Michael Pollan Explains How Cooking Can Change Your Life; Recommends Cooking Books, Videos & Recipes

in Food & Drink | November 20th, 2014

Last year, we fea­tured “How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life,” an ani­mat­ed short based on the work of In Defense of Food, The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma, and Food Rules author Michael Pol­lan. If you want more — and the culi­nar­i­ly inclined fans of Pol­lan, a self-described “lib­er­al food­ie intel­lec­tu­al,” often can’t get enough — have a look at his extend­ed pre­sen­ta­tion on the same sub­ject above. (If you pre­fer an audio pod­cast, you can get an MP3 with audi­ence Q&A and all here.) The talk came as part of an event held at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce (RSA), which con­fronts the daunt­ing ques­tion of how peo­ple can “improve their family’s health and well-being, build com­mu­ni­ties, help fix our bro­ken food sys­tem, and break our grow­ing depen­dence on cor­po­ra­tions.” Pol­lan’s rec­om­men­da­tion, it may or may not sur­prise you to hear, comes down to one sim­ple act: cook­ing.

Of course, any­one who decides to jump into cook­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry real­izes how sim­ple it isn’t, or at least how com­pli­cat­ed we’ve made it. Pol­lan, as luck would have it, real­izes this, so today we’ve round­ed up some of his resources that can help you learn to cook bet­ter, or indeed cook at all. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the man him­self has nev­er writ­ten a cook­book. “While I enjoy cook­ing, I’ll leave the art of per­fect­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing recipes to the pros,” he writes. “That said, I believe that if you can read, you can cook, and I have a few cook­books that I use reg­u­lar­ly and rec­om­mend to those of you want­i­ng good, healthy and basic recipes” — from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Every­thing and How to Cook Every­thing Veg­e­tar­i­an to Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters’ The Art of Sim­ple Food, and even (“when I have an ingre­di­ent I want to use but don’t know what to do with it”) epicurious.com.

You can find more Pol­lan-endorsed food read­ing, includ­ing San­dor Katz’s The Art of Fer­men­ta­tion and Michael Moss’ Salt Sug­ar Fat, on his lists at Omnivo­ra­cious and Barnes and Noble. He also offers a roundup of online cook­ing resources:

Pol­lan’s sec­tion on cook­ing class­es and oth­er ways to learn to cook, aside from a vari­ety of sug­ges­tions of region­al insti­tu­tions, includes these use­ful options:

  • A “free, beau­ti­ful book full of recipes that fit a food stamp bud­get” called Good and Cheap.
  • Skill­Share, whose “inno­v­a­tive plat­form allows almost any­one, any­where to teach a project-based class either online to a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty or offline in their local com­mu­ni­ty. You can search for cook­ing, brew­ing or bread bak­ing class­es in your region.”
  • Life­Hack­er and its “cook­ing advice, recipes and how to’s.”

And if you missed it, don’t for­get to take Pol­lan’s own course “Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion,” free from UC Berke­ley. I like to think he’d sec­ond my own advice on the mat­ter: just cook some­thing that sounds good, any­thing that sounds good, right now. Not that I dare inflict the result on friends and fam­i­ly until I’ve learned a lit­tle more — which is when all those links above come in handy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

Michael Pollan’s Book, Food Rules, Brought to Life with Ani­ma­tion

Michael Pol­lan on Sus­tain­able Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

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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15 Great Films Adapted From Equally Great Novels

in Film, Literature | November 19th, 2014

clockwork orange adaptation

Warn­er Bros.

How often does a film adap­ta­tion of a nov­el you love meet your expec­ta­tions? Cir­cle one: A) Always B) Often C) Rarely D) Nev­er.

I’m guess­ing most peo­ple choose C, with a few falling solid­ly in the peren­ni­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed D camp. There are, of course, those very few films that rise so far above their source mate­r­i­al that we needn’t speak of the nov­el at all. I can think of one off the top of my head, involv­ing a cer­tain well-dressed mob­ster fam­i­ly.

Then there are adap­ta­tions of books that depart so far from the source that any com­par­i­son seems like a wast­ed exer­cise. Spike Jonze’s Adap­ta­tion is one inten­tion­al exam­ple, one that glee­ful­ly rev­els in its meta-poet­ic license-tak­ing.

