The Filmmaking Craft of David Fincher Demystified in Two Video Essays

in Film | April 8th, 2015

David Finch­er is an auteur in the same way that Alfred Hitch­cock is — you can tell a Finch­er film from see­ing a sin­gle frame. His shots are col­ored with inky blacks and sick­ly flu­o­res­cent greens and they are always com­po­si­tion­al­ly per­fect. His cam­era moves with an eerie dis­em­bod­ied smooth­ness that makes a Kubrick film seem down right warm and invit­ing. His movies mine the murky recess­es of the human con­di­tion; you are more like­ly to see a gris­ly mur­der in a Finch­er movie than a pas­sion­ate kiss. Even movies that have a rel­a­tive­ly low body count, like The Social Net­work, are imbued with a dis­tinct­ly Finch­er­sque grim­ness.

A grow­ing num­ber of crit­ics are start­ing to pay atten­tion. Above you can see Tony Zhou illus­trate the director’s styl­is­tic restraint in a video essay called “And the Oth­er Way is Wrong.” Finch­er him­self once said, “They know you can do any­thing so the ques­tion is what don’t you do, not what do you do.” And Zhou ele­gant­ly shows what Finch­er does not do, which is such sta­ples of Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing as hand-held cam­eras and close ups. He likes his cam­era locked down and aloof.

In anoth­er video essay series, Aaron Aradil­las and the great Matt Zoller Seitz focus sim­ply on the open­ings of Fincher’s films. The series starts with Fincher’s first, and most maligned, movie Alien3. Aradil­las and Zoller Seitz argue that the film is dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from the first two Alien films. Rid­ley Scott, direc­tor of Alien, kept the shots long and the edits large­ly invis­i­ble. Finch­er, in con­trast, used fast and jar­ring edits. He start­ed as a music video direc­tor and was still in MTV mode when he made Alien3.

In a lat­er episode on Zodi­ac, arguably his mas­ter­piece, Aradil­las and Zoller Seitz show that Finch­er bril­liant­ly packed the film’s two open­ing sequences with an impres­sive amount of expo­si­tion, set­ting up not just sto­ry ele­ments but also the film’s com­plex, sub­jec­tive point of view.

There are four videos in total in this series with a promise of a fifth. You can watch them all here.

Ear­li­er this week, we showed you Cameron Beyl’s five-part, three-hour Direc­tors Series study of Stan­ley Kubrick. Who is he tack­ling next? Finch­er, of course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Watch Four Iconic Live Performances by Billie Holiday

in Music | April 7th, 2015

Bil­lie Holiday’s name has been in the news late­ly for some rea­sons that remind us of the tragedies she sang about and those she endured. First, there was the sto­ry of the rather appalling­ly tone-deaf PR firm who thought one of Holiday’s most well-known record­ings, “Strange Fruit”—a song about lynch­ing—would make a great name for their brand. Then there were the new details in Johann Hari’s book Chas­ing the Scream of how Hol­i­day was hunt­ed, haunt­ed, and pos­si­bly framed by Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics head Har­ry Anslinger. These sto­ries com­pound the image of Hol­i­day as a trag­ic fig­ure, a casu­al­ty of soci­etal ills and per­son­al demons.

Hol­i­day may have doc­u­ment­ed her trou­bled life in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, but she would have pre­ferred to be remem­bered for her music. Born 100 years ago today, the jazz songstress trans­mut­ed her per­son­al pain into beau­ty; her inter­pre­ta­tions of songs became stan­dards in their own right, and became unique­ly hers.

“God Bless the Child,” above, res­onates with Holiday’s own dif­fi­cult child­hood, shad­owed by neglect and loss, but she deliv­ers it as though all had been for­giv­en and redeemed. She sang through abu­sive rela­tion­ships and addic­tion and some pret­ty shab­by treat­ment by a racist indus­try.

For exam­ple, Bret Pri­mack tells the sto­ry in a Jaz­zTimes arti­cle of the Fox The­atre in Detroit forc­ing Hol­i­day to wear black­face in order to appear on stage with Count Basie’s Orches­tra. As Lady Day her­self remarked of the humil­i­at­ing episode, “There’s no damn busi­ness like show busi­ness. You have to smile to keep from throw­ing up.” Toward the end of her life, in 1956, she gave one of her last of 22 con­certs at Carnegie Hall (see her do her own com­po­si­tion “Fine and Mel­low” above). The rehearsals—wrote New York Times crit­ic Gilbert Mill­stein in the album lin­er notes—“had been desul­to­ry,” her voice “tin­ny and trailed off.” But at show­time, she appeared “poised and smil­ing,” singing “with strength undi­min­ished.” In his lin­er remarks, Nat Hentoff described Holiday’s “assur­ance of phras­ing and into­na­tion” and “an out­go­ing warmth, a pal­pa­ble eager­ness to reach out and touch the audi­ence,” a smile “often light­ly evi­dent on her lips and her eyes.”

