What Advice Would You Give Your Younger Self?: What Research Shows, and What You Have to Say

in Data, Life, Psychology, Random, Science | June 21st, 2019

Pho­to of Dr. Esther Pohl Love­joy via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Almost every­one has advice they’d glad­ly give their younger self, so much so that Clem­son Uni­ver­si­ty psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Robin Kowal­s­ki and doc­tor­al stu­dent Annie McCord, were moved to ini­ti­ate a sys­tem­at­ic study of it.

The first of its kind, this study com­piled the respons­es of more than 400 par­tic­i­pants over 30, whose hypo­thet­i­cal younger self­’s aver­age age was 18.

The study’s data was culled from a sur­vey con­duct­ed over Amazon’s crowd­sourc­ing mar­ket­place, MTurk. Respon­dents spent 45 min­utes or so answer­ing hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tions online, receiv­ing $3 for their efforts.

Mon­ey-grub­bing, data-skew­ing shirk­ers were held at bay by ques­tion 36.

(Play along at home after the fact here.)

Kowal­s­ki and McCord’s find­ings, pub­lished in the bimonth­ly aca­d­e­m­ic Jour­nal of Social Psy­chol­o­gy, echo many recur­rent themes in their oth­er sur­vey of the same demo­graph­ic, this one hav­ing to do with regret—the one that got away, blown edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, mon­ey squan­dered, and risks not tak­en.

Per­son­al­i­ty and sit­u­a­tion fig­ure in, of course, but over­whelm­ing­ly, the crowd-sourced advice takes aim at the fate­ful choic­es (or non-choic­es) of youth.

Some com­mon pieces of advice include:

  • “Be kinder to your­self.”
  • “Always know your worth.”
  • “The world is big­ger than you think it is and your wor­ries aren’t as impor­tant as you think they are, just be you.”
  • “Don’t wor­ry if you look dif­fer­ent, or feel you look dif­fer­ent, from most oth­er peo­ple. There is much more to you than what oth­ers see on the sur­face.”
  • “Don’t get so caught up in the dif­fi­cul­ties of the moment since they are only tem­po­rary.”
  • “Don’t dwell on the past. Just because it was that way doesn’t mean it will be that way again.”

There’s not much research to sug­gest how recep­tive the par­tic­i­pants’ younger selves would have been to these unso­licit­ed pearls of wis­dom, but 65.7% of respon­dents report that they have imple­ment­ed some changes as a result of tak­ing Kowalk­si and McCord’s sur­vey.

Dr. Kowal­s­ki, who’s come to believe her “laser-focused on school” younger self would have ben­e­fit­ed from some inter­vals of rose-smelling, writes that the bet­ter-late-than-nev­er approach “can facil­i­tate well-being and bring us more in line with the per­son that we would like to be should we fol­low that advice.”

If you want to dou­ble down, share your advice with chil­dren, prefer­ably your own.

And for those who can’t rest easy til they’ve com­pared them­selves with Oprah Win­frey:

Be relaxed

Stop being afraid

Every­thing will be alright

No sur­prise there.

READERS—WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR YOUNGER SELVES? Add your advice to the com­ments sec­tion below. (The author’s is some­what unprint­able…)

For inspi­ra­tion, see the Advice to My Younger Self Sur­vey Ques­tions here and the relat­ed sur­vey deal­ing with regret here.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

36 Artists Give Advice to Young Cre­ators: Wim Wen­ders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Pat­ti Smith, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco & More

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Her month­ly install­ment book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, will resume in the fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Hear a Previously Unheard Freddie Mercury Song, “Time Waits for No One,” Unearthed After 33 Years

in Music | June 21st, 2019

Fred­die Mer­cury, now gone for more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, seems to have become a star again in the late 2010s. It has hap­pened in not just the Eng­land where he grew up and first hit it big with his band Queen, but in Amer­i­ca (where Queen took longer to catch on) and indeed most of the rest of the world as well: the release of the Mer­cury biopic Bohemi­an Rhap­sody last year renewed inter­est in him even in South Korea, where I live, and where any­one of the age to have lis­tened to Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at the time of its release would have need­ed to pirate a copy. All this has nat­u­ral­ly prompt­ed a return to the stu­dio vaults in search of more Mer­cury mate­r­i­al, the lat­est find from that expe­di­tion being “Time Waits for No One.”

