The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Explained

in Art, History | April 26th, 2021

Over the half-mil­len­ni­um since Hierony­mus Bosch paint­ed it, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights has pro­duced an ever-widen­ing array of inter­pre­ta­tions. Is it “a paint­ing about sex­u­al free­dom”? A “medieval acid trip”? An “erot­ic fan­ta­sy”? A “hereti­cal attack on the church”? The work of “a mem­ber of an obscure free-love cult”? James Payne, the Lon­don cura­tor behind the Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained, rejects all these views. In the open­ing of the in-depth video analy­sis above, he describes Bosch’s well-known and much-scru­ti­nized late-15th or ear­ly-16th cen­tu­ry trip­tych as, “pure and sim­ply, hard­core Chris­tian­i­ty.”

Dat­ing from “a time when Euro­pean artists, writ­ers, and the­olo­gians were shap­ing a new, ter­ri­fy­ing vision of Hell and the pun­ish­ment await­ing sin­ners,” Payne argues, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights is “an intense­ly moral­is­tic work that should be approached as what it is: reli­gious pro­pa­gan­da.”

Depict­ing the Bib­li­cal cre­ation of the world on its out­er pan­els, the work opens up to reveal elab­o­rate­ly detailed visions of Adam and Eve in the Gar­den of Eden, then human­i­ty indulging in all known earth­ly delights, then the con­se­quent tor­ments of Hell. It is that last pan­el, with its abun­dance of per­verse activ­i­ties and grotesque human, ani­mal, and human-ani­mal fig­ures (recent­ly made into fig­urines and even piñatas) that keeps the strongest hold on our imag­i­na­tion today.

Payne’s expla­na­tion goes into detail on all aspects of the work, high­light­ing and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing details that even avowed appre­ci­a­tors may not have con­sid­ered before. While iden­ti­fy­ing both the pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions and the pos­si­ble sym­bol­ic inten­tions of the fig­ures and sym­bols with which Bosch filled the trip­tych, Payne empha­sizes that, as far as the artist was con­cerned, “his images were a real­is­tic por­tray­al of sin and its con­se­quences, so in that sense, it was­n’t sur­re­al­ism, it was real­ism.” This bears repeat­ing, giv­en how dif­fi­cult we mod­erns find it “to look at this paint­ing and not see it as sur­re­al­ism or a prod­uct of the sub­con­scious, not see it as a sex­u­al utopia, a cri­tique of reli­gion, or even a psy­che­del­ic romp.” Just as The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights tells us a great deal about the world Bosch lived in, so our views of it tell us a great deal about the world we live in.

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:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Musi­cal Instru­ments in Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Get Brought to Life, and It Turns Out That They Sound “Painful” and “Hor­ri­ble”

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Quarantined Dancer Creates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final Dirty Dancing Scene with a Lamp as a Dance Partner

in Comedy, Dance, Film | April 26th, 2021

1987’s low bud­get sleep­er hit, Dirty Danc­ing, pro­pelled its leads, Jen­nifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze, to instant star­dom.

Swayze lat­er mused to the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute about the film’s remark­able stay­ing pow­er:

It’s got so much heart, to me. It’s not about the sen­su­al­i­ty; it’s real­ly about peo­ple try­ing to find them­selves, this young dance instruc­tor feel­ing like he’s noth­ing but a prod­uct, and this young girl try­ing to find out who she is in a soci­ety of restric­tions when she has such an amaz­ing take on things. On a cer­tain lev­el, it’s real­ly about the fab­u­lous, funky lit­tle Jew­ish girl get­ting the guy because [of] what she’s got in her heart.

Near­ly 35 years after the orig­i­nal release, anoth­er gift­ed male dancer, Brook­lyn-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er Quinn Whar­ton, is tap­ping into that heart… and Grey has been replaced by a lamp.

Whar­ton once told Bal­let Hub that his favorite part of danc­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly with the San Fran­cis­co Bal­let and Hub­bard Street Dance Chica­go was the access it gave him to the great names in dance — William Forsythe, Mats Ek, Christo­pher Wheel­don, Wayne McGre­gor, and oth­ers whose prox­im­i­ty made for “a remark­able edu­ca­tion.”