Per­haps no sin­gle author save Shake­speare, Jane Austen, or Stephen King has had as many of his works adapt­ed to the screen as sci-fi vision­ary Philip K. Dick. The results vary, but the force of Dick’s imag­i­na­tion seems to make every cin­e­ma ver­sion of his nov­els worth watch­ing, I’d argue.

But all this talk of adap­ta­tion brings us to the ques­tion that the inter­net must ask of every sub­ject under the sun: what are nth best films made from novels—list them, damn you! Okay, well, you won’t get just my hum­ble opin­ion, but the col­lec­tive votes of hun­dreds of Guardian read­ers, cir­ca 2006, when writ­ers Peter Brad­shaw and Xan Brooks took a poll, then post­ed the results as “The Big 50.”

The list includes those dap­per mafiosi, but, as I said, I’m not much inclined—nor was Fran­cis Ford Coppola—to Mario Puzo’s nov­el. But there are sev­er­al films on the list made from books I do like quite a bit. In the 15 picks below, I like the movies almost or just as much. These are films from The Guardian’s big 50 that I feel do their source nov­els jus­tice. Go ahead and quib­ble, rage, or even agree in the com­ments below—or, by all means, make your own sug­ges­tions of cas­es where film and book meet equal­ly high stan­dards, whether those exam­ples appear on “The Big 50” or not.

1. A Clock­work Orange (1971)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s take on Antho­ny Burgess’ 1962 dystopi­an fable repli­cates the high­ly dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence of tra­vers­ing a fic­tion­al world through the eyes of a Beethoven-lov­ing, Nad­sat-speak­ing, sociopath. Mal­colm McDow­ell gives the per­for­mance of his career (see above). So dis­tinc­tive is the set design, it inspired a chain of Koro­va Milk Bars. Burgess him­self had a com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the film and its direc­tor. Prais­ing the adap­ta­tion as bril­liant, he also found its bleak, sar­don­ic end­ing, and omis­sion of the novel’s redemp­tive final chapter—also miss­ing from U.S. edi­tions of the book pri­or to 1986—troubling. The film’s relent­less ultra­vi­o­lence, so dis­turb­ing to many a view­er, and many a reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, also dis­turbed the author who imag­ined it.

2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

A film adap­ta­tion with an even more brava­do ensem­ble cast (Dan­ny DeVi­to, Brad Dou­rif, Louise Fletch­er, Christo­pher Lloyd) and incred­i­bly charismatic—and dangerous—lead, Jack Nichol­son, Milos Forman’s Cuckoo’s Nest stands per­fect­ly well on its own. But lovers of Ken Kesey’s mad­cap nov­el have many rea­sons for favor­able com­par­i­son. One vast dif­fer­ence between the two, how­ev­er, lies in the nar­ra­tive point-of-view. The book is nar­rat­ed by will­ful­ly silent Chief Bromden—the film most­ly takes McMurphy’s point-of-view. With­out a voice-over, it would have been near-impos­si­ble to stay true to the source, but the result leaves the novel’s nar­ra­tor most­ly on the sidelines—along with many of his the­mat­ic con­cerns. Nonethe­less, actor Will Samp­son imbues the tow­er­ing Brom­den with deep pathos, empa­thy, and com­ic sto­icism. When he final­ly speaks, it’s almost like we’ve been hear­ing his voice all along (see above).

3. To Kill a Mock­ing­bird (1962)

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up! Your father’s pass­ing.” If this scene (above), doesn’t choke you up just a lit­tle, well… I don’t real­ly know what to say.… The sen­ti­men­tal adap­ta­tion of the reclu­sive Harp­er Lee’s only nov­el is flawed, right­eous, and love­able. Gre­go­ry Peck is Atti­cus Finch (and as far as adap­ta­tions go—despite the brave attempts of many a fine actor—is Ahab as well). And the young Mary Bad­ham is Scout. Robert Duvall makes his screen debut as kind­ly shut-in Boo Radley, audi­ences learn how to pro­nounce “chif­farobe”…. It’s as clas­sic a piece of work as the novel—seems almost impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the two.

