Repairing Willie Nelson’s Trigger: A Good Look at How a Luthier Gets America’s Most Iconic Guitar on the Road Again

Many gui­tarists are of two minds about trib­ute mod­els. In some cas­es, they seem like shame­less cash grabs, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the artist is no longer with us and can’t con­sent to the process. Fender’s “Jimi Hen­drix Stra­to­cast­er” (reg­is­tered trade­mark) is in no way, after all, Jimi Hendrix’s Stra­to­cast­er. His white Strat was a right-hand­ed gui­tar he mod­i­fied him­self, turn­ing it upside down to play as a lefty. Born of neces­si­ty, it was nonethe­less a bril­liant mechan­i­cal inno­va­tion that defined his sound. The mass-mar­ket ver­sion flips every­thing over on a left-hand­ed gui­tar for the more numer­ous righty cus­tomers, under­min­ing the pur­pose of the design, mass-pro­duc­ing Hendrix’s hand­made alter­ations, and turn­ing a one-of-a-kind his­tor­i­cal arti­fact into a com­mod­i­ty.

Fel­low lefty Kurt Cobain’s inge­nious Jag-Stang—a mashup of Fender’s Mus­tang and Jaguar guitars—seems more legit, on the oth­er hand, since Fend­er made pro­to­types for Cobain from a design he him­self sent to the com­pa­ny (or rather from two Polaroids he taped togeth­er). There’s a pro­pri­etary rela­tion­ship here between artist and gui­tar mak­er, a pri­or arrange­ment. We don’t see that rela­tion­ship between anoth­er famous play­er and his guitar’s famous mak­er. Like Hen­drix and Cobain and their Fend­ers, Willie Nel­son has inspired gen­er­a­tions of play­ers to pick up Mar­tin acoustics. But I very much doubt that Mar­tin would ever pro­duce a repli­ca based on Trig­ger, Nelson’s stal­wart clas­si­cal ax, even if such a thing were pos­si­ble.

That’s for the best. Trig­ger is and should remain an entire­ly unique object. It has an aura of its own, much of it ema­nat­ing from a huge hole in the mid­dle of the gui­tar. Like its own­er, Trig­ger is weath­ered and worn, and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able. It has been with Nel­son since he restart­ed his career in Austin after his first bout of Nashville fame, and it rep­re­sents Nelson’s trans­for­ma­tion from tra­di­tion­al croon­er into the out­law trou­ba­dour who emerged in the ear­ly sev­en­ties to change the course of coun­try music. (Read the sto­ry of the man and his gui­tar here.) To real­ly appre­ci­ate Trig­ger’s ragged mys­ter­ies, you don’t need to hear from Mar­tin gui­tars, but from one of the instrument’s elite hostlers, so to speak. Respect­ed luthi­er Mark Erlewine takes care of Trig­ger when it’s at home in Austin and can explain, as he does in the video above, every one of the guitar’s pecu­liar­i­ties.

“There are a num­ber of things wrong with it,” says Erlewine, “but they’re just minor repairs to keep it going.” As for that hole and the craters sur­round­ing it, he seems uncon­cerned. Though it looks like it might cave in at any moment, Erlewine has kept it struc­tural­ly sound. “Willie is not con­cerned about the looks of this gui­tar so much as the playa­bil­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty of it.” How did Trig­ger come to take on its dis­tinc­tive wounds? Not in the way you might expect. Rather than a stage acci­dent or tour mishap, the way these things can hap­pen, Nelson’s gui­tar became dam­aged through the sheer pas­sion of his fin­ger­style play­ing. Over the years his fin­ger­nails would “often chip into the wood and pull out wood as he plays.”