The first few months of the pan­dem­ic forced him to dance solo, recre­at­ing mem­o­rable film moments in response to a friend’s chal­lenge:

I was hes­i­tant at first but thought I would give it a try to see what I might be able to learn from it. Turns out it was way more fun than I thought and the result was fun­nier than I could have imag­ined.

We agree that his Quinn-tessen­tial Dance Scenes series is very fun­ny, as well as beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed in the twin are­nas of cam­era work and dance. His self-imposed para­me­ters — no out­side help, no green screen, no film­ing out­side of the apart­ment, and no spe­cial pur­chas­es of props or cos­tumes, con­tribute to the humor.

His hard­work­ing, dis­em­bod­ied, com­par­a­tive­ly well-cov­ered haunch­es elic­it laughs when seen next to the much skimpi­er orig­i­nal cos­tume of Flash­dance’s “Mani­ac” scene, above. 18-year-old star Jen­nifer Beals had three dance dou­bles — Marine Jahan, gym­nast Sharon Shapiro, and leg­endary B‑Boy Richard Colón, aka Crazy Legs of Rock Steady crew. None of them appeared in the orig­i­nal cred­its because, as Jahan told Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the pro­duc­ers “did­n’t want to break the mag­ic.”

In oth­er words, a lot of steamy 80s-era fan­tasies cen­tered on Beals are now known to be a case — pos­si­bly three cas­es — of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.

Whar­ton’s quar­an­tine project afford­ed him a chance to come at John Tra­vol­ta from two angles, thanks to the dis­co clas­sic Sat­ur­day Night Fever and Pulp Fic­tion’s twist sequence, a sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar fan request. Though Travolta’s dance train­ing was lim­it­ed to child­hood tap lessons with Gene Kelly’s broth­er, Fred, Whar­ton prais­es his “seri­ous range.”

Whar­ton cites the inspi­ra­tion for one of his less­er known recre­ations, direc­tor Baz Lurhman’s first fea­ture, Strict­ly Ball­room, as a rea­son he began danc­ing:

My dad loves this movie and as a kid I can’t count the num­ber of times that I watched it. It’s so much, loud, brash, exu­ber­ant …It also allowed me to bring back my favorite part­ner.

Quinn-tessen­tial Dance Scenes is on hia­tus so Whar­ton can con­cen­trate on his work as a dance pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Watch a playlist of all eight episodes here.

See more of his dance pho­tog­ra­phy on his Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

The Pow­er of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, who can occa­sion­al­ly be spot­ted wan­der­ing around New York City in a bear suit, in char­ac­ter as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ray Dalio & Adam Grant Launch Free Online Personality Assessment to Help You Understand Yourself (and Others Understand You)

in Business, Psychology | April 26th, 2021

Back in 2017, Ray Dalio pub­lished Prin­ci­ples: Life and Work, a best­selling book where the cre­ator of the world’s largest hedge fund shared “the uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples that he’s devel­oped, refined, and used over the past forty years to cre­ate unique results in both life and busi­ness.” You can find a dis­tilled ver­sion of those uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples in a 30-minute ani­ma­tion video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our site.

To accom­pa­ny his book, Dalio has now released, along with Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant, a free per­son­al­i­ty assess­ment tool called Prin­ci­plesY­ou. The assess­ment takes about 30 to 40 min­utes to com­plete, and we would strong­ly encour­age you to sign up for an account before you get start­ed, so that you can save the results of the assess­ment after­wards. Oth­er­wise you will lose the results.

Accord­ing to psy­chol­o­gist Bri­an Lit­tle, “Prin­ci­plesY­ou was devel­oped over a two-year inten­sive and cre­ative R&D process with two goals in mind. First, it mea­sures traits that Ray Dalio and his team have observed and stud­ied for many years as crit­i­cal for per­son­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al suc­cess. Sec­ond, it is based on the lat­est research in per­son­al­i­ty sci­ence. The assess­ment pro­vides a person’s score on a com­pre­hen­sive set of traits, their under­ly­ing facets and inter­ac­tive pat­terns, and it has high reli­a­bil­i­ty, inter­nal struc­ture, re-test reli­a­bil­i­ty and valid­i­ty of these traits and facets. A dis­tinc­tive strength is its abil­i­ty to pre­dict an extra­or­di­nary array of actu­al behav­iors observed by the Bridge­wa­ter staff over many years.”