Astute fans will rec­og­nize the song as a ver­sion of “Time,” the title song Mer­cury record­ed for the 1986 sci-fi musi­cal by Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five. Elab­o­rate­ly pro­duced with 96 tracks in total, the ver­sion that came out at the time did well enough, but “Clark had always remem­bered that per­for­mance of Fred­die Mer­cury at Abbey Road Stu­dios from 1986,” says Mer­cury’s web site.

“The orig­i­nal had sold mil­lions, and in his own words ‘worked.’  But the feel­ing he had dur­ing the orig­i­nal rehearsal, expe­ri­enc­ing ‘goose­bumps,’ hadn’t dis­si­pat­ed over the decades, and he want­ed to hear this orig­i­nal record­ing — just Fred­die on vocals and Mike Moran on piano.” And so, three decades lat­er, Clark brought Moran back into the stu­dio to re-record his piano part for Mer­cury’s orig­i­nal vocal track.

Like every big song of the 2010s, the stripped-down “Time Waits for No One” (the orig­i­nal title of “Time”) need­ed an impres­sive video to go with it. Mer­cury, who died in the mid­dle of the first music-video era, would sure­ly appre­ci­ate the way that the inter­net has restored a cer­tain vital­i­ty to the form. Clark, who still pos­sessed the neg­a­tives from the orig­i­nal “Time” video shoot, used the mate­r­i­al he did­n’t the first time around to cre­ate a pre­vi­ous­ly unseen Mer­cury per­for­mance to go with this pre­vi­ous­ly unheard — or at least not prop­er­ly heard — Mer­cury song. Like few rock singers before him, Fred­die Mer­cury under­stood the impor­tance of the star­tling, the elab­o­rate, and the oper­at­ic to his craft. But it takes a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple pro­duc­tion like the new “Time Waits for No One” and its accom­pa­ny­ing video to reveal just why he has endured in a way so many of his con­tem­po­raries haven’t.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

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

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Scenes from Bohemi­an Rhap­sody Com­pared to Real Life: A 21-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Atlas of Space: Behold Brilliant Maps of Constellations, Asteroids, Planets & “Everything in the Solar System Bigger Than 10km”

in Astronomy, Design, Science | June 20th, 2019

A great deal remains to be learned about our solar sys­tem, but a great deal has already been learned about it as well. Yet huge amounts of data such as those pro­duced by out­er-space research so far can’t do much for us unless we can inter­pret them. Luck­i­ly, the age of the inter­net has made pos­si­ble unprece­dent­ed­ly easy access to data as well as unprece­dent­ed­ly easy dis­tri­b­u­tion of inter­pre­ta­tions of that data. Eleanor Lutz, a biol­o­gy grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and the cre­ator of the sci­ence illus­tra­tion blog Table­top Whale, has tak­en advan­tage of both con­di­tions to wow her ever-grow­ing fan base with her maps of the realms beyond Earth.

“Atlas of Space, her lat­est project, is all about the solar sys­tem,” writes Wired’s Sara Har­ri­son. “She plumbed the depths of pub­licly avail­able data sets from agen­cies like NASA and the US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey and used them to cre­ate vivid maps of con­stel­la­tions, aster­oids, and plan­ets. In one image, lumi­nes­cent bands of fuch­sia and aqua­ma­rine aster­oids swirl around the bright, white point of the Sun. In anoth­er, Earth seems to pul­sate as an ani­ma­tion of Arc­tic sea ice shows how it extends down the con­ti­nents dur­ing the win­ter and then retracts back to the poles in sum­mer.”

Lutz plans to release all the images she has cre­at­ed for her Atlas of Space over the next few weeks, along with instruc­tions teach­ing read­ers how to cre­ate sim­i­lar illus­tra­tions them­selves. In her intro­duc­to­ry post to the project, she promis­es “an ani­mat­ed map of the sea­sons on Earth, a map of Mars geol­o­gy, and a map of every­thing in the solar sys­tem big­ger than 10km.”

