The Coddling of the American Mind: Malcolm Gladwell Leads a Conversation with Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff & Lenore Skenazy

in Education, Life | September 23rd, 2019

From the 92nd Street Y in New York City comes a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion fea­tur­ing Mal­colm Glad­well, Jonathan Haidt (NYU), Greg Lukianoff (Foun­da­tion for Indi­vid­ual Rights in Edu­ca­tion), and Lenore Ske­nazy (founder of the Free-Range Kids move­ment). Here’s a quick sum­ma­ry of the ground they cov­er:

Civ­il dis­course is in decline, with poten­tial­ly dire results for Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

On col­lege cam­pus­es across Amer­i­ca, vis­it­ing speak­ers are dis­in­vit­ed, or even shout­ed down, while pro­fes­sors, stu­dents, and admin­is­tra­tors are afraid to talk open­ly, for fear that some­one will take offense. Polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion on social media and tele­vi­sion has devolved into a wave of hyper-par­ti­san noise. A gen­er­a­tion of over­pro­tec­tive par­ents are reluc­tant to let their chil­dren play out­side with­out super­vi­sion. How did we get here? And how can we change the way that we engage with one anoth­er?

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Cod­dling of the Amer­i­can Mind sounds the depths of this gen­er­a­tional cri­sis. Join us for a live­ly dis­cus­sion with the authors, pres­i­dent of the non-prof­it Let Grow and founder of the Free-Range Kids move­ment Lenore Ske­nazy, and #1 New York Times best­seller Mal­colm Glad­well on how we as cit­i­zens can engage with one anoth­er across the polit­i­cal spec­trum.

If it’s not already clear, the con­ver­sa­tion is based on Lukianoff and Haidt’s book The Cod­dling of the Amer­i­can Mind: How Good Inten­tions and Bad Ideas Are Set­ting Up a Gen­er­a­tion for Fail­ure. Ske­nazy is the author of Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Chil­dren (With­out Going Nuts with Wor­ry). If you sign up for a free tri­al with Audi­ble, you can down­load copies of both books.

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!

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Nine Things a Woman Couldn’t Do in 1971

in Gender, History, Law, Life, Politics, Twitter | September 20th, 2019

As we bar­rel toward the cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion of wom­en’s suf­frage in the Unit­ed States, it’s not enough to bone up on the plat­forms of female pri­ma­ry can­di­dates (though that’s an excel­lent start).

A Twit­ter user and self-described Old Crone named Robyn recent­ly urged her fel­low Amer­i­cans to take a good long gan­der at a list of nine free­doms women in the Unit­ed States were not uni­ver­sal­ly grant­ed in 1971, the year Helen Red­dy released the soon-to-be anthem, “I Am Woman,” above.

Even those of us who remem­ber singing along as chil­dren may expe­ri­ence some shock that these facts check out on Snopes.

