary, in the video above, on 99 pic­tures tak­en by oth­ers. Lis­ten to him describe his view­ing approach—that of a voyeuris­tic, all-feel­ing detective—and you’ll nev­er look the same way at cur­tains, wom­en’s shoes, stone Bud­dhas, and fes­ter­ing sores again.

Lynch select­ed these favorite 99 pho­tos from the thou­sand pre­sent­ed at 2012’s Paris Pho­to, the inter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy fair that hap­pens each Novem­ber dur­ing the Euro­pean Month of Pho­tog­ra­phy. He arrived as the inau­gur­al selec­tion of “Paris Pho­to vu par…,” a new tra­di­tion that will each year com­pile a book of images, their selec­tion “entrust­ed to a dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty each year.” Die-hard fans will sure­ly need to own their idol­’s edi­tion, and in late April they can make a pil­grim­age to Lynch’s town for the launch of Paris Pho­to Los Ange­les. Its loca­tion? The lot of Para­mount Pic­tures, dis­trib­u­tor of Lynch’s pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly strik­ing The Ele­phant Man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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

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Beat Writer William S. Burroughs Spreads Counterculture Cool on Nike Sneakers, 1994

in Business, Literature, Television | February 14th, 2013

Nike footwear and celebri­ty ath­letes usu­al­ly go hand-in-hand. When you think Nike, you think of Michael Jor­dan, Bo Jack­son and Mia Hamm. And let’s not for­get the now trou­bled duo of Tiger Woods and Lance Arm­strong too. Fit, lithe bod­ies gen­er­al­ly sell sneak­ers, we know that.

But then there’s the bizarre, odd excep­tion. Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1994, when Nike enlist­ed William S. Bur­roughs to sell its Air Max shoes. That’s right a decrepit 79-year-old Beat writer, known for his hero­in addic­tion, manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion and cut up writ­ing. William S. Bur­roughs is pret­ty much the anti-Mia Hamm. And yet the ad works in its own way. Just like the Gap could use Jack Ker­ouac to lend hip­ster cred to its stodgy khakis, so Bur­roughs could bring a main­streamed coun­ter­cul­ture cool to Nike shoes as his head, appear­ing in a TV set pro­claims, “The pur­pose of tech­nol­o­gy is not to con­fuse the brain, but to serve the body, to make life eas­i­er, to make any­thing pos­si­ble. It’s the com­ing of the new tech­nol­o­gy.” That new tech­nol­o­gy being, I guess, the cut­ting edge cush­ions in Nike’s shoes?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky (find it also in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

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“PoemTalk” Podcast, Where Impresario Al Filreis Hosts Lively Chats on Modern Poetry

in Literature, Podcasts, Poetry | February 14th, 2013

William-Carlos-Williams-001

 

Want to know what’s going on the poet­ry world? Ask Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia pro­fes­sor Al Fil­reis. A nation­al trea­sure for mod­ern Amer­i­can poet­ry, Fil­reis serves as Fac­ul­ty Direc­tor of the Kel­ly Writ­ers House, Direc­tor of UPenn’s Cen­ter for Pro­grams in Con­tem­po­rary Writ­ing, and Co-Direc­tor of the excel­lent poet­ry record­ing series and archive PennSound. He also teach­es a Cours­era mas­sive open online course, “Mod­Po,” which has reached over 36,000 stu­dents, bring­ing his thir­ty years of sem­i­nar-style teach­ing expe­ri­ence to the mass­es. On top of all that, Fil­reis is the pub­lish­er of con­tem­po­rary poet­ry webzine Jack­et 2, which hosts a pod­cast called “PoemTalk.”

“PoemTalk” brings togeth­er poets, writ­ers, and teach­ers to infor­mal­ly dis­cuss a sin­gle poem. Like Fil­reis’ classes—in which he prefers live­ly dis­cus­sions over long lectures—these sem­i­nar-like ses­sions involve a lot of friend­ly dis­agree­ment and serendip­i­tous insights, with many pearls of poet­ic wis­dom scat­tered through­out. The first episode of “PoemTalk” (above), from Decem­ber 2007, took on William Car­los Williams’ frag­men­tary mod­ernist provo­ca­tion “Between Walls”:

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hos­pi­tal where
noth­ing

will grow lie
cin­ders

in which shine
the bro­ken

pieces of a green
bot­tle

If you don’t see much in this lit­tle imag­ist exer­cise, you might just want to read it again, sev­er­al times, after lis­ten­ing to Fil­reis, Saigon-born poet Linh Dinh, teacher and poet Ran­dall Couch, and poet Jes­si­ca Lowen­thal unpack the poem’s many res­o­nances and reflec­tions. (Or you might have had your fill by then). Williams’ approach was com­plete­ly inno­v­a­tive, strip­ping all of the rhetor­i­cal excess­es from Amer­i­can poet­ry, which suf­fered from a kind of Vic­to­ri­an hang­over into the first decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry until those nasty mod­ernists fin­ished rough­ing it up. As the episode’s page points out, “‘Between Walls’ has had a huge influ­ence on poet­ry and pho­tog­ra­phy since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1934.” Lis­ten to the dis­cus­sion above to find out why such a seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward­ly unsen­ti­men­tal, un-“poetic” piece of writ­ing had such an impact.