In per­fect con­di­tion when he bought it, Trig­ger has record­ed in its beat­en-up top the motor mem­o­ries of “over 10,000 shows and record­ing ses­sions” in the deep impres­sions of only its own­er’s fin­gers and per­son­al­i­ty. There is no way to dupli­cate this phe­nom­e­non for mass con­sump­tion. Stick with the video, from gui­tar tool and parts giant Stew­art-Mac­Don­ald, and see how Erlewine keeps Trig­ger healthy, “alive,” and “shored up over the years.”

via Uncrate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Willie Nel­son and His Famous Gui­tar: The Tale of Trig­ger: Watch the Short Film Nar­rat­ed by Woody Har­rel­son

Willie Nelson–Young, Clean-Shaven & Wear­ing a Suit–Sings Ear­ly Hits at the Grand Ole Opry (1962)

Mark Knopfler Gives a Short Mas­ter­class on His Favorite Gui­tars & Gui­tar Sounds

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

On the Power of Teaching Philosophy in Prisons

Phi­los­o­phy is often seen as an arcane aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline, in com­pe­ti­tion with the hard sci­ences or laden with abstruse con­cepts and lan­guage inac­ces­si­ble to ordi­nary peo­ple. Such a per­cep­tion may be war­rant­ed. This is not to damn aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy but to high­light what has been lost through pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion: clas­si­cal notions of ethics as “the art of liv­ing” or what Michel Fou­cault called “the care of the self”; the ancient Greek idea of par­rhe­sia—bold, hon­est speech uncloud­ed by pro­pri­etary jar­gon; phi­los­o­phy as a prac­tice like med­i­ta­tion or yoga, a tech­nique for self-knowl­edge, self-con­trol, and wise, just, and con­sid­er­ate rela­tion­ships with oth­ers.

From Socrates to Aris­to­tle to Epi­cu­rus and the Sto­ics, ancient West­ern thinkers believed phi­los­o­phy to be inti­mate­ly rel­e­vant to every­day life. This was very much the case in ancient East­ern thought as well, in the Jain­ist sages, the Bud­dha, or Lao-Tzu, to name a few. We will find some form of pop­u­lar phi­los­o­phy on every con­ti­nent and every his­tor­i­cal age. And while plen­ty of mod­ern teach­ers still believe in phi­los­o­phy for every­one, they oper­ate in a con­sumer cul­ture that often deems them irrel­e­vant, at best. Still, many edu­ca­tors per­sist out­side the acad­e­my, endeav­or­ing to reach not only ordi­nary cit­i­zens but a class of dis­em­pow­ered peo­ple also deemed irrel­e­vant, at best: the impris­oned, many of whom have had few edu­ca­tion­al resources and lit­tle to no expo­sure to philo­soph­i­cal think­ing.

We have many exam­ples of influ­en­tial thinkers writ­ing from prison, whether Boethius’ ear­ly Chris­t­ian Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy, Anto­nio Gramsci’s pas­sion­ate Marx­ist prison let­ters, Oscar Wilde’s De Pro­fundis, or Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s essen­tial “Let­ter from a Birm­ing­ham Jail.” These have maybe pro­vid­ed read­ers who have nev­er been jailed with trag­ic, yet roman­tic notions of doing phi­los­o­phy while doing time. But the philoso­phers who enter pris­ons to work with peo­ple convicted—justly or otherwise—of all man­ner of crimes can­not afford to have roman­tic ideas. Philoso­pher Alan Smith found this to be espe­cial­ly so after teach­ing in UK pris­ons for 14 years, and writ­ing bold­ly and can­did­ly about the expe­ri­ence in his Guardian col­umn “Phi­los­o­phy for Pris­on­ers.”

Final­ly retir­ing in 2013, Smith con­fessed, “If I car­ried on in prison, I would have to do it dif­fer­ent­ly; I would have to admit that it was prison.” He may have felt burned out at the end of his sojourn, but he had­n’t lost his sense of eth­i­cal pur­pose:

When we don’t know about his­to­ry and art and soci­ety we are adrift. Most of you read­ing this will nev­er have had that expe­ri­ence, but many of the men I taught were igno­rant of just about every­thing, and as grown men felt this keen­ly. Edu­ca­tion was a relief, a route to self-respect.