Lutz also briefly describes her plans to write about every­thing from “work­ing with Dig­i­tal Ele­va­tion Mod­els (DEMs) in Bash and Python” to “using the NASA HORIZONS orbital mechan­ics serv­er and scrap­ing inter­net data” to “updat­ing vin­tage illus­tra­tions and paint­ing in Pho­to­shop.” That last ele­ment has already made the project par­tic­u­lar­ly eye-catch­ing: you’ll notice the Atlas of Space pages pub­lished so far, “An Orbit Map of the Solar Sys­tem” and “A Topo­graph­ic Map of Mer­cury,” both pos­sess a strong retro design sen­si­bil­i­ty, though each of a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent kind. Levi Wal­ter Yag­gy would be proud — and no doubt aston­ished by just how much more infor­ma­tion we’ve man­aged to gath­er about the solar sys­tem over the past 130 years.

via Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strik­ing­ly Beau­ti­ful Maps & Charts That Fired the Imag­i­na­tion of Stu­dents in the 1880s

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

3D Map of Uni­verse Cap­tures 43,000 Galax­ies

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

The Solar Sys­tem Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Cre­ates a Hand­craft­ed Quilt to Use as a Teach­ing Aid in Her Astron­o­my Class

The Solar Sys­tem Drawn Amaz­ing­ly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky Demystifies Depression, Which, Like Diabetes, Is Rooted in Biology

in Psychology | June 20th, 2019

We know that depres­sion affects peo­ple from all walks of life. Rich. Poor. Celebs. Ordi­nary Joes. Young. Old. But, some­how after the death of Robin Williams, there’s a renewed focus on depres­sion, and my mind turned imme­di­ate­ly to a lec­ture we fea­tured on the site way back in 2009. The lec­ture is by Robert Sapol­sky, a Stan­ford biol­o­gist, who has a tal­ent for mak­ing sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects pub­licly acces­si­ble. A recip­i­ent of the MacArthur genius grant, Sapol­sky notes that depres­sion — cur­rent­ly the 4th great­est cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide, and soon the 2nd — is deeply bio­log­i­cal. Depres­sion is root­ed in biol­o­gy, much as is, say, dia­betes. As the lec­ture unfolds, you will see how depres­sion changes the body. When depressed, our brains func­tion dif­fer­ent­ly while sleep­ing, our stress response goes way up 24/7, our bio­chem­istry lev­els change, etc. You will see that biol­o­gy is at work.

Sapol­sky is one com­pelling teacher. So you might not want to miss his Stan­ford course, Intro­duc­tion to Human Biol­o­gy. It’s equal­ly worth your time. You can always find it housed in our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on the site in August, 2014.

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:

Exer­cise May Prove an Effec­tive Nat­ur­al Treat­ment for Depres­sion & Anx­i­ety, New Study Shows

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Nutri­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try: Why Diet May Play an Essen­tial Role in Treat­ing Men­tal Health Con­di­tions, Includ­ing Depres­sion, Anx­i­ety & Beyond

Psilo­cy­bin Could Soon Be a Legal Treat­ment for Depres­sion: Johns Hop­kins Pro­fes­sor, Roland Grif­fiths, Explains How Psilo­cy­bin Can Relieve Suf­fer­ing

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Apollo 11 in Real Time: A New Web Site Lets You Take a Real-Time Journey Through First Landing on the Moon

in Science | June 20th, 2019

It only took four days. Four, long, nail-bit­ing days where any­thing could go wrong, with so many fraught steps, between the liftoff of Apol­lo 11 and Neil Arm­strong leav­ing the first foot­print on the moon. And now fifty years stretch­es between us and those days, very brief days indeed, where the pop­u­la­tion of the earth came togeth­er over one stun­ning act of sci­ence and inge­nu­ity. Yes, it was an Amer­i­can flag plant­ed on the moon, but it was one giant leap for mankind.

This July we might want to revis­it those warm feel­ings about human­i­ty in what feels like a dimin­ished world, and look in won­der at the stars again. The Apol­lo In Real Time web­site is here to do just that.

Now you can go to this web­site, sit back and watch as the entire Apol­lo 11 mis­sion unfolds in real time.

It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly designed web­site, look­ing like a con­trol pan­el from NASA itself. There are three time­lines up top to show exact­ly where we are over the entire course of the nine days, from launch to re-entry. On the left there is a sum­ma­ry of Mis­sion Sta­tus, includ­ing veloc­i­ty and dis­tance from the earth. Below is a real time tran­script between mis­sion con­trol and the craft. And a strip down the mid­dle offers over 40 dif­fer­ent chan­nels of audio from all the main and not-so-main play­ers, a total of 11,000 hours, most of which has nev­er been heard before. Where avail­able there’s film and video footage, along with pho­tographs, a lot of it tak­en by the astro­nauts them­selves, and all in the best pos­si­ble qual­i­ty. So if you think you’ve seen this footage over and over, think again.

