Why You Should Read The Master and Margarita: An Animated Introduction to Bulgakov’s Rollicking Soviet Satire

in Books, History, Literature | June 3rd, 2019

Which are the essen­tial Russ­ian nov­els? Quite a few unde­ni­able con­tenders come to mind right away: Fathers and Sons, Crime and Pun­ish­ment, War and Peace, Anna Karen­i­na, The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Dr. Zhiva­go, One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich. But among seri­ous enthu­si­asts of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture, nov­els don’t come much less deni­able than The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Mikhail Bul­gakov’s tale of the Dev­il’s vis­it to Sovi­et Moscow in the 1930s. This “sur­re­al blend of polit­i­cal satire, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, and occult mys­ti­cism,” as Alex Gendler describes it in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, “has earned a lega­cy as one of the 20th century’s great­est nov­els — and one of its strangest.”

The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta con­sists of two par­al­lel nar­ra­tives. In the first, “a meet­ing between two mem­bers of Moscow’s lit­er­ary elite is inter­rupt­ed by a strange gen­tle­man named Woland, who presents him­self as a for­eign schol­ar invit­ed to give a pre­sen­ta­tion on black mag­ic.” Then, “as the stranger engages the two com­pan­ions in a philo­soph­i­cal debate and makes omi­nous pre­dic­tions about their fates, the read­er is sud­den­ly trans­port­ed to first-cen­tu­ry Jerusalem,” where “a tor­ment­ed Pon­tius Pilate reluc­tant­ly sen­tences Jesus of Nazareth to death.”

The nov­el oscil­lates between the sto­ry of the his­tor­i­cal Jesus — though not quite the one the Bible tells — and that of Woland and his entourage, which includes an enor­mous cat named Behe­moth with a taste for chess, vod­ka, wise­cracks, and firearms. Dark humor flows lib­er­al­ly from their antics, as well as from Bul­gakov’s depic­tion of “the USSR at the height of the Stal­in­ist peri­od. There, artists and authors worked under strict cen­sor­ship, sub­ject to impris­on­ment, exile, or exe­cu­tion if they were seen as under­min­ing state ide­ol­o­gy.”

The dev­il­ish Woland plays this over­bear­ing bureau­crat­ic life like a fid­dle, and “as heads are sep­a­rat­ed from bod­ies and mon­ey rains from the sky, the cit­i­zens of Moscow react with pet­ty-self inter­est, illus­trat­ing how Sovi­et soci­ety bred greed and cyn­i­cism despite its ideals.” Such con­tent would nat­u­ral­ly ren­der a book unpub­lish­able at the time, and though Bul­gakov’s ear­li­er satire The Heart of a Dog (in which a sur­geon trans­plants human organs into a dog and then insists he behave as a human) cir­cu­lat­ed in samiz­dat form, he could­n’t even com­plete The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta before his death in 1940.

“Bulgakov’s expe­ri­ences with cen­sor­ship and artis­tic frus­tra­tion lend an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal air to the sec­ond part of the nov­el, when we are final­ly intro­duced to its name­sake,” says Gendler. “The Mas­ter is a name­less author who’s worked for years on a nov­el but burned the man­u­script after it was reject­ed by pub­lish­ers — just as Bul­gakov had done with his own work. Yet the true pro­tag­o­nist is the Master’s mis­tress Mar­gari­ta,” whose “devo­tion to her lover’s aban­doned dream bears a strange con­nec­tion to the dia­bol­i­cal company’s escapades — and car­ries the sto­ry to its sur­re­al cli­max.”