  1. CREDIT CARDS: Pri­or to the Equal Cred­it Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act of 1974, mar­ried women couldn’t get cred­it cards with­out their hus­bands’ sig­na­tures. Sin­gle women, divorcees, and wid­ows were often required to have a man cosign. The dou­ble stan­dard also meant female appli­cants were fre­quent­ly issued card lim­its up to 50% low­er than that of males who earned iden­ti­cal wages.
  2. PREGNANT WORKERS: The Preg­nan­cy Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act of 1978 pro­tect­ed preg­nant women from being fired because of their impend­ing mater­ni­ty. But it came with a major loop­hole that’s still in need of clos­ing. The lan­guage of the 41-year-old law stip­u­lates that the employ­ers must accom­mo­date preg­nant work­ers only if con­ces­sions are being made for oth­er employ­ees who are “sim­i­lar in their abil­i­ty or inabil­i­ty to work.”
  3. JURY DUTY: In 1975, the Supreme Court declared it con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able for states to deny women the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve on juries. This is an are­na where we’ve all come a long way, baby. It’s now com­plete­ly nor­mal for men to be excused from jury duty as the pri­ma­ry care­givers of their young chil­dren.
  4. MILITARY COMBAT: In 2013, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Leon Panet­ta and for­mer Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey announced that the Pen­ta­gon was rescind­ing the direct com­bat exclu­sion rule that barred women from serv­ing in artillery, armor, infantry and oth­er such bat­tle roles. At the time of the announce­ment, the mil­i­tary had already seen more than 130 female sol­diers killed, and 800 wound­ed on the front­lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  5. IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS: Those who con­ceive of elite col­leges as breed­ing grounds for sex­u­al assault protests and Title IX activism would do well to remem­ber that Colum­bia Col­lege didn’t admit women until 1983, fol­low­ing in the mar­gin­al­ly deep­er foot­steps of oth­ers in the Ivy League—Harvard (1977), Dart­mouth (1972), Brown (1971), Yale (1969), and Prince­ton (1969). These days, sin­gle sex high­er edu­ca­tion options for women far out­num­ber those for men, but the net­work­ing pow­er and increased earn­ing poten­tial an Ivy League degree con­fers remains the same.
  6. WORKPLACE HARASSMENT: In 1977, women who’d been sex­u­al­ly harassed in the work­place received con­fir­ma­tion in three sep­a­rate tri­als that they could sue their employ­ers under Title VII of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act. In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex harass­ment was also unlaw­ful. In between was the tele­vi­sion event of 1991, Ani­ta Hill’s shock­ing tes­ti­mo­ny against her for­mer boss, U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice (then nom­i­nee) Clarence Thomas.
  7. SPOUSAL CONSENT: In 1993, spousal rape was offi­cial­ly out­lawed in all 50 states. Not tonight hon­ey, or you’ll have a headache in the form of your wife’s legal back up.
  8. HEALTH INSURANCE: In 2010, the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act decreed that any health insur­ance plan estab­lished after March of that year could not charge women high­er pre­mi­ums than men for iden­ti­cal ben­e­fits. This was bad news for women who got their health insur­ance through their jobs, and whose employ­ers were grand­fa­thered into dis­crim­i­na­to­ry plans estab­lished pri­or to 2010. Of course, that’s all ancient his­to­ry now.
  9. CONTRACEPTIVES: In 1972, the Supreme Court made it legal for all cit­i­zens to pos­sess birth con­trol, irre­spec­tive of mar­i­tal sta­tus, stat­ing “if the right of pri­va­cy means any­thing, it is the right of the indi­vid­ual, mar­ried or sin­gle, to be free from unwar­rant­ed gov­ern­men­tal intru­sion into mat­ters so fun­da­men­tal­ly affect­ing a per­son as the deci­sion whether to bear or beget a child.” (It’s worth not­ing, how­ev­er, that in 1972, states could still con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it and pun­ish sex out­side of mar­riage.)

Fem­i­nism is NOT just for oth­er women.

- Old Crone

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Dig­i­tizes Over 16,000 Pages of Let­ters & Speech­es from the Women’s Suf­frage Move­ment, and You Can Help Tran­scribe Them

MAKERS Tells the Sto­ry of 50 Years of Progress for Women in the U.S.

Women’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tions to Mod­ern Genet­ics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Foot­notes

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Time Seems to Fly By As You Get Older, and How to Slow It Down: A Scientific Explanation by Neuroscientist David Eagleman

in Neuroscience, Psychology | September 20th, 2019

The Bud­dha, it’s said, strug­gled might­i­ly with three specters of adulthood—aging, sick­ness, and death—when reflec­tions on mor­tal­i­ty harshed his hedo­nis­tic life as a prince. His “intox­i­ca­tion with life entire­ly dropped away,” the sto­ries say, when he reflect­ed on its pass­ing. Noth­ing cured his fatal unease until a mem­o­ry from child­hood arose unbid­den: of stop­ping time by qui­et­ly sit­ting under a rose-apple tree.

In anoth­er ver­sion of this sto­ry, Mar­cel Proust dis­cov­ered time­less­ness baked in a cook­ie. His potent mem­o­ries of madeleines also came from child­hood. As he recalled “the taste of tea and cake,” he writes, “at once the vicis­si­tudes of life had become indif­fer­ent to me, its dis­as­ters innocu­ous, its brevi­ty illu­so­ry …. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, acci­den­tal, mor­tal.”

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist David Eagle­man also invokes a child­hood mem­o­ry in his dis­cus­sion of time and aging, in the BBC video above. It is also a mem­o­ry res­o­nant with a remark­able phys­i­cal detail: red brick pave­ment hurtling toward him as he falls from the roof of a house, expe­ri­enc­ing what must have been a ter­ri­fy­ing descent in slow motion. Quite a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence from com­muning with trees and eat­ing tea cakes, but maybe the con­tent of a child­hood mem­o­ry is irrel­e­vant to its tem­po­ral dimen­sions.

