Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japanese Cartoons During WWII, Then Atones with Horton Hears a Who!

in History, Literature | August 20th, 2014

seuss japan 1

Before Theodor Seuss Geisel AKA Dr. Seuss con­vinced gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren that a wock­et might just be in their pock­et, he was the chief edi­to­r­i­al car­toon­ist for the New York news­pa­per PM from 1940 to 1948. Dur­ing his tenure he cranked out some 400 car­toons that, among oth­er things, praised FDR’s poli­cies, chid­ed iso­la­tion­ists like Charles Lind­bergh and sup­port­ed civ­il rights for blacks and Jews. He also staunch­ly sup­port­ed America’s war effort.

To that end, Dr. Seuss drew many car­toons that, to today’s eyes, are breath­tak­ing­ly racist. Check out the car­toon above. It shows an arro­gant-look­ing Hitler next to a pig-nosed, slant­ed-eye car­i­ca­ture of a Japan­ese guy. The pic­ture isn’t real­ly a like­ness of either of the men respon­si­ble for the Japan­ese war effort – Emper­or Hiro­hi­to and Gen­er­al Tojo. Instead, it’s just an ugly rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a peo­ple.

In the bat­tle for home­land morale, Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da mak­ers depict­ed Ger­many in a very dif­fer­ent light than Japan. Ger­many was seen as a great nation gone mad. The Nazis might have been evil but there was still room for the “Good Ger­man.” Japan, on the oth­er hand, was depict­ed entire­ly as a bru­tal mono­lith; Hiro­hi­to and the guy on the street were uni­form­ly evil. Such think­ing paved the way for the U.S. Air Force fire­bomb­ing of Tokyo, where over 100,000 civil­ians died, and for its nuclear bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. And it def­i­nite­ly laid the ground­work for one of the sor­ri­est chap­ters of Amer­i­can 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry, the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al incar­cer­a­tion of Japan­ese-Amer­i­cans.

waiting for signals

Geisel him­self was vocal­ly anti-Japan­ese dur­ing the war and had no trou­ble with round­ing up an entire pop­u­la­tion of U.S. cit­i­zens and putting them in camps.

But right now, when the Japs are plant­i­ng their hatch­ets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and war­ble: “Broth­ers!” It is a rather flab­by bat­tle cry. If we want to win, we’ve got to kill Japs, whether it depress­es John Haynes Holmes or not. We can get pal­sy-wal­sy after­ward with those that are left.

Geisel was hard­ly alone in such beliefs but it’s still dis­con­cert­ing to see ugly car­toons like these drawn in the same hand that did The Cat in the Hat.

jap alley

In 1953, Geisel vis­it­ed Japan where he met and talked with its peo­ple and wit­nessed the hor­rif­ic after­math of the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma. He soon start­ed to rethink his anti-Japan­ese vehe­mence. So he issued an apol­o­gy in the only way that Dr. Seuss could.

He wrote a children’s book.

Hor­ton Hears a Who!, pub­lished in 1954, is about an ele­phant that has to pro­tect a speck of dust pop­u­lat­ed by lit­tle tiny peo­ple. The book’s hope­ful, inclu­sive refrain – “A per­son is a per­son no mat­ter how small” — is about as far away as you can get from his igno­ble words about the Japan­ese a decade ear­li­er. He even ded­i­cat­ed the book to “My Great Friend, Mit­su­gi Naka­mu­ra of Kyoto, Japan.”