In the event, a cen­sored ver­sion of The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta was first pub­lished in the 1960s, and an as-com­plete-as-pos­si­ble ver­sion even­tu­al­ly appeared in 1973. Against the odds, the man­u­script that Bul­gakov left behind sur­vived him to become a mas­ter­piece that has inspired not just oth­er Russ­ian writ­ers, but cre­ators like the Rolling Stones, Pat­ti Smith, and (in a per­haps less than safe-for-work man­ner) H.R. Giger as well. Per­haps the author him­self had some pre­mo­ni­tion of the book’s poten­tial: man­u­scripts, as he famous­ly has Woland say to the Mas­ter, don’t burn.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? (This could include The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta.) Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Ani­mat­ed in Two Min­utes

Pat­ti Smith’s Musi­cal Trib­utes to the Russ­ian Greats: Tarkovsky, Gogol & Bul­gakov

Why You Should Read Crime and Pun­ish­ment: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dostoevsky’s Moral Thriller

Why Should We Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451? A New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Explains

Why You Should Read One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude: An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

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

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 ( 1 ) |

Elton John Takes Us Through the Creative Process of His Early Hit “Tiny Dancer” (1970)

in Film, Life, Music | June 3rd, 2019

We all have our favorites from Elton John’s vast cat­a­log, and I’ll admit that 1970’s “Tiny Dancer” has nev­er been one of mine.

Call me crass, but I tend to get it con­fused with 1973’s “Can­dle in the Wind,” which John retooled so swift­ly for Princess Diana’s 1997 funer­al.

But then Sir Elton—or “Reg” as close friends and long-time lyri­cist Bernie Taupin call the artist for­mer­ly known as Regi­nald Ken­neth Dwight—has always had a knack for work­ing quick­ly, as Taupin explains above.

I’d nev­er been curi­ous enough to inves­ti­gate, but assumed, cor­rect­ly, that the lyric “seam­stress for the band” referred to an actu­al per­son.

John actu­al­ly seems a bit blasé, explain­ing that it’s about Taupin’s then girl­friend and even­tu­al first wife, Max­ine Feibel­man, whom I must thank for inad­ver­tent­ly sup­ply­ing the title of my favorite track, “The Bitch is Back,” which was her code phrase for “Elton’s in a mood.”

As per Sir Elton, “Tiny Dancer”’s lyrics informed the sound, which is more bal­le­ri­na than pirate smile.

And while the orig­i­nal lin­er notes’ ded­i­ca­tion sug­gests that “Tiny Dancer” is indeed a trib­ute to Feibel­man, three wives lat­er, Taupin revised things a bit, telling author Gavin Edwards:

We came to Cal­i­for­nia in the fall of 1970, and sun­shine radi­at­ed from the pop­u­lace. I was try­ing to cap­ture the spir­it of that time, encap­su­lat­ed by the women we met—especially at the clothes stores up and down the Strip in L.A. They were free spir­its, sexy in hiphug­gers and lacy blous­es, and very ethe­re­al, the way they moved. So dif­fer­ent from what I’d been used to in Eng­land. And they all want­ed to sew patch­es on your jeans. They’d moth­er you and sleep with you—it was the per­fect Oedi­pal com­plex.

Writer-direc­tor Cameron Crowe must’ve absorbed that mes­sage, to go by his mem­o­rable use of the song in Almost Famous’ tour bus scene,

Those com­mu­nal good vibes per­me­ate direc­tor Max Weiland’s win­ning entry in a recent John-spon­sored con­test on The Cut, which, like the open­ing scene of La La Land, gets a lot of mileage from LA’s rep­u­ta­tion for traf­fic jams.

Can tick­et buy­ers expect to find the song fea­tured promi­nent­ly in the just released John biopic, Rock­et­man?

No.

(Just kid­ding. Why else would John and his Rock­et­man dop­pel­gänger, actor Taron Egerton choose that one for a duet at John’s annu­al Oscar par­ty?)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Christ­mas Com­mer­cial Takes You on a Sen­ti­men­tal Jour­ney Through Elton John’s Rich Musi­cal Life

Elton John Sings His Clas­sic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

Elton John Proves He Can Turn any Text into a Song: Watch Him Impro­vise with Lines from Hen­rik Ibsen’s Play, Peer Gynt

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Cure Performed the Entire “Disintegration” Album on the 30th Anniversary of Its Release: Watch The Complete Concert Online

in Music | May 31st, 2019

30 years after its orig­i­nal release, The Cure per­formed the entire­ty of their 1989 album Dis­in­te­gra­tion at a con­cert held this past Thurs­day at The Syd­ney Opera House. Dis­in­te­gra­tion remains the band’s best-sell­ing album to date, and it now ranks #326 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Great­est Albums of All Time.” You can watch the show, from start to fin­ish, above. Find a setlist, with time­stamps, below.