(Side note: I find just lis­ten­ing to the sounds of mis­sion con­trol is very relax­ing. I’m think­ing a lot of you will agree.)

The site is the cre­ation of Ben Feist, a soft­ware engi­neer and his­to­ri­an at NASA, along with his team of col­lab­o­ra­tors, who under­took some­thing sim­i­lar a few years ago for Apol­lo 17.

via Kottke.org

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

The Source Code for the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Mis­sion Is Now Free on Github

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How to Argue With Kindness and Care: 4 Rules from Philosopher Daniel Dennett

in Philosophy | June 19th, 2019

Pho­to by Math­ias Schindler, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Drawn from Aris­to­tle and his Roman and Medieval inter­preters, the “clas­si­cal trivium”—a divi­sion of thought and writ­ing into Log­ic, Gram­mar, and Rhetoric—assumes at least three things: that it mat­ters how we arrive at our ideas, it mat­ters how we express them, and it mat­ters how we treat the peo­ple with whom we inter­act, even, and espe­cial­ly, those with whom we dis­agree. The word rhetoric has tak­en on the con­no­ta­tion of emp­ty, false, or flat­ter­ing speech. But it orig­i­nal­ly meant some­thing clos­er to kind­ness.

We might note that this ped­a­gogy comes from a logo­cen­tric tra­di­tion, one that priv­i­leges writ­ing over oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But while it ignores phys­i­cal niceties like ges­ture, pos­ture, and per­son­al space, we can still incor­po­rate its lessons into spo­ken conversation—that is, if we’re inter­est­ed in hav­ing con­struc­tive dia­logue, in being heard, find­ing agree­ment, and learn­ing some­thing new. If we want to lob shots into the abyss and hear hun­dreds of voic­es echo back, well… this requires no spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

The sub­ject of sound rhetoric—with its sub­sets of eth­i­cal and emo­tion­al sensitivity—has been tak­en up by philoso­phers over hun­dreds of years, from medieval the­olo­gians to the staunch­ly athe­ist philoso­pher of con­scious­ness Daniel Den­nett. In his book Intu­ition Pumps and Oth­er Tools for Think­ing, Den­nett sum­ma­rizes the cen­tral rhetor­i­cal prin­ci­ple of char­i­ty, call­ing it “Rapoport’s Rules” after an elab­o­ra­tion by social psy­chol­o­gist and game the­o­rist Ana­tol Rapoport.

Like their clas­si­cal pre­de­ces­sors, these rules direct­ly tie care­ful, gen­er­ous lis­ten­ing to sound argu­men­ta­tion. We can­not say we have under­stood an argu­ment unless we’ve actu­al­ly heard its nuances, can sum­ma­rize it for oth­ers, and can grant its mer­its and con­cede it strengths. Only then, writes Den­nett, are we equipped to com­pose a “suc­cess­ful crit­i­cal com­men­tary” of another’s posi­tion. Den­nett out­lines the process in four steps:

  1. Attempt to re-express your tar­get’s posi­tion so clear­ly, vivid­ly and fair­ly that your tar­get says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
  2. List any points of agree­ment (espe­cial­ly if they are not mat­ters of gen­er­al or wide­spread agree­ment).
  3. Men­tion any­thing you have learned from your tar­get.
  4. Only then are you per­mit­ted to say so much as a word of rebut­tal or crit­i­cism.

Here we have a strat­e­gy that pays div­i­dends, if under­tak­en in the right spir­it. By show­ing that we under­stand an opponent’s posi­tions “as well as they do,” writes Den­nett, and that we can par­tic­i­pate in a shared ethos by find­ing points of agree­ment, we have earned the respect of a “recep­tive audi­ence.” Alien­at­ing peo­ple will end an argu­ment before it even begins, when they turn their backs and walk away rather than sub­ject them­selves to obtuse­ness and abuse.

Addi­tion­al­ly, mak­ing every effort to under­stand an oppos­ing posi­tion will only help us bet­ter con­sid­er and present our own case, if it doesn’t suc­ceed in chang­ing our minds (though that dan­ger is always there). These are reme­dies for bet­ter social cohe­sion and less shouty polar­iza­tion, for deploy­ing “the artillery of our right­eous­ness from behind the com­fort­able shield of the key­board,” as Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings, “which is real­ly a men­ace of react­ing rather than respond­ing.”