4. Apoc­a­lypse Now (1979)

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and screen­writer John Milius—the Hol­ly­wood char­ac­ter so well car­i­ca­tured by John Good­man in The Big Lebows­ki—trans­form Joseph Conrad’s lean 1899 colo­nial­ist novel­la Heart of Dark­ness into a grandiose, bare­ly coher­ent, psy­che­del­ic tour-de-force set in the steam­ing jun­gles of Viet­nam. Bran­do glow­ers in shad­ow, Robert Duvall strikes hilar­i­ous­ly macho pos­es, Mar­tin Sheen gen­uine­ly los­es his mind, and a coked-up, man­ic Den­nis Hop­per shows up, quotes T.S. Eliot, and near­ly upstages every­one (above). Roger Ebert loved the even longer, cra­zier Redux, released in 2001, say­ing it “shames mod­ern Hollywood’s timid­i­ty.” Nov­el­ist Jes­si­ca Hage­dorn fic­tion­al­ized the movie’s leg­endary mak­ing in the Philip­pines. How much is left of Con­rad? I would say, sur­pris­ing­ly, quite a bit of the spir­it of Heart of Dark­ness survives—maybe even more than in Nico­las Roeg’s straight­for­ward 1994 adap­ta­tion with John Malkovich as Kurtz and Tim Roth as Mar­low.

5. Trainspot­ting (1996)

Dan­ny Boyle’s adap­ta­tion of Irvine Welsh’s addic­tion-themed first novel—or rather col­lec­tion of inter­linked stories—about a scrap­py bunch of Scot­tish lowlifes may be very much a prod­uct of its moment, but its hard to imag­ine a more per­fect screen real­iza­tion of Welsh’s punk prose. Char­ac­ter-dri­ven in the best sense of the phrase, Boyle’s com­ic Trainspot­ting man­ages the estimable feat of telling a sto­ry about drug addicts and crim­i­nal types that doesn’t fea­ture any gold­en-heart­ed hook­ers, mourn­ful inter­ven­tions, self-right­eous, didac­tic pop soci­ol­o­gy, or oth­er Hol­ly­wood drug-movie sta­ples. A sequel—based on Welsh’s fol­low-up nov­el Porno—may be forth­com­ing.

And below are 10 more selec­tions from The Guardian’s top 50 in which—I’d say—film and book are both, if not equal­ly, great:

6. Blade Run­ner (1982)
7. Dr. Zhiva­go (1965)
8. Empire of the Sun (1987)
9. Catch-22 (1970)
10. Loli­ta (1962)
11. Tess (1979)
12. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
13. The Day of the Trif­fids (1962)
14. Alice (1988)
15. Lord of the Flies (1963)

So, there you have it—my top 15 from The Guardian’s list of 50 best adap­ta­tions. What are your favorites? Look over their oth­er 35—What glar­ing omis­sions deserve men­tion (The Shin­ing? Naked Lunch? Dr. Strangelove? Lawrence of Ara­bia? The Col­or Pur­ple?), which inclu­sions should be strick­en, for­got­ten, burned? (Why, oh, why was the Tim Bur­ton Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry remake picked over the orig­i­nal?) All of the films men­tioned are in English—what essen­tial adap­ta­tions in oth­er lan­guages should we attend to? And final­ly, what alter­nate ver­sions do you pre­fer to some of the most-seen adap­ta­tions of nov­els or sto­ries?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

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

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Stanley Kubrick’s Obsession with the Color Red: A Supercut