In a ret­ro­spec­tive essay, Hentoff refers to the sad fact that “Bil­lie is most remem­bered as a victim—of her­self, of soci­ety” as well as “the myth that, toward the end, Lady invari­ably sound­ed like a cracked husk of what she had been years before.” While it’s cer­tain­ly true that she fell vic­tim to oth­ers’ designs and her own bad judg­ment, she had her share of tri­umphs as well, most of them on the stage. Even in 1959, the year of her death, when her prob­lems with alco­hol had wors­ened to a soon-to-be fatal degree, and her voice had lost some of its vital­i­ty, she per­formed with swag­ger and grace. See her above sing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” in one of her final live appear­ances. Holiday’s short, trag­ic life may have giv­en us plen­ty to talk about, but her mem­o­ry is best pre­served by lis­ten­ing to her sing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Bil­lie Hol­i­day — The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

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

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Rijksmuseum Digitizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Masterpieces by Rembrandt Included!

in Art | April 7th, 2015

rembrandt-sp-as-apostle-paul

We all found it impres­sive when Ams­ter­dam’s Rijksmu­se­um put up 125,000 Dutch works of art online. “Users can explore the entire col­lec­tion, which is hand­i­ly sort­ed by artist, sub­ject, style and even by events in Dutch his­to­ry,” explained Kate Rix in our first post announc­ing it. ” “Not only can users cre­ate their own online gal­leries from select­ed works in the museum’s col­lec­tion, they can down­load Rijksmu­se­um art­work for free to dec­o­rate new prod­ucts.”

Het straatje

But we post­ed that almost two and a half years ago, and you can hard­ly call the Rijksmu­se­um an insti­tu­tion that sits idly by while time pass­es, or indeed does any­thing at all by half mea­sures: think of their cre­ation of Rem­brandt’s Face­book time­line, their com­mis­sion­ing of late Rem­brandt can­vas­es brought to life, or of their accom­mo­da­tion of ter­mi­nal­ly ill patients vis­it­ing one last time.

And so they’ve kept hard at work adding to their dig­i­tal archive, which, as of this writ­ing, offers near­ly 361,000 works of art. This brings them with­in shout­ing dis­tance of hav­ing dou­bled the col­lec­tion in size since we first wrote about it.

George_Hendrik_Breitner_-_Meisje_in_witte_kimono_(Geesje_Kwak)

You want the Dutch Mas­ters? You got ’em. You want Rem­brandt’s Self-por­trait as the Apos­tle Paul? It’s in the archive, right along­side Night Watch. You want Ver­meer’s View of Hous­es in Delft, bet­ter known as The Lit­tle Street? It’s in there too. But don’t stop now; the Rijksmu­se­um has put up a much greater breadth of Dutch art than that. You’ll also find impor­tant Dutch painters you may not have heard so much about before, such as the impres­sion­ist George Hen­drik Bre­it­ner, whose Girl in a White Kimono appears just above. And it even includes high-res­o­lu­tion images of works of art and design in oth­er media, such as Michel de Klerk’s 1918 suite of fur­ni­ture for ‘t Woon­huys, whose arm­chair you see below. Looks almost good enough to sit in, does­n’t it? You can enter the col­lec­tion here,  or search the col­lec­tion here.

skichair

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A Final Wish: Ter­mi­nal­ly Ill Patients Vis­it Rembrandt’s Paint­ings in the Rijksmu­se­um One Last Time

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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 Mad Men Reading List: 25 Revealing Books Read by the Characters on the Show

in Literature, Television | April 7th, 2015

mad men reading list

Image cour­tesy of The New York Pub­lic Library.

The good peo­ple over at the New York Pub­lic Library com­piled a list of books read by the char­ac­ters of Mad Men, which just start­ed the last half of its sev­enth and final sea­son. Over the course of the series, the show’s char­ac­ters drank sev­er­al swim­ming pools worth of cock­tails, engaged in a host of ill-advised illic­it affairs and, on occa­sion, dreamed up a bril­liant adver­tis­ing cam­paign or two. As it turns out, they also read quite a bit.