What we can all remem­ber is that along with impa­tience and dis­tractibil­i­ty, child­hood seems rich with care­free, absorp­tive lan­guor (or moments of slow-motion pan­ic). Psy­chol­o­gists have indeed shown in sev­er­al stud­ies that adults, espe­cial­ly those over the age of 40, per­ceive time as mov­ing faster than it did when they were chil­dren. Why?

Because time is a “psy­cho­log­i­cal con­struct,” says Eagle­man, and can vary not just between ages and cul­tures, but also between indi­vid­ual con­scious­ness­es. “It can be dif­fer­ent in your head and my head,” he says. “Your brain is locked in silence and dark­ness inside the vault of your skull.” In order to “fig­ure out what’s going on out­side,” it’s got to do “a lot of edit­ing tricks.” One trick is to con­vince us that we’re liv­ing in the moment, when the moment hap­pened half a sec­ond in the past.

But we can notice that gap when we’re faced with nov­el­ty, because the brain has to work hard­er to process new infor­ma­tion, and it cre­ates thick­er descrip­tions in the mem­o­ry. All of this addi­tion­al pro­cess­ing, Eagle­man says, seems to take more time, so we per­ceive new expe­ri­ences as hap­pen­ing in a kind of slow motion (or remem­ber them that way). That includes so many expe­ri­ences in our child­hood as well as emer­gency sit­u­a­tions in which we have to nav­i­gate a chal­leng­ing new real­i­ty very quick­ly.

As writer Charles Bukows­ki once said, “as you live many years, things take on a repeat…. You keep see­ing the same thing over and over again.” The brain can coast on famil­iar­i­ty and expend lit­tle ener­gy gen­er­at­ing per­cep­tion. We retain few­er detailed mem­o­ries of recent events, and they seem to have flown by us. The rem­e­dy, says Eagle­man, is to seek nov­el­ty. (You thought he was going to say “mind­ful­ness”?) Wear your watch on a dif­fer­ent wrist, change the way you brush your teeth….

Mun­dane exam­ples, but the point remains: we need new and var­ied expe­ri­ences to slow our sense of time. Rou­tine lack of nov­el­ty in adult­hood may be the pri­ma­ry rea­son that “our ear­ly years,” write psy­chol­o­gists James Broad­way and Brit­taney San­doval write at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can,“tend to be rel­a­tive­ly over­rep­re­sent­ed in our auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal mem­o­ry and, on reflec­tion, seem to have last­ed longer.”

They can also, for that rea­son, seem all the sweet­er. But nos­tal­gia, how­ev­er tempt­ing, can’t take the place of going new places, meet­ing new peo­ple, read­ing new books, hear­ing new music, see­ing new films, and so on and so forth—and there­by effec­tive­ly slow­ing down time.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret Pow­ers of Time

Why Time Seems to Speed Up as We Get Old­er: What the Research Says

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

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

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Watch 16 Hours of Historic Live Aid Performances: Queen, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young & Much More

in Music | September 20th, 2019

12 pm — 2 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

As Live Aid geared up for its momen­tous series of con­certs of both sides of the Atlantic, famous con­cert pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham com­pared it to Wood­stock: “What we’re doing now is entire­ly dif­fer­ent. The rea­son for the event is more impor­tant than the event itself.”

Three decades lat­er, the mem­o­ry of the event has eclipsed its rea­son (and one Queen per­for­mance has eclipsed most of the con­cert). It was a gath­er­ing of the best of main­stream ‘80s rock–still try­ing to jus­ti­fy itself along­side acts from the 60s and the ‘70s–and the zenith of the fundrais­ing telethon: broad­cast live in 140 coun­tries to raise $50 mil­lion for vic­tims of a relent­less African famine. (Fun fact: the con­certs raised about $560 mil­lion in 2019 mon­ey, about two days’ worth of Jeff Bezos’ cur­rent earn­ings!)

If you have a day to spare, you can recre­ate that amaz­ing July 13th in 1985 with this series of YouTube playlists.

The day start­ed at Lon­don’s Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um (up top), with the Reg­i­men­tal Band of the Cold­stream Guards per­form­ing the Roy­al Salute for Queen and Coun­try and all that, and then things real­ly start­ed with Sta­tus Quo, those griz­zled ol’ blokes play­ing “Rockin’ All Over the World.” Yanks might have said “who?” but it was the Brits who either bopped along or said, “Not this bloody Dad rock!” (Okay, not true, the phrase hadn’t been invent­ed, but some­thing sim­i­lar was uttered.)