in Film | November 19th, 2014

In his book, Abject Ter­rors: Sur­vey­ing the Mod­ern and Post­mod­ern Hor­ror Film, Tony Magis­trale talks about Stan­ley Kubrick­’s deep and abid­ing obses­sion with the col­or red. He writes 2001: A Space Odyssey “com­mences Kubrick­’s direc­to­r­i­al fas­ci­na­tion with vivid col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly the col­or red, that becomes the defin­ing trait of the auteur’s sub­se­quent cin­e­ma… [T]he par­tic­u­lar use of red as the keynote col­or in Kubrick­’s cin­e­mat­ic palette speaks direct­ly to cin­e­mat­ic mean­ing: The col­or red under­scores vary­ing lev­els of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence present in Clock­work, The Shin­ing and Bar­ry Lyn­don; forces the view­er to make a con­nec­tion between HAL and demon­ic ener­gies in 2001; and is asso­ci­at­ed with the car­nal sex­u­al­i­ty that is present in near­ly every sequence of Eyes Wide Shut.” But it’s one thing to read about this obses­sion, and anoth­er thing to see it. Above we have ’s “Red: A Stan­ley Kubrick Super­cut,” which art­ful­ly weaves togeth­er footage from Spar­ta­cus, 2001, A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don, The Shin­ing, Full Met­al Jack­et and Eyes Wide Shut. Now you’ll see what Magis­trale means.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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Handmade Animation Shows You “How To Make a 1930 Paramount Record”

in Animation, Music | November 19th, 2014

The his­to­ry of Amer­i­can music—the blues, jazz, gospel, etc.—has been told, and sold, so many times over that it seems hard to jus­ti­fy yet anoth­er ret­ro­spec­tive. And yet, I for one am very hap­py to see the huge two-vol­ume box set The Rise & Fall of Para­mount Records appear on the scene. Grant­ed, I can’t cough up $800 for, in total, 1600 remas­tered dig­i­tal tracks, 12 LPs, 900 pages of artist bios, por­traits, discogra­phies, and ful­ly-restored adver­tise­ments from the Mid­west­ern musi­cal pow­er­house of the 20s and 30s. And that’s not to men­tion the beau­ti­ful, peri­od pack­ag­ing, “first-of-its-kind music and image play­er app… housed on cus­tom met­al USB dri­ve,” and more. But even those of us too skint to afford all the glo­ri­ous swag can sam­ple some of the fruit of the enor­mous labors that went into this joint pro­duc­tion of Jack White’s Third Man Records and folk gui­tar hero John Fahey’s Revenant Records (if only by proxy). And we can learn a lit­tle about the labors that went in to mak­ing the orig­i­nal records them­selves.

Paramount records label

Just above, we have a beau­ti­ful hand­made video by Kel­li Ander­son which “recre­ates the inner work­ings of the defunct Para­mount Records Fac­to­ry (where records by artists like Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son, Louis Arm­strong and Charley Pat­ton were pressed in the 1920s and ‘30s).” Made “entire­ly from paper atop a ply­wood set,” the stop-motion ani­ma­tion sim­u­lates the pro­duc­tion of Paramount’s “race records,” accom­pa­nied by Charley Patton’s 1930 “High Water Every­where, Part 1,” whose “thick, ana­log noise,” Ander­son writes on her blog, “is a reminder that some of history’s most inven­tive musi­cians were record­ed on the most infe­ri­or equip­ment of their day.” She quotes Dean Black­wood of Revenant, who writes that the Para­mount fac­to­ry “sat perched above the Mil­wau­kee Riv­er riverbed. Dirt from that riverbed was one of the key ingre­di­ents in their shel­lac dough, which was low­er on shel­lac con­tent and high­er on unex­pect­ed com­po­nents like riverbed clay, cot­ton flock, and lamp black.”

But from these hum­ble, dirty, cheap mate­ri­als came a sound like no other—one that can nev­er be dupli­cat­ed and which deserves the high­est qual­i­ty preser­va­tion. Just above, see a video trail­er for vol­ume 1 of the mas­sive box set, and read much more about this project at Third Man’s site (Vol­ume 1, Vol­ume 2).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe & Oth­er Amer­i­can Blues Leg­ends Per­form in the UK (1963–66)

‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Hobo Blues’: Great Per­for­mances by John Lee Hook­er