17:15 Deliri­ous Night

23:44 Fear of Ghosts

30:45 No Heart

34:20 Esten

38:17 2 Late

41:10 Out of Mind

44:46 Bab­ble

54:42 Plain­song

59:25 Pic­tures of You

1:06:44 Close­down

1:11:00 Lovesong

1:14:40 Last Dance

1:19:52 Lul­la­by

1:24:46 Fas­ci­na­tion Street

1:29:47 Prayers for Rain

1:35:34 The Same Deep Water as You

1:44:47 Dis­in­te­gra­tion

1:53:11 Home­sick

2:00:16 Unti­tled

2:10:55 Burn @​

2:17:52 Three Imag­i­nary Boys

2:21:30 Pirate Ships

via Laugh­ing Squid

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 Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The First Museum Dedicated to Japanese Folklore Monsters Is Now Open

in History | May 31st, 2019

As any enthu­si­ast of Godzil­la movies knows, nobody does mon­sters quite like the Japan­ese. The cul­tur­al tra­di­tion of giant crea­tures lay­ing waste to cities is known as kai­jū, a com­bi­na­tion of kai (怪), “strange,” and jū (獣), “beast.” The well of kai­jū goes deep, but the well of Japan­ese mon­ster­hood itself goes much deep­er. Take yōkai, the cat­e­go­ry of mon­sters, spir­its, and demons whose his­to­ry goes all the way back to the first cen­tu­ry. But it was­n’t until the medieval era that depic­tions of yōkai —whose name com­bines the char­ac­ters yō (妖), with its con­no­ta­tions of attrac­tion, bewitch­ment, and calami­ty, and kai (怪), which can indi­cate some­thing sus­pi­cious, a mys­tery, or an appari­tion — turned into pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment.

Most yōkai pos­sess super­nat­ur­al pow­ers, some­times used for good but often not so much. Some look human, while oth­ers, such as the tur­tle-like kap­pa and the intel­li­gent if dis­solute rac­coons called tanu­ki (stars of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li ani­ma­tor Isao Taka­ha­ta’s Pom Poko), resem­ble ani­mals. But the wide world of yōkai also includes shapeshifters as well as only seem­ing­ly inan­i­mate objects. You can famil­iar­ize your­self with all of them — from the gong-bang­ing bake ichō no sei who hang around under gingko trees to the cloth drag­on shi­ro uneri born of a dishrag to the “tem­ple-peck­er” ter­at­sut­su­ki who lives among Bud­dhist priests and on a diet of rage — at the Eng­lish-lan­guage data­base Yokai.com.

Demand for yōkai sto­ries increased dur­ing the ear­ly 17th to the mid-18th cen­tu­ry Edo peri­od, which saw the intro­duc­tion of the print­ing press to Japan. One pop­u­lar tale of that era, Ino Mononoke Roku, tells of a young boy who must under­go 30 days of con­fronta­tions with var­i­ous yōkai in the city of Miyoshi. It’s no coin­ci­dence that the very first muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to yōkai has just opened in that same place. “The Miyoshi Mononoke Muse­um, or for­mal­ly the Yumo­to Koichi Memo­r­i­al Japan Yokai Muse­um, opened in the city of Miyoshi after Koichi Yumo­to, a 68-year-old eth­nol­o­gist and yokai researcher in Tokyo, donat­ed some 5,000 items from his col­lec­tion in 2016,” says the Japan Times. “The muse­um dis­plays about 160 items from Yumoto’s col­lec­tion, which includes a scroll paint­ing of the famous folk­tale and crafts.”

