“Mr. Tambourine Man” & Other Bob Dylan Classics, Sung Beautifully by Kids

in K-12, Music | January 10th, 2020

New Zealan­der David Antony Clark grew up with the music of Bob Dylan, and, like many his age, felt sad that the youngun’s had no idea who that was. Instead of moan­ing, he decid­ed to pro­duce Kids Sing Bob Dylan, an 11-track CD of cov­ers sung by the Star­bugs, Clark’s children’s group.

Before you flinch, check the YouTube clip above. These kids can actu­al­ly sing, right? The har­monies are there…I mean pos­si­bly cleaned up a bit with tech­nol­o­gy, I can’t say for sure.

Here’s “For­ev­er Young,” from Dylan’s 1974 Plan­et Waves. An appro­pri­ate song for this quin­tet: Jessie Hil­lel, Rebec­ca Jenk­ins, Sarah Whitak­er, Ben Ander­son, and Roisin Ander­son, all from Welling­ton, NZ, and rag­ing in age from 7 to 15.

Accord­ing to a Stuff.nz arti­cle on the release, Jessie Hil­lel said about the record­ing: “Hear­ing and lis­ten­ing to him was real­ly fun. But you can do what­ev­er you want to the songs, but at the same time I real­ly want­ed to have his stan­dard because he did such a good job. I feel proud of myself, it’s just so good.”

Ben Ander­son, age 12, was the only one with pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Dylan: ““I’d heard about him a few times before, I was real­ly excit­ed. He’s a real­ly good singer, just the emo­tion that he puts into his songs, I was real­ly excit­ed to sing them. I was real­ly ner­vous that I would­n’t live up to it, and do it right, but it got eas­i­er as the song went on.”

Now, you might have noticed two things from a quick lis­ten. One of the younger kids, Jessie Hil­lel, might be small, but she packs a voice from some­one twice her age. (She han­dles the low­er range in the har­monies.) The oth­er thing: these videos are from 2011.

Where is Jessie now? Fun­ny you ask:

In 2012 she made her way onto the finals of New Zealand’s Got Tal­ent, and in 2016 she sang Puc­ci­ni in Mel­bourne. She’s cur­rent­ly study­ing music in Mel­bourne and is in a jazz-fusion band called Jakal.

Sarah Whitak­er also has her own music chan­nel on YouTube.

Fun­ny about kids–they grow up right in front of your eyes.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Tan­gled Up in Blue: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

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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Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

in Books, Education | January 10th, 2020

Below, you can hear jour­nal­ist David Epstein talks with Recode’s Kara Swish­er about his book, Range: Why Gen­er­al­ists Tri­umph in a Spe­cial­ized World. In it, “he argues that the world’s most suc­cess­ful ath­letes, artists, musi­cians, inven­tors, fore­cast­ers and sci­en­tists are more like­ly to be dab­blers, rather than peo­ple who set out to do what they do best from a young age — and, in fact, the peo­ple who have high­ly spe­cial­ized train­ing from an ear­ly age tend to have low­er life­time earn­ings over­all.” The #1 New York Times best­selling book makes the case that “in most fields—especially those that are com­plex and unpredictable—generalists, not spe­cial­ists, are primed to excel. Gen­er­al­ists often find their path late, and they jug­gle many inter­ests rather than focus­ing on one. They’re also more cre­ative, more agile, and able to make con­nec­tions their more spe­cial­ized peers can’t see.”

You can pick up a copy of Range: Why Gen­er­al­ists Tri­umph in a Spe­cial­ized World in print, or get it as a free audio book if you sign up for a 30-day free tri­al with Audible.com.

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:

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

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

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

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How Dick Cavett Brought Sophistication to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Classic Interviews Online

in Television | January 9th, 2020

Just as the avun­cu­lar pres­ence of Ed Sul­li­van helped ease mid­dle Amer­i­ca into accept­ing Elvis Pres­ley and The Bea­t­les, the aw-shucks mid­west­ern charm of Dick Cavett made Wood­stock hip­pies seem down­right cud­dly when he had Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, and Joni Mitchell on just after the leg­endary music fes­ti­val in 1969. He had a way of mak­ing every­one around him com­fort­able enough to reveal just a lit­tle more than they might oth­er­wise. (See Jimi Hen­drix talk about his Nation­al Anthem per­for­mance, below.)