You can view an assort­ment of Dr. Seuss’s wartime draw­ings in gen­er­al, and his car­toons of the Japan­ese in par­tic­u­lar, at the Dr. Went to War Archive host­ed by UCSD.

via Dart­mouth

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

New Archive Show­cas­es Dr. Seuss’s Ear­ly Work as an Adver­tis­ing Illus­tra­tor and Polit­i­cal Car­toon­ist

Fake Bob Dylan Sings Real Dr. Seuss

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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Willie Nelson Shows You a Delightful Card Trick

in Random | August 20th, 2014

Sit back and let Willie Nel­son, accom­pa­nied by his sis­ter Bob­bie, show you a great card trick. It’s a vari­a­tion on a trick called “Sam the Bell­hop,” which sleight of hand expert Bill Mal­one pop­u­lar­ized, it not invent­ed. If you want to fig­ure out how the wiz­ardy is done, you’ll need to look else­where. We’re not going to spoil this bit of fun.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Per­forms A Mag­ic Trick

Skep­tic Michael Sher­mer Shows You How to Bend Spoons with Your Mind

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

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Dave Grohl Raises the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to an Art Form

in Film, Life, Music | August 19th, 2014

Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl raised an inter­net meme to an art form when he took the ALS Ice Buck­et Chal­lenge while par­o­dy­ing the epic prom scene from Car­rie. John Tra­vol­ta appeared in the 1976 hor­ror film, and Stephen King wrote the book behind it. So Grohl name checks them both. Where Jack Black fits into the pic­ture, I’m not exact­ly sure.

Dona­tions to help find a cure for the hor­rif­ic dis­ease can be made over at the ALS Asso­ci­a­tion. For a tru­ly sober­ing account of what it’s like to live with ALS, read Tony Judt’s essay, “Night,”  in The New York Review of Books. It was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2010, short­ly before the dis­ease took his life.

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The ABCs of Dada Explains the Anarchic, Irrational “Anti-Art” Movement of Dadaism

in Art | August 19th, 2014

If asked to explain the art move­ment known as Dada, I’d feel tempt­ed to quote Louis Arm­strong on the music move­ment known as jazz: “Man, if you have to ask, you’ll nev­er know.” But maybe I’d do bet­ter to sit them down in front of the half-hour doc­u­men­tary The ABCs of Dada. They may still come away con­fused, but not quite so deeply as before — or maybe they’ll feel more con­fused, but in an enriched way.

Even the video, which gets pret­ty thor­ough about the ori­gins of and con­trib­u­tors to Dada, quotes heav­i­ly from the rel­e­vant Wikipedia arti­cle in its descrip­tion, fram­ing the move­ment as “a protest against the bar­barism of World War I, the bour­geois inter­ests that Dada adher­ents believed inspired the war, and what they believed was an oppres­sive intel­lec­tu­al rigid­i­ty in both art and every­day soci­ety.” They came to the con­clu­sion that “rea­son and log­ic had led peo­ple into the hor­rors of war, so the only route to sal­va­tion was to reject log­ic and embrace anar­chy and irra­tional­i­ty.” So there you have it; don’t try to under­stand.

Per­haps you remem­ber that vin­tage Onion arti­cle, “Repub­li­cans, Dadaists Declare War on Art,” sat­i­riz­ing, among oth­er things, the way pro­po­nents of Dada called its fruit not art, but “anti-art.” They made it delib­er­ate­ly mean­ing­less where “real” art strove to deliv­er mes­sages, delib­er­ate­ly offen­sive where it strained to appeal to com­mon sen­si­bil­i­ties. The ABCs of Dada exam­ines Dada through a great many of these Dadaists them­selves, such as Sophie Taeu­ber-Arp, a teacher and dancer forced to wear a mask for her Dada activ­i­ties due to the group’s scan­dalous rep­u­ta­tion in the acad­e­my; archi­tect Mar­cel Jan­co, who remem­bers of the group that “among us were nei­ther blasé peo­ple nor cyn­ics, actors nor anar­chists who took the Dada scan­dal seri­ous­ly”; and “Dada-mar­shal” George Grosz, who declared that “if one calls my work art depends on whether one believes that the future belongs to the work­ing class.” You can find fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion among UBUwe­b’s col­lec­tion of Dada, Sur­re­al­ism, & De Sti­jl Mag­a­zines, such as Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire and Berlin’s Der Dada. Or per­haps you’ll find fur­ther obfus­ca­tion, but that aligns with the Dada spir­it — in a world that has ceased to make sense, so the Dadaists believed, the duty falls to you to make even less.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

Anémic Ciné­ma: Mar­cel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

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.

