Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt take on both Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel plus the Bruce Miller/Hulu TV series through season 3. There’s also a graphic novel and the 1990 film.
We get into what’s needed to move a novel to the screen like that: The character can’t just remain passive as in the novel in order to keep us suffering with her past the first season as storytelling beyond the book begins. We talk about Atwood’s funny neologisms (like “prayvaganza”) that didn’t make it into the show.
How does race play into the story, and how should it? Is the story primarily a political statement or a self-contained work of art? Given the bleakness of the situation depicted, can there be comic relief? How can we have a nominally funny podcast about this work?
Some of the articles we drew on or bring up include:
You may be interested in these related Partially Examined Life episodes (Mark’s long-running philosophy podcast): #181 on Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil, #139 on bell hooks and her historical account of conditions for black women not terribly dissimilar to the ones described by Atwood, #90 interviewing David Brin about the connections between speculative fiction, philosophy, and political speech. PEL has also recorded several episodes on Sartreand Mark ran a supporter-only session that you could listen to on Nausea in particular. Also check out Brian’s Contellary Tales podcast #2 talking about another breeding-related sci-fi story by Octavia Butler.
During the late 70s, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures at the College de France in which he defined the concept of biopolitics, an idea Rachel Adams calls “political rationality which takes the administration of life and populations as its subject.” These ideas have come to have even more resonance in the spread of biometric identification systems and militarized population control policies.
Foucault begins his lecture series on biopolitics with an account of the birth of Neoliberalism, the engineered privatization of public goods and services and the concentration of capital and power into the hands of a few. “Everything I do,” he once said, “I do in order that it might be of use.” What would he have to say about the current situation? asks the BBC video above, a political landscape permeated by fake news, accusations of fake news, and the general admission that we are now “post truth”?
In some sense, Foucault, argued, we have always lived in such a world—not one in which real news and actual truth did not exist, but in which we are conditioned through language to adopt ideological perspectives that may have little to do with fact. What counts as knowledge, Foucault showed, gets authenticated to serve the interests of power. Later in his career, he saw more space for resistance and self-transformation emerge in power relations—and he would have seen such spaces in social media too, the video claims.
After his infamous acid trip in Death Valley, Foucault reportedly (and self-reportedly) returned a changed man, with a much less gloomy, claustrophobic outlook. The earlier Foucault may have emphasized the totalizing mechanisms of surveillance and control in social media, perhaps to the exclusion of any potential for liberation. The video doesn’t make these distinctions between early and late or give us much in the way of a history of his thought, though it acknowledges how critically important history was to Foucault himself.
We can’t know that he would say any of the things attributed to him here. He was a contrarian thinker, who “didn’t believe in all-embracing theories to explain the world,” the narrator admits. Perhaps he would have seen social media as technical elaboration of biopower: harvesting personal data, tracking everyone’s location, getting us all to watch each other. Or as a version of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, in which we never know when someone’s watching us, so we internalize the control system. These are some of the prisons, Foucault might say, that appear under regimes of “security, territory, population.”
The video features Angie Hobbs, Professor of Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.
Surely each of us hears more music in a day than the average prehistoric human being heard in a lifetime. Then again, it depends on the definition of “music”: though what we listen to is undoubtedly more complex than what our distant ancestors listened to, our music descends from theirs just as we descend from them. And so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the musical instruments used in prehistoric times should sound vaguely familiar to us. Take, for instance, archaeologist and prehistoric music specialist Jean-Loup Ringot’s performance on the semicircle of stones known as a lithophone, or “rock gong.”
Lithophones, wrote Josh Jones on the instrument’s last appearance here on Open Culture, “have been found all over the African continent, in South America, Australia, Azerbaijan, England, Hawaii, Iceland, India, and everywhere else prehistoric people lived. Not the cultural property of any one group, the rock gong came, rather, from a universal human insight into the natural sonic properties of stone.”
A commenter on the video of Ringot playing the lithopone describes it as “reminiscent of the bonang,” the collection of small gongs set on strings that constitutes one of the defining instruments of the traditional Javanese percussion ensemble known as gamelan.
Even if you’ve never heard of gamelan or bonang, the sound of the lithophone — and its resemblance to that of instruments used in other traditional musics — may well resonate with you, so to speak. The main difference comes out of the materials: the gongs, or kettles, of a bonang are made from bronze, iron, or mixtures of other metals, while the lithophone generates sound with only what would have been available to the Flintstones. The use of such a naturally abundant substance has, of course, inspired many a modern wag to Flintstonian quips about lithophone players as the first “rockers.” Players of the real classic rock, in other words — not like all the junk that has come out in the last few millennia. But then, don’t we all prefer the early stuff?
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.