Yelling, or typ­ing, into the void, rather than engag­ing in sub­stan­tive, respect­ful dis­cus­sion is also a ter­ri­ble waste of our time—a dis­trac­tion from much wor­thi­er pur­suits. We can and should, argues Den­nett, Rapoport, and philoso­phers over the cen­turies, seek out posi­tions we dis­agree with. In seek­ing out and try­ing to under­stand their best pos­si­ble ver­sions, we stand to gain new knowl­edge and widen our appre­ci­a­tion.

As Den­nett puts it, “when you want to crit­i­cize a field, a genre, a dis­ci­pline, an art form… don’t waste your time and ours hoot­ing at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone.” In “going after the good stuff,” we might find that it’s bet­ter, or at least dif­fer­ent, than we thought, and that we’re wis­er for hav­ing tak­en the time to learn it, even if only to point out why we think it most­ly wrong.

via Brain Pick­ings/Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

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

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

How Blondie’s Debbie Harry Learned to Deal With Superficial, Demeaning Interviewers

in Music | June 19th, 2019

Unpro­fes­sion­al, obnox­ious, rude, bor­ing, bullying—all adjec­tives that can apply when mid­dle-aged men com­ment inces­sant­ly on a woman’s looks, when that woman has met with them to talk about her career. The cringe-fac­tor is mag­ni­fied a thou­sand­fold when it’s broad­cast over air­waves, or fiber and 4G. The actress­es and singers who have endured such abuse in front of audi­ences spans the his­to­ry of radio and TV.

Blondie’s Deb­o­rah Har­ry got the treat­ment. Sub­ject­ed to “years of super­fi­cial, tedious, and demean­ing ques­tions from jour­nal­ists,” notes doc­u­men­tary pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Pub­lic Inter­est, she final­ly “devis­es a bril­liant way to turn inter­views on their head.” The video above pulls togeth­er a mon­tage of inter­view clips in which both male and female talk­ing heads start near­ly every con­ver­sa­tion with Har­ry by refer­ring to her as “a rein­car­na­tion of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe” or some­thing to that effect. She is vis­i­bly annoyed but keeps her cool, which a cou­ple inter­view­ers take as an invi­ta­tion for near-harass­ment.

Some might claim the crude inter­est in Harry’s looks was jus­ti­fied, giv­en her ear­ly per­sona as a punk-rock pin­up, but note that most of the inter­view­ers nev­er get around to talk­ing about the music—the rea­son we know and admire her in the first place. Instead, one British TV pre­sen­ter fol­lows up the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe ques­tion (if it can be so called) by ask­ing if Har­ry is “think­ing about going into mar­riage.”

The ques­tions aren’t always lech­er­ous but they are always inane. Har­ry is clear about one thing. It’s an oblig­a­tion; she’s there to sell a prod­uct. How does she turn the tables? A stuffed ani­mal mas­cot, a few well-placed “can you believe this shit?” looks at the cam­era, and a flat-out refusal to answer any ques­tions about Madon­na, for a start. Lou Reed and Bob Dylan get cred­it for being some of the cranki­est inter­view sub­jects in rock and roll, but Har­ry had more rea­son than either of them to hate this part of the job.

See how she han­dles it, and for con­trast, read an inter­view she did with Bill Brew­ster in 2014, when Blondie released the reunion album Ghosts of Down­load. Brew­ster keeps the focus on the music, and she seems total­ly thrilled to get the chance to talk about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Deb­bie Harry’s Stun­ning Ethe­re­al Vocal Tracks from “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rap­ture,” and “One Way or Anoth­er”

Watch Iggy Pop & Deb­bie Har­ry Sing a Swelli­gant Ver­sion of Cole Porter’s “Did You Evah,” All to Raise Mon­ey for AIDS Research (1990)

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

When Stanley Kubrick Banned His Own Film, A Clockwork Orange: It Was the “Most Effective Censorship of a Film in British History”

in Film | June 19th, 2019

“What in hell is Kubrick up to here?” asked Roger Ebert in his orig­i­nal 1972 review of A Clock­work Orange, whose mar­ket­ing announced it as a film about “the adven­tures of a young man whose prin­ci­pal inter­ests are rape, ultra-vio­lence, and Beethoven.” How could this acclaimed direc­tor real­ly want to involve us in the “psy­cho­path­ic lit­tle life” of this dubi­ous pro­tag­o­nist? “In a world where soci­ety is crim­i­nal, of course, a good man must live out­side the law. But that isn’t what Kubrick is say­ing. He actu­al­ly seems to be imply­ing some­thing sim­pler and more fright­en­ing: that in a world where soci­ety is crim­i­nal, the cit­i­zen might as well be a crim­i­nal, too.”