Locat­ed in Hiroshi­ma Pre­fec­ture (also home to the Onomichi Muse­um of Art and its famous cats Ken-chan and Go-chan), the Miyoshi Mononoke Muse­um fea­tures “about 160 items from Yumoto’s col­lec­tion, which includes a scroll paint­ing of the famous folk­tale and crafts,” an “inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal pic­ture book of yōkai” as well as oppor­tu­ni­ties to “take pho­tos with the mon­sters using a spe­cial cam­era set up at the site.” You’ll find a suit­ably odd ani­mat­ed pro­mo­tion­al video for the muse­um, which turns into a yōkai dance par­ty, at the top of the post. Whether or not you believe that these attrac­tive, bewitch­ing, calami­tous, sus­pi­cious, mys­te­ri­ous appari­tions real­ly inhab­it the world today, you have to acknowl­edge their knack for inhab­it­ing every form of media that has arisen over the cen­turies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la: #38 on the List of The 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe & Elvis Pres­ley Star in an Action-Packed Pop Art Japan­ese Mon­ster Movie

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Watch “The Mid­night Par­a­sites,” a Sur­re­al Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Set in the World of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights (1972)

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 Art & Cooking of Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Georgia O’Keeffe, Vincent Van Gogh & More

in Art, Education, Food & Drink | May 31st, 2019

Mex­i­can cui­sine is as time-con­sum­ing as it is deli­cious.

Fri­da Kahlo fans attract­ed to the idea of dupli­cat­ing some dish­es from the ban­quet served at her wed­ding to fel­low artist Diego Rivera should set aside ample time, so as to tru­ly enjoy the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing chiles rel­lenos and nopales sal­ad from scratch.

Sarah Urist Green’s Kahlo-themed cook­ing les­son, above, adapt­ed from Marie-Pierre Colle and Frida’s step­daugh­ter Guadalupe Rivera’s 1994 cook­book Frida’s Fies­tas: Recipes and Rem­i­nis­cences of Life with Fri­da Kahlo, is refresh­ing­ly frank about the chal­lenges of tack­ling these types of dish­es, espe­cial­ly for those of us whose grand­mas ran more toward Jell‑O sal­ad.

Her self-dep­re­ca­tion should go a long way toward reas­sur­ing less-skilled cooks that per­fec­tion is not the goal.

As she told Nuvo’s Dan Gross­man:

The art cook­ing videos are immense­ly fun to make… And what I’m try­ing to do is reach peo­ple who aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly out­ward­ly into art or don’t know whether they’re into art so they’re not going to click on a video that’s strict­ly about art. But if you can present art ideas through a cook­ing tuto­r­i­al per­haps they’ll be more open to it. I love to cook. And I love to think about that side of art his­to­ry.

To that end, she takes a cou­ple of bite-sized art breaks, to intro­duce view­ers to Frida’s life and work, while the toma­toes are roast­ing.

As tempt­ing as it is for old Fri­da hands to skip this well-chart­ed ter­rain, doing so will not make din­ner ready any faster. Why not enjoy the non-cook­ing relat­ed sec­tions with the eas­i­est item on the menu—a tequi­la shot?

Don’t trick your­self into think­ing there’s noth­ing more to learn.

For instance, I did not know the Span­ish for “I can’t get over this hang­over,” but Frida’s pet par­rot did. (Didn’t know that either.)

Green also offers some quick how-tos that could come in handy for oth­er, less time-con­sum­ing dish­es, like a sand­wich or a plate of home­made pasta—everything from how to make home­made toma­to sauce  to denud­ing prick­ly pear cac­tus pads of their non-edi­ble spines.

If you’re undaunt­ed by the Fri­da recipes, per­haps you should pro­ceed to Sal­vador Dali’s tow­er­ing Bush of Cray­fish in Viking herbs, or the Futur­ists’ high­ly sug­ges­tive Meat Sculp­ture. Oth­er recipes come from Vin­cent Van Gogh and Geor­gia O’Ke­effe. See above.

Books ref­er­enced in the videos include: Din­ner with Geor­gia O’Ke­effe; A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe; Dal­i’s Les Din­ers de Gala; Van Gogh’s Table at the Auberge Ravoux: Recipes From the Artist’s Last Home and Paint­ings of Cafe Life; and again Frida’s Fies­tas: Recipes and Rem­i­nis­cences of Life with Fri­da Kahlo.