Born in Nebras­ka in 1937, “the only per­sona [Cavett] both­ered to, or need­ed to, devel­op for work­ing on cam­era was of a boy from Nebras­ka daz­zled by the bright lights of New York,” as Clive James writes in an appre­ci­a­tion of the TV host. As he inter­viewed the biggest stars of late six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies on the long-run­ning Dick Cavett Show, Cavett’s easy­go­ing Mid­west­ern demeanor dis­armed both his guests and audi­ences. He kept them engaged with his eru­di­tion, quick wit, and breadth of cul­tur­al knowl­edge.

Cavett, writes James, was “the most dis­tin­guished talk-show host in Amer­i­ca… a true sophis­ti­cate with a daunt­ing intel­lec­tu­al range.” He was also an empath­ic inter­view­er who could lead his guests beyond the stock respons­es they were used to giv­ing in TV inter­views. (David Bowie, below, reveals how he was influ­enced by his fans.)

A trained gym­nast and self-taught magician—Cavett met fel­low magi­cian John­ny Car­son in the ear­ly 50s at a mag­ic convention—the talk-show host left Nebras­ka for Yale and nev­er looked back. (He once joked, quot­ing Abe Bur­rows, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?”) After col­lege, he moved to New York to pur­sue act­ing. There, he got his first com­e­dy writ­ing job, when he hand­ed some of his jokes to Tonight Show host Jack Paar in an ele­va­tor. He befriend­ed Stan Lau­rel, Grou­cho Marx, and all the biggest names in com­e­dy, and wrote for Jer­ry Lewis and Merv Grif­fin.

Once he had his own late-night talk show, how­ev­er, which ran oppo­site John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show, it became clear that he was doing some­thing very dif­fer­ent. “Cavett nev­er mugged, nev­er whooped it up for the audi­ence, rarely told a for­mal­ly con­struct­ed joke, and lis­tened to the guest,” writes James. He became “famous enough not to be able to go out except in dis­guise,” but “his style did not suit a mass audi­ence.” This is what made—and still makes—Cavett worth watch­ing.

He had Bri­an de Pal­ma and Mar­tin Scors­ese on to talk about how they’re each other’s best crit­ics, and Scors­ese revealed that he did addi­tion­al shoot­ing for The Last Waltz after De Pal­ma saw it.

Robin Williams came on to demon­strate his devel­op­ing Pop­eye voice dur­ing the shoot­ing of the Robert Alt­man film in 1979. In the clip above, he talks about feel­ing like “a mon­key on a string” and work­ing through his depres­sion.

Lucille Ball told the sto­ry of her ear­ly years in show busi­ness, and her time work­ing as a mod­el, and Dick Van Dyke talked frankly about his alco­holism and the stig­ma sur­round­ing addic­tion.

These are just a few of the 270+ sur­pris­ing clips you’ll find on the Dick Cavett Show YouTube chan­nel, where George Car­lin, Muham­mad Ali, Mar­lon Bran­do, George Har­ri­son, John Lennon, Ian McK­ellen, Julie Andrews, and too many more stars to name say things they rarely said any­where else, as Cavett draws them out and keeps them talk­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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

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The Magic of Chess: Kids Share Their Uninhibited, Philosophical Insights about the Benefits of Chess

in Games, K-12 | January 9th, 2020

From the US Chess Fed­er­a­tion and direc­tor Jen­ny Schweitzer comes the short doc­u­men­tary, The Mag­ic of Chess. “Filmed at the 2019 Ele­men­tary Chess Cham­pi­onships at the Nashville Opry­land resort, a group of chil­dren share their unin­hib­it­ed, philo­soph­i­cal insights about the ben­e­fits of chess.” Jen­ny Schweitzer added: “For me, as a moth­er of a child who sim­ply loves the game, it was my inten­tion to focus not on the com­pet­i­tive aspects of the chess world, but rather what a deep com­mit­ment to chess can poten­tial­ly offer some­one, young or old.” If this whets your appetite, explore some of our chess resources below.

