Walt Disney Creates a Frank Animation That Teaches High School Kids All About VD (1973)

in Animation, Education, Health, Life, Psychology | February 24th, 2017

The com­i­cal­ly plain­spo­ken, tough-guy sergeant is a heav­en sent assign­ment for char­ac­ter actors.

Think R. Lee Ermey in Full Met­al Jack­et…

Louis Gos­set Jr. in An Offi­cer and a Gen­tle­man…

Even Stripes’  War­ren Oates.

Keenan Wynn, who strove to keep Amer­i­ca safe from “devi­at­ed pre­verts” in 1964’s Dr. Strangelove, was award­ed the role of a life­time nine years lat­er, when Dis­ney Stu­dios was seek­ing vocal tal­ent for VD Attack Plan, above, a 16-minute ani­ma­tion intend­ed to teach high school­ers about the scourge of vene­re­al dis­ease.

Wynn (son of Ed) threw him­self into the part with gus­to, imbu­ing his bad­ly-com­plect­ed, Kaiser-hel­met­ed germ com­man­der with the sort of straight-talk­ing charis­ma rarely seen in high school Health class.

A risky maneu­ver, giv­en that Viet­nam-era teens did not share their parent’s generation’s respect for mil­i­tary author­i­ty and VD Attack Plan was the first edu­ca­tion­al short specif­i­cal­ly aimed at the high school audi­ence. Pri­or to that, such films were geared toward sol­diers. (Dis­ney wad­ed into those waters in 1944, with the train­ing film, A Few Quick Facts No. 7—Venereal Dis­ease, the same year Mick­ey Mouse appeared in LOOK mag­a­zine, wag­ing war on gon­or­rhea with sul­fa drugs.

Gon­or­rhea was well rep­re­sent­ed in the Wynn’s Con­ta­gion Corps. The ranks were fur­ther swelled by Syphilis. Both pla­toons were out­fit­ted with para­mil­i­tary style berets.

The Sarge pumped them up for the com­ing sneak attack by urg­ing them to maim or bet­ter yet, kill their human ene­my. Shaky recruits were reas­sured that Igno­rance, Fear, and Shame would have their backs.

Scriptwriter Bill Bosche had quite the knack for iden­ti­fy­ing what sort of sug­ar would make the med­i­cine go down. The Sarge inti­mates that only a few of the afflict­ed are “man enough” to inform their part­ners, and while Igno­rance and Shame cause the major­i­ty to put their faith in inef­fec­tu­al folk reme­dies, the “smart ones” seek treat­ment.

Ele­men­tary psy­chol­o­gy, but effec­tu­al nonethe­less.

Today’s view­ers can’t help but note that HIV and AIDS had yet to assert their fear­some hold.

On the oth­er hand, the Sarge’s mat­ter of fact deliv­ery regard­ing the poten­tial for same sex trans­mis­sion comes as a pleas­ant sur­prise. His pri­ma­ry objec­tive is to set the record straight. No, birth con­trol pills won’t pro­tect you from con­tract­ing the clap. But don’t waste time wor­ry­ing about pick­ing it up from pub­lic toi­let seats, either.

A word of cau­tion to those plan­ning to watch the film over break­fast, there are some tru­ly gnarly graph­ic pho­tos of rash­es, sores, and skin erup­tions. Help­ful to teens seek­ing straight dope on their wor­ri­some symp­toms. Less so for any­one try­ing to enjoy their break­fast links sans the specter of burn­ing uri­na­tion.

So here’s to the sergeants of the sil­ver screen, and the hard­work­ing actors who embod­ied them, even those whose cre­ations resem­bled Pillsbury’s Fun­ny Face drink mix mas­cots. Let’s do as the Sarge says, and make every day V‑D Day!

VD Attack Plan will be added to the ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City next week. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Free Short Course on How Pixar Uses Physics to Make Its Effects

in Animation, Film, Technology | February 24th, 2017

A new com­put­er-ani­mat­ed spec­ta­cle that makes us rethink the rela­tion­ship between imag­i­na­tion and tech­nol­o­gy seems, now, to come out every few months. Audi­ences have grown used to var­i­ous com­put­er ani­ma­tion stu­dios all com­pet­ing to wow them, but not so long ago the very notion of enter­tain­ing ani­ma­tion made with com­put­ers sound­ed like sci­ence fic­tion. All that changed in the mid-1980s when a young ani­ma­tor named John Las­seter breathed life into the CGI stars of such now sim­ple-look­ing but then rev­o­lu­tion­ary shorts as The Adven­tures of André and Wal­ly B. and Luxo Jr., the lat­ter being the first inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion by a cer­tain Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios.