View the full playlist of The Art Assignment’s Art Cook­ing episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Metallica, REM, Led Zeppelin & Queen Sung in the Style of Gregorian Chant

in Music | May 31st, 2019

Gre­go­ri­an chants became a thing very briefly in the ear­ly 1990s, when Ger­man elec­tron­ic group Enig­ma com­bined them with the Soul II Soul “Keep On Movin’” drum loop and that ever­p­re­sent shakuhachi sam­ple for “Sad­ness Part One”. And then that song was *every­where* for the first half of the 90s, giv­ing rise to chill­out music like the Orb and The Future Sound of Lon­don.

Gre­go­ri­an music fad­ed away as a trend in dance music, but it’s nev­er real­ly gone away. Bol­stered by some claims that the sooth­ing voic­es help increase alpha waves in the brain, groups like Gre­go­ri­an (cre­at­ed by Enigma’s Frank Peter­son) set about arrang­ing pop songs in the Gre­go­ri­an style, start­ing in 1999.

Oth­ers have fol­lowed suit, or should I say fol­lowed cowl (such as Aus­cul­tate, which cre­at­ed the Queen cov­er below).

But Gre­go­ri­an (the group) is the king of them all, and Petersen’s project has gone on to sell over 5.5 mil­lion albums.

Corny or not, the project is immense­ly pop­u­lar world­wide, and has pro­duced ten “Mas­ters of Chant” albums, along with Christ­mas CDs and such. And while our cur­rent pop stars have to get into ath­let­ic con­di­tion for their Vegas-like shows, there’s some­thing to be said for a group of blokes just stand­ing around on stage singing in uni­son like they’re in a crypt. Looks like a decent gig. Here’s a full con­cert:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

The His­to­ry of Clas­si­cal Music in 1200 Tracks: From Gre­go­ri­an Chant to Górec­ki (100 Hours of Audio)

Expe­ri­ence the Mys­ti­cal Music of Hilde­gard Von Bin­gen: The First Known Com­pos­er in His­to­ry (1098 – 1179)

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 ) |

1980s Metalhead Kids Are Alright: Scientific Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjusted Adults

in Music, Psychology | May 30th, 2019

In the 1980s, The Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC), an orga­ni­za­tion co-found­ed by Tip­per Gore and the wives of sev­er­al oth­er Wash­ing­ton pow­er bro­kers, launched a polit­i­cal cam­paign against pop music, hop­ing to put warn­ing labels on records that pro­mot­ed Sex, Vio­lence, Drug and Alco­hol Use. Along the way, the PMRC issued “the Filthy Fif­teen,” a list of 15 par­tic­u­lar­ly objec­tion­able songs. Hits by Madon­na, Prince and Cyn­di Lau­per made the list. But the list real­ly took aim at heavy met­al bands from the 80s — name­ly, Judas Priest, Möt­ley Crüe, Twist­ed Sis­ter, W.A.S.P., Def Lep­pard, Black Sab­bath, and Ven­om. (Inter­est­ing foot­note: the Sovi­ets sep­a­rate­ly cre­at­ed a list of black­balled rock bands, and it looked pret­ty much the same.)

Above, you can watch Twist­ed Sis­ter’s Dee Snider appear before Con­gress in 1985 and accuse the PMRC of mis­in­ter­pret­ing his band’s lyrics and wag­ing a false war against met­al music. The evi­dence 30 years lat­er sug­gests that Snider per­haps had a point.

A study by psy­chol­o­gy researchers at Hum­boldt State, Ohio State, UC River­side and UT Austin “exam­ined 1980s heavy met­al groupies, musi­cians, and fans at mid­dle age” — 377 par­tic­i­pants in total — and found that, although met­al enthu­si­asts cer­tain­ly lived riski­er lives as kids, they were nonethe­less “sig­nif­i­cant­ly hap­pi­er in their youth and bet­ter adjust­ed cur­rent­ly than either mid­dle-aged or cur­rent col­lege-age youth com­par­i­son groups.” This left the researchers to con­tem­plate one pos­si­ble con­clu­sion: “par­tic­i­pa­tion in fringe style cul­tures may enhance iden­ti­ty devel­op­ment in trou­bled youth.” Not to men­tion that heavy met­al lyrics don’t eas­i­ly turn kids into dam­aged goods.