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:

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

A Brief His­to­ry of Chess: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1,500-Year-Old Game

Gar­ry Kas­parov Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Chess

A Beau­ti­ful Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Chess Grand­mas­ter Gar­ry Kas­parov Relives His Four Most Mem­o­rable Games

When John Cage & Mar­cel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chess­board That Turned Chess Moves Into Elec­tron­ic Music (1968)

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

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Vincent Van Gogh’s Favorite Books

in Art, Books | January 9th, 2020

Piles of French Nov­els, Vin­cent Van Gogh, 1887

Among lovers of Vin­cent van Gogh, the Dutch artist is as well known for his let­ter writ­ing as for his extra­or­di­nary paint­ing. “The per­son­al tone, evoca­tive style and live­ly lan­guage” of his cor­re­spon­dence, writes the Van Gogh Muse­um, “prompt­ed some peo­ple who were in a posi­tion to know to accord the cor­re­spon­dence the sta­tus of lit­er­a­ture. The poet W.H. Auden, who pub­lished an anthol­o­gy with a brief intro­duc­tion, wrote: ‘there is scarce­ly one let­ter by Van Gogh which I, who am cer­tain­ly no expert, do not find fas­ci­nat­ing.’”

Auden was, of course, an expert on the writ­ten word, though maybe not on Van Gogh, and he refined his lit­er­ary exper­tise the same way the painter did: by read­ing as copi­ous­ly as he wrote. “When it was too dark to paint,” writes Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico pro­fes­sor of human­i­ties Jef­frey Her­li­hy Mera at the Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, “Van Gogh read prodi­gious­ly and com­piled a tremen­dous amount of per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence.” Much of his writ­ing, espe­cial­ly his let­ters to his broth­er Theo, was in French, a lan­guage he learned in his teens and spoke in Bel­gium, Paris, and Arles.

Van Gogh’s com­mand of writ­ten French, how­ev­er, came from his read­ing of Vic­tor Hugo, Guy de Mau­pas­sant, and Émile Zola. “Vin­cent loved lit­er­a­ture,” the Van Gogh Muse­um writes. “In gen­er­al, the books he read reflect­ed what was going on in his own life. When he want­ed to fol­low in his father’s foot­steps and become a min­is­ter, he read books of a reli­gious nature. He devoured Parisian nov­els when he was con­sid­er­ing mov­ing to the French cap­i­tal.”

In his let­ters to Theo, he weaves togeth­er the sacred and pro­fane, describ­ing his spir­i­tu­al and cre­ative striv­ings and his unre­quit­ed obses­sions. In his read­ing, he test­ed his val­ues and desires. We get a sense of how Van Gogh’s read­ing com­ple­ment­ed his pious, yet roman­tic nature in the list of some of his favorites, below, com­piled by the Van Gogh Muse­um.

  • Charles Dick­ens, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1843)
  • Jules Michelet, L’amour (1858)
  • Émile Zola, L’Oeu­vre (1886)
  • Alphonse Daudet, Tar­tarin de Taras­con (1887)
  • The Bible
  • John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)
  • George Eliot, Scenes of Cler­i­cal Life (1857)
  • Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low, The Poet­i­cal Works of Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low (1887)
  • Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, What the Moon Saw (1862)
  • Thomas a Kem­p­is, The Imi­ta­tion of Christ (1471–1472)
  • Har­ri­et Beech­er Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cab­in (1851–1852)
  • Edmond de Goncourt, Chérie (1884)
  • Vic­tor Hugo, Les mis­érables (1862)
  • Hon­oré de Balzac, Le Père Gori­ot (1835)
  • Guy de Mau­pas­sant, Bel-Ami (1885)
  • Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysan­thème (1888)
  • Voltaire, Can­dide (1759)
  • Shake­speare, Mac­beth (c. 1606–1607)
  • Shake­speare, King Lear (1606–1607)
  • Charles Dick­ens, Hard Times (1854)
  • Emile Zola, Nana (1880)
  • Emile Zola, La joie de vivre (1884)

