In late 2012, an exhibition called Shoot! Existential Photography was held in London. And it traced the history of an unusual attraction that started appearing in European fairgrounds after World War I — the photographic shooting gallery. It worked something like this: A contestant paid a little money, and tried to hit the center of a target with a gun. If he or she hit the target, a camera took a photo, and instead of winning a little toy, the contestant received a snapshot of him or herself shooting the gun. According to the exhibition, this side-show “fascinated many artists and intellectuals in its heyday, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Man Ray and Lee Miller.” You can see a gallery of photos here. But above, we have a picture of de Beauvoir and Sartre at the shooting gallery together. Taken at the Porte d’Orléans fairground in Paris in June, 1929 — the same year the young philosophers met — this photograph is, according to the blog Avec Beauvoir, the couple’s first picture together. Do note that de Beauvoir apparently hit the target with her eyes closed. You can click the image to see it in a larger format.
Back during the waning years of the Soviet Union, animator Aleksandr Tatarsky left the state-run studio Écran to form his own animation company called Studio Pilot, the first privately owned company of its kind in Russia. The studio quickly made a name for itself by turning out bizarre, surreal and, at times, downright disturbing animated shorts. If you went to animation festivals during the Clinton presidency, you probably saw something from Studio Pilot.
Metafilter user “Nomyte,” who clearly knows both animation and Russian, put together an exhaustive list of movies on Youtube from Studio Pilot. A whopping 17 hours of footage. Here are a few favorites:
His Wife is a Chicken (1989) — A surrealist domestic drama tale about a guy who rejects his loving, hardworking wife when he realizes that, well, she’s a chicken. Told completely without words, the film (shown above) masterfully fuses everyday banality with some truly unnerving bits of weirdness – like that horrific worm dog creature with a human face. I saw this movie at some point in the early ‘90s and it gave me nightmares.
The Coup (1991) – An animated political cartoon that — 20 some odd years later — has become a fascinating historical document. The short shows a svelte Boris Yeltsin literally flush away the leaders of the doomed 1991 coup attempted against Mikhail Gorbachev. The incident was the last gasp of the Soviet old guard; its failure resulted in the eventual dissolution of the USSR. As the film’s end title points out, all of the short’s animators were personally involved in fighting the coup: “From 19 to 21 of August 1991, all animators who made this film have been [sic] defending the white house of Russia. Only by night on August 21 they could start working on the film.”
Gone with the Wind(1998) – Nothing about romance during the Civil War here. Instead, this movie is about, once again, a chicken. The short animation is a macabre tale about a boiled bird that comes back from the dead and struggles to return to its original unplucked state. You won’t look at eggs in quite the same way again.
2+1= (2003) – A lighthearted comedy about dinosaurs in love.
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.
Harvard has a few propositions it would like you consider. Take, for example, the one expounded on above by Robert Lue, whose titles include Professor of the Practice of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, and the faculty director of HarvardX. As an Open Culture reader, you might have some experience with that last institution—or, rather, digital institution—which releases Harvard-caliber learning opportunities free in the form of Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs). You’ll find some of them on our very own regularly-updated collection of MOOCs from great universities. Perhaps you haven’t enjoyed taking one, but you may well do it soon. What, though, does their increasing popularity mean for universities, one of the oldest of the traditional industries we so often speak of the internet “disrupting”? Lue, who offers eight and a half minutes of the choicest words on the subject, would like you to consider the MOOC’s moment not one of disruption for the university, but one of “inflection, and ultimately a moment of potential transformation.”
Lue’s argument comes laid out in one of the six brief but sharp lectures from Harvard Thinks Big 5, the latest round of the famed university’s series of TED-style talks where “a collection of all-star professors each speak for ten minutes about something they are passionate about.” Jeffrey Miron, Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has a passion for drug legalization. In his talk just above, Miron tells us why we should reconsider our assumptions about the benefits of any kind of drug prohibition — or at least, the benefits we just seem to assume it brings. And as we rethink our positions on the role of government in drug use and technology in the university, why not also rethink the role of large news organizations — and large organizations of any kind — in our lives? Below, Nicco Mele, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, explains why all kinds of power, from manufacturing sandals all the way up to gathering news, has and will continue to devolve from institutions to individuals.
When I first entered college in the mid-‘90s, the phenomenon of pop culture studies in academia seemed like an exciting novelty, bound to the ethos of the Clinton years. Often incisive, occasionally frivolous, pop culture studies made academia fun again, and reinvigorated the world of scholarly publishing and college life in general. All manner of fandom ruled the day: we took classes in hip hop videos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alanis Morrissette redefined irony, and nearly everyone got hired right after graduation (see for reference the cult classic 1994 film PCU). These days I don’t need to tell you that the prospects for new grads are considerably reduced, but I’m very happy to find academic societies and journals still organized around TV shows, fantasy novels, and pop music. Today we bring you two examples from the world of Classic Rock & Roll Studies (to coin a term). First up we have BOSS, or “The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies.”