Those who do this work report on how so many inmates hunger for routes to self-knowl­edge, reflec­tion, and rig­or­ous intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise. Sev­er­al edu­ca­tors at The Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion, for exam­ple, have writ­ten about their expe­ri­ences teach­ing phi­los­o­phy in var­i­ous UK pris­ons. Con­di­tions are dif­fer­ent, and often much bleak­er, in the US—a coun­try with 5% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and 25% of its prisoners—but here, too, philoso­phers have helped inmates dis­cov­er new truths about them­selves and their soci­ety. In the very short TED talk up top, Damon Horowitz, who teach­es at San Quentin through the Prison Uni­ver­si­ty Project, gives a pas­sion­ate, rapid-fire account­ing of his mis­sion behind bars: “Every­one’s got an opin­ion. We are here for knowl­edge. Our ene­my is thought­less­ness.” A cho­rus of ven­er­a­ble ancients would assured­ly agree.

Fur­ther down, you can see par­tic­i­pants in Prince­ton’s Prison Teach­ing Ini­tia­tive talk about the virtues and rewards of their accred­it­ed pro­gram. That includes teach­ers and stu­dents alike.

Note: You can find 140+ Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es in our ever-grow­ing list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Rob­bins’ Improv Class­es Trans­form Pris­on­ers’ Lives & Low­er Recidi­vism Rates

Pat­ti Smith Reads from Oscar Wilde’s De Pro­fundis, the Love Let­ter He Wrote From Prison (1897)

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

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

Long Before Photoshop, the Soviets Mastered the Art of Erasing People from Photographs — and History Too

Adobe Pho­to­shop, the world’s best-known piece of image-edit­ing soft­ware, has long since tran­si­tioned from noun to verb: “to Pho­to­shop” has come to mean some­thing like “to alter a pho­to­graph, often with intent to mis­lead or deceive.” But in that usage, Pho­to­shop­ping did­n’t begin with Pho­to­shop, and indeed the ear­ly mas­ters of Pho­to­shop­ping did it well before any­one had even dreamed of the per­son­al com­put­er, let alone a means to manip­u­late images on one. In Amer­i­ca, the best of them worked for the movies; in Sovi­et Rus­sia they worked for a dif­fer­ent kind of pro­pa­gan­da machine known as the State, not just pro­duc­ing offi­cial pho­tos but going back to pre­vi­ous offi­cial pho­tos and chang­ing them to reflect the regime’s ever-shift­ing set of pre­ferred alter­na­tive facts.

“Like their coun­ter­parts in Hol­ly­wood, pho­to­graph­ic retouch­ers in Sovi­et Rus­sia spent long hours smooth­ing out the blem­ish­es of imper­fect com­plex­ions, help­ing the cam­era to fal­si­fy real­i­ty,” writes David King in the intro­duc­tion to his book The Com­mis­sar Van­ish­es: The Fal­si­fi­ca­tion of Pho­tographs and Art in Stal­in’s Rus­sia. “Stal­in’s pock­marked face, in par­tic­u­lar, demand­ed excep­tion­al skills with the air­brush. But it was dur­ing the Great Purges, which raged in the late 1930s, that a new form of fal­si­fi­ca­tion emerged. The phys­i­cal erad­i­ca­tion of Stal­in’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents at the hands of the secret police was swift­ly fol­lowed by their oblit­er­a­tion from all forms of pic­to­r­i­al exis­tence.”

Using tools that now seem impos­si­bly prim­i­tive, Sovi­et pro­to-Pho­to­shop­pers made “once-famous per­son­al­i­ties van­ish” and craft­ed pho­tographs rep­re­sent­ing Stal­in “as the only true friend, com­rade, and suc­ces­sor to Lenin, the leader of the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion and founder of the USSR.”