2 pm — 4 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

The British side was indeed a mixed bag, reflect­ing the idio­syn­crasies of its own sin­gles chart com­pared to the more stead­fast Amer­i­can charts. Elvis Costel­lo sang “All You Need Is Love”; the Style Coun­cil sang their hits; Nik Ker­shaw played his chart-top­per. Phil Collins per­formed “Against All Odds,” then jumped on a Con­corde for New York, arriv­ing to sing it again for a dif­fer­ent audi­ence.

4 pm — 6 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

There’s so much more to explore in these playlists: the Led Zep­pelin reunion, The Cars at the height of their pow­ers (RIP Ric Ocasek), Neil Young (and his reunion with Cros­by, Stills, and Nash), Bob Dylan, The Four Tops, Run D.M.C., the list real­ly goes on and on.

6 pm — 8 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

8 pm — 10 pm | Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um, Lon­don

2 pm — 5 pm | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

5 pm — 8 pm | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

8 pm — 11 pm | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

Live Aid | 11 pm- 2 am | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

Live Aid | 2 am — 4 am | John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia

Find a com­plete list of Live Aid per­for­mances here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

A Stun­ning Live Con­cert Film of Queen Per­form­ing in Mon­tre­al, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored to Per­fec­tion (1981)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. 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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Musicians Around the World Play The Band’s Classic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Robbie Robertson and Ringo Starr

in Music | September 19th, 2019

Play­ing For Change, a “move­ment cre­at­ed to inspire and con­nect the world through music,” has released its lat­est video–this one fea­tur­ing musi­cians from five con­ti­nents play­ing “The Weight,” a clas­sic song from The Band’s 1968 album, Music from Big Pink. Amongst the musi­cians you’ll find The Band’s own Rob­bie Robert­son and The Beat­le’s Ringo Starr. In our archive, find oth­er Play­ing for Change takes on The Grate­ful Dead­’s “Rip­ple,” The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter,” Bob Mar­ley’s “Redemp­tion Song,” and Ben King’s “Stand by Me.” For more, vis­it Play­ing for Change’s YouTube chan­nel.

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 The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s and The Band’s Base­ment Tapes

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Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour Teaches a Course on Creativity & Leadership

in Fashion, Magazines, Online Courses | September 19th, 2019

Imag­ine a famous mag­a­zine edi­tor, and smart mon­ey says the image that comes to mind has a bob hair­cut and sun­glass­es. No one has defined the role of mag­a­zine-edi­tor-as-cul­tur­al-force, and so con­sis­tent­ly lived it, more than Anna Win­tour, and the online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class has some­how con­vinced her to take her hand off the wheel of Vogue — and put aside those over­sized shades — just long enough to star in a course about how she steers that behe­moth of a pub­li­ca­tion through the waters of fash­ion. “I know many peo­ple are curi­ous about who I am and how I approach my work,” Win­tour says in the trail­er above. “This is a class for those who want to under­stand my lead­er­ship style, and then under­stand the expe­ri­ences that have helped me become an effec­tive leader.”

You may well have already heard a thing or two about Win­tour’s lead­er­ship style, the famous­ly exact­ing nature of which has pro­voked dif­fer­ent reac­tions from dif­fer­ent peo­ple (and pos­si­bly even inspired a best­selling nov­el and its fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion).

But as Win­tour her­self explains it, “you need some­one who can push you, that isn’t pulling you back” — sen­si­ble advice even for lead­ers of com­pa­nies, teams, and class­rooms who don’t mind pro­ject­ing a some­what more laid-back image. But even for those who want to project as much indi­vid­ual strength and resolve as pos­si­ble, “it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to sur­round your­self with a team whose opin­ions that you trust, who are not in any way fright­ened of dis­agree­ing with you, and you have to lis­ten.”

In her Mas­ter­class, Win­tour teach­es, in oth­er words, “how to be a boss.” That phrase appears at the top of its syl­labus, whose twelve lessons include “Anna’s Man­age­ment Tips” and “Edi­to­r­i­al Deci­sion-Mak­ing” as well as “Pho­tog­ra­phers and Mod­els,” “A Look Back at Icon­ic Cov­ers,” and “Trans­form­ing the Met Gala.” Though geared toward view­ers with an inter­est in the busi­ness of fash­ion (case stud­ies include the careers of Miuc­cia Pra­da and Michael Kors), “Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship” also offers prin­ci­ples for any human endeav­or that requires inven­tion, group work, and meet­ing hard dead­lines over and over again. You can sign up for Win­tour’s course here.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