Oth­ers in the press lev­eled sim­i­lar crit­i­cisms at A Clock­work Orange, most of them much sim­pler and more accusato­ry. They had more seri­ous con­se­quences for the pic­ture in Kubrick­’s adopt­ed home­land of Eng­land. With­in two weeks of its release there, writes David Hugh­es in The Com­plete Kubrick, “right-wingers and tub-thump­ing MPs were bay­ing for the film to be banned there before copy­cat vio­lence could spread among the nation’s impres­sion­able youth. Under a head­line that read ‘CLOCKWORK ORANGES ARE TICKING BOMBS,’ the Evening News pre­dict­ed that the film would ‘lead to a clock­work cult which will mag­ni­fy teen vio­lence.’ ”

The direct attri­bu­tions of vio­lent inci­dents involv­ing young peo­ple to A Clock­work Orange con­tin­ued until the film was final­ly pulled from British the­aters — by the film­mak­er him­self. “In ear­ly 1974, Kubrick and Warn­er Bros qui­et­ly with­drew it from cir­cu­la­tion,” Hugh­es writes, “refus­ing to allow it to be shown under any cir­cum­stances.” Attempt­ed breach­es of this “most effec­tive cen­sor­ship of a film in British his­to­ry” were dealt with harsh­ly: Lon­don’s Scala Cin­e­ma, for exam­ple, was forced to shut its doors for­ev­er after show­ing the film in 1992. A Clock­work Orange final­ly received a British re-release in 2000, the year after Kubrick­’s death.

That same year the doc­u­men­tary Still Tickin’: The Return of A Clock­work Orange, which you can watch on YouTube, told the sto­ry of the film’s sup­pres­sion and re-emer­gence. But why would such a force­ful­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic film­mak­er as Stan­ley Kubrick pull his own film from cir­cu­la­tion in the first place? “Stan­ley was very insult­ed by the reac­tion, and hurt,” Hugh­es quotes his wid­ow Chris­tiane as say­ing. Kubrick “did­n’t want to be mis­un­der­stood and mis­in­ter­pret­ed,” nor did he want to keep receiv­ing the “death threats” that the bad press had been draw­ing.

Kubrick “nev­er spoke about the deci­sion” to ban his own movie, writes Devin Faraci at Birth.Movies.Death., and sure­ly did­n’t see it as to blame for youth vio­lence in Britain, but “he was still sick­ened to see the clothes of his char­ac­ters hung on these per­pe­tra­tors. The mes­sage of his film was being missed, and he refused to let the movie take on a life of its own.” Kubrick had dis­cussed his own oppo­si­tion to the idea that art pro­motes vio­lent behav­ior dur­ing the ini­tial pro­mo­tion of A Clock­work Orange: “There has always been vio­lence in art,” he said to jour­nal­ist Michel Ciment. “There is vio­lence in the Bible, vio­lence in Homer, vio­lence in Shake­speare, and many psy­chi­a­trists believe that it serves as a cathar­sis rather than a mod­el.”

In Kubrick­’s view, “the peo­ple who com­mit vio­lent crime are not ordi­nary peo­ple who are trans­formed into vicious thugs by the wrong diet of films or TV. Rather, it is a fact that vio­lent crime is invari­ably com­mit­ted by peo­ple with a long record of anti-social behav­ior, or by the unex­pect­ed blos­som­ing of a psy­chopath who is described after­ward as hav­ing been ‘…such a nice, qui­et boy.’ ” Either way, “immense­ly com­pli­cat­ed social, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal forces are involved,” and “the sim­plis­tic notion that films and TV can trans­form an oth­er­wise inno­cent and good per­son into a crim­i­nal has strong over­tones of the Salem witch tri­als.” Whether or not Kubrick went too far in with­draw­ing A Clock­work Orange, he cer­tain­ly had a clear­er sense of what cre­ates the kind of malev­o­lent char­ac­ters it depicts than many of its ear­ly view­ers did.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Peter Sell­ers Calls Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange “Vio­lent,” “The Biggest Load of Crap I’ve Seen” (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.