This qua­si-arti­sanal work, “one of the more enjoy­able tasks for the art depart­ment of pub­lish­ing hous­es dur­ing those times,” demand­ed seri­ous dex­ter­i­ty with the scalpel, glue, paint, and air­brush. (Some exam­ples, as you can see in this five-page gallery of images from The Com­mis­sar Van­ish­es, evi­denced more dex­ter­i­ty than oth­ers.) In this man­ner, Stal­in could order writ­ten out of his­to­ry such com­rades he ulti­mate­ly deemed dis­loy­al (and who usu­al­ly wound up exe­cut­ed as) as Naval Com­mis­sar Niko­lai Yezhov, infa­mous­ly made to dis­ap­pear from Stal­in’s side on a pho­to tak­en along­side the Moscow Canal, or Peo­ple’s Com­mis­sar for Posts and Telegraphs Niko­lai Antipov, com­man­der of the Leningrad par­ty Sergei Kirov, and Chair­man of the Pre­sid­i­um of the Supreme Sovi­et Niko­lai Shvernik — pic­tured, and removed one by one, just above.

This prac­tice even extend­ed to the mate­ri­als of the Sovi­et space pro­gram, writes Wired’s James Oberg. Cos­mo­nauts tem­porar­i­ly erased from his­to­ry include Valentin Bon­darenko, who died in a fire dur­ing a train­ing exer­cise, and the espe­cial­ly promis­ing Grig­oriy Nelyubov (pic­tured, and then not pic­tured, at the top of the post), who “had been expelled from the pro­gram for mis­be­hav­ior and lat­er killed him­self.” Yuri Gagarin, the cos­mo­naut who made his­to­ry as the first human in out­er space, did not, of course, get erased by the proud author­i­ties, but even his pho­tos, like the one just above where he shakes hands with the Sovi­et space pro­gram’s top-secret leader Sergey Koroly­ov, went under the knife for cos­met­ic rea­sons, here the removal of the evi­dent­ly dis­tract­ing work­man in the back­ground — hard­ly a major his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, let alone a con­tro­ver­sial one, but still a real and maybe even liv­ing reminder that while the cam­era may lie, it can’t hold its tongue for­ev­er.

h/t @JackFeerick

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

Leon Trot­sky: Love, Death and Exile in Mex­i­co

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, 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.

India on Film, 1899–1947: An Archive of 90 Historic Films Now Online

India, the largest democ­ra­cy in the world, is a ris­ing eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, and a major play­er in the fields of media, enter­tain­ment, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.

But for many arm­chair trav­el­ers, sub­con­ti­nen­tal moder­ni­ty takes a back­seat to post­card visions of ele­phants, teem­ing rus­tic streets, and snake charm­ers.

Fans of Rud­yard Kipling and E.M. Forster will thrill to the vin­tage footage in a just released British Film Insti­tute online archive, India on Film (see a trail­er above).

1914’s The Won­der­ful Fruit of the Trop­ics, a sten­cil-coloured French-pro­duced primer on the edi­ble flo­ra of India offers just the right blend of exoti­cism and reas­sur­ance (“the fruit of a man­go is excel­lent as a food”) for a new­ly arrived British house­wife.

A Native Street in India (1906) speaks to the pop­u­lous­ness that con­tin­ues to define a coun­try sched­uled to out­pace China’s num­bers with­in the next 10 years.

An East­ern Mar­ket fol­lows a Pun­jabi farmer’s trek to town, to buy and sell and take in the big city sights.

The archive’s biggest celeb is sure­ly activist Mahat­ma Gand­hi, whose great nephew, Kanu, enjoyed unlim­it­ed film­ing access on the assur­ance that he would nev­er ask his uncle to pose.

The Raj makes itself known in 1925’s King Emper­or’s Cup Race, a Han­d­ley Page biplane arriv­ing in Cal­cut­ta in 1917, and sev­er­al films doc­u­ment­ing Edward Prince of Wales’ 1922 tour

Explore the full BFI’s full India on Film: 1899–1947 playlist here. It fea­tures 90 films in total, with maybe more to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Par­vati Saves the World: Watch a Remix of Bol­ly­wood Films That Com­bats Rape in India

Google’s Mov­ing Ad About 1947 Par­ti­tion of India & Pak­istan Tops 10 Mil­lion Views

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

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

Artists Put a Hidden Message in Their Letter Resigning from President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities

It was­n’t the most high pro­file mass res­ig­na­tion of last week. (The CEOs on Trump’s busi­ness advi­so­ry coun­cils got that dis­tinc­tion.) But it was arguably the most cre­ative one. Last Fri­day, “all 16 of the promi­nent artists, authors, per­form­ers and archi­tects on the President’s Com­mit­tee on the Arts and the Human­i­ties resigned,” reports The New York Times. And while their res­ig­na­tion let­ter did­n’t mince words (read it online here), it did take the added step of encod­ing in its text a short mes­sage for POTUS. Cir­cle the first let­ter of each para­graph and what do you get? RESIST, the mantra of 2017.

