Watch 1990s Video of Sacha Baron Cohen Playing Christo, the Proto Borat (NSFW)

in Comedy, Film, Television | June 27th, 2014

In 2005, a hir­sute Kaza­kh jour­nal­ist named Borat Sagdiyev ven­tured to Amer­i­ca to make a doc­u­men­tary about “the Great­est Coun­try in the World.” Along the way, he had extreme­ly awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions with politi­cians Bob Barr and Alan Keyes, unwit­ting­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Gay Pride parade, and acci­den­tal­ly destroyed a gift shop filled with Con­fed­er­a­cy mem­o­ra­bil­ia. When he vis­it­ed a Vir­ginia rodeo, he near­ly caused a riot. Pri­or to the event, he praised the War on Ter­ror — which got cheers — and then wished that “George W. Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq,” which got few­er cheers. He then sang the lyrics of the Kaza­kh nation­al anthem to the tune of the “Star Span­gle Ban­ner.” That got boos.

Borat is, of course, a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter played by British come­di­an Sacha Baron Cohen, made famous in his huge­ly suc­cess­ful 2006 movie Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan. While his brand of gonzo com­e­dy might not be everybody’s cup of tea, you have to admit he’s brave and weird­ly ded­i­cat­ed to his craft. The cops were called over 90 times dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Borat and Baron Cohen nev­er broke char­ac­ter once.

Of all of Baron Cohen’s char­ac­ters – the dim-wit­ted wannabe gang­ster Ali G and the equal­ly obliv­i­ous gay fash­ion­ista Bruno, Borat is per­haps his most like­able, and there­fore his most dan­ger­ous, char­ac­ter. He’s so naive­ly igno­rant, so benight­ed by provin­cial prej­u­dices that he evokes a tone of kind­ly con­de­scen­sion from just about every­one he encoun­ters – at least before they call the cops on him. And that con­de­scen­sion can prove to be a trap. Borat’s casu­al, jar­ring­ly overt homo­pho­bia, sex­ism and anti-Semi­tism can often lead inter­vie­wees to say things out loud that they wouldn’t nor­mal­ly say in front of a cam­era. When Borat stat­ed, “We hang homo­sex­u­als in my coun­try!” Bob­by Rowe, the pro­duc­er of that rodeo quipped: “That’s what we’re try­ing to do here.”

The first incar­na­tion of Borat was a Mol­da­vian jour­nal­ist named Alexi who appeared on the Grana­da TV show F2F in the mid-90s. For the BBC Two show Com­e­dy Nation, Baron Cohen turned Alexi into Chris­to from Alba­nia. You can see a cou­ple of his ear­ly skits as Chris­to. In the one up top, he tries the patience of famed socialite Lady Col­in Camp­bell by insist­ing on car­ry­ing the train of her haute cou­ture dress. Below that, Chris­to stum­bles uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly into the world of S&M. Both videos, as you might expect, are NSFW.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ali G at Har­vard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cul­tur­al Estab­lish­ment

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

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.

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Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us

in Food & Drink | June 27th, 2014

Caffeinated-cover

Jour­nal­ist Mur­ray Car­pen­ter has writ­ten a new book about the world’s most pop­u­lar drug — caf­feine. And it answers ques­tions that many cof­fee drinkers sure­ly won­der about: Is caf­feine addic­tive? What exact­ly does it do to our bio­chem­istry? How does it gives us a jolt? And what health con­se­quences does it have (or not have)? These ques­tions all get answered in the book, Caf­feinat­ed: How Our Dai­ly Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us. And much of them were dis­cussed when Car­pen­ter recent­ly vis­it­ed my favorite radio pro­gram in San Fran­cis­co, KQED’s Forum. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

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Digital Dubliners: Free, 21st Century Ways to Read Joyce’s Great Story Collection on its 100th Anniversary