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

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Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essential Movies — Now with Women Filmmakers

in Film | November 19th, 2014

512px-Spike_Lee_(2012)
Image by José Cruz/ABr CC-BY-SA‑3.0

Last year, inde­pen­dent film icon and NYU pro­fes­sor Spike Lee turned to the crowd­sourc­ing site Kick­starter to raise $1.25 mil­lion dol­lars for his lat­est film. To drum up pub­lic­i­ty, he pub­lished his list of 87 “essen­tial” movies that he hands out in his grad­u­ate film class­es. And it is a very idio­syn­crat­ic list. Some great, over­looked movies like Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Steve James’s Hoop Dreams make the cut while oth­er inclu­sions are more puz­zling — Mel Gibson’s Apoc­a­lyp­to, for instance. Or Abel Ferrera’s Bad Lieu­tenant. The list’s exclu­sions, how­ev­er, raised eye­brows. Cit­i­zen Kane (?!) some­how didn’t get a men­tion. Nei­ther did Sev­en Samu­rai. Stan­ley Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus some­how won out over 2001: A Space Odyssey. And such canon­i­cal direc­tors as Yasu­jiro Ozu, Ing­mar Bergman, Fritz Lang, John Ford and Char­lie Chap­lin were left out entire­ly.

But the inter­net real­ly took Lee to task for the list’s most glar­ing omis­sion – there are no women. To that last issue, Lee made amends. In his updat­ed blog entry – “Thank You For That Coat Pulling” – Lee revamped the list to include eight movies by five female direc­tors, bring­ing the total to 95.

Three of the four women ever to be nom­i­nat­ed for a Best Direc­tor Oscar wound up on the list – Wert­muller, Cam­pi­on, Bigelow. I guess Lee isn’t a fan of Sophia Cop­po­la.

Lina Wert­muller man­aged to get four films on the new list – a feat not shared by any of her male coun­ter­parts. That’s right, she best­ed Kuro­sawa, Kubrick and Hitch­cock. In her hey­day, Wert­muller court­ed con­tro­ver­sy by com­bin­ing sex and left wing pol­i­tics, which sounds right up Lee’s alley. Fair­ly or not, Wertmuller’s rep­u­ta­tion hasn’t aged well, most­ly because fem­i­nist crit­ics pil­lo­ried her movie for being misog­y­nous. And Guy Ritchie’s unfor­tu­nate remake of her 1974 movie Swept Away, star­ring Madon­na, did lit­tle to bur­nish her pres­tige.

Also on the list is Julie Dash’s Daugh­ter of the Dust, a lyri­cal land­mark of indie cin­e­ma about Gul­lah women liv­ing on one of South Carolina’s bar­ri­er islands, and French direc­tor Euzhan Palcy’s lit­tle seen Sug­ar Cane Alley is about blacks toil­ing in the sug­ar cane fields of rur­al Mar­tinique.

Indiewire notes that Lee’s addi­tions bump the gen­der dis­par­i­ty up from 0% to about 8.7%. That’s not a lot, but accord­ing to Cel­lu­loid Ceil­ing’s 2013 report, it’s bet­ter than it is cur­rent­ly in Hol­ly­wood. Of the top 250 earn­ing movies last year, only 6 were direct­ed by women.

You can see Lee’s orig­i­nal list below:

lee essential 2.jpg.CROP.article568-large

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

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 lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Naropa Archive Presents 5,000 Hours of Audio Recordings of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg & Other Beat Writers

in Internet Archive, Poetry, Writing | November 19th, 2014

Image via Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis

Schools like Har­vard, Oxford, and the Sor­bonne sure­ly have qual­i­ties to rec­om­mend them, but to my mind, noth­ing would feel quite as cool as say­ing your degree comes from the Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied Poet­ics. If you aspire to say it your­self, you’ll have to apply to Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty, which Tibetan Bud­dhist teacher (and, inci­den­tal­ly, Oxford schol­ar) Chö­gyam Trung­pa estab­lished in Boul­der, Col­orado in 1974. This rare, accred­it­ed, “Bud­dhist-inspired” Amer­i­can school has many unusu­al qual­i­ties, as you’d expect, but, as many of us remem­ber from our teenage years, your choice of uni­ver­si­ty has as much to do with who has passed through its halls before as what you think you’ll find when you pass through them. Naropa, besides nam­ing a school after the late Ker­ouac has host­ed the likes of Allen Gins­berg, Anne Wald­man, William S. Bur­roughs, Gre­go­ry Cor­so, Philip Whalen, and Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti.

