The History of the Batmobile: A Free Documentary

in Film | June 1st, 2020

In 2012, Roko Bel­ic direct­ed an hour-long doc­u­men­tary on The Bat­mo­bile. Orig­i­nal­ly released on The Dark Knight Ris­es (2012) blu-ray, the film explores the his­to­ry and evo­lu­tion of the Bat­mo­bile in com­ic books, TV and movies. And it fea­tures “notable Bat­man movie direc­tors includ­ing Chris Nolan, Joel Schu­mach­er and Tim Bur­ton, as well as actors Chris­t­ian Bale from The Dark Knight and Adam West from the 1960s Bat­man series.” Warn­er Bros. Enter­tain­ment has made the film avail­able on YouTube. Watch it above. Or find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of meta­col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Andy Warhol Made a Bat­man Super­hero Movie (1964)

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

1950s Bat­man Car­toon Tells Kids: “Don’t Believe Those Crack­pot Lies About Peo­ple Who Wor­ship Dif­fer­ent­ly”

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Saul Alinsky’s 13 Tried-and-True Rules for Creating Meaningful Social Change

in Politics | June 1st, 2020

Saul David Alin­sky died 36 years before the elec­tion of Barack Oba­ma and Hilary Clin­ton’s first attempt for the pres­i­den­cy. But many fever­ish screeds on social media, talk radio, and YouTube might have made one think he lurked behind these politi­cians like Rasputin. Spo­ken of by many on the right as a ser­vant of the dev­il, “Amer­i­can Joseph Goebbels,” and “dan­ger­ous har­bin­ger of insur­rec­tion,” Alin­sky devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for insid­i­ous­ness that may exceed his influ­ence, con­sid­er­able though it may be.

But lib­er­als and left­ists have no spe­cial pur­chase on Alinsky’s lega­cy. As one thought­ful, elo­quent pun­dit recent­ly wrote, “the Right has tak­en Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Rad­i­cals and shoved it up where #TheRe­sis­tance don’t shine.” Not long before this charm­ing appro­pri­a­tion, Alinsky’s 1971 man­u­al of polit­i­cal war­fare found its way into the hands of some of the same Tea Par­ty orga­niz­ers who had made his name syn­ony­mous with every­thing they despised about the left. (See Alin­sky court his Lucifer­ian com­par­isons in the 1966 inter­view above.)

But Alin­sky wrote Rules for Rad­i­cals for his demo­graph­ic. From the 30s to the 70s, he orga­nized poor, work­ing peo­ple in Chica­go and oth­er cities and addressed coun­ter­cul­tur­al and civ­il rights activists nation­wide. The open­ing para­graph of the book makes it per­fect­ly clear who his read­ers are:

What fol­lows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was writ­ten by Machi­avel­li for the Haves on how to hold pow­er. Rules for Rad­i­cals is writ­ten for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

Alin­sky’s ref­er­ence to Machi­avel­li sets read­ers up for a high degree of ruth­less­ness and realpoli­tik, and the book does not dis­ap­point. If you’re look­ing for Anar­chist Cook­book-lev­el rad­i­cal­ism, you’d best look else­where. While Alin­sky talked tough, in an hon­est Chica­go way, he did not rec­om­mend vio­lence in his man­u­al. In the Pro­logue, he denounces “parts of the far left who have gone so far in the polit­i­cal cir­cle that they are now all but indis­tin­guish­able from the extreme right.” In recent rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence, he writes, “we are deal­ing with peo­ple who are mere­ly hid­ing psy­chosis behind a polit­i­cal mask.”

Rules for Rad­i­cals rec­om­mends most­ly work­ing with­in the system—though in the twist­ed way Machi­avel­li is reput­ed to have done (whether or not he’s been inter­pret­ed fair­ly). Below, you’ll find Alinsky’s list of 13 “Rules for Rad­i­cals,” offered with his pro­vi­so that polit­i­cal activism can­not be a self-serv­ing enter­prise: “Peo­ple can­not be free unless they are will­ing to sac­ri­fice some of their inter­ests to guar­an­tee the free­dom of oth­ers. The price of democ­ra­cy is the ongo­ing pur­suit of the com­mon good by all of the peo­ple.”