in Literature | June 26th, 2014


Read near­ly any crit­i­cal com­men­tary on James Joyce’s Dublin­ers, his 1914 col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that chron­i­cle the lives of ordi­nary Irish res­i­dents of the title city, and you’re sure to come across the word “epiphany.” This is not some aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but the word Joyce him­self used to describe the way that each sto­ry builds to a shock of recognition—often in the form of painful self-awareness—for key char­ac­ters. Short-cir­cuit­ing the typ­i­cal cli­max-res­o­lu­tion-dénoue­ment of con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive, Joyce’s epipha­nies give his sto­ries a verisimil­i­tude that can still feel very unset­tling, giv­en our typ­i­cal expec­ta­tions that real­ist fic­tion still obey the rules of fic­tion. Dra­mat­ic moments in our lives rarely have neat and tidy end­ings. But in sto­ries like “Eve­line,” “Ara­by,” “A Lit­tle Cloud,” and the collection’s cap­stone piece, “The Dead,” the often feck­less char­ac­ters find them­selves par­a­lyzed in states of exis­ten­tial dread by sud­den flash­es of self-knowl­edge, unable to assim­i­late new and painful insights into their lim­it­ed per­spec­tives.

That final sto­ry (adapt­ed into John Huston’s final film) “ele­vates the book to the lev­el of the supreme art­works of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” writes Mark O’Connell in Slate. O’Connell’s essay com­mem­o­rates the cen­te­nary of Dublin­er’s pub­li­ca­tion this month. Dublin­ers remains, he writes, a book that “writ­ers of the short sto­ry form seem basi­cal­ly resigned to nev­er sur­pass­ing.” Writ­ten in the author’s ear­ly 20s, the sto­ries, as Ulysses would eight years lat­er, “reveal some­thing pro­found and essen­tial and unre­al­ized about the city and its peo­ple”: “Dublin can feel less like a place that James Joyce wrote about than a place that is about James Joyce’s writ­ing.” All of us non-Dublin­ers can enter the city through Joyce’s exquis­ite sto­ries, and in an increas­ing vari­ety of ways, thanks to dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. At the top of the post, find a dig­i­tized first edi­tion of Dublin­ers. Just above, we have a read­ing of “Eve­line” by “vel­vet-voiced” Dublin­er Tad­hg Hynes, and below, hear Irish actor Jim Nor­ton read “The Sis­ters.”

You’ll find many more read­ings of Dublin­ers’ sto­ries online, such as this dead­pan read­ing of “Ara­by” from one of our favorites, Tom O’Bedlam, a Blooms­day read­ing of “Eve­line” by award-win­ning Irish play­wright Miri­am Gal­lagher, and this Lib­rivox col­lec­tion of read­ings from var­i­ous voic­es. I think Joyce would have very much appre­ci­at­ed the use of tech­nol­o­gy to keep his work alive into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Part of his lit­er­ary mission—certainly in many of Dublin­ers’ stories—was to illus­trate the stul­ti­fy­ing effects of cling­ing to the past. An eager adopter of new tech­nolo­gies, Joyce in fact brought the first cin­e­ma, The Vol­ta, to Dublin in 1909. So it seems fit­ting that 100 years after the pub­li­ca­tion of Dublin­ers, his book receive the mul­ti­me­dia app treat­ment in the form of Dig­i­tal Dublin­ers, a free, “engag­ing and author­i­ta­tive edi­tion” of the book designed by Boston Col­lege stu­dents and fea­tur­ing “three hun­dred-odd images, sev­en hun­dred or so notes and expla­na­tions, two dozen videos, crit­i­cal essays and hyper­links, inter­ac­tive maps sourced from con­tem­po­rary news­pa­per, sound, film and pho­to­graph­ic archives, with essays, film, record­ings, back­ground and expert dis­cus­sion.” Watch a short pro­mo video for Dig­i­tal Dublin­ers below, and down­load the book on iTunes here.

Final­ly, you may wish to read the text in a more late-20th-cen­tu­ry, and more open, for­mat with this ful­ly search­able “hyper­tex­tu­al, self-ref­er­en­tial edi­tion” pre­pared for Project Guten­berg. Whichev­er way you read Joyce’s Dublin­ers, you should, I pre­sume to sug­gest, read Joyce’s Dublin­ers. And if you have read these sto­ries before, even “some­where in the dou­ble fig­ures,” as Mark O’Connell has, then you’ll know how rich­ly they reward re-read­ing, or hear­ing, or study­ing along with oth­er read­ers and lovers of Joyce and a well-worn map of Dublin, or its shim­mer­ing touch-screen dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent.