All the books seem to say some­thing about the inner life of each char­ac­ter. The show’s enig­mat­ic main char­ac­ter, Don Drap­er, favored works like Dante’s Infer­no and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – books that point towards Draper’s series-long down­ward spi­ral. The whiny, inse­cure Pete Camp­bell read Thomas Pynchon’s para­noid clas­sic The Cry­ing of Lot 49. And Bert Coop­er, the aris­to­crat­ic bow-tie sport­ing patri­arch of Ster­ling Coop­er is appar­ent­ly an Ayn Rand fan; he’s seen read­ing Atlas Shrugged ear­ly in the series. You can see the full read­ing list below or here in a beau­ti­ful PDF designed by the NYPL.

A num­ber of the texts list­ed below also appear in our Free eBooks and Free Audio­Books col­lec­tions.

DON DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • EXODUS by Leon Uris (Episode 106 “Baby­lon”)
  • THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe
  • MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY by Frank O’Hara
  • THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkn­er
  • THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD by Ruth Bene­dict
  • THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John Le Carre
  • THE FIXER by Bernard Mala­mud
  • ODDS AGAINST by Dick Fran­cis
  • THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri
  • THE LAST PICTURE SHOW by Lar­ry McMurtry
  • PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth

ROGER STERLING’S PICK:

  • CONFESSIONS OF AN ADVERTISING MAN by David Ogilvy

JOAN HARRIS’S PICK:

  • LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER by D. H. Lawrence

PETE CAMPBELL’S PICKS:

  • THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pyn­chon
  • GOODNIGHT MOON by Mar­garet Wise Brown

BETTY DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • BABYLON REVISITED AND OTHER STORIES by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
  • THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy

LANE PRYCE’S PICK:

  • THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain

HENRY FRANCIS’S PICK:

  • THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

BERT COOPER’S PICK:

  • ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand

SALLY DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gib­bon
  • TWENTY ONE BALLOONS by William Pene Du Bois
  • NANCY DREW: THE CLUE OF THE BLACK KEYS by Car­olyn Keene
  • THE BLACK CAULDRON by Lloyd Alexan­der
  • ROSEMARY’S BABY by Ira Levin

via The New York Pub­lic Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Ernest Hemingway’s List for a Young Writer

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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What It’s Like to Be Color Blind and See Art in Color for the First Time

in Art, Biology, Museums, Science, Technology | April 7th, 2015

We all know that say­ing about walk­ing in anoth­er’s shoes, but what about see­ing through anoth­er’s eye­balls? I’m not talk­ing about per­spec­tive. I’m talk­ing about col­or. As in I see it, and my hus­band does­n’t. At least not the way I do.

His cop­ing mech­a­nism is to chal­lenge me when­ev­er I refer to some­thing as “blue.” To him, it’s grey, or brown, or some oth­er non-blue shade. He wants me to see it that way too. To admit that I am wrong. For my part, I feel it’s impor­tant that the per­son to whom I’m mar­ried acknowl­edge that there’s no way my favorite bowl can be the col­or of cement, no mat­ter what his cone cell recep­tors are telling him.

Per­haps he’d have bet­ter luck ask­ing patient strangers to describe col­or to him, as blind-from-birth film crit­ic Tom­my Edi­son does below. Hmm. Col­or may be more sub­jec­tive than my hus­band’s and my spec­tral stand-offs would sug­gest.

Accord­ing to EnChro­ma, the com­pa­ny that designed and sells the col­or-cor­rect­ing lens­es the onscreen guinea pigs are seen wear­ing in the video up top, an esti­mat­ed 300 mil­lion peo­ple suf­fer from some form of col­or blind­ness. Their glass­es offer some of those three mil­lion a chance at see­ing red in the lit­er­al sense. The video par­tic­i­pants are, not sur­pris­ing­ly, blown away by their first encounter with a Cray­ola-col­ored world.

Hav­ing refreshed myself on the struc­tures of the eye, I took the col­or blind­ness test on EnChro­ma’s web­site. I test­ed nor­mal, hav­ing iden­ti­fied the hid­den (or in my case not-so-hid­den) num­bers in a vari­ety of vir­tu­al mosaics.