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Jimi Hendrix Plays the Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Tripper,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”

in Music | August 19th, 2014

Who invent­ed rock and roll? Ask Chuck Berry, he’ll tell you. It was Chuck Berry. Or was it Bill Haley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Lit­tle Richard? Mud­dy Waters? Robert John­son? Maybe even Lead Bel­ly? You didn’t, but if you asked me, I’d say that rock and roll, like coun­try blues, came not from one lone hero but a matrix of black and white artists in the South—some with big names, some without—trading, steal­ing, licks, spot­lights, and hair­dos. Coun­try croon­ers, blues­men, refugees from jazz and gospel. Maybe look­ing to cash in, maybe not. Did the tee­ny-bop­per star sys­tem kill rock and roll’s out­law heart? Or was it Bud­dy Holly’s plane crash? Big Pay­ola? There’s a mil­lion the­o­ries in a mil­lion books, look it up.

Who res­ur­rect­ed rock and roll? The Bea­t­les? The Stones? If you ask me, and you didn’t, it was one man, Jimi Hen­drix. Any­one who ever cried into their beer over Don McLean’s maudlin eulo­gy had only to lis­ten to more Hen­drix.

He had it—the swag­ger, the hair, the trad­ing, steal­ing, licks: from the blues, most­ly, but also from what­ev­er caught his ear. And just as those val­orized giants of the fifties did, Hen­drix cov­ered his com­pe­ti­tion. Today, we bring you Hen­drix play­ing The Bea­t­les. Above, see him, Noel Red­ding, and Mitch Mitchell do “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” in 1967, mere days after the song’s release. As we wrote in a pre­vi­ous post, “The album came out on a Fri­day, and by Sun­day night, Jimi Hen­drix learned the songs and opened his own show with a cov­er of the title track.” And, might we say, he made it his very own. “Watch out for your ears, okay?” says Hen­drix to the crowd. Indeed.


Just above, from ‘round that same time, hear Hen­drix and Expe­ri­ence cov­er “Day Trip­per,” one of many record­ings made for BBC Radio, col­lect­ed on the album BBC Ses­sions. Fuzzed-out, blis­ter­ing, boom­ing rock and roll of the purest grade. And below? Why it’s an extreme­ly drunk Jim Mor­ri­son and a super loose Hen­drix jam­ming out “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows,” or some­thing vague­ly like it. Morrison’s vocal con­tri­bu­tions come to noth­ing more than slurred moan­ing. (He’s very vocal in anoth­er cut from this ses­sion, called alter­nate­ly “Morrison’s Lament” and “F.H.I.T.A”—an acronym you’ll get after a lis­ten to Morrison’s obscene refrain.)

This raw take comes from a jam some­time in 1968 at New York’s The Scene club. Also play­ing were The Scene house band The McCoys, bassist Har­vey Brooks, and Band of Gypsy’s drum­mer Bud­dy Miles. John­ny Win­ter may or may not have been there. Released on bootlegs called Bleed­ing Heart, Sky High, and Woke Up This Morn­ing and Found Myself Dead, these ses­sions are a must-hear for Hen­drix com­pletists and lovers of decon­struct­ed vir­tu­oso blues-rock alike. After what Hen­drix did for, and to, rock and roll, there real­ly was nowhere to go but back to the skele­tal bones of punk or into the out­er lim­its of avant psych-noise and fusion. Don McLean should have writ­ten a song about that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Rare Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

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

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Don Pardo (1918–2014), Voice of Saturday Night Live, Suggests Using Short Words

in Comedy, Life, Television | August 19th, 2014

Don Par­do voiced the intro­duc­tions of Sat­ur­day Night Live for 38 sea­sons. He began call­ing out the names of the S.N.L. cast mem­bers dur­ing the first episode in Octo­ber, 1975, and (except for the 1981–82 sea­son) he kept call­ing out those names straight through last May. Chevy Chase, Gil­da Rad­ner, John Belushi, Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Tina Fey — he called them all. Thanks to an imper­son­ator, you can hear a com­pi­la­tion of Par­do’s call for every cast mem­ber.