“Vin­cent read moral­is­tic books often favoured among mem­bers of the Protes­tant Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty” in which he was raised by his min­is­ter father. He looked also to the moral­i­ty of Charles Dick­ens, whose works he “read and reread… through­out his life.” Zola’s “rough, direct nat­u­ral­ism” appealed to Van Gogh’s desire “to give an hon­est depic­tion of what he saw around him: farm labour­ers, a weath­ered lit­tle old man, deject­ed or work­ing women, a soup kitchen, a tree, dunes and fields.”

In Alphonse Daudet’s 1887 Tar­tarin de Taras­con, “an enter­tain­ing car­i­ca­ture of the south­ern French­man,” Van Gogh sat­is­fied his “need for humor and satire.” Despite the stereo­type of the artist as per­pet­u­al­ly tor­tured, his let­ters con­sis­tent­ly reveal his good-natured sense of humor. From French his­to­ri­an Jules Michelet’s 1858 L’amour, the artist “found wis­dom he could apply to his own love life,” tumul­tuous as it was. He used Michelet’s insights “to jus­ti­fy his choic­es,” such as “when he fell in love with his cousin Kee Vos.”

In a let­ter to Theo, Vin­cent expressed his emo­tion­al strug­gles over Vos’s rejec­tion of him as “a great many ‘pet­ty mis­eries of human life,’ which, if they were writ­ten down in a book, could per­haps serve to amuse some peo­ple, though they can hard­ly be con­sid­ered pleas­ant if one expe­ri­ences them one­self.” He is at a loss for what to do with him­self, he writes, but “‘wan­der­ing we find our way,’ and not by sit­ting still.” For Van Gogh, “wan­der­ing” just as often took the form of sit­ting still with a good book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

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

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The Art & Philosophy of Bonsai

in Art, Nature, Philosophy | January 9th, 2020

We all know what to think of when we hear the term bon­sai: dwarf trees. Or so Shi­nobu Noza­ki titled his book, the very first major pub­li­ca­tion on the sub­ject in Eng­lish. Dwarf Trees came out in the 1930s, not long after the Japan­ese art of bon­sai start­ed draw­ing seri­ous inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. But the art itself goes back as far as the sixth cen­tu­ry, when Japan­ese embassy employ­ees and stu­dents of Bud­dhism return­ing from sojourns in Chi­na brought back all the lat­est things Chi­nese, includ­ing plants grow­ing in con­tain­ers. By six or sev­en cen­turies lat­er, as scrolls show us today, Japan had tak­en that hor­ti­cul­tur­al tech­nique and refined it into a prac­tice based on not just minia­tur­iza­tion but pro­por­tion, asym­me­try, poignan­cy, and era­sure of the artist’s traces, one that pro­duces the kind of trees-in-minia­ture we rec­og­nize as art­works, and even mas­ter­works, today.

It hard­ly needs say­ing that bon­sai trees don’t take shape by them­selves. As the name, which means “tray plant­i­ng” (盆栽), sug­gests, a work of bon­sai must begin by plant­i­ng a spec­i­men in a small con­tain­er. From then on, it demands dai­ly atten­tion in not just the pro­vi­sion of the prop­er amounts of water and sun­light but also care­ful trim­ming and adjust­ment with trim­mers, hooks, wire, and every­thing else in the bon­sai cul­ti­va­tor’s sur­pris­ing­ly large suite of tools.

You can see a Japan­ese mas­ter of the art named Chi­ako Yamamo­to in action in “Bon­sai: The End­less Rit­u­al,” the BBC Earth Unplugged video at the top of the post. “Shap­ing nature in this way demands ever­last­ing devo­tion with­out the prospect of com­ple­tion,” says its nar­ra­tor, a point under­scored by one bon­sai under Yamamo­to’s care, orig­i­nal­ly plant­ed by her grand­fa­ther over a cen­tu­ry ago.