1. “Pow­er is not only what you have, but what the ene­my thinks you have.” Pow­er is derived from 2 main sources – mon­ey and peo­ple. “Have-Nots” must build pow­er from flesh and blood.
2. “Nev­er go out­side the exper­tise of your peo­ple.” It results in con­fu­sion, fear and retreat. Feel­ing secure adds to the back­bone of any­one.
3. “When­ev­er pos­si­ble, go out­side the exper­tise of the ene­my.” Look for ways to increase inse­cu­ri­ty, anx­i­ety and uncer­tain­ty.
4. “Make the ene­my live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every let­ter gets a reply, send 30,000 let­ters. You can kill them with this because no one can pos­si­bly obey all of their own rules.
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irra­tional. It’s infu­ri­at­ing. It also works as a key pres­sure point to force the ene­my into con­ces­sions.
6. “A good tac­tic is one your peo­ple enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it with­out urg­ing and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even sug­gest bet­ter ones.
7. “A tac­tic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.
8. “Keep the pres­sure on. Nev­er let up.” Keep try­ing new things to keep the oppo­si­tion off bal­ance. As the oppo­si­tion mas­ters one approach, hit them from the flank with some­thing new.
9. “The threat is usu­al­ly more ter­ri­fy­ing than the thing itself.” Imag­i­na­tion and ego can dream up many more con­se­quences than any activist.
10. “The major premise for tac­tics is the devel­op­ment of oper­a­tions that will main­tain a con­stant pres­sure upon the oppo­si­tion.” It is this unceas­ing pres­sure that results in the reac­tions from the oppo­si­tion that are essen­tial for the suc­cess of the cam­paign.
11. “If you push a neg­a­tive hard enough, it will push through and become a pos­i­tive.” Vio­lence from the oth­er side can win the pub­lic to your side because the pub­lic sym­pa­thizes with the under­dog.
12. “The price of a suc­cess­ful attack is a con­struc­tive alter­na­tive.” Nev­er let the ene­my score points because you’re caught with­out a solu­tion to the prob­lem.
13. “Pick the tar­get, freeze it, per­son­al­ize it, and polar­ize it.” Cut off the sup­port net­work and iso­late the tar­get from sym­pa­thy. Go after peo­ple and not insti­tu­tions; peo­ple hurt faster than insti­tu­tions.

Alinsky’s rules can and have been used for anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic designs. But he defines the U.S. as a “soci­ety pred­i­cat­ed on vol­un­tarism.” His vision of democ­ra­cy leans heav­i­ly on that of keen out­side observ­er of ear­ly Amer­i­ca, Alex­is de Toc­queville, the French philoso­pher who “grave­ly warned,” writes Alin­sky, “that unless indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens were reg­u­lar­ly involved in the action of gov­ern­ing them­selves, self-gov­ern­ment would pass from the scene.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2017. In this moment of protest, we’re bring­ing it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

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

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What Makes a Cover Song Great?: Our Favorites & Yours

in Music | June 1st, 2020

Many years ago I tried to per­suade friends I played with in a local indie band to debut a coun­try-punk ver­sion of Wu Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” live. No one went for it, and look­ing back, I’m pret­ty sure it would have been a musi­cal dis­as­ter. That 90s hip-hop clas­sic deserves bet­ter than our Weird Al-meets-Ween-meets-Wilco approach, which is not to say that such a cov­er couldn’t work at all, but that Neil Young was more our speed.

Great cov­er songs come in all styles, and the world’s best musi­cians (which my friends and I were not) can take mate­r­i­al from almost any genre and make it their own (cf. Coltrane). For most peo­ple, the cov­er song is tricky ter­ri­to­ry.

Hew too close­ly to an icon­ic orig­i­nal and you risk a com­pe­tent but total­ly unnec­es­sary remake, like Gus Van Sant’s ver­sion of Psy­cho—“all that’s miss­ing is the ten­sion,” as Roger Ebert wrote of that 1998 endeav­or, “the con­vic­tion that some­thing urgent is hap­pen­ing.”

Stray too far from the source, as I near­ly dared to do with “C.R.E.A.M.,” and the effort can seem hokey, tone-deaf, dis­re­spect­ful, cul­tur­al­ly appro­pria­tive, and so forth. For some rea­son, old­er artists seem to have more grace with oth­ers’ mate­r­i­al, per­haps because they’ve lived enough to under­stand it inside and out. Many of my favorite cov­ers, and yours, are in this vein, like two well-known from film and tele­vi­sion: Charles Bradley’s cov­er of Ozzy’s “Changes” and John­ny Cash’s cov­er of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt.”