In oth­er relat­ed news, the admin­is­tra­tion announced that Trump will skip the annu­al Kennedy Cen­ter Hon­ors this year–just the fourth time that a pres­i­dent has missed this annu­al nation­al cel­e­bra­tion of the arts. This year’s hon­orees include Glo­ria Este­fan, LL COOL J, Nor­man Lear, Lionel Richie, and Car­men de Laval­lade.

via Boing Boing/Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant Again in 2017

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

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The Comedic Legacies of Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis (RIP): A Study in Contrasts

Two titans of com­e­dy passed away this week­end, but the deaths of Dick Gre­go­ry and Jer­ry Lewis have seemed like cul­tur­al foot­notes amidst some of the most anx­ious, angry few days in recent U.S. his­to­ry. Gre­go­ry and Lewis are stars of a bygone era, maybe two full gen­er­a­tions behind con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar rel­e­vance. And yet, in many ways, the mid-20th cen­tu­ry world where both men got their start feels clos­er than ever.

Both Gre­go­ry and Lewis once wield­ed con­sid­er­able pow­er in the enter­tain­ment indus­try and in their oth­er cho­sen spheres of influence—the civ­il rights move­ment and char­i­ta­ble giv­ing, respec­tive­ly. In near­ly every oth­er respect, the two could not have been more dif­fer­ent.

Gre­go­ry broke into main­stream suc­cess with a new wave of black comics like Bill Cos­by and Richard Pry­or, and like Pry­or, he did so by telling painful truths about racism that many white Amer­i­cans laughed about but were unwill­ing to hon­est­ly con­front or change. You can hear an ear­ly exam­ple in the rou­tine above, from his 1962 album Dick Gre­go­ry Talks Turkey.

Gre­go­ry got his big break in 1961 when he seized the moment in a try­out at Hugh Hefner’s Chica­go Play­boy Club. As he lat­er told CBS Sun­day Morn­ing, “I pushed that white boy out of the way and ran up there…. Two hours lat­er, they called Hefn­er. And Hefn­er came by and they went out of their mind.” That same year, he made his first nation­al TV appear­ance. See it at 15:16 in the doc­u­men­tary Walk in My Shoes just above, which also fea­tures Mal­colm X and Con­gress for Racial Equal­i­ty (CORE) founder James Farmer.

In the playlist  below, you can hear three full Gre­go­ry com­e­dy record­ings, Liv­ing Black & White (1961), East & West (1961), and an inter­view album, Dick Gre­go­ry on Com­e­dy. Through­out his career, Gre­go­ry was an uncom­pro­mis­ing civ­il rights activist who was beat­en and arrest­ed in the six­ties at march­es and protests. He was at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton, faced down the Klan to help inte­grate restau­rants, and fast­ed to protest the Viet­nam War. In a review of his provoca­tive­ly-titled auto­bi­og­ra­phy, The New York Times described him as “a man who deeply wants a world with­out mal­ice and hate and is doing some­thing about it.”

He also did some­thing about it in com­e­dy. When Jack Paar’s pro­duc­er called him to appear on the show, Gre­go­ry hung up on him. Then Paar him­self called, and Gre­go­ry told him he wouldn’t come on unless he could sit on the couch, a priv­i­lege afford­ed white comics and denied their black coun­ter­parts. Paar agreed. “It was sit­ting on the couch,” he said, “that made my salary grow in three weeks from $250 work­ing sev­en days a week to $5,000 a night.” For the next sev­er­al decades, he lever­aged his wealth and fame for human­i­tar­i­an and civ­il rights caus­es, and even a run for may­or of Chica­go in 1967 and a pop­u­lar write-in pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in the 1968 elec­tion. He died at 84 a ven­er­at­ed elder states­man of stand-up com­e­dy and of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment.