You’ll find even old­er bon­sai at the Nation­al Bon­sai Muse­um at the U.S. Nation­al Arbore­tum in Wash­ing­ton D.C. In the video “Bon­sai Will Make You a Bet­ter Per­son,” cura­tor Jack Sus­tic — an Amer­i­can first exposed to bon­sai in the mil­i­tary, while sta­tioned in Korea — shows off a Japan­ese white pine “in train­ing” since the year 1625. That unusu­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy reflects the fact that no work of bon­sai even attains a state of com­plete­ness. “They’re always grow­ing,” say Sus­tic. “They’re always chang­ing. It’s nev­er a fin­ished art­work.” In Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s “Amer­i­can Shokunin” just above, the tit­u­lar bon­sai cul­ti­va­tor (shokunin has a mean­ing sim­i­lar to “crafts­man” or “arti­san”), Japan-trained, Ore­gon-based Ryan Neil, expands on what bon­sai teach­es: not just how to artis­ti­cal­ly grow small trees that resem­ble big ones, but what it takes to com­mune with nature and attain mas­tery.

“A mas­ter is some­body who, every sin­gle day, tries to pur­sue per­fec­tion at their cho­sen endeav­or,” says Neil. “A mas­ter does­n’t retire. A mas­ter does­n’t stop. They do it until they’re dead.” And as a work of bon­sai lit­er­al­ly out­lives its cre­ator, the pur­suit con­tin­ues long after they’re dead. The bon­sai mas­ter must be aware of the aes­thet­ic and philo­soph­i­cal val­ues held by the gen­er­a­tions who came before them as well as the gen­er­a­tions that will come after. Wabi sabi, as bon­sai prac­ti­tion­er Pam Woythal defines it, is “the Japan­ese art of find­ing beau­ty in imper­fec­tion and pro­fun­di­ty in nature, of accept­ing the nat­ur­al cycle of growth, decay, and death.” Shibu­mi (or in its adjec­ti­val form shibui) is, in the words of I Am Bon­sai’s Jonathan Rodriguez, “the sim­ple sub­tle details of the sub­ject,” man­i­fest for exam­ple in “the appar­ent sim­ple tex­ture that bal­ances sim­plic­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty.” Looked at cor­rect­ly, a bon­sai tree — leaves, branch­es, pot, and all — reminds us of the impor­tant ele­ments of life and the impor­tant ele­ments of art, and of the fact that those ele­ments aren’t as far apart as we assume.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Kintsu­gi: The Cen­turies-Old Japan­ese Craft of Repair­ing Pot­tery with Gold & Find­ing Beau­ty in Bro­ken Things

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

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

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

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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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #26 Discusses Alan Moore’s Watchmen Comic and the HBO Show with Cornell Psychology Professor David Pizarro

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 9th, 2020

Per­haps the most laud­ed graph­ic nov­el has been sequelized for HBO, and amaz­ing­ly, it turned out pret­ty darn well (with a 96% Rot­ten Toma­toes rat­ing!).

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by the Cor­nel­l’s David Pizarro, host of the pop­u­lar Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast. We con­sid­er Alan Moore’s 1986 graph­ic nov­el, the 2009 Zack Sny­der film, and of course most­ly the recent­ly com­plet­ed (we hope) show by Damon Lin­de­lof, the cre­ator of Lost and The Left­overs.

How does Moore’s idio­syn­crat­ic writ­ing style trans­late to the screen? Did the show make best use of its nine hours? Are there oth­er sto­ries in this alter­nate his­to­ry that should still be told, per­haps to reflect on oth­er recur­rent social ills or crises of what­ev­er moment might be depict­ed? Was Lin­de­lof real­ly the guy to tell this sto­ry about race, and does mak­ing the show about racism (which is bad!) under­mine Moore’s rejec­tion of (moral­ly) black-and-white heroes and vil­lains?