My col­or blind friend, Bob, agreed to take it too, pro­vid­ed I muz­zle myself from offer­ing the sort of com­men­tary to which hus­bands are sub­ject­ed. (Whad­daya mean you can’t see it!? It’s bright fuch­sia!!!) He pulled a pret­ty heavy duty protan defi­cien­cy, oth­er­wise known as red-green col­or blind­ness.

Accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er, EnChro­ma glass­es are unlike­ly to col­or his world. The best he could hope for is a slight improve­ment after weeks of wear­ing.

Bum­mer, except that he lives in Chica­go, where the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art offers EnChro­ma Cx loan­ers at the recep­tion desk. Like many such insti­tu­tions, the MCA is active­ly seek­ing ways to improve acces­si­bil­i­ty. (The museum’s col­or blind direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions rec­om­mends hav­ing a look at Mar­tin Creed’s Work No. 1351, a col­or­ful lat­tice in the cafe. See right below.)

Creed_JulyInstall_03

Per­haps Bob will get a peek at some­thing he has­n’t seen before. Like red. Oth­ers will expe­ri­ence a rev­e­la­tion. Mean­while, an insuf­fer­able non-col­or­blind indi­vid­ual such as myself might get an effect akin to an Insta­gram fil­ter. My col­ors will pop.

“Unfair,” say Bob and my hus­band. I have to agree. Should the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art offer col­or-leech­ing glass­es, I will wear them, even if the frames are real­ly ugly. Until then, the video below pro­vides some sense of what those of us who see the full range of col­or aren’t miss­ing.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Por­trait

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

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

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Every Literary Reference Made by Sterling Archer in One Supercut

in Animation, Books, Television | April 6th, 2015

Ser­e­na Bram­ble, the mas­ter­mind behind this super­cut writes, “Ster­ling Archer, the mod­ern take-down of James Bond on Adam Reed’s cult ani­mat­ed show Archer, is many things,” includ­ing a book nerd, “but that last detail has always been a quirk in the show, with lit­er­ary ref­er­ences spout­ed out almost as often as jokes about oral sex.” If you’ve watched the show, you may have caught the ref­er­ences to Chekhov, Tolkien and Orwell, just to name a few. But, in case you did­n’t, Bram­ble’s super­cut gath­ers them togeth­er and shows proof that Archer’s cre­ator indeed had a “tenure as a frus­trat­ed Eng­lish major.” Check it out.

via Indiewire

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Discover the Life & Work of Stanley Kubrick in a Sweeping Three-Hour Video Essay

in Film | April 6th, 2015

For at least fifty years, the work of Stan­ley Kubrick has con­sti­tut­ed an ide­al object of study for seri­ous cinephiles. Now that the tech­no­log­i­cal democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the past decade has allowed some of the most seri­ous cinephiles to become video essay­ists, that study has flow­ered into a host of mini-doc­u­men­taries close­ly exam­in­ing the tech­niques of all of film his­to­ry’s most scru­ti­niz­able auteurs. The sub­field of Kubrick-themed video essay­ism recent­ly reached a new high water­mark with film­mak­er Cameron Beyl’s five-part, three-hour Direc­tors Series study of the man’s life and work.

“Every liv­ing film­mak­er today works under the shad­ow of Stan­ley Kubrick,” says Beyl in his nar­ra­tion toward the end of the series. “His roller-coast­er ride of a career last­ed 45 years and spanned two con­ti­nents, leav­ing four­teen fea­tures and count­less inno­va­tions in its wake.

In mak­ing his films, Kubrick ulti­mate­ly want­ed to change the form of cin­e­ma itself. His explo­ration of alter­na­tive sto­ry struc­tures and new forms of expres­sion result­ed in sev­er­al ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of the craft itself.”

If you want to find out much more about the nature of those ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions, block out the time and watch Beyl’s analy­ses of each peri­od of Kubrick­’s career: the time of his ear­ly inde­pen­dent fea­tures (Fear & Desire, Killer’s Kiss, The Killing), the Kirk Dou­glas years (Paths of Glo­ry and Spar­ta­cus), the Peter Sell­ers come­dies (Loli­ta and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb), the mas­ter­works (2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don, and The Shin­ing), and the final fea­tures (Full Met­al Jack­et and Eyes Wide Shut.)