But you don’t actu­al­ly have to attend Naropa to par­take of its Beat lega­cy. At the Naropa Poet­ics Audio Archives, freely brows­able at the Inter­net Archive, you can hear over 5000 hours of read­ings, lec­tures, per­for­mances, sem­i­nars, pan­els, and work­shops record­ed at the school and fea­tur­ing the afore­men­tioned lumi­nar­ies and many oth­ers. “The Beat writ­ers had inter­vened on the cul­ture,” says Wald­man in an inter­view about her book Beats at Naropa. “It wasn’t just a mat­ter of sim­ply offer­ing the usu­al kind of writ­ing work­shops, but read­ing and think­ing lec­tures, pan­els, pre­sen­ta­tions as well. The Beat writ­ers have been excep­tion­al as polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al activists, inves­tiga­tive work­ers, trans­la­tors, Bud­dhists, envi­ron­men­tal activists, fem­i­nists, seers. There’s so much leg­endary his­to­ry here.” Empha­sis — I repeat, 5000 hours — on so much.

To help you dive into this leg­endary his­to­ry, we’ve round­ed up today some pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured high­lights from Naropa. Begin here, and if you keep going, you’ll dis­cov­er vari­eties of Beat expe­ri­ence even we’ve nev­er had — and maybe you’ll even con­sid­er putting in a Ker­ouac School appli­ca­tion, and doing some cul­tur­al inter­ven­tion of your own.

Enter the Naropa Audio Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

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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Read Free Digital Art Catalogues from 9 World-Class Museums, Thanks to the Pioneering Getty Foundation

in Art, Technology | November 18th, 2014

OSCI image ipad

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the var­i­ous pio­neer­ing efforts of The Getty — from free­ing 4,600 high-res­o­lu­tion art images (and then 77,000 more) into the pub­lic domain, to dig­i­tal­ly releas­ing over 250 art books. Now they’ve put their minds to those rare, beau­ti­ful, and high­ly edi­fy­ing spec­i­mens known as art cat­a­logues. “Based on metic­u­lous research, these cat­a­logues make avail­able detailed infor­ma­tion about the indi­vid­ual works in a muse­um’s col­lec­tion, ensur­ing the con­tents a place in art his­to­ry,” announces their site. “Yet print­ed vol­umes are cost­ly to pro­duce and dif­fi­cult to update reg­u­lar­ly; their poten­tial con­tent often exceeds allot­ted space. One could say they are like thor­ough­bred hors­es con­fined to stock pens.” But now the Get­ty has offered a solu­tion in the form of the Online Schol­ar­ly Cat­a­logue Ini­tia­tive (OCSI), cre­at­ing an online plat­form for free cat­a­logues — and not just the Get­ty’s, but those of any art insti­tu­tion.

renoir catalogue

 

You can access the first set of art cat­a­logues released under the OSCI ini­tia­tive here. As you can see, where the Get­ty goes, oth­er insti­tu­tions fol­low: The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go has released cat­a­logues on the work of Mon­et and Renoir. The Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sack­ler Gallery has a cat­a­logue on The World of the Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Book, which sits nice­ly along­side LAC­MA’s cat­a­logue on South­east Asian Art. Oth­er titles include Dutch Paint­ings of the Sev­en­teenth Cen­tu­ry from the Nation­al Gallery of Art; The Rauschen­berg Research Project from SFMOMA; Dis­cov­er the Chi­nese Paint­ing & Cal­lig­ra­phy Col­lec­tion at the Seat­tle Art Muse­um; The Tates’s The Cam­den Town Group in Con­text; and the Liv­ing Col­lec­tions Cat­a­logue from the Walk­er Art Cen­ter.

japanese illustrated books

You can learn more about the project, its devel­op­ment, and its poten­tial in the short Get­ty video, “The Future of Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing in Muse­ums.” Do note that, while you can, of course, view this wealth of cat­a­logues on a com­put­er, you’ll want to use a tablet for the opti­mized expe­ri­ence. And the more the OCSI ini­tia­tive devel­ops, the rich­er a read­ing expe­ri­ence you’ll have on any device; it not only pro­vides users detailed art images, but also the options to “over­lay them with con­ser­va­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion, dis­cov­er schol­ar­ly essays in easy-to-read for­mats, take notes in the mar­gins that can be stored for lat­er use, and export cita­tions to their desk­tops.” And thus yet anoth­er unex­pect­ed ben­e­fit of the inter­net emerges: we are all art his­to­ri­ans now.