We know Pixar today as the out­fit respon­si­ble for Toy Sto­ry, The Incred­i­bles, WALL‑E, and oth­er ground­break­ing com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­tures, each one more impres­sive than the last. How do they do it? Why, with ever-larg­er and more high­ly skilled cre­ative and tech­no­log­i­cal teams, of course, all of whom work atop a basic foun­da­tion laid by Las­seter and his pre­de­ces­sors in the art of com­put­er ani­ma­tion, in the search for answers to one ques­tion: how can we get these dig­i­tal machines to con­vinc­ing­ly sim­u­late our world?

After all, even imag­i­nary char­ac­ters must emote, move around, and bump into one anoth­er with con­vic­tion, and do it in a medi­um of light, wind, water, and much else at that, all ulti­mate­ly under­gird­ed by the laws of physics.

Thanks to Pixar and their com­pe­ti­tion, not a few mem­bers of the past cou­ple gen­er­a­tions have grown up dream­ing of mas­ter­ing com­put­er ani­ma­tion them­selves. Now, in part­ner­ship with online edu­ca­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion Khan Acad­e­my, they have a place to start: Pixar in a Box, a series of short inter­ac­tive cours­es on how to “ani­mate bounc­ing balls, build a swarm of robots, and make vir­tu­al fire­works explode,” which vivid­ly demon­strates that “the sub­jects you learn in school — math, sci­ence, com­put­er sci­ence, and human­i­ties — are used every day to cre­ate amaz­ing movies.” The effects course gets deep­er into the nit­ty-grit­ty of just how com­put­er ani­ma­tors have found ways of tak­ing real phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na and “break­ing them down into mil­lions of tiny par­ti­cles and con­trol­ling them using com­put­er pro­gram­ming.”

It all comes down to devel­op­ing and using par­ti­cle sys­tems, pro­grams designed to repli­cate the motion of the real par­ti­cles that make up the phys­i­cal world. “Using par­ti­cles is a sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of real physics,” says Pixar Effects Tech­ni­cal Direc­tor Matt Wong, “but it’s an effec­tive tool for artists. The more par­ti­cles you use, the clos­er you get to real physics. Most of our sim­u­la­tions require mil­lions and mil­lions of par­ti­cles to cre­ate believ­able water,” for instance, which requires a lev­el of com­put­ing pow­er scarce­ly imag­in­able in 1982, when Pixar’s own effects artist Bill Reeves (who appears in the one of these videos) first used a par­ti­cle sys­tem for a visu­al effect in Star Trek II. These effects have indeed come a long way, but as any­one who takes this course will sus­pect, com­put­er ani­ma­tion has only begun to show us the worlds it can real­ize.

For more Pixar/Khan Acad­e­my cours­es, please see the items in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my Offer a Free Online Course on Sto­ry­telling

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Ani­ma­tions from Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling … Makes for an Addic­tive Par­lor Game

Free Online Physics Cours­es

A Rare Look Inside Pixar Stu­dios

The Beau­ty of Pixar

The First 3D Dig­i­tal Film Cre­at­ed by Ed Cat­mull, Co-Founder of Pixar (1970)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Earth, a Landmark of Soviet Cinema (1930)

in Film | February 24th, 2017

Today we’re adding to our list of Free Movies a 1930 Sovi­et silent film by direc­tor Alexan­der Dovzhenko. It’s called Earth, and it’s the third install­ment in Dovzhenko’s “Ukraine Tril­o­gy.”