Springsteen Studies is not new. In fact, a massive Springsteen symposium called “Glory Days”—jointly sponsored by Virginia Tech, Penn State, and Monmouth University—has taken place twice in West Long Branch, New Jersey since 2005 and is currently preparing for its next event. BOSS, however, only just emerged, the first scholarly Springsteen journal ever published. The first issue will appear in June of this year, and the editors are now soliciting 15 to 25 page academic articles for their January, 2015 issue. Describing themselves as a “scholarly space for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy,” BOSS seeks “broad interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to Springsteen’s songwriting, performance, and fan community.” Springsteen scholars: check the BOSS site for deadlines and contact info.
Unlike most scholarly journals, BOSS is open-access, so fans and admirers of all kinds can read the sure-to-be fascinating discussions it fosters as it works toward securing “a place for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy.” Springsteen Studies’ advocacy appears to be working—Rutgers University plans to add a Springsteen theology class, covering Springsteen’s entire discography, and other institutions like Princeton and the University of Rochester have offered Springsteen courses in the past.
In another first for a specialized pop culture field, the first-ever academic conference on the work of Pink Floyd will be held this coming April 13 at Princeton University. Called “Pink Floyd: Sound, Sight, and Structure,” the event promises to be a multi-media extravaganza, featuring as its keynote speaker Grammy-award winning Pink Floyd producer and engineer James Guthrie. (See Guthrie and others discuss the production of the surround-sound Super Audio CD of Wish You Were Here in the video above). In addition to Guthrie’s talk, and his surround sound mix of the band’s music, the conference will offer “live compositions and arrangements inspired by Pink Floyd’s music,” an “exhibition of Pink Floyd covers and art,” and a screening of The Wall. Papers include “The Visual Music of Pink Floyd,” “Space and Repetition in David Gilmour’s Guitar Solos,” and “Several Species of Small Furry Animals: The Genius of Early Floyd.” Admission is free, but you’ll need to RSVP to get in. The town of Princeton will join in the festivities with “Outside the Wall,” a series of events and specials on drinks, dining, art, and music.
While these events and publications may seem to locate pop culture studies squarely in New Jersey, those interested can find conferences all over the world, in fact. A good place to start is the site of the PCA (“Pop Culture Association”), which hosts its annual conference next month in Chicago, and the International Conference on Media and Popular Culture will be held this May in Vienna. Pop culture and media studies still seem to me to be particular products of the optimistic ‘90s (due to my own vintage, no doubt), but it appears these academic fields are thriving, despite the vastly different economic climate we now live in, with its no-fun, belt-tightening effects on higher ed across the board.
Just over a century after the first radio performance of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Il Pagliacci,” and Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” were broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910, the World Concert Hall has made it its mission to bring free live classical concerts to the world. The website contains a collection of links to free radio performances each week, allowing listeners to tune into live concerts performed across the globe. You can browse performances according to the site’s schedule, or choose from a selection of classical radio stations in a large number of countries. As you might expect, the U.S has the largest selection by far, with 80 stations. But for more curious music lovers, World Concert Hall also offers a taste of what other fans are listening to in other countries, like China, Japan, and Israel.
Thomas Edison is undoubtedly America’s best-known inventor. Nicknamed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” for his prolific creativity, Edison amassed a whopping 1093 patents throughout his lifetime. His most important inventions, such as the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph, were not merely revolutionary in and of themselves: they led directly to the establishment of vast industries, such as power utilities and the music business. It is one of his lesser known inventions, however, that led to the production of the first film shot in the United States, which you can view above.
The film, called Monkeyshines, No. 1, was recorded at some point between June 1889 and November 1890. Its creation is the work of William Dickson, an employee of Edison’s, who had been in charge of developing the inventor’s idea for a new film-viewing device. The machine that Edison had conceived and Dickson engineered was the Kinetoscope: a large box that housed a system that quickly moved a strip of film over a light source. Users watched the film whiz by from a hole in the top of the box, and by using sequential images, like those in a flip-book, the Kinetoscope gave the impression of movement.