The project leaves no aspect of Kubrick­’s mas­tery unmen­tioned: his painstak­ing research habits, his much-dis­cussed take-after-take-after-take shoot­ing method on set, his care­ful method of dis­cov­er­ing each film’s form in the edit­ing room, his eager­ness to incor­po­rate new tech­nol­o­gy into his pro­duc­tions, and his fin­ished pic­tures’ simul­ta­ne­ous embod­i­ment and sub­ver­sion of genre. It makes us ask the obvi­ous but seem­ing­ly unan­swer­able ques­tion: who’s the next Stan­ley Kubrick? But Beyl actu­al­ly has an answer, and one that has become the sub­ject of his next series, already in progress: David Finch­er. The direc­tor of The Game, Fight Club, and The Social Net­work has big shoes to fill —  or so he’ll real­ize even more clear­ly if he watch­es the Kubrick series him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Explore the Mas­sive Stan­ley Kubrick Exhib­it at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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 An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: A Fun Primer on How to Strengthen, Not Weaken, Your Arguments

in Books, Philosophy, Politics | April 6th, 2015

bad arguments.jpg

The sci­ence of argu­men­ta­tion can seem com­pli­cat­ed, but in day-to-day terms, it quite often comes down to com­pet­ing emo­tions. Polit­i­cal dis­agree­ments thrive on dis­gust and fear; we shut down our rea­son­ing when we feel stressed or angry; and it is dif­fi­cult to get oppo­nents to hear us, whether they agree or not, if we do not exhib­it any sym­pa­thy for their posi­tion, hard as that may be.

How­ev­er, sub­jects in tests told not to feel any­thing about an issue before view­ing media about it tend to be more sup­port­ive. They’ve had some oppor­tu­ni­ty to access high­er order think­ing skills and to over­ride knee-jerk reac­tions. Most argu­ments take place in the fray—family din­ners, online forum wars—but even in these cas­es, apply­ing the best of our rea­son­ing, before, dur­ing, or after, can put us in bet­ter stead. As Ali Almos­sawi, author of An Illus­trat­ed Book of Bad Argu­ments (read online ver­sion here) puts it in his pref­ace:

… for­mal­iz­ing one’s rea­son­ing [can] lead to use­ful ben­e­fits such as clar­i­ty of thought and expres­sion, objec­tiv­i­ty and greater con­fi­dence. The abil­i­ty to ana­lyze argu­ments also help[s] pro­vide a yard­stick for know­ing when to with­draw from dis­cus­sions that would most like­ly be futile.

Almossawi’s strat­e­gy to mit­i­gate bad, or wast­ed, think­ing comes in the form of an inoc­u­la­tion. He quotes Stephen King, who “describes his expe­ri­ence of read­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly ter­ri­ble nov­el as, ‘the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of a small­pox vac­ci­na­tion.’” Rather than a Ciceron­ian trea­tise on what makes a good argu­ment, Almos­sawi presents us with nine­teen exam­ples of the bad: infor­mal log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es we may be famil­iar with—Appeal to Author­i­ty (below), Cir­cu­lar Rea­son­ing (fur­ther down), Slip­pery Slope (bottom)—as well as many we may not be.

Appeal to Authority

The twist here is in Ale­jan­dro Giraldo’s play­ful illus­tra­tions, and the mem­o­rable exam­ples that fol­low Almossawi’s descrip­tions. Inspired part­ly by “alle­gories such as Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm and part­ly by the humor­ous non­sense of works such as Lewis Carroll’s sto­ries and poems,” the draw­ings are also high­ly rem­i­nis­cent, if not very much inspired by, the baroque car­toons of Tony Mil­lion­aire. The art is rich and full of sur­pris­es; the sam­ple argu­ments sil­ly but effec­tive at mak­ing the point.

Circular Reasoning

The next time you find your­self melt­ing down over a dis­agree­ment, it will like­ly help to take a time out and refresh your­self with this use­ful primer. If noth­ing else, it will give you some insight into the short­com­ings of your own argu­ments, and maybe some mea­sure of when to drop the sub­ject alto­geth­er. As Richard Feynman—quoted in an epi­logue to the book—once remarked, “The first prin­ci­ple is that you must not fool your­self and you are the eas­i­est per­son to fool.”  Find the book online here, or pur­chase a copy here.

Slippery Slope

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A Guide to Log­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es: The “Ad Hominem,” “Straw­man” & Oth­er Fal­lac­i­es Explained in 2‑Minute Videos

Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

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

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