When The Guardian cre­at­ed its list of the Top 10 Silent Movies of all time, it put Earth in the #9 slot. About the film writer Pamela Hutchin­son said:

Earth, capped by that avowed­ly sec­u­lar title, is a lyri­cal, car­nal movie about birth, death, sex and rebel­lion. Offi­cial­ly, this Sovi­et-era Ukrain­ian silent is a paean to col­lec­tive farm­ing, craft­ed around a fam­i­ly dra­ma, but its direc­tor, Alexan­der Dovzhenko, was a born rene­gade, for whom plots were far less impor­tant than poet­ry…

Earth is the final part of Dovzhenko’s silent tril­o­gy (fol­low­ing the nation­al­ist fan­ta­sy Zvenig­o­ra (1928) and the avant-garde anti-war film Arse­nal (1929), and is brim­ming with exu­ber­ant youth, but haunt­ed by the shad­ow of death.…

Sketched as trib­ute to the boons of col­lec­tivi­sa­tion, but released as those schemes were falling out of favour, Earth was con­demned on its home turf on polit­i­cal grounds. It was also snipped by cen­sors who object­ed to the nudi­ty, and the infa­mous scene in which farm­ers uri­nate into their trac­tor’s radi­a­tor. But while there was dis­may and cen­sure in the Sovi­et Union, crit­ics else­where were over­awed…

It’s the lat­ter impres­sion that endures. Dovzhenko’s sym­bol­ism is both rich and auda­cious. His scope com­pris­es vast pas­toral land­scapes, and inti­mate fleshy naked­ness. Per­haps its most cel­e­brat­ed sequence is the mag­nif­i­cent open­ing scene: the painful coun­ter­point between a dying man, his infant grand­chil­dren and the burst­ing fruit of his orchard. This is liv­ing cin­e­ma, as refresh­ing and vital as the film’s own cli­mac­tic down­pour.

You can watch Earth above, and find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Silent Films, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Named the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch Sovi­et Avant-Garde Com­posers Cre­ate Syn­the­sized Music with Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions (1934)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

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You Can Have Your Ashes Turned Into a Playable Vinyl Record, When Your Day Comes

in Life, Music | February 23rd, 2017

Even in death we are only lim­it­ed by our imag­i­na­tion in how we want to go out. There are now ways to turn our corpse into a tree, or have our ash­es shot into space, or press­ing our ash­es into dia­monds–I believe Super­man is involved in that last one. And now for the music lover, a com­pa­ny called And Viny­ly will press your ash­es into a playable vinyl record.

You like that pun­ny com­pa­ny name? There’s more: the busi­ness lets the dear depart­ed to “Live on from beyond the groove.” Hear that groan? That’s the deceased lit­er­al­ly spin­ning in their grave…on a turntable.

The UK-based com­pa­ny has been around since 2009, when Jason Leach launched it “just for fun” at first. But a lot of peo­ple liked the idea and have kept him in busi­ness.

It will cost, how­ev­er. The basic ser­vice costs around $4,000, which gets you 30 copies of the record, all of which con­tain the ash­es. How­ev­er, you can­not use copy­right-pro­tect­ed music to fill up the 12 min­utes per side, so no “Free Bird” or “We Are the Cham­pi­ons,” unfor­tu­nate­ly. But you can put any­thing else: a voice record­ing, or the sounds of nature, or com­plete silence. For an addi­tion­al fee, you can hire musi­cians through the com­pa­ny to record a track or tracks for you.

Oth­er extras include cov­er art either sup­plied by the deceased or their fam­i­ly or paint­ed by James Hague of the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery in Lon­don and/or street artist Paul Insect; extra copies to be dis­trib­uted world­wide through record shops (has any­one seen one? Let us know.); and a £10,000 “FUNer­al,” where your record will be played at your funer­al, sur­round­ed by loved ones.

Jok­ing aside, the ser­vice can pro­vide com­fort and a mem­o­ry trig­ger for those left behind. The above video, “Hear­ing Madge” is a short doc about a son who took record­ings of his moth­er and used And Viny­ly to make a record out of them. It’s sweet.

“I’m sure a lot of peo­ple think that it’s creepy, a lot of peo­ple think it’s sac­ri­le­gious,” the man says. “But I know my moth­er wouldn’t have. She would’ve thought it was a hoot.”

Jason Leach, a musi­cian and vinyl col­lec­tor him­self, talks of the imme­di­a­cy of sound and what it means to many.