You can read the report, Three Decades Lat­er: The Life Expe­ri­ences and Mid-Life Func­tion­ing of 1980s Heavy Met­al Groupies here. And, right above, lis­ten to an inter­view with one of the researchers, Tasha Howe, a for­mer head­banger her­self, who spoke yes­ter­day with Michael Kras­ny on KQED radio in San Fran­cis­co.

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

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:

The Dev­il­ish His­to­ry of the 1980s Parental Advi­so­ry Stick­er: When Heavy Met­al & Satan­ic Lyrics Col­lid­ed with the Reli­gious Right

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

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

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

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

Take a Visual Journey Through 181 Years of Street Photography (1838–2019)

in History, Photography | May 30th, 2019

All of us here in the 2010s have, at one time or anoth­er, been street pho­tog­ra­phers. But up until 1838, nobody had ever been a street pho­tog­ra­ph­er. In that year when cam­era phones were well beyond even the ken of sci­ence fic­tion, Louis Daguerre, the inven­tor of the daguerreo­type process and one of the fathers of pho­tog­ra­phy itself, took the first pho­to of a human being. In so doing he also became the first street pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cap­tur­ing as his pic­ture did not just a human being but the urban envi­ron­ment inhab­it­ed by that human being, in this case Paris’ Boule­vard du Tem­ple. Daguer­re’s pic­ture begins the his­tor­i­cal jour­ney through 181 years of street pho­tog­ra­phy, one street pho­to per year all sound­tracked with peri­od-appro­pri­ate songs, in the video above.

From the dawn of the prac­tice, street pho­tog­ra­phy (unlike smile-free ear­ly pho­to­graph­ic por­trai­ture) has shown life as it’s actu­al­ly lived. Like the lone Parisian who hap­pened to be stand­ing still long enough for Daguer­re’s cam­era to cap­ture, the peo­ple pop­u­lat­ing these images go about their busi­ness with no con­cern for, or even aware­ness of, being pho­tographed.

The ear­li­est street pho­tographs come most­ly from Europe — Lon­don’s Trafal­gar Square, Copen­hagen’s for­mer Ulfeldts Plads (now Gråbrø­dretorv), Rome’s Via di Ripet­ta — but as pho­tog­ra­phy spread, so spread street pho­tog­ra­phy. Rapid­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing cities in Amer­i­ca and else­where in the for­mer British Empire soon get in on the action, and a few decades lat­er scenes from the cities of Asia, Africa, and the Mid­dle East begin to appear.

Each of these 181 street pho­tographs was tak­en for a rea­son, though most of those rea­sons are now unknown to us. But some pic­tures make it obvi­ous, espe­cial­ly in the case of the star­tling­ly com­mon sub­genre of post-dis­as­ter street pho­tog­ra­phy: we see the after­math of an 1858 brew­ery fire in Mon­tre­al, an 1866 explo­sion in Syd­ney, an 1874 flood in Pitts­burgh, a 1906 earth­quake in San Fran­cis­co, and a 1920 bomb­ing in New York. Each of these pic­tures tells a sto­ry of a moment in the life of a par­tic­u­lar city, but togeth­er they tell the sto­ry of the city itself, as it has over the past two cen­turies grown out­ward, upward, and in every oth­er way nec­es­sary to accom­mo­date grow­ing pop­u­la­tions; trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies like bicy­cles, street­cars, auto­mo­biles; spaces like squares, cin­e­mas, and cafés; and above all, the ever-diver­si­fy­ing forms of human life lived with­in them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Humans of New York: Street Pho­tog­ra­phy as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Life

19-Year-Old Stu­dent Uses Ear­ly Spy Cam­era to Take Can­did Street Pho­tos (Cir­ca 1895)

Vivian Maier, Street Pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Dis­cov­ered

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

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 ( 2 ) |

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