The fact that both of these soul­ful, raspy singers have passed on gives these songs an extra-musi­cal poignan­cy. They were also two singers well acquaint­ed in life with grief, loss, and hurt. Oth­er cov­er ver­sions that stick with me include Cat Power’s “At the Dark End of the Street” and R.E.M.’s cov­er of art-punks Wire’s “Strange.” What makes them great? I could go on about  the mer­its of each one, but I don’t have a gen­er­al the­o­ry of cov­ers. You’ll find such a the­o­ry in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top, how­ev­er, which asks and answers the ques­tion, “how does an artist nav­i­gate the tumul­tuous waters of cov­er songs?”

The nar­ra­tor admits the ambi­gu­i­ty inher­ent in judg­ing a suc­cess­ful cov­er. “I don’t think there’s a clear set of rules you can stick to that will guar­an­tee suc­cess. But I do think there are lessons to be learned from look­ing at the great cov­ers of the past.” He does so by ana­lyz­ing three of the most suc­cess­ful cov­ers, both crit­i­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly, ever record­ed: Jimi Hendrix’s haunt­ed elec­tric take on Dylan’s “All Along the Watch­tow­er,” Aretha’s anthemic trans­fig­u­ra­tion of Otis Redding’s “Respect,” and Cash’s open wound cov­er of “Hurt.”

All of these songs, in their own ways, trans­form the source mate­r­i­al com­plete­ly, such that each became a sig­na­ture for the artist. Dylan, for exam­ple, was so impressed with Hendrix’s cov­er that his live ver­sions began to resem­ble Jimi’s arrange­ment. “Strange how when I sing it,” he wrote in the lin­er notes to Bio­graph, “I always feel it’s a trib­ute to him in some kind of way.” That’s a rar­i­fied “endorse­ment of a suc­cess­ful cov­er,” if there ever was one, Poly­phon­ic says. But there’s more to it than earn­ing the song­writer’s approval.

To under­stand how a suc­cess­ful cov­er works, ret­ro­spec­tive­ly at least, we have to go back to the source and find the qual­i­ty the cov­er artist extrap­o­lat­ed and expand­ed upon. In Hendrix’s case, that was a “sense of ten­sion and desperation”—announced in his pound­ing intro, the first howl­ing line of the song, and, of course, in Hendrix’s slinky, spooky, effects-laden gui­tar runs. He trans­lat­ed the emo­tion­al tenor of Dylan’s orig­i­nal into a musi­cal vocab­u­lary that was ful­ly his own in every respect.

Cov­ers also evoke a host of per­son­al asso­ci­a­tions, as the video con­cedes, that are dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate to firm con­clu­sions about what makes one a suc­cess. We form life­long rela­tion­ships with cer­tain songs and may accept no substitutes—or we might, on the oth­er hand, be more drawn to cov­er ver­sions through a love of the orig­i­nal. That’s espe­cial­ly true with cov­ers that alchem­i­cal­ly change a song’s sound, mean­ing, tem­po, and feel while keep­ing its intan­gi­ble emo­tion­al essence intact. Leave your favorite cov­ers in the com­ments below and tell us what you think makes them so great.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

Icon­ic Songs Played by Musi­cians Around the World: “Stand by Me,” “Redemp­tion Song,” “Rip­ple” & More

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

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

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Magnificent Ancient Roman Mosaic Floor Unearthed in Verona, Italy

in Architecture, History | June 1st, 2020

One often hears about ren­o­va­tion projects that tear up linoleum, shag car­pet, or some equal­ly unap­peal­ing floor­ing to dis­cov­er a pris­tine (and now much more attrac­tive) lay­er of hard­wood or tile beneath. Any build­ing of suf­fi­cient age becomes a palimpsest, a col­lec­tion of era upon era of trends in archi­tec­ture and design: a look under a floor or behind a wall can poten­tial­ly become a trip back in time. The same holds for the land itself, at least in the parts of the world where civ­i­liza­tion arrived first. “In for­mer Mesopotamia there are hills in areas that should be entire­ly flat,” writes Myko Clel­land, bet­ter known as the Dap­per His­to­ri­an, on Twit­ter. “They’re actu­al­ly remains of entire towns, where res­i­dents built lay­er after lay­er until the whole thing became metres tall.”