“Sound is vibrat­ing you, the room, and it’s actu­al­ly mov­ing the air around you,” he says. “And that’s what’s so pow­er­ful about hear­ing someone’s voice on a record. They’re actu­al­ly mov­ing the air and for me that’s pow­er­ful.”

via Men­tal Floss/Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Watch Carl Sagan’s “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn” Become the First Vinyl Record Played in Space, Cour­tesy of Jack White

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Bertrand Russell Writes an Artful Letter, Stating His Refusal to Debate British Fascist Leader Oswald Mosley (1962)

in History, Letters | February 23rd, 2017

Image by Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Chang­ing the minds of oth­ers has nev­er count­ed among human­i­ty’s eas­i­est tasks, and it seems only to have become an ever-stiffer chal­lenge as his­to­ry has ground along. Increas­ing­ly many, as Yale pro­fes­sor David Bromwich recent­ly argued in the Lon­don Review of Books, “have had no prac­tice in using words to influ­ence peo­ple unlike them­selves. That is an art that can be lost. It depends on a quan­tum of acci­den­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is miss­ing in a life of organ­ised con­tacts.” We might find our­selves in rea­son­ably fruit­ful debates with basi­cal­ly like-mind­ed friends, acquain­tances, and strangers on the inter­net, but can we ever con­vince, or be con­vinced by, some­one tru­ly dif­fer­ent from us?

Bertrand Rus­sell doubt­ed it. In 1962, long before the struc­tures of the inter­net allowed us to build tighter echo cham­bers than ever before, the Nobel-win­ning philoso­pher “received a series of let­ters from an unlike­ly cor­re­spon­dent — Sir Oswald Mosley, who had found­ed the British Union of Fas­cists thir­ty years ear­li­er,” writes Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va.

“Mosley was invit­ing — or, rather, pro­vok­ing — Rus­sell to engage in a debate, in which he could per­suade the moral philoso­pher of the mer­its of fas­cism.” Even at the age of 89, with lit­tle time and much else to do, Rus­sell declined with the utmost force and clar­i­ty in a piece of cor­re­spon­dence fea­tured on Let­ters of Note:

Dear Sir Oswald,

Thank you for your let­ter and for your enclo­sures. I have giv­en some thought to our recent cor­re­spon­dence. It is always dif­fi­cult to decide on how to respond to peo­ple whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repel­lent to one’s own. It is not that I take excep­tion to the gen­er­al points made by you but that every ounce of my ener­gy has been devot­ed to an active oppo­si­tion to cru­el big­otry, com­pul­sive vio­lence, and the sadis­tic per­se­cu­tion which has char­ac­terised the phi­los­o­phy and prac­tice of fas­cism.

I feel oblig­ed to say that the emo­tion­al uni­vers­es we inhab­it are so dis­tinct, and in deep­est ways opposed, that noth­ing fruit­ful or sin­cere could ever emerge from asso­ci­a­tion between us.

I should like you to under­stand the inten­si­ty of this con­vic­tion on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I val­ue in human expe­ri­ence and human achieve­ment.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

Bertrand Rus­sell

Rus­sell passed on eight years lat­er, in 1970, and Mosley a decade there­after. “His final mes­sage to the British peo­ple appeared in a let­ter to the New States­man writ­ten only a week ear­li­er,” remem­bers jour­nal­ist Hugh Pur­cell in that news­pa­per. It con­cerned an arti­cle’s descrip­tion of the “Olympia ral­ly,” the 1934 deba­cle that lost the British Union of Fas­cists much of what pub­lic sup­port it enjoyed. “The largest audi­ence ever seen at that time assem­bled to fill the Olympia hall and hear the speech,” Mosley insist­ed. “A small minor­i­ty deter­mined by con­tin­u­ous shout­ing to pre­vent my speech being heard. After due warn­ing our stew­ards removed with their bare hands men among whom were some armed with such weapons as razors and knives. The audi­ence were then able to lis­ten to a speech which last­ed for near­ly two hours.”

The New States­men, print­ing Mosley’s let­ter posthu­mous­ly, ran it under this intro­duc­tion: “Through­out his life he was intent on per­suad­ing peo­ple that their view of his­to­ry was mis­tak­en.” Despite his unceas­ing efforts, he ulti­mate­ly per­suad­ed few — and it would hard­ly have required as keen an observ­er as Rus­sell to see that some­one like Mosley cer­tain­ly was­n’t about to let him­self be per­suad­ed by any­one else.

via Let­ters of Note/Brain Pick­ings and The Bertrand Rus­sell Archives, McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Lis­ten to ‘Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian,’ Bertrand Russell’s Pow­er­ful Cri­tique of Reli­gion (1927)