Mar­garet Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Cre­ative Writ­ing

David Lynch Teach­es an Online Course on Film & Cre­ativ­i­ty

Enter “The Mag­a­zine Rack,” the Inter­net Archive’s Col­lec­tion of 34,000 Dig­i­tized Mag­a­zines

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham (RIP) on Liv­ing La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

George Orwell Blasts Amer­i­can Fash­ion Mag­a­zines (1946)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Martin Scorsese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspiring Filmmaker Needs to See

in Film | September 19th, 2019

Martin_Scorsese_Berlinale_2010

Image by “Sieb­bi,” Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Before the rise of insti­tu­tion­al film schools—ensconced in uni­ver­si­ty walls with all the for­mal­i­ty that entails—those seek­ing to learn the craft did so by appren­tic­ing them­selves to stu­dios and mas­ter direc­tors, and by watch­ing lots and lots of movies. If we take the exam­ple of some of the most inter­est­ing film­mak­ers work­ing today, this still may be the best way to become a film­mak­er. Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School, for exam­ple, for­goes the trap­pings of class­rooms for a much more rough-and-tum­ble approach—and a direct con­fronta­tion with the medi­um. Kevin Smith dropped out of film school, as did Paul Thomas Ander­son, spurred on part­ly by a love of Ter­mi­na­tor 2. “My film­mak­ing edu­ca­tion,” revealed Ander­son, “con­sist­ed of find­ing out what film­mak­ers I liked were watch­ing, then see­ing those films.” It’s more or less how Quentin Taran­ti­no learned to make movies too.

You could hard­ly do better—if you’ve decid­ed to take this inde­pen­dent route toward a cin­e­mat­ic education—than appren­tice your­self under Mar­tin Scors­ese. Or at least find out what films he loves, and watch them all your­self.

Last year, we fea­tured a list of 39 for­eign films the estimable direc­tor of Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, Hugo, Good­fel­las (etc., etc., etc.) rec­om­mend­ed to a young film­mak­er. Today, we bring you a list of 85 films Scors­ese ref­er­enced in the course of a four-hour inter­view he gave to Fast Com­pa­ny. “Some of the movies he dis­cussed,” writes Fast­Co, “Oth­ers he just men­tioned. But the cumu­la­tive total reflects a life lived entire­ly with­in the con­fines of movie mak­ing.” Shoot on over to Fast Com­pa­ny to read Scorsese’s com­men­tary on each of the films below, and see an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing ver­sion of his list over at MUBI as well.

Like I said, you could hard­ly do bet­ter.

  • Ace in the Hole
  • All that Heav­en Allows
  • Amer­i­ca, Amer­i­ca
  • An Amer­i­can in Paris
  • Apoc­a­lypse Now
  • Arsenic and Old Lace
  • The Bad and the Beau­ti­ful
  • The Band Wag­on
  • Born on the Fourth of July
  • Cape Fear
  • Cat Peo­ple
  • Caught
  • Cit­i­zen Kane
  • The Con­ver­sa­tion
  • Dial M for Mur­der
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Duel in the Sun
  • The Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse
  • Europa ’51
  • Faces
  • The Fall of the Roman Empire
  • The Flow­ers of St. Fran­cis
  • Force of Evil
  • Forty Guns
  • Ger­many Year Zero
  • Gil­da
  • The God­fa­ther
  • Gun Crazy
  • Health
  • Heaven’s Gate
  • House of Wax
  • How Green Was My Val­ley
  • The Hus­tler
  • I Walk Alone
  • The Infer­nal Cake­walk
  • It Hap­pened One Nght
  • Jason and the Arg­onauts
  • Jour­ney to Italy
  • Julius Cae­sar
  • Kansas City
  • Kiss Me Dead­ly
  • Klute
  • La Ter­ra Trema
  • The Lady From Shang­hai
  • The Leop­ard
  • Mac­beth
  • The Mag­ic Box
  • M*A*S*H
  • A Mat­ter of Life and Death
  • McCabe & Mrs. Miller
  • The Mes­si­ah
  • Mid­night Cow­boy
  • Mishi­ma
  • Deeds Goes to Town
  • Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton
  • Nashville
  • Night and the City
  • One, Two, Three
  • Oth­el­lo
  • Paisa
  • Peep­ing Tom
  • Pick­up on South Street
  • The Play­er
  • The Pow­er and the Glo­ry
  • Stage­coach
  • Raw Deal
  • The Red Shoes
  • The Rise of Louis XIV
  • The Roar­ing Twen­ties
  • Roc­co and his Broth­ers
  • Rome, Open City
  • Secrets of the Soul
  • Sen­so
  • Shad­ows
  • Shock Cor­ri­dor
  • Some Came Run­ning
  • Strom­boli
  • Sullivan’s Trav­els
  • Sweet Smell of Suc­cess
  • Tales of Hoff­man
  • The Third Man
  • T‑Men
  • Touch of Evil
  • The Tri­al
  • Two Weeks in Anoth­er Town