1045_Tate_OSCI_iphone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

The Get­ty Adds Anoth­er 77,000 Images to its Open Con­tent Archive

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intel­li­gent Art Appre­ci­a­tion Guide

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

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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The Red Menace: A Striking Gallery of Anti-Communist Posters, Ads, Comic Books, Magazines & Films

in Art, History, Politics | November 18th, 2014

Cold-War-Ads-The-Red-Menace

By its very nature, pro­pa­gan­da dis­torts the truth or tells out­right lies. It tar­gets our basest impulses—fear and anger, flight or fight. While works of pure pro­pa­gan­da may pre­tend to make log­i­cal argu­ments, they elim­i­nate nuance and over­sim­pli­fy com­pli­cat­ed issues to the point of car­i­ca­ture. These gen­er­al ten­den­cies hold true in every case, but nowhere, per­haps, is this gross exag­ger­a­tion and fear mon­ger­ing more evi­dent than in times of war.

Socialism 1909

And while we’ve all seen our share of wartime pro­pa­gan­da, we may be less famil­iar with the decades-long pro­pa­gan­da war the U.S. and West­ern Europe waged against social­ism and Com­mu­nism, even decades before the Cold War era. It may sur­prise you to learn that this offen­sive began even before the start of World War One, as you can see above in a British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty poster from 1909.

Russian anti-Communist 1918

Rep­re­sent­ing social­ism as an ape-like demon stran­gling some sort of god­dess of “pros­per­i­ty,” this strik­ing piece of poster art sets the tone for almost all of the anti-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da to come in the wake of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. At least since this ear­ly graph­ic sal­vo, Com­mu­nists and social­ists have gen­er­al­ly been depict­ed as ter­ri­fy­ing mon­sters. See, for exam­ple, an ear­ly, post-WWI exam­ple of Russ­ian anti-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da above, por­tray­ing the Com­mu­nist threat as an apoc­a­lyp­tic horse­man of death.

German anti-Communist 1919

Norwegian anti-Communist

As the per­ceived threat increased, so too did the scale of the mon­strous car­i­ca­tures. In the post-WWI era Ger­man and Nor­we­gian posters above, Godzil­la-sized Com­mu­nists lay waste to entire cities. Below, in “Bol­she­vism Unmasked,” an exam­ple from the Sec­ond World War, the skele­tal Com­mu­nist destroy­er strad­dles the entire globe.

Bolshevism Unmasked

Occa­sion­al­ly the racial dimen­sions of these depic­tions were explic­it. More often, they were strong­ly implied. But a 1953 Cold War exam­ple below is par­tic­u­lar­ly unsub­tle. Show­ing a scene lit­er­al­ly right out of a schlocky Para­mount hor­ror film, fea­tur­ing actress Janet Logan, the text tells us, “In case the Com­mu­nists should con­quer, our women would be help­less beneath the boots of the Asi­at­ic Rus­sians.” At the top of this rather lurid piece of agit-prop, we’re also told that “many Amer­i­can men would be ster­il­ized” should Rus­sia win the “next world war.”

If Russia Should Win

In the 50s and 60s, pop cul­ture media like film and com­ic books lent them­selves par­tic­u­lar­ly well to anti-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da, and they were exploit­ed relent­less­ly by gov­ern­ment agen­cies, pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies, and cor­po­ra­tions. Films like I Mar­ried a Com­mu­nist (below) and The Red Men­ace (top), both from 1949, offered sen­sa­tion­al­ized pulpy takes on the red scare.

I-Married-a-Communist

In these peak Cold War decades, anti-Com­mu­nist sen­ti­ment flour­ished as the U.S.’s for­mer ally the Sovi­et Union became its pri­ma­ry ene­my. Com­ic books pro­vid­ed the per­fect plat­form for the broad strokes of anti-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da. As psy­chi­a­trist Fredric Wertham waged war against the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of com­ic books, adver­tis­ers and the gov­ern­ment found them increas­ing­ly effec­tive at spread­ing mes­sages. “If there was any enti­ty that believed in the pow­er of com­ic books to indoc­tri­nate and instruct as Wertham did,” writes Greg Beato at Rea­son, “it was the U.S. gov­ern­ment.”