Jer­ry Lewis’s lega­cy is much more com­pli­cat­ed, and serves in many ways as a “cau­tion­ary tale,” as Nick Gille­spie puts it, for the hubris of celebri­ty. Lewis broke through in the 50s as the ani­mat­ed, rub­bery com­ic foil to Dean Martin’s suave straight man in the huge­ly famous com­e­dy duo of Mar­tin & Lewis. See them above do a standup rou­tine in 1952 on their Col­gate Com­e­dy Hour, with an intro­duc­tion (and inter­ven­tion) from Bob Hope. The act was a phe­nom­e­non. “Com­ing from lit­er­al­ly nowhere,” writes Shawn Levy at The Guardian, “the pair rode a sky­rock­et­ing 10-year career that made them sta­ples of Amer­i­can show­biz for the rest of their lives…. They met when they were just two guys scuf­fling for a break in Times Square, and they helped forge a new brand of pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment suit­ed to the post­war mood.”

In the same year as the broad­cast fur­ther up, Lewis made his first appear­ance, with Mar­tin and Jack­ie Glea­son, on the Mus­cu­lar Dys­tro­phy Asso­ci­a­tions of Amer­i­ca (MDAA) telethon. Just above, see them do a bit while the famil­iar banks of oper­a­tors stand by behind them. Lewis began host­ing his own MDAA telethon in 1966 and did so until 2010, rais­ing bil­lions for the orga­ni­za­tion, which remem­bers him as a “Com­ic genius. Cul­tur­al icon. Human­i­tar­i­an.” Many dis­abil­i­ty activists feel oth­er­wise, includ­ing many for­mer “Jerry’s Kids,” his “pet name,” writes Gille­spie, for the poster chil­dren he recruit­ed to rep­re­sent the MD com­mu­ni­ty on the telethon and relat­ed advo­ca­cy mate­ri­als. “The telethon was wide­ly par­o­died,” and Lewis’s efforts have been seen by many activists and pro­tes­tors as self-serv­ing, per­pet­u­at­ing harm­ful, demean­ing atti­tudes and encour­ag­ing pity for MD suf­fer­ers rather than accep­tance and social equal­i­ty.

As a movie star, Lewis often played an all-Amer­i­can doo­fus whose phys­i­cal antics and stam­mer­ing, boy­ish per­sona endeared him to audi­ences (see above, for exam­ple, from 1952’s Sailor Beware). As a direc­tor, he made tight­ly chore­o­graphed mad­cap come­dies. He also trad­ed in offen­sive stereo­types, par­tic­i­pat­ing in an ugly Hol­ly­wood tra­di­tion that emerged from anti-Chi­nese big­otry of the 19th cen­tu­ry and anti-Japan­ese World War II pro­pa­gan­da. (Lewis was unflat­ter­ing­ly remem­bered in The Japan Times as the “king of low-brow com­e­dy… for­ev­er squeal­ing, gri­mac­ing and flail­ing his way” through var­i­ous roles.) He intro­duced Asian car­i­ca­tures into his act in the Mar­tin & Lewis days (see below) and reprised the shtick in his crit­i­cal­ly-loathed 1980 film Hard­ly Work­ing, in which, writes Paul Maco­v­az at Sens­es of Cin­e­ma, he “real­izes an offen­sive, pro­found­ly racist yel­low-face sashi­mi chef.”