Dublin­ers also appears in our two col­lec­tions, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

James Joyce’s Dublin Cap­tured in Vin­tage Pho­tos from 1897 to 1904

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

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

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Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones & The Beatles Played on a 3‑String Electric Mountain Dulcimer

in Music | June 26th, 2014

My par­ents always seemed to me to rep­re­sent two very dif­fer­ent strains of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture. My mom loved Peter, Paul and Mary, Appalachi­an folk and blue­grass, and played the dul­cimer and auto­harp. My dad loved psy­che­del­ic rock, and had an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Zep­pelin, Bea­t­les, Floyd, and Hen­drix records. It wasn’t a Dylan-goes-elec­tric-lev­el dis­agree­ment, but their fond rem­i­nisces of the glo­ry days could some­times get a lit­tle tense. But as we’ve seen in decades since, folkies, hip­pies, and psych-rock­ers can come togeth­er, and not only in 70s folk-rock bands from Cal­i­for­nia. Take Robert Plant and Alli­son Krauss’s fruit­ful and unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion, for instance, or the dozens of Led Zep­pelin and Rolling Stones cov­ers by dozens of flan­nel-clad indie folk­ers.

In the past decade or so, it almost came to seem like psy­che­del­ic blues-rock and moun­tain folk music had always made com­fort­able bed­fel­lows, and maybe they had. (After all, Zep­pelin includ­ed folk instru­ments on sev­er­al of their clas­sic songs, like John Paul Jones’ man­dolin on “Going to Cal­i­for­nia.”) As fur­ther evi­dence we have 3‑string elec­tric moun­tain dul­cimer play­er Sam Edel­stein, who cov­ers clas­sic rock songs on an instru­ment usu­al­ly thought of as par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­tle, del­i­cate, and sweet, as its name implies. At the top, see Edel­stein rip through a sear­ing ver­sion of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.” Just above, he does a killer take on the Rolling Stones’ “19th Ner­vous Break­down,” and below, Edel­stein plays an increas­ing­ly rock­ing cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ “Come Togeth­er” at the Nation­al Moun­tain Dul­cimer Com­pe­ti­tion. As uploader Con­tem­po­rary Dul­cimer states on Youtube, “the dulcimer’s roots may be in folk music, but it’s a nat­ur­al rock & roll instru­ment.” Indeed. Who knew?

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss Sing Coun­try Ver­sions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Lev­ee Breaks”

Musi­cians Re-Imag­ine the Com­plete Song­book of the Bea­t­les on the Ukulele

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

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

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Free Archive of Audio Interviews with Rock, Jazz & Folk Legends Now on iTunes

in Archives, Music | June 26th, 2014

joe smith interviews

Back in 2012, we told you about how the Library of Con­gress launched the Joe Smith Col­lec­tion, an audio archive fea­tur­ing 200+ inter­views with leg­endary music artists, all record­ed dur­ing the 1980s by Joe Smith while research­ing and writ­ing his book Off the Record. The audio col­lec­tion, still avail­able on the web, has now been brought to iTune­sU. And the iTunes col­lec­tion has a virtue that the web archive does­n’t — it lets you down­load instead of stream the audio files.

If you’re a music junkie, you won’t want to miss the long­form inter­views with leg­endary fig­ures like Dave Brubeck, Lou Reed, Paul McCart­ney, Joan Baez, Her­bie Han­cock, David Bowie, George Har­ri­son, Yoko Ono, James Brown, Bo Did­dley, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Chris­tine McVie, Mick Jag­ger, Lin­da Ron­stadt and more. Each inter­view runs 30–60 good min­utes. You can enter the archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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Hardware Wars: The Mother of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Profitable Short Film Ever Made)

in Film | June 26th, 2014

Back in 1977, San Fran­cis­co film­mak­er Ernie Fos­selius had the brain­wave to make a spoof of a movie that had just come out. It was a risky move. Nobody had any sense that Star Wars would become the world­wide cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that it did. And just as George Lucas’s space opera earned stag­ger­ing amounts of mon­ey, so did Fosselius’s par­o­dy, Hard­ware Wars. You can watch it above. Made for a mere eight grand, the 13-minute movie became a pre-inter­net viral hit and a sta­ple on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, ulti­mate­ly earn­ing over $1,000,000 – an unheard of haul for a short film. In fact, in terms of mon­ey spent ver­sus mon­ey earned, Hard­ware Wars end­ed up being far more prof­itable than Star Wars. And it’s con­sid­ered the most prof­itable short film ever made.