Don Par­do died yes­ter­day at 96 years of age. Ear­li­er in his career, he was the announc­er for a num­ber of Amer­i­can TV shows, includ­ing The Price Is Right, Jack­pot, and Jeop­ardy!. But his voice became part of the fab­ric of Amer­i­ca’s great­est com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. And he con­tin­ued voic­ing the intro long after his for­mal retire­ment from NBC in 2004. Not lack­ing ener­gy (watch him blow out his can­dles on his 90th birth­day), Par­do flew from Tuc­son to New York week­ly to get S.N.L. start­ed. Above, we have a short video that fea­tures Par­do, then 88, show­ing off, his sheer lin­guis­tic awe­some­ness.

Some­how, I’m now hop­ing that when­ev­er my day comes, Don Par­do’s voice will intro­duce me on the oth­er side.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

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Salvador Dalí Creates a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II

in Art, History, Life, Psychology | August 18th, 2014

As a New York City sub­way rid­er, I am con­stant­ly exposed to pub­lic health posters. More often than not these fea­ture a pho­to of a whole­some-look­ing teen whose sober expres­sion is meant to con­vey hind­sight regret at hav­ing tak­en up drugs, dropped out of school, or fore­gone con­doms. They’re well intend­ed, but bor­ing. I can’t imag­ine I’d feel dif­fer­ent­ly were I a mem­ber of the tar­get demo­graph­ic. The Chelsea Mini Stor­age ads’ saucy region­al humor is far more enter­tain­ing, as is the train wreck design approach favored by the ubiq­ui­tous Dr. Jonathan Ziz­mor. 

Pub­lic health posters were able to con­vey their des­ig­nat­ed hor­rors far more mem­o­rably before pho­tos became the graph­i­cal norm. Take Sal­vador Dalí’s sketch (below) and final con­tri­bu­tion (top) to the WWII-era anti-vene­re­al dis­ease cam­paign.

Which image would cause you to steer clear of the red light dis­trict, were you a young sol­dier on the make?

A por­trait of a glum fel­low sol­dier (“If I’d only known then…”)?

Or a grin­ning green death’s head, whose chop­pers dou­ble as the frankly exposed thighs of two face­less, loose-breast­ed ladies?

Cre­at­ed in 1941, Dalí’s night­mare vision eschewed the sort of man­ly, mil­i­taris­tic slo­gan that retroac­tive­ly ramps up the kitsch val­ue of its ilk. Its mes­sage is clear enough with­out:

Stick it in—we’ll bite it off!

(Thanks to blog­ger Rebec­ca M. Ben­der for point­ing out the composition’s resem­blance to the vagi­na den­ta­ta.)

As a fem­i­nist, I’m not crazy about depic­tions of women as pesti­len­tial, one-way death­traps, but I con­cede that, in this instance, sub­vert­ing the girlie pin up’s explic­it­ly phys­i­cal plea­sures might well have had the desired effect on horny enlist­ed men.

A decade lat­er Dalí would col­lab­o­rate with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Philippe Hals­man on “In Volup­tas Mors,” stack­ing sev­en nude mod­els like cheer­lead­ers to form a peace­time skull that’s far less threat­en­ing to the male fig­ure in the low­er left cor­ner (in this instance, the very dap­per Dalí him­self).

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence: A Naked­ly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

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

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Michael Sandel on the Partially Examined Life Podcast Talks About the Limits of a Free Market Society

in Philosophy, Politics | August 18th, 2014

Sandel-1024x1011

Har­vard pro­fes­sor Michael J. Sandel is one of our most famous liv­ing philoso­phers. His course, Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or Har­vard’s web page) has been enjoyed by more than 14,000 stu­dents over 30 years, and was recent­ly offered as a Mas­sive Open Online Course.