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Did Nietzsche Become the Most Misunderstood & Bastardized Philosopher?: A Video from Slate Explains

in Philosophy | February 23rd, 2017

Is there a more mis­un­der­stood philoso­pher than Friedrich Niet­zsche? Grant­ed, the ques­tion makes two assump­tions: 1) That peo­ple read phi­los­o­phy 2) That peo­ple read Friedrich Niet­zsche. Per­haps nei­ther of these things is wide­ly true. Many peo­ple get their phi­los­o­phy from film and tele­vi­sion: Good Will Hunt­ing, True Detec­tive, Com­ing to Amer­i­ca.… There’s noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with that. I don’t read med­ical books. Most of my knowl­edge of med­i­cine comes from hos­pi­tal dra­mas. (If you ever hear me make unsourced med­ical claims, please remind me of this.)

But back to Niet­zsche…. If few peo­ple read phi­los­o­phy in gen­er­al and Niet­zsche in par­tic­u­lar, why is his name so well-known, why are his ideas so bad­ly man­gled? Because some of the peo­ple who read a lit­tle Niet­zsche write films and tele­vi­sion shows. In many of them, he emerges as a twist­ed nihilist with no scru­ples and lit­tle regard for human life. In the most infa­mous case of Niet­zsche-twist­ing, the philosopher’s sis­ter extract­ed from his books what she want­ed them to say, which sound­ed very much like the ideas of the Nazis who lat­er quot­ed him.

Nietzsche’s mas­tery of the apho­rism and his fierce­ly polem­i­cal nature have made him supreme­ly quotable: “God is dead,” “What does not kill us, makes us stronger.” And so on. Bring the con­text of these state­ments to bear and they sound noth­ing like what we have imag­ined. The video above from Shon Arieh-Lerer and Daniel Hub­bard explains how Niet­zsche became “the most absurd­ly bas­tardized philoso­pher in Hol­ly­wood.” It leads with a telling­ly hilar­i­ous clip from The Sopra­nos in which A.J. calls the philoso­pher “Niche” and Tony tells him, “even if God is dead, you’re still gonna kiss his ass.”

We might half expect Tony to embrace the Ger­man philoso­pher. The way Nietzsche’s been inter­pret­ed seems to jus­ti­fy the prin­ci­ples of sociopaths. This should not be so. “In real­i­ty,” the video’s pro­duc­ers write at Slate, “Niet­zsche was a very sub­tle thinker.” The two biggest mis­con­cep­tions about Niet­zsche, that he was a nihilist and an anti-Semi­te, get his phi­los­o­phy griev­ous­ly wrong. Niet­zsche “wrote let­ters to his fam­i­ly and friends telling them to stop being anti-Semit­ic” (and call­ing anti-Semi­tes “abort­ed fetus­es.”) He famous­ly broke off his intense friend­ship with Richard Wag­n­er in part because of Wagner’s anti-Semi­tism. His work is not kind to Judaism, but he rages against anti-Semi­tism.

Far from endors­ing nihilist ideas, Niet­zsche feared their rise and con­se­quences. So how did he become “a dar­ling of Nazis and sad teenagers?” The car­i­ca­ture arose in part because read­ers from his day to ours have, like Tony Sopra­no, found his com­plete and total rejec­tion of Judeo-Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty too shock­ing to get beyond, mis­char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as tan­ta­mount to the rejec­tion of all human val­ues. On the con­trary, Niet­zsche argued for the “reval­u­a­tion” of val­ues, “the exact oppo­site of what one might expect,” he wrote,” not at all sad and gloomy, but much more like a new and bare­ly describ­able type of light, hap­pi­ness, relief, amuse­ment, encour­age­ment, dawn.”

Of course, the fact that Nietzsche—or a butchered ver­sion thereof—was co-opt­ed by the Nazis did more to sul­ly his name than any­thing he actu­al­ly wrote. “By the time Niet­zsche made his way into Amer­i­can pop cul­ture,” says Arieh-Lerer, “we were pre­dis­posed to get­ting him wrong.” Niet­zsche may have had some strange qua­si-mys­ti­cal con­cep­tions, and he believed in a def­i­nite hier­ar­chy of cul­tures, but he was not a racist or a psy­chopath. He has been as mis­un­der­stood as many of the sad teenagers who love him. Per­haps you will be moved to read him for your­self after see­ing his reha­bil­i­ta­tion above. If so, we can point you toward online edi­tions of near­ly all of his books here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Niet­zsche Real­ly Mean When He Wrote “God is Dead”?