Or take Negrar di Valpo­li­cel­la, home of the epony­mous wine vari­etal, one of whose vine­yards has turned out to con­ceal an ancient Roman vil­la. The dis­cov­ery at hand is an elab­o­rate mosa­ic floor which The His­to­ry Blog reports as “dat­ing to around the 3rd cen­tu­ry A.D.” So far, the dig under the Benedet­ti La Vil­la has revealed “long unin­ter­rupt­ed stretch­es of mosa­ic pave­ments with poly­chrome pat­terns of geo­met­ric shapes, guil­loche, wave bands, flo­ral vaults and the semi-cir­cu­lar pelta.”

Though the floor’s bril­liance may have been unex­pect­ed, its pres­ence was­n’t: that a Roman vil­la had once stood on the grounds “was known since the 19th cen­tu­ry. Indeed, the name of the win­ery is tak­en from the name of the con­tra­da (mean­ing neigh­bor­hood or dis­trict), evi­dence of cul­tur­al­ly trans­mit­ted knowl­edge of a grand vil­la there.”

Announced just last week by Negrar di Valipocel­la, the dis­cov­ery of this mosa­ic floor comes a result of the most recent of a series of archae­o­log­i­cal digs that began in 1922. “Numer­ous attempts were made in sub­se­quent decades to find the vil­la,” says The His­to­ry Blog, “and anoth­er small­er mosa­ic was dis­cov­ered in 1975 and cov­ered back up with soil for its preser­va­tion.” Though inter­rupt­ed by bud­getary lim­i­ta­tions, the work cycle of the still-oper­a­tional vine­yard, and this year’s coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the project has nev­er­the­less man­aged to turn up a strong con­tender for the archae­o­log­i­cal find of the year. With luck it will turn up much more of this 1,800-year-old domus, giv­ing us all a chance to see what oth­er unex­pect­ed­ly taste­ful design choic­es the ancient Romans made. The images in this post come via Myko Clel­land, Dap­per His­to­ri­an on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale

Take Ani­mat­ed Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Cir­ca 320 AD)

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

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

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How the Visionary Artist Christo (RIP) Changed the Way We See the World

in Art | June 1st, 2020

Hus­band and wife team Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude pro­duced what is arguably the most grandiose body of work in mod­ern his­to­ry. Their tem­po­rary mon­u­ments to the very idea of huge­ness were view­able from space and impos­si­ble to ignore on the ground: Entire islands wrapped in miles of pink fab­ric. Gar­gan­tu­an yel­low and blue umbrel­las placed up and down the coasts of Cal­i­for­nia and Japan. The Reich­stag bun­dled up in white fab­ric like a mas­sive, shiny Christ­mas gift.

These projects left an indeli­ble impres­sion on mil­lions not only in the months after their unveil­ing, but decades lat­er. The icon­ic sites the two artists trans­formed always bear the mem­o­ry of hav­ing once served as a can­vas for their cre­ations.

After remov­ing the wrap­ping from the Bis­cayne Bay islands, a project he called “my Water Lilies” in hon­or of Claude Mon­et,” Chris­to remarked that Sur­round­ed Islands lived on, “in the mind of the peo­ple.” So too will Chris­to live on—remembered by mil­lions as an artist who did things no one else would ever have con­ceived of, much less car­ried out.

The artist, who passed away from nat­ur­al caus­es at age 84 yes­ter­day, seemed to savor the con­tro­ver­sy and bewil­der­ment that met his incred­i­bly labor-inten­sive out­door sculp­tures. “If there are ques­tions, if there’s a pub­lic out­cry,” he said of their 2005 Cen­tral Park instal­la­tion The Gates, “we know how the pub­lic can be angry at art, which I think is fan­tas­tic.” I remem­ber walk­ing through The Gates when it debuted and think­ing, as most every­one does at some point in response to his mas­sive out­door instal­la­tions, “but, why?”

The effect was unde­ni­ably strik­ing, hun­dreds of saf­fron flags wav­ing between rec­tan­gu­lar steel arch­ways. Spring bloomed around the rows of gates that twist­ed around the Park’s foot­paths, 7,503 gates in all. From a short dis­tance away from the park, The Gates could be breath­tak­ing. Up close, it could be crowd­ed and obtru­sive, as mass­es of tourists and locals made their way through the gaunt­let of orange steel struc­tures.