In the film, which Dickson and another Edison employee named William Heise created, a blurry outline of an Edison labs employee moves about, seemingly dancing. The above clip contains both Monkeyshines, No. 1, and its sequel, apparently filmed to conduct further equipment tests, known as Monkeyshines, No. 2.HD video, this is not. Despite having the honor of being the first films to be shot in the US, the Monkeyshines series has garnered an unenthusiastic reaction from present-day critics: the original received a rating of 5.5/10 stars at IMDB. The sequel? A 5.4.
1968. Revolution was in the air and the future seemed bright. That year, Stanley Kubrick released his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey – a big-budget, experimental rumination on the evolution of mankind. The film was a huge box office hit when it came out; its mind-bending metaphysics resonated with the culture’s newfound interest in chemically altered states and in spirituality.
In the September issue from that year, Playboy magazine published a lengthy interview with Kubrick. Even at a time when public figures were supposed to sound like intellectuals (boy, times have changed), Kubrick comes across as insanely well read. During the course of the interview, he quotes from the likes of media critic Marshall McLuhan, Winston Churchill, and 19th Century poet Matthew Arnold along with a handful of prominent academics.
Kubrick is characteristically cagey about offering any explanations of his enigmatic movie but he does readily expound on philosophical questions about God, the meaning of life (or lack thereof) and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But perhaps the most interesting part of the 17-page interview is his vision of what 2001 might look like. It’s fascinating to see what he got right, what might be right a bit further into the future, and what’s completely wrong. Check them out below:
“Within ten years, in fact, I believe that freezing of the dead will be a major industry in the United States and throughout the world; I would recommend it as a field of investment for imaginative speculators.”
“Perhaps the greatest breakthrough we may have made by 2001 is the possibility that man may be able to eliminate old age.”
“I’m sure we’ll have sophisticated 3‑D holographic television and films, and it’s possible that completely new forms of entertainment and education will be devised.”
“You might have a machine that taps the brain and ushers you into a vivid dream experience in which you are the protagonist in a romance or an adventure. On a more serious level, a similar machine could directly program you with knowledge: in this way, you might, for example, easily be able to learn fluent German in 20 minutes.”
“I believe by 2001 we will have devised chemicals with no adverse physical, mental or genetic results that can give wings to the mind and enlarge perception beyond its present evolutionary capacities…there should be fascinating drugs available by 2001; what use we make of them will be the crucial question.”
“The so-called sexual revolution, mid-wifed by the pill, will be extended. Through drugs, or perhaps via the sharpening or even mechanical amplification of latent ESP functions, it may be possible for each partner to simultaneously experience the sensations of the other; or we may eventually emerge into polymorphous sexual beings, with male and female components blurring, merging and interchanging. The potentialities for exploring new areas of sexual experience are virtually boundless.”
“Looking into the distant future, I suppose it’s not inconceivable that a semisentient robot-computer subculture could evolve that might one day decide it no longer needed man.”
For such a famously pessimistic filmmaker, Kubrick’s vision of the future is remarkably groovy – lots of sex, drugs and holographic television. He wasn’t, of course, the only one out there who thought about the future. You can see more bold predictions below:
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.
I can think of very few tasteful phenomena to have come to prominence in the seventies, but David Bowie’s albums and Dick Cavett’s talk shows both make the short list. In the middle of that decade, Bowie certainly made the television rounds; we previously featured his 1975 appearance opposite Cher, and today we have his appearance opposite Cavett from the previous year. “David Bowie is a superstar in a category that has never actually been defined,” says the host about the rocker, to audience cheers, “because as soon as a critic tries to say what he is, he changes, like a chameleon.” It seems that Bowie, then at the height of his self-transformative tendencies, could reduce even the most eloquent man on television to that not-quite-accurate cliché. As the former host told Esquire thirty years after this broadcast, “Doesn’t a chameleon exert tremendous energy to become indistinguishable from its environment?”
Yet Cavett ultimately holds his own with Bowie, a feat I doubt many of the rest of us could pull off then or now. The appearance involves more than just music; while Bowie does perform, he also sits down to talk, something that his fans hadn’t yet seen him do in 1974. To many of them, he remained for the most part a mystery, albeit an astutely rocking one. “Who is he? What is he?” Cavett rhetorically asks the crowd. “Man? Woman? Robot?” In the event, they discuss his school days, his ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the unforgettable Diamond Dogs cover art, his step back from “glitter,” why other people would have feared interviewing him, and whether he pictures himself at sixty (in the far-flung year of 2007). How easy to forget, in this age when we can often converse with our idols by merely sending them an @ reply on Twitter, how much a showman like Bowie could leave to our imaginations. He remains admirably secretive by today’s standards, but back in the seventies, anything he said would have come as a revelation — especially if prompted by no less artful a conversationalist.
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