“I think a lot of the charm of that movie is the fact that we didn’t real­ly know what we were doing,” said Scott Math­ews, who donned a blonde wig to play the movie’s lead, Fluke Star­buck­er. The movie’s pro­duc­tion is so glee­ful­ly cheap and half-assed that you can’t help but be charmed by it. Irons, toast­ers, and tape play­ers are used in place of space­ships.

A can­is­ter vac­u­um clean­er stands in for R2D2, and Chew­bac­ca appears to be a Cook­ie Mon­ster pup­pet dyed brown. At one point, while on a desert plan­et of Tatooine, you see a beach-goer saun­ter­ing in the back­ground. And Star Wars’s famous can­ti­na scene is in this movie sim­ply a stroll through a crowd­ed tav­ern. If you know any­thing about the bar scene in 1970s San Fran­cis­co, you know that it was at least as weird as any­thing George Lucas man­aged to put up on the screen.

The often liti­gious Lucas report­ed­ly real­ly liked the movie, called it “cute.” He even invit­ed Fos­selius to voice the incon­solable sobs of Jab­ba the Hut­t’s ani­mal train­er after his beloved Ran­cor gets killed by Luke Sky­walk­er in Return of the Jedi.

Hard­ware Wars end­ed up launch­ing an entire sub­genre of movie – the Star Wars fan film. And with the advent of Youtube and dig­i­tal film­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the abil­i­ty of nerds and mavens to make increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed takes on Lucas’s uni­verse became eas­i­er and eas­i­er. One of the bet­ter, and old­er, ones is Troops. A mash up of Star Wars and the real­i­ty TV series Cops, the short shows the chal­lenges and the strug­gles of being an Impe­r­i­al Stormtroop­er. Check it out below.

via Film­mak­erIQ

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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.

 

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Zeppelin Took My Blues Away: An Illustrated History of Zeppelin’s “Copyright Indiscretions”

in Music | June 26th, 2014

11-RANDY-CALIFORNIA

Few have gone broke work­ing in copy­right law. Some, how­ev­er, have gone broke break­ing it. Oth­ers have built up enough of a rep­u­ta­tion and for­tune by bend­ing the rules just far enough, though they still run the risk of, if not going finan­cial­ly bank­rupt, then look­ing cre­ative­ly bank­rupt. The Eng­lish rock band Led Zep­pelin seems to have art­ful­ly walked just this line for decades, though their usage of the blues and folk songs that inspired them has more recent­ly under­gone some seri­ous­ly high-pro­file exam­i­na­tion in court. Even their sig­na­ture “Stair­way to Heav­en” had a suit filed against it in May, “brought by the estate of the late musi­cian Randy Cal­i­for­nia against the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Led Zep­pelin and their record label. The copy­right infringe­ment case alleges that the Zep­pelin song was tak­en from the sin­gle ‘Tau­rus’ by the 1960s band Spir­it, for whom Cal­i­for­nia served as lead gui­tarist.”

11.2-Stairway-To-Heaven

Those look­ing to make up their own minds about the rel­e­vant issues of musi­cal author­ship here can look to Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away, an “illus­trat­ed his­to­ry of copy­right indis­cre­tions,” cre­at­ed in trad­ing card for­mat, and fea­tur­ing clips for the pur­pos­es of com­par­i­son and con­trast. In this post, we have the card and clips doc­u­ment­ing the resem­blances between “Stair­way to Heav­en” and “Tau­rus,” Randy Cal­i­for­ni­a’s 1968 song. The series comes to 19 cards in total, includ­ing such per­haps exces­sive­ly Zep­pelin-bor­rowed tunes as Bert Jan­sch’s “Black­wa­ter­side,” Ritchie Valens’ “Ohh, My Head,” Willie Dixon’s “You Need Love,” and Jake Holmes’ “Dazed and Con­fused.” The ques­tion of whether we can call Jim­my Page and Robert Plant reck­less music thieves or sim­ply artists mak­ing use of what came before — as all artists must — has no easy answer. I, for my part, can’t even imag­ine the legal drudgery required for a ver­dict in cas­es like this. Some­thing tells me that noth­ing as fun as trad­ing cards ever gets admit­ted as evi­dence.

LED ZEPPELIN “Stair­way To Heav­en” 1971

SPIRIT “Tau­rus” 1968

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Whole Lot­ta Led Zep­pelin: Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A is for Atom: Vin­tage PR Film for Nuclear Ener­gy

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

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

 

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