Is This Tomorrow?

But pri­vate enti­ties did their share in the com­ic book war against Com­mu­nism as well. Wit­ness a par­tic­u­lar­ly wild exam­ple, Is This Tomor­row?, above. Pub­lished by the “Cat­e­chet­i­cal Guild Edu­ca­tion­al Soci­ety” in St. Paul, MN, this 1947 com­ic impli­cates gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of busi­ness, social wel­fare pro­grams, anti-reli­gious sen­ti­ment, and “peo­ple giv­ing up their sil­ly ideas about ‘sacred­ness’ of life” in a fiendish­ly orches­trat­ed plot to take over Amer­i­ca. Work­ers who embrace Com­mu­nist doc­trine are lit­tle more than dupes and pawns. You can read the whole fever­ish sce­nario here.

red menace anti soviet propaganda 3

These car­toon scare tac­tics may seem out­landish, but of course we know that red scare pro­pa­gan­da had real effects on the lives and liveli­hoods of real Amer­i­cans, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the arts and acad­e­mia. Free­think­ing, left-lean­ing cre­ative types and intel­lec­tu­als have long been tar­gets of anti-Com­mu­nist para­noia. The Amer­i­can Legion Mag­a­zine cov­er above illus­trates the fear—one still very preva­lent now—that col­lege pro­fes­sors were bent on cor­rupt­ing young, mal­leable minds. “Par­ents,” the mag­a­zine states, “can rid cam­pus­es of com­mu­nists who cloak them­selves in ‘aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom.’” At the height of the red scare, many col­lege pro­fes­sors, like Stan­ley Moore at Reed Col­lege, were dragged before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee and sum­mar­i­ly fired.

face-communism

More con­fi­dent, it seems, than the pro­pa­gan­da of pre­vi­ous decades, the Cold War vari­ety shrunk the Com­mu­nist threat back to human dimen­sions. But Com­mu­nists were no less mon­strous than before—only more insid­i­ous. They looked like your neigh­bors, your co-work­ers, and your chil­dren’s teacher. Instead of pur­vey­ors of brute force, they were depict­ed as devi­ous manip­u­la­tors who used ide­o­log­i­cal machi­na­tions to per­vert democ­ra­cy and crip­ple cap­i­tal­ism. As in the Amer­i­can Legion col­lege pro­fes­sor cov­er sto­ry, edu­ca­tion was often posed as the cul­tur­al bat­tle­field on which—as the heat­ed Canadair ad above states—“Communism could take the citadel from with­in” by spread­ing “doubts about the old ways” and insin­u­at­ing “ideas of athe­ism, reg­i­men­ta­tion and false ide­al­ism.”

Cold-War-Ads-After-Total-War

Post-WWII, of course, the great­est threat was not a full-scale invasion—it was total nuclear anni­hi­la­tion. It was a grim possibility—as Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove satir­i­cal­ly point­ed out—in which no one would win. Web Urban­ist points us toward one par­tic­u­lar­ly chill­ing and dis­hon­est piece of pro­pa­gan­da dis­trib­uted by the gov­ern­ment. In the poster above, we are assured that “After total war can come total liv­ing.” Unless the hap­py cou­ple is gaz­ing out over a man­i­cured sub­urb in the after­life, this scene of “total liv­ing” post-nuclear war is absurd giv­en the strat­e­gy of Mutu­al­ly Assured Destruc­tion. Nev­er­the­less, what the poster depicts is an ana­logue of the Sovi­ets’ total­i­tar­i­an ethos—it’s a future of total ide­o­log­i­cal puri­ty, in which the Earth has been cleansed of the hulk­ing mon­strous hordes of Com­mu­nism, as well as, pre­sum­ably, the cryp­to-Com­mu­nist teach­ers, artists, intel­lec­tu­als, and bureau­crats who threat­en from with­in.

via Web Urban­ist/io9/Kuriosi­tas

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of How Boot­legged Hol­ly­wood Movies Helped Defeat Com­mu­nism in Roma­nia

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

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