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

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

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The Creepy 13th-Century Melody That Shows Up in Movies Again & Again: An Introduction to “Dies Irae”

in Film, Music | September 19th, 2019

The num­ber of icon­ic scenes in cin­e­ma his­to­ry can and do fill text­books hun­dreds of pages long. Doubt­less most of us have seen enough of these scenes to know the basic gram­mar of fea­ture film, and to rec­og­nize the hun­dreds of ref­er­ences in movies and TV to clas­sic cuts and com­po­si­tions from Hitch­cock, Kubrick, or Kuro­sawa.

Visu­al and nar­ra­tive allu­sions might leap out at us, but music tends to work in sub­tler ways, prompt­ing emo­tion­al respons­es with­out engag­ing the parts of our brain that make com­par­isons. Case in point, the videos here from Vox and Berklee Col­lege of Music pro­fes­sor Alex Lud­wig demon­strate the wide­spread use of a musi­cal motif of four notes from the “Dies Irae,” or “day of wrath,” a 13th cen­tu­ry Gre­go­ri­an requiem, or Catholic mass tra­di­tion­al­ly sung at funer­als.

Of course, we know these notes from the icon­ic, oft-par­o­died Amadeus scene of Mozart com­pos­ing the “Dies Irae” move­ment of his Requiem in his sickbed, as ulti­mate fren­e­my Salieri furi­ous­ly tran­scribes. Once you hear the mag­is­te­ri­al­ly omi­nous sequence of notes, you might imme­di­ate­ly think of Wendy Car­los’ themes for The Shin­ing and A Clock­work Orange. But did you notice these four notes in Disney’s The Lion King, Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope, or It’s a Won­der­ful Life?


What about Har­ry Pot­ter and the Cham­ber of Secrets, Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, or Home Alone? Both Vox and Lud­wig show how the “dies irae” theme appears over and over, cue­ing us to per­il or tragedy ahead, ori­ent­ing us to the ter­ror and unease we see onscreen. For almost 800 years, these four notes have sig­ni­fied all of the above for Catholic Europe, as well as, Vox notes, sound­track­ing the sup­posed future day when “God will judge the liv­ing and the dead and send them to heav­en or hell.”

The “dies irae” has per­me­at­ed nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma for almost as long as film has exist­ed. The old­est exam­ple in Ludwig’s com­pi­la­tion comes from a 1927 score writ­ten by Got­tfried Hup­pertz for Fritz Lang’s silent Metrop­o­lis. Lud­wig also brings his musi­co­log­i­cal exper­tise to bear in Vox’s explo­ration of “dies irae” ref­er­ences. He sums up the net effect as cre­at­ing a “sense of dread,” bestowed upon moder­ni­ty by hun­dreds of years of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy as expressed in music.

Film com­posers were only the lat­est to pick up the cul­tur­al thread of fear and threat in “Dies Irae.” Their work stands on the shoul­ders of Mozart and lat­er com­posers like Hec­tor Berlioz, who lift­ed the melody in his 1830 Sym­phonie fan­tas­tique to tell a sto­ry of obses­sive love and mur­der, and a night­mare of a witch’s sab­bath. Lat­er came Franz Liszt’s 1849 Toten­tanz (Dance of the Dead) and Giuseppe Verdi’s 1874 Mes­sa da Requiem, a very rec­og­niz­able piece of music that has made its appear­ance in no small num­ber of movies, TV shows, com­mer­cials, and temp scores.

Vox and Lud­wig show the “dies irae” phe­nom­e­non in film to be a slow cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion from the ornate, sacred pomp of medieval Catholic rites to the ornate, sec­u­lar pomp of Hol­ly­wood film pro­duc­tion, by way of clas­si­cal com­posers who seized on the theme’s “sense of dread” but remained at least ambiva­lent about hap­py end­ings on the day of wrath.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

Hear 9 Hours of Hans Zim­mer Sound­tracks: Dunkirk, Inter­stel­lar, Incep­tion, The Dark Knight & Much More

All of the Music from Mar­tin Scorsese’s Movies: Lis­ten to a 326-Track, 20-Hour Playlist

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

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