You may have seen the image above floating around, especially if you follow jazz lovers and writers like Ted Gioia: the first page of Sun Ra’s application to NASA’s art program. The program was “somewhat of a glorified PR campaign,” writes Shannon Gormley at Willamette Week, but one nonetheless that has employed many prominent artists since its inception in 1962, including Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol, Laurie Anderson, and Norman Rockwell. NASA has “enlisted musicians, poets and others for more variety,” the Administration notes. “Patti LaBelle even recorded a space-themed song.”
But Sun Ra—given name Herman Blount; legal name (as he writes in parentheses) Le Sony’r Ra—was not, it seems, considered when he applied in the 1960s, even if he more or less invented space jazz in the previous decade. After many years in Chicago, he’d relocated his free jazz big band, the Arkestra, to New York, where they influenced later Beats and the early psychedelic scene (just as he was to influence funk, prog, and fusion in the 70s, and come in for a major revival in the 90s through indie rock and hip hop.)
Likely, whoever read his application was unfamiliar with the creative idiosyncrasies of his language, written just as he sang and played—with incantatory repetition, syntactical surprises, and ALL CAPS all the time. The prodigious, visionary bandleader proposes to contribute “music that enlightens and space orientate discipline coordinate.” One might cast a wary eye on this description, from an applicant who lists their educational mission as “space orientation.” Unless you’d heard what Sun Ra meant by the phrase.
Take his orientation in 1961’s “Space Jazz Reverie” from The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, recorded just after he arrived in New York, on the threshold of pushing the Arkestra further out into the solar system. The tune “ostensibly sounds like a large-ensemble take on hard bop,” writes Matthew Wuethrich at All About Jazz. “Mid-tempo swing, strange-but-not-unheard-of-intervals and a string of solos.” But the composition starts to warp and wobble. “Ra’s comping on the piano generates an unsettling backdrop.” A “bizarre bridge” after the solos throws things further off-kilter.
This is not cold, crystalline music of the stars, but an emotional journey into the excitation, coordination (to take his phrase), and defamiliarization of space travel. Listening to Sun Ra almost inclines me to believe his tales of interstellar travel and alien abduction—or at least to feel, for a few minutes, as though I had taken a cosmic trip. NASA’s art program would have certainly been enriched by his contributions, though whether it would have raised either one’s profile is uncertain.
Ra’s application “reads like a prophecy,” writes Gormley. We need music, in space and otherwise. “What is called man is very anarchy-minded at present,” he wrote. But Sun Ra himself was “anarchy-minded,” in the best sense of the term—he gave his imagination free rein and did not cater to any authority. This rankled many of his jazz peers, who frequently said he went too far. Sun Ra never seemed to bother about the criticism.
He may have taken the NASA snub a little hard. In his landmark 1972 film Space is the Place, he discusses the space program with a group of black Oakland youth, saying, “I see none of you have been invited.” Sun Ra and the young people to whom he brought the hope of outer space could not have known about the hidden history of African American scientists and astronauts in the space program. In any case, Ra had his own space program. A one-band cultural revolution that was too forward-looking for both jazz and NASA.
When I first saw Monty Python’s Flying Circus, late at night on PBS and in degraded VHS videos borrowed from friends, I assumed the show’s concepts must have come out of bonkers improv sessions. But the troupe’s many statements since the show’s end, in the form of books, documentaries, interviews, etc., have told us in no uncertain terms that Monty Python’s creators always put writing first. “I’m not an actor at all,” says Eric Idle in the GQ video above. “I’m really a writer who just acts occasionally.”
Likewise, in the PBS series Monty Python’s Personal Best, Idle discusses the joy of writing for the show—and compares creating Monty Python to fishing, of all things: “You go to the riverbank every day, you don’t know what you’re going to catch.” This idyllic scene may be the last thing you’d associate with the Pythons, though you may recall their take on fishing in the second season sketch “Fish License,” in which John Cleese’s character, Eric, tries to buy a license for his pet halibut, Eric.
Idle’s protestations notwithstanding, none of the show’s writing would have worked as well as it did onscreen without the considerable acting talents of all five performers. (Idle modestly ascribes his own ability to being “lifted up” by the others.) Above, he talks about the most iconic characters he embodied on the show, beginning with the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?” guy: a character, we learn, based on Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band crossed with a regular from Idle’s local pub named Monty, from whom the troupe took their first name.
We also learn that the character was so popular in the States that “Elvis called everybody ‘squire’ because of that f*cking sketch!” Presley’s’ penchant for doing Monty Python material while in bed with his girlfriend (“if only there was footage”) is but one of the many fascinating anecdotes Idle casually tosses off in his commentary on characters like the Australian Bruces, who went on to sing “The Philosopher’s Song”; Mr. Smoketoomuch, who delivers a ten-minute monologue written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman; and Idle’s characters in the non-Python mocumentary All You Need Is Cash, which he created and co-wrote, about a parody Beatles band called The Rutles.