Hard­ly does it occur to us in muse­ums to ask why the art exists. We enter with lofty, ready­made ideas about its val­ue and impor­tance. But we were nev­er giv­en scripts to make sense of Christo’s whim­si­cal intru­sions into the land­scape. Instead, he and Jeanne-Claude invent­ed new forms and new venues for art, and made the mul­ti-year process of plan­ning and build­ing each work from scratch a part of the work itself.

That process includ­ed lob­by­ing leg­is­la­tures and bureau­cra­cies, sketch­ing and plan­ning, and coor­di­nat­ing with thou­sands who installed and removed the fin­ished prod­ucts. Each Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude cre­ation seemed more osten­ta­tious than the last. “His grand projects,” writes William Grimes at The New York Times, “often decades in the mak­ing and all of them tem­po­rary, required the coop­er­a­tion of dozens, some­times hun­dreds, of landown­ers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, judges, envi­ron­men­tal groups, local res­i­dents, engi­neers and work­ers, many of whom had lit­tle inter­est in art and a deep reluc­tance to see their lives and their sur­round­ings dis­rupt­ed by an eccen­tric vision­ary.”

And yet, “again and again, Chris­to pre­vailed, through per­sis­tence, charm and a child­like belief that even­tu­al­ly every­one would see things the way he did.” This meant that every­one who had to live with Christo’s cre­ations in their back­yards had to see things his way too, for as long as the pub­lic art exist­ed. Chris­to “remained sto­ic in the face of mount­ing crit­i­cism,” as Alex Green­berg­er at Art­news puts it. Asso­ci­at­ed ear­ly with Sit­u­a­tion­ism and France’s Nou­veau Réal­isme move­ment, the artist shared the lat­ter group’s goal of dis­cov­er­ing “new ways of per­ceiv­ing the real” and the for­mer movement’s com­mit­ment to spec­ta­cle as a means of mass dis­rup­tion.

In the short video intro­duc­tions to some of Chris­to and Jean-Claude’s most famous works here, you can see how the two revealed new real­i­ties to the world, dri­ving up tourism while spurn­ing cor­po­rate dol­lars. Instead, the artists financed their own projects by sell­ing off the draw­ings and plans used to con­ceive them. Their oper­a­tion was a self-sus­tain­ing enti­ty, a thriv­ing, suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny of its own. What they made were “beau­ti­ful things,” the artist said, “unbe­liev­ably use­less, total­ly unnec­es­sary,” and also total­ly inspir­ing, infu­ri­at­ing, and unfor­get­table.

“Chris­to lived his life to the fullest,” a state­ment released by his office reads, “not only dream­ing up what seemed impos­si­ble but real­iz­ing it. Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude’s art­work brought peo­ple togeth­er in shared expe­ri­ences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and mem­o­ries.” Chris­to hasn’t fin­ished with us yet. The artist died while in the final plan­ning stages of what will be his final work, L’Arc de Tri­om­phe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Étoile – Charles de Gaulle), first con­ceived in 1962. That project, which will swad­dle Paris’s Arc de Tri­om­phe in 269,097 feet of fab­ric, is still expect­ed to debut in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

“The Artist Project” Reveals What 127 Influ­en­tial Artists See When They Look at Art: An Acclaimed Video Series from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

This Huge Crash­ing Wave in a Seoul Aquar­i­um Is Actu­al­ly a Gigan­tic Opti­cal Illu­sion

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

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The Best Campaign Slogan of 2020 (So Far)

in Current Affairs | May 31st, 2020

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An Analysis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Narrated (Mostly) by Quentin Tarantino

in Film | May 29th, 2020

For near­ly thir­ty years, the work of Quentin Taran­ti­no has inspired copi­ous dis­cus­sion among movie fans. Some of the most copi­ous dis­cus­sion, as well as some of the most insight­ful, has come from no less avid a movie fan than Taran­ti­no him­self. Every cinephile has long since known that the man who made Reser­voir Dogs, Pulp Fic­tion, and Jack­ie Brown — and more recent­ly pic­tures like Djan­go Unchained, The Hate­ful Eight, and Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood — is one of their own. Now the sub­ject of numer­ous video essays, Taran­ti­no could, in anoth­er life, have become that medi­um’s fore­most prac­ti­tion­er. In the Now You See It video essay above, we have the next best thing: an analy­sis of Taran­ti­no’s work nar­rat­ed, for the most part, by the man him­self.