In July, the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast dis­cussed Sandel’s first (and most aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly influ­en­tial) book, 1982’s Lib­er­al­ism and the Lim­its of Jus­tice, in which he argued that soci­ety can’t be neu­tral with regard to claims about what the good life amounts to. Mod­ern lib­er­al­ism (by which he means the tra­di­tion com­ing from John Locke focus­ing on rights; this includes both Amer­i­ca’s cur­rent lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives) acknowl­edges that peo­ple want dif­fer­ent things and tries to keep gov­ern­ment in a mere­ly medi­at­ing role, giv­ing peo­ple as much free­dom as pos­si­ble.

So what’s the alter­na­tive? Sandel thinks that pub­lic dis­course should­n’t just be about peo­ple push­ing for what they want, but a dia­logue about what is real­ly good for us. He gives the famous exam­ple of the Nazis march­ing in Skok­ie. A lib­er­al would defend free speech, even if the speech is repel­lent. Sandel thinks that we can acknowl­edge that some speech is actu­al­ly per­ni­cious, that the inter­ests of that com­mu­ni­ty’s Holo­caust sur­vivors are sim­ply more impor­tant than the inter­ests of those who want to spread a mes­sage of hate.

You can lis­ten to the dis­cus­sion of Sandel’s views below or at the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life web­site:

A week lat­er, a fol­low-up episode brought Sandel him­self onto the pod­cast, pri­mar­i­ly to speak about his most recent book, What Mon­ey Can’t Buy: The Moral Lim­its of Mar­kets. A more pop­u­lar work, this book con­sid­ers numer­ous exam­ples of the mar­ket soci­ety gone amok, where every­thing from sex to body parts to adver­tis­ing space on the side of one’s house is poten­tial­ly for sale.

Sandel helped us under­stand the con­nec­tion between this and his ear­li­er work: In remain­ing neu­tral among com­pet­ing con­cep­tions of what’s real­ly good for us, lib­er­al­ism has made an all-too-quick peace with unfet­tered exchange. If two peo­ple want to make a deal, who are the rest of us to step in and stop it? Lib­er­al think­ing does jus­ti­fy pre­vent­ing sup­pos­ed­ly free exchanges on the grounds that they might not actu­al­ly be free, e.g. one side is under undue eco­nom­ic pres­sure, not mature or ful­ly informed, in some way coerced or incom­pe­tent. But Sandel wants to argue that some prac­tices can be mere­ly degrad­ing, even if per­formed will­ing­ly, and that a moral­ly neu­tral soci­ety does­n’t have the con­cep­tu­al appa­ra­tus to for­mu­late such a claim. Instead, as exem­pli­fied by his course on jus­tice, Sandel thinks that moral issues need to be a part of pub­lic debate. By exten­sion, we can’t pre­tend that eco­nom­ics is a moral­ly neu­tral sci­ence that mere­ly mea­sures human behav­ior. Our empha­sis on eco­nom­ics in pub­lic pol­i­cy crowds out oth­er pos­i­tive goods like cit­i­zen­ship and integri­ty.

For addi­tion­al back­ground, lis­ten to the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life’s ear­li­er dis­cus­sion of John Rawls, the father of mod­ern lib­er­al­ism who is Sandel’s main tar­get in his dis­cus­sion of lib­er­al­ism. You could also watch Sandel’s lec­ture on Rawls from his Jus­tice course.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog, which has just hit episode 100 with a spe­cial live-in-front-of-an-audi­ence dis­cus­sion of Pla­to’s Sym­po­sium, now avail­able on audio or video. You can access the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast via iTunes or the PEL web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Actress­es Lucy Law­less & Jaime Mur­ray Per­form Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” for The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast

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