Since this inau­gur­al episode, “PoemTalk” has cov­ered sev­er­al dozen con­tem­po­rary, liv­ing poets, as well as such nota­bles as Ezra Pound, John Ash­bery, Adri­enne Rich, Allen Gins­berg, and Wal­lace Stevens. By the way, as an added bonus, all of the poems dis­cussed on “PoemTalk” are avail­able as audio record­ings on PennSound, read by the poets them­selves. Here’s Williams read­ing “Between Walls.”

“PoemTalk”’s most recent episode takes as its text Charles Alexander’s “Near or Ran­dom Acts.” You can lis­ten through the web­site or sub­scribe on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Car­los Williams Reads His Poet­ry (1954)

Lis­ten­ing to Poet­ry Online

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day

in Comedy, Film | February 14th, 2013

It’s Valen­tine’s Day and love is in the air. Or at least some­thing is in the air in this delet­ed scene from the 1999 cult film Mys­tery Men. We’re not sure exact­ly what. In the film, Tom Waits plays the mad sci­en­tist Dr. Heller, inven­tor of “Fog-in-a-Tube” and “Truth­paste,” among oth­er things. For anoth­er strange scene of cupid’s arrow gone bad­ly astray, see our post from last year, David Lynch Falls in Love: A Clas­sic Scene From Twin Peaks.

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:

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight, 1977

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

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Watch Lambeth Walk—Nazi Style: The Early Propaganda Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

in Comedy, Film, History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture | February 14th, 2013

In a ter­rif­ic his­tor­i­cal prank that sent Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels storm­ing out of the screen­ing room, British min­is­ter Charles A. Rid­ley edit­ed togeth­er scenes from the film Tri­umph of the Will with the music from the musi­cal Me and My Girl to cre­ate a spoof that infu­ri­at­ed lead­ers of the Third Reich.

Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style was released in 1941 to news­reel com­pa­nies. It was billed as “Schich­le­gru­ber Doing the Lam­beth Walk, Assist­ed by the Gestapo Hep Cats,” and lays the catchy tune against images of Hitler and Nazi sol­diers from Leni Riefenstahl’s sem­i­nal pro­pa­gan­da film.

The sto­ry goes that the par­o­dy enraged Goebbels to such an extent that he ran out of the screen­ing room, kick­ing at chairs and scream­ing obscen­i­ties.

“The Lam­beth Walk” tune was writ­ten for the 1937 musi­cal, about a Cock­ney boy who inher­its a for­tune and must leave behind his work­ing-class ways to become a gen­tle­man. Nazi par­ty offi­cials called the tune “Jew­ish mis­chief and ani­mal­is­tic hop­ping,” mak­ing it even fun­nier as the back­ground music for Nazi sol­diers parad­ing.

The name “Schich­le­gru­ber,” by the way, was also a dig at Hitler. It was the name of his mater­nal grand­moth­er, whose son Alois (Hitler’s father) was an ille­git­i­mate child. Oops!

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Hitler Reacts to Take­down of Hitler Par­o­dies

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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From the Annals of Optimism: The Newspaper Industry in 1981 Imagines its Digital Future

in Technology, Television | February 14th, 2013

“Imag­ine, if you will, sit­ting down to your morn­ing cof­fee, turn­ing on your home com­put­er to read the day’s news­pa­per.” A flam­boy­ant­ly spec­u­la­tive-sound­ing notion, no doubt, were you watch­ing this tele­vi­sion news broad­cast back when it aired in 1981. A pro­duc­tion of San Fran­cis­co’s KRON, the seg­ment takes a look at how the city’s news­pa­pers, dis­play­ing admirable far­sight­ed­ness, were then “invest­ing a lot of mon­ey to try and get a ser­vice just like that start­ed.” We see North Beach res­i­dent Richard Hal­lo­ran (he of  the immor­tal­ly meme-wor­thy onscreen iden­ti­fi­er, “Owns Home Com­put­er”) dial­ing, on his rotary tele­phone, “a local num­ber that will con­nect him with a com­put­er in Colum­bus, Ohio.” We also see the edi­tors of the San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er “pro­gram­ming today’s copy of the paper into that same Ohio com­put­er.” Hal­lo­ran plops the phone’s receiv­er into his modem’s acoustic cou­pler, pre­sum­ably pours his morn­ing cof­fee, and down­loads the day’s paper — which takes two hours, at a cost of five dol­lars an hour.

“This is only the first step in news­pa­pers by com­put­er,” says KRON sci­ence reporter Steve New­man. “Engi­neers now pre­dict the day will come when we get all out news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines by home com­put­er.” We see footage of a tra­di­tion­al news­pa­per ven­dor: “But that’s a few years off, so for the moment, at least, this fel­low isn’t wor­ried about being out of a job.” That day came over a decade ago, and that fel­low sure­ly wor­ries now, as do the pub­lish­ers of his wares. We who start each day read­ing the news on our “home com­put­ers” laugh at the news­pa­per indus­try’s evi­dent hubris­tic self-destruc­tion by its fail­ure to under­stand the inter­net, much less engage with it. But this report shows us that cer­tain papers — the eight that Hal­lo­ran’s menu offered him, at least — seem­ing­ly had their eyes on the ball long before we did. Do we see here an indus­try sow­ing the seeds of its own inevitable destruc­tion, or evi­dence that things could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Clay Shirky on the Demise of the News­pa­per

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

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

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