“It’s as if a cou­ple of movie-crazy young French­men were in a cof­fee house, and they’ve tak­en a banal Amer­i­can crime nov­el and they’re mak­ing a movie out of it based not on the nov­el, but on the poet­ry they’ve read between the lines.” So goes New York­er crit­ic Pauline Kael’s review of Jean-Luc Godard­’s Bande à part — as remem­bered by Taran­ti­no in an inter­view in the 2000s.

These and oth­er such clips com­prise “Quentin Taran­ti­no and the Poet­ry Between the Lines,” or at least they com­prise the parts that don’t come straight from Taran­ti­no’s films or the films that inspired them. From Bande à part Taran­ti­no took not just the name of his pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny but also the imper­fect style of danc­ing he had John Tra­vol­ta and Uma Thur­man show off in Pulp Fic­tion, one of the many acts of cin­e­mat­ic “steal­ing” to which he glad­ly cops.

In describ­ing the rule-break­ing work of Godard, the first big cinephile-film­mak­er, Kael inad­ver­tent­ly bestowed a rev­e­la­tion upon Taran­ti­no: “That’s my aes­thet­ic!” he remem­bers think­ing. “That’s what I want to achieve!” That goal has inspired Taran­ti­no to a num­ber of acts of cul­tur­al trans­po­si­tion, and this video essay also brings togeth­er the com­ments sev­er­al oth­er fig­ures have made about his achieve­ment: Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds star Christoph Waltz remarks on the char­ac­ter­is­tic way that Taran­ti­no, “the prod­uct of the cul­ture that made the West­ern pos­si­ble at all,” would “take the genre once removed into the Ital­ian and bring it back to Amer­i­ca” as he does in his repa­tri­at­ed spaghet­ti West­ern The Hate­ful Eight. To that pic­ture, and to Quentin Taran­ti­no’s greater cin­e­mat­ic project, applies the obser­va­tion Gene Siskel made on Pulp Fic­tion just as it was becom­ing a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non in its own right: “Like all great films, it crit­i­cizes oth­er movies.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Steals from Oth­er Movies: A Video Essay

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

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.

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An Emotional Journey into the Heart of August Sander’s Iconic Photograph, “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance”

in Books, History, Photography | May 29th, 2020

The por­trait is your mir­ror. It’s you. —August Sander

A pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, and com­pelling por­traits that speak elo­quent­ly to a crit­i­cal moment in his­to­ry often earn many more than that.

Author John Green’s thought­ful Art Assign­ment inves­ti­ga­tion into Three Farm­ers on Their Way to a Dance, August Sanders’ 1914 pho­to­graph, taps into our need to inter­pret what we’re look­ing at.

The descrip­tive title (the piece is alter­na­tive­ly referred to as Young Farm­ers) offers some clues, as does the date.

The sub­jects’ youth and location—a remote vil­lage in the Ger­man Westerwald—suggest, cor­rect­ly as it turns out, that they would soon be bound for what Green terms “anoth­er dance,” WWI.

Green has learned far more about the peo­ple in his favorite pho­to since he cov­ered it in a 2‑minute seg­ment for his vlog­broth­ers chan­nel below.

Much of the short­er video’s nar­ra­tion car­ries over to the Art Assign­ment script, but this time, Green has the help of “a com­mu­ni­ty of prob­lem solvers” who con­tributed research that fleshed out the nar­ra­tive.

We now know the young farm­ers’ iden­ti­ties, actu­al occu­pa­tions, what they did in the war, and their even­tu­al fate.

Dit­to their con­nec­tion to pho­tog­ra­ph­er Sanders, who lugged his equip­ment on foot to the remote moun­tain path the friends would be trav­el­ing in fin­ery made pos­si­ble by the Sec­ond Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion.

A con­sum­mate sto­ry­teller, Greene makes a meal out of what he has learned.

It would pro­vide the basis for a hel­lu­va book…though here anoth­er author has beat­en Green to the punch. Richard Pow­ers’ nov­el, also titled Three Farm­ers on Their Way to a Dance, was a Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Award Final­ist in 1985.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

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

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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