Idle is steadfast in his description of himself as a competent “caricaturist,” and not a “comic actor.” But his song and dance routines, sly subtle wit and broad gestures, and forever funny turn as cowardly Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail should leave his fans with little doubt about his skill in front of the camera.
Nobody uses the word computerized anymore. Its disappearance owes not to the end of computerization itself, but to the process’ near-completeness. Now that we all walk around with computers in our pockets (see also the fate of the word portable), we expect every aspect of life to involve computers in one way or another. But in 1967, the very idea of computers got people dreaming of the far-flung future, not least because most of them had never been near one, let alone brought one into their home. But for the Shore family, each and every phase of the day involves a computer: their “central home computer, which is secretary, librarian, banker, teacher, medical technician, bridge partner, and all-around servant in this house of tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, in this case, means the year 1999. Today is 1967, when Philco-Ford (the car company having purchased the bankrupt radio and television manufacturer six years before) didn’t just design and build this speculative “house of tomorrow,” which made its debut on a television broadcast with Walter Cronkite, but produced a short film to show how the family of tomorrow would live in it. Year 1999 AD traces a day in the life of the Shores: astrophysicist Michael, who commutes to a distant laboratory to work on Mars colonization; “part-time homemaker” Karen, who spends the rest of the time at the pottery wheel; and eight-year-old James, who attends school only two mornings a week but gets the rest of his education in the home “learning center.”
There James watches footage of the moon landing, plausible enough material for a history lesson in 1999 until you remember that the actual landing didn’t happen until 1969, two years after this film was made. The flat screens on which he and his parents perform their daily tasks (a technology that would also surface in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey the following year) might also look strikingly familiar to we denizens of the 21st century. (Certainly the way James watches cartoons on one screen while his recorded lectures play on another will look familiar to today’s parents and educators.) But many other aspects of the Philco-Ford future won’t: even though the year 2000 is also retro now, the Shores’ clothes and decor look more late-60s than late-90s.
In this and other ways, Year 1999 AD resembles a parody of the techno-optimistic shorts made by postwar corporate America, so much so that Snopes put up a page confirming its veracity. “Many visionaries who tried to forecast what daily life would be like for future generations made the mistake of simply projecting existing technologies as being bigger, faster, and more powerful,” writes Snopes’ David Mikkelson. Still, Year 1999 AD does a decent job of predicting the uses of technology to come in daily life: “Concepts such as ‘fingertip shopping,’ an ‘electronic correspondence machine,’ and others envisioned in this video anticipate several innovations that became commonplace within a few years of 1999: e‑commerce, webcams, online bill payment and tax filing, electronic funds transfers (EFT), home-based laser printers, and e‑mail.”
Even twenty years after 1999, many of these visions have yet to materialize: “Split-second lunches, color-keyed disposable dishes,” pronounces the narrator as the Shores sit down to a meal, “all part of the instant society of tomorrow, a society of leisure and taken-for-granted comforts.” But as easy as it is to laugh at the notion that “life will be richer, easier, healthier as Space-Age dreams come true,” the fact remains that, like the Shores, we now really do have computer programs that let us communicate and do our shopping, but that also tell us what to eat and when to exercise. What would the minds behind Year 1999 AD make of my watching their film on my personal screen on a subway train, amid hundreds of riders all similarly equipped? “If the computerized life occasionally extracts its pound of flesh,” says the narrator, “it holds out some interesting rewards.” Few statements about 21st-century have turned out to be as prescient.
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.
Lately, young people standing up against oppressive regimes have faced unrelenting streams of ridicule, abuse, and worse: some have even lost their lives in mysterious circumstances that recall the tragic fates of those who battled racism in the U.S. south decades ago. Though it’s cold consolation to the bereaved and harassed, it at least remains the case today that activists who speak out can count on varying, but vocal levels of support, and they will find celebrities and politicians, whether cynical or well-meaning, to amplify (or co-opt) their message.
We can and should draw parallels between 20th-century European fascism and the 21st-century’s fascist turn. But the above situation could never have obtained in Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 40s. Anti-Nazi points of view were banned even for entertainment purposes. Circulating them would almost certainly result in execution. Ordinary Germans may have also vented their spleens at dissenters, but they did so with full assurance that those people would be crushed by the government, and that no one would stand up for them, not even to posture.