Some of the arti­cles we used to warm up for this dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

You might want to also check out HBO’s Watch­men page, which includes extra essays and the offi­cial pod­cast with Damon Lin­de­lof com­ment­ing on the episodes.

Fol­low Dave @peez. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, undoubt­ed­ly the apex of his pro­fes­sion­al career.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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A Map of the Disney Entertainment Empire Reveals the Deep Connections Between Its Movies, Its Merchandise, Disneyland & More (1967)

in Business, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Television | January 8th, 2020

We all remem­ber the first Dis­ney movie we ever saw. In most of our child­hoods, one Dis­ney movie led to anoth­er, which stoked in us the desire for Dis­ney toys, Dis­ney games, Dis­ney comics, Dis­ney music, and so on. If we were lucky, we might also take a trip to Dis­ney­land or one of its descen­dants else­where in the world. Many of us spent the bulk of our youngest years as hap­py res­i­dents of the Dis­ney enter­tain­ment empire; some of us, into adult­hood or even old age, remain there still.

Die-hard Dis­ney fans appre­ci­ate that the world of Dis­ney — com­pris­ing not just films and theme parks but tele­vi­sion shows, print­ed mat­ter, attrac­tions on the inter­net, and mer­chan­dise of near­ly every kind — is too vast ever to com­pre­hend, let alone ful­ly explore.

It was already big half a cen­tu­ry ago, but not too big to grasp. You can see the whole of the oper­a­tion laid out in this orga­ni­za­tion­al syn­er­gy dia­gram cre­at­ed by Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions in 1967. Depict­ing “the many and var­ied syn­er­gis­tic rela­tion­ships between the divi­sions of Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions,” the infor­ma­tion graph­ic reveals the links between each divi­sion.

Along the arrow­head­ed lines indi­cat­ing the flows of man­pow­er, mate­r­i­al, and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, “short tex­tu­al descrip­tions show what each divi­sion sup­plies and con­tributes to the oth­ers.” The motion pic­ture divi­sion “feeds tunes and tal­ent” to the music divi­sion, for exam­ple, which “pro­motes pre­mi­ums for tie-ins” to the mer­chan­dise licens­ing depart­ment, which “feeds ideas for retail items” to WED Enter­pris­es (the hold­ing com­pa­ny found­ed by Walt Dis­ney in 1950), which pro­duces “audio-ani­ma­tron­ics” for Dis­ney­land.

Some of the nexus­es on the dia­gram will be as famil­iar as Mick­ey Mouse, Goofy, Tin­ker­bell, and the char­ac­ters cavort­ing here and there around it. Oth­ers will be less so: the 16-mil­lime­ter films divi­sion, for instance, which would even­tu­al­ly be replaced by a colos­sal home-video divi­sion (itself sure­ly being eat­en into, now, by stream­ing). The Celebri­ty Sports Cen­ter, an indoor enter­tain­ment com­plex out­side Den­ver, closed in 1994. MAPO refers to a theme-park ani­ma­tron­ics unit formed in the 1960s with the prof­its of Mary Pop­pins (hence its name) and dis­solved in 2012. And as for Min­er­al King, a pro­posed ski resort in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sequoia Nation­al Park, it was nev­er even built.

“The ski resort was one of sev­er­al ambi­tious projects that Walt Dis­ney spear­head­ed in the years before his death in 1966,” writes Nathan Mas­ters at Giz­mo­do. But as the size of the Min­er­al King plans grew, wilder­ness-activist oppo­si­tion inten­si­fied. After years of oppo­si­tion by the Sier­ra Club, as well as the pas­sage of the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act 1970 and the Nation­al Parks and Recre­ation Act of 1978, cor­po­rate inter­est in the project final­ly fiz­zled out. Though that would no doubt have come as a dis­ap­point­ment to Walt Dis­ney him­self, he might also have known to keep the fail­ure in per­spec­tive. As he once said of the empire bear­ing his name, “I only hope that we nev­er lose sight of one thing — that it was all start­ed by a mouse.”

h/t Eli and via Howard Low­ery

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

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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