Down­load Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Mod­ern Thought (1960)

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

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

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Watch Leonard Bernstein Conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Using Only His Eyebrows

in Music, Random | February 23rd, 2017

Per­haps you’ll recall the episode from Sein­feld when Bob Cobb, a con­duc­tor for The Police Orches­tra, insists that every­one call him “mae­stro”–and only “mae­stro.” The pre­ten­tious­ness of the sug­ges­tion makes for some good com­e­dy, that’s for sure.

But occa­sion­al­ly the hon­orif­ic title is fit­ting. Here’s one such instance. Above, watch Leonard Bern­stein con­duct the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, lead­ing them through Haydn’s Sym­pho­ny No. 88 … with only his eye­brows and small facial ges­tures. No baton, thank you. A mae­stro indeed.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Intro­duc­tion to the Great Amer­i­can Art Form (1956)

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

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“Stop It and Just DO”: Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Advice on Overcoming Creative Blocks, Written by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

in Art, Creativity, Letters | February 22nd, 2017


A quick fyi: this video is a lit­tle not safe for work.

You know you want to cre­ate some­thing, but how on Earth to get it out of your mind and into real­i­ty? Some­times you sim­ply can’t see the way for­ward, a sit­u­a­tion in which every cre­ator finds them­selves soon­er or lat­er. When the sculp­tor Eva Hesse hit a cre­ative block in 1965, she wrote of her prob­lem to a close friend, the con­cep­tu­al artist Sol Lewitt. He emphat­i­cal­ly sug­gest­ed that she “just stop think­ing, wor­ry­ing, look­ing over your shoul­der,” and fur­ther­more that she stop

won­der­ing, doubt­ing, fear­ing, hurt­ing, hop­ing for some easy way out, strug­gling, grasp­ing, con­fus­ing, itch­ing, scratch­ing, mum­bling, bum­bling, grum­bling, hum­bling, stum­bling, num­bling, ram­bling, gam­bling, tum­bling, scum­bling, scram­bling, hitch­ing, hatch­ing, bitch­ing, moan­ing, groan­ing, hon­ing, bon­ing, horse-shit­ting, hair-split­ting, nit-pick­ing, piss-trick­ling, nose stick­ing, ass-goug­ing, eye­ball-pok­ing, fin­ger-point­ing, alley­way-sneak­ing, long wait­ing, small step­ping, evil-eye­ing, back-scratch­ing, search­ing, perch­ing, besmirch­ing, grind­ing, grind­ing, grind­ing away at your­self. Stop it and just

DO

You can read Lewit­t’s reply in full, which offers much more col­or­ful advice and sup­port­ing ver­biage besides (as well as a far bold­er “DO” than HTML can ren­der), at Let­ters of Note. Though per­son­al­ly tai­lored to Hesse and her dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ties, Lewit­t’s sug­ges­tions also show the poten­tial for wider appli­ca­tion: “Try and tick­le some­thing inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ ” “Don’t wor­ry about cool, make your own uncool.” “If you fear, make it work for you — draw & paint your fear & anx­i­ety.” “Prac­tice being stu­pid, dumb, unthink­ing, emp­ty.” “Try to do some BAD work — the worst you can think of and see what hap­pens but main­ly relax and let every­thing go to hell — you are not respon­si­ble for the world — you are only respon­si­ble for your work — so DO IT.”

Though all this has plen­ty of impact on the page, it has an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind when per­formed by actor (and cham­pi­on let­ter-read­er) Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, as seen and heard in the Let­ters Live video above. Putting on a not-over­done New York accent, the Eng­lish star of Sher­lock and The Imi­ta­tion Game deliv­ers with all nec­es­sary force Lewit­t’s advice to “leave the ‘world’ and ‘ART’ alone and also quit fondling your ego,” to “emp­ty your mind and con­cen­trate on what you are doing,” to know “that you don’t have to jus­ti­fy your work — not even to your­self.” Be warned that this cre­ative coach­ing ses­sion does gets a lit­tle NSFW at times, but then, so do some of the finest works of art — and so do the truths we need to hear to make them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Famous Writ­ers Deal With Writer’s Block: Their Tips & Tricks

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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