It was in this paralyzing climate of terror that the student members of The White Rose, a secretive, anonymous group of activists, began distributing leaflets denouncing Hitler and Nazism. “At a time when a sarcastic remark could constitute treason,” notes the TED-Ed lesson above, the strident language “was unprecedented.” Most of the leaflets were written by Hans Scholl, as the short, animated video—scripted by scholar Iseult Gillespie—informs us. Just a few years earlier, Scholl had been an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth, and his sister Sophie, who joined him in The White Rose, had been a member of the League of German Girls.
In 1936, when Hans witnessed a mass Nazi rally for the first time, he began to seriously question his life choices. Sophie had been entertaining her own doubts. Their parents, both increasingly concerned about the Nazi threat, were very supportive. The Scholl family had secretly listened to foreign broadcasts and learned “shocking truths” about what was happening in their country. While at the University of Munich, Hans “started reading anti-Nazi sermons,” writes Erin Blakemore at Smithsonian, “and attending classes with Kurt Huber, a psychology and philosophy professor whose lectures included veiled criticisms of the regime.”
Hans was drafted into the army as a medic, where he witnessed abuses against Jewish prisoners and heard about the concentration camps. When he returned to medical school at the University of Munich, he met several friends who shared his outrage. In 1939, The White Rose printed its first leaflets, spreading them all over Munich. “Adopt passive resistance,” they urged, inspiring Germans to sabotage the war effort. “Block the functioning of this atheistic war machine before it is too late. Before the last city is a heap of rubble. Before the last youth in our nation bleeds to death.”
Many more leaflets followed. (Sophie would not discover them and join the group until after their activities began.) “The White Rose mailed the pamphlets to random people they found in the phone book,” writes Blakemore. They “took them in suitcases to other cities, and left them in phone booths. They also painted graffiti on the walls of the University of Munich with slogans like ‘Freedom!’ and ‘Hitler the Mass Murderer!’” It was the first time public dissent against the Nazis had taken hold. “The society’s work quickly spread to other cities, with some of its literature even showing up in Austria.”
In 1943, Allied planes dropped tens of thousands of The White Rose’s leaflets over Nazi Germany. News of them “even reached concentrations camps and prisons,” the video notes. Soon afterward, the Scholls and their friend Christoph Probst were arrested by the Gestapo. (Read a moving account of their arrest and trial at the Jewish Virtual Library.) The three were put on show trial and executed by guillotine. Later, their professor, Kurt Huber and other members of The White Rose were also beheaded.
The identities of The White Rose would not be known until after the war. They have since become heroes to anti-fascists and activists around the world, and their call for passive resistance echoes in one of their final leaflets: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” In spite of the risks, which they all knew, the Scholls and their allies chose to act, cautiously, but decisively, against a regime they finally saw to be a terrible evil.
The thirty Bob Marley superfans who heeded artist Candice Breitz’s 2005 call to visit a Port Antonio, Jamaica recording studio, to be filmed individually performing the entirety of Marley’s Legend album a capella, were not propelled by showbiz dreams.
Rather, their participation was a way for them to connect with the beloved icon, in a manner as intimate as singing along in one’s teenaged bedroom.
They were given no direction as far as performance style or costume, only that they stick with it for the duration of the hour-long album, piped into their ears via discreet grey buds.
Some dart their eyes apprehensively, barely moving.
Others bob and weave with unbridled abandon.
One man shucks his cap when dreadlocks are mentioned in “Buffalo Soldier.”
A young woman grimaces and shrugs apologetically as the final track’s many “jammin’s” get away from her.
Some nod and widen their eyes at personally significant lines, pointing for emphasis, as if to tell viewers less familiar with Marley’s work to listen up, because herein the message lies.
In between songs, they sip from plastic bottles of water and soda, occasionally offering impromptu commentary (“I feel this one!”). The grey-bearded gent mops his brow.
Once these solos were in the can, Breitz arranged them into a choir, stacked Brady Bunch-style, six across, five down.
Everyone starts at the same moment, but with no instruction as to how to approach backing vocals and the wordless aspects of Marley’s performance, inadvertent soloists emerge, sometimes as the result of a jumped gun.
Breitz, who has since created similar work with Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Madonna, and Leonard Cohen fans, took pains to make sure the participants left the studio feeling good about the experience. It’s not a TV talent contest.
While certain squares contain star quality charisma, all thirty were necessary to achieve the goal of a composite portrait that eschews the “overtly iconic representation” of the subject as “some kind of fixed, unchanging entity.”
While Marley, Madonna and Jackson may play a lopsidedly central role in shaping their fans’ lives and identities, these fans play a reciprocal part in resurrecting the stars’ original appeal, which has been subsumed by the celebrity culture that created them. The culture of stardom may thrive on a series of cheap imitations, mimicking an elusive idea of ‘celebrity’, but even in this concatenationof simulated identities, a few authentic portraits can still be discovered.
Listen—and sing along—to Bob Marley’s Legend in its entirety on Spotify.
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