“I imag­ine that most view­ers will be trou­bled by it,” Maco­v­az com­ments, “wrenched vis­cer­al­ly from their enjoy­ment of the Lewisian idiot and pressed squirm­ing into the overde­ter­mined con­cep­tu­al nar­ra­tive zone of Amer­i­can Ori­en­tal­ism.” Those view­ers who know anoth­er of Lewis’s lat­er-career dis­as­ters will rec­og­nize anoth­er awk­ward char­ac­ter in Hard­ly Work­ing, the sad-faced clown of 1972’s dis­as­trous The Day the Clown Died, a film so ill-advised and bad­ly exe­cut­ed that Lewis nev­er allowed it to be released. (Just below, see a short doc­u­men­tary on the abortive effort.)  In the movie, as com­e­dy writer Bruce Handy not­ed in a 1992 Spy mag­a­zine arti­cle, the come­di­an plays “an unhap­py Ger­man cir­cus clown… sent to a con­cen­tra­tion camp and forced to become a sort of geno­ci­dal Pied Piper, enter­tain­ing Jew­ish chil­dren as he leads them to the gas cham­bers.” Meant to be his first “seri­ous,” dra­mat­ic role, the large­ly unseen film now stands as an arche­typ­al epit­o­me of poor taste—an artis­tic fail­ure that Mel Brooks might have dreamed up as a sick joke.

As Gille­spie points out, Lewis’s last years saw him threat­en­ing to punch Lind­say Lohan and telling refugees to “stay where the hell they are.” Long past the time most peo­ple want­ed to hear them, he per­sist­ed in mak­ing “racist and misog­y­nis­tic jokes” and gave “the most painful­ly awk­ward inter­view of 2016” to the Hol­ly­wood Reporter. He became well-known for ver­bal­ly abus­ing his audi­ences. The run­ning joke that Lewis was beloved by the French, which “only made him less respectable in his home coun­try,” may have been run into the ground. But in the lat­ter half of his career, it sums up how much Amer­i­can comedians—even those like Steve Mar­tin, Robin Williams, Jim Car­rey, and Eddie Mur­phy, who were clear­ly influ­enced by his man­ic humor—were often unwill­ing to make too much of the debt. But look­ing back at his 1950s dada zani­ness and at films like The Nut­ty Pro­fes­sor, it’s impos­si­ble to deny his con­tri­bu­tions to 20th cen­tu­ry com­e­dy and even a cer­tain brand of absur­dist 21st cen­tu­ry humor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 30 of the Great­est Standup Com­e­dy Albums: A Playlist Cho­sen by Open Cul­ture Read­ers

Chris Rock Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Standup Com­e­dy Spe­cials

Bill Hicks’ 12 Prin­ci­ples of Com­e­dy

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

Final Show of Metallica’s North American Tour Now Streaming Free Online

A quick fyi: Metal­li­ca wrapped up their North Amer­i­can tour on Fri­day night in Edmonton–their first North Amer­i­can tour in eight years. The show was live-streamed on YouTube, and it’s now ful­ly view­able online, thanks to Metal­li­caTV. Enjoy all 2 hours and 41 min­utes of it. You can see a setlist for the show here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Metal­li­ca Play­ing “Enter Sand­man” on Class­room Toy Instru­ments

Artistic Maps of Pakistan & India Show the Embroidery Techniques of Their Different Regions

Jour­nal­ist Saima Mir post­ed to Twit­ter this “map of Pak­istan show­ing the embroi­dery tech­niques of its regions.” And, sure enough, it led to some­one sur­fac­ing a cor­re­spond­ing map of Pak­istan’s neigh­bor, India. The under­ly­ing mes­sage of the maps? It’s to show, as @AlmostLived not­ed, “how diverse ele­ments come togeth­er to make beau­ti­ful things.” The map above was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced by Gen­er­a­tion, a Pak­istani fash­ion com­pa­ny. We’re not clear on the ori­gin of the India map, unfor­tu­nate­ly.

via Boing Boing

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

New BBC Drama­ti­za­tion of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Chil­dren Now Stream­ing Free for a Lim­it­ed Time

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play an Enchant­i­ng Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Pak­istani Immi­grant Goes to a Led Zep­pelin Con­cert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musi­cian & Then Sells 30 Mil­lion Albums

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

India’s Answer to M.I.T. Presents 268 Free Online Cours­es (in Eng­lish)

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