Adam Grant adds: “To achieve suc­cess, you need to know your­self and the peo­ple around you. Although your car comes with an owner’s man­u­al, your mind doesn’t—and nei­ther do your col­leagues. We designed Prin­ci­plesY­ou to help you gain the self-aware­ness and oth­er-aware­ness that are crit­i­cal to mak­ing good deci­sions, get­ting things done, and turn­ing a group of cowork­ers into a great team.”

You can watch Grant and Dalio dis­cuss Prin­ci­plesY­ou above. You can lis­ten to Grant fea­ture Dalio’s insights on his Work Life pod­cast here. And final­ly you can start the free per­son­al­i­ty assess­ment here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

The Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess by Entre­pre­neur & Investor Ray Dalio: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer

Eco­nom­ics 101: Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio Explains How the Econ­o­my Works in a 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Video

How to Raise Cre­ative Chil­dren Who Can Change the World: 3 Lessons from Whar­ton Pro­fes­sor Adam Grant

 

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Parrot Sings AC/DCs “Whole Lotta Rosie”

in Random | April 25th, 2021

Here’s the orig­i­nal from AC/DC. And here you can find more sing-alongs from Frank Maglio Tico & the Man. Enjoy.

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:

Sci­ence Shows That Snow­ball the Cock­a­too Has 14 Dif­fer­ent Dance Moves: The Vogue, Head­bang & More

Hear the Sound Of Endan­gered Birds Get Turned Into Elec­tron­ic Music

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

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Freddie Mercury & Rami Malek’s Live Aid Performance: A Side-By-Side Comparison

in Music | April 23rd, 2021

All Hol­ly­wood musi­cals need a big final set piece, one final rous­ing num­ber to bring all the nar­ra­tive threads back togeth­er, and pro­vide redemp­tion to our fall­en hero. Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the 2018 biopic about Fred­die Mer­cury and the band Queen, uses Live Aid as its final num­ber. We’ve writ­ten else­where about how this was not real­ly the final hur­rah for the band, nor was this some kind of tri­umphant return after years in the Wilder­ness. (“Radio Gaga” and “I Want to Break Free” had been in the charts just over a year pre­vi­ous.) Nei­ther was it their biggest con­cert of the 1980s. That would be the Wem­b­ley con­cert of 1986, where they would fill the exact same sta­di­um used for Live Aid, but this time it was just for them.

But Hol­ly­wood cares not for that, so instead lets look at how faith­ful­ly Rami Malek and his fel­low actors (along with what might have been Bryan Singer as direc­tor or pos­si­bly Dex­ter Fletch­er, the man who replaced him after events we’d rather not go into, look it up) faith­ful­ly recre­ate those 20 glo­ri­ous min­utes. After all, it was one of the most watched events in the sum­mer of 1985. There is video evi­dence!

I’ll leave it up to you out there to debate over Malek’s per­for­mance, which is going to suf­fer no mat­ter what he does in a side-by-side with the real thing. Instead, notice how the film­mak­ers use cer­tain parts of the per­for­mance to com­plete the nar­ra­tives of the film. We get a cut­away to Bri­an May (Gwilym Lee) with a “by George he’s actu­al­ly got it” look on his face—relief that Mer­cury final­ly got it togeth­er for the per­for­mance. There’s no equiv­a­lent shot in real life. The kiss that Mer­cury blows to some­body off cam­era is received by his moth­er and sis­ter back at his child­hood home.

After Mercury’s call-and-response with the teem­ing audi­ence, the band dives into “Ham­mer to Fall” and the film cuts to a mon­tage to show Live Aid’s phones ring­ing off the hook, anx­ious view­ers want­i­ng to donate even more because of Queen’s per­for­mance. This is again Hol­ly­wood hokum, as dona­tions only real­ly stepped up after Bob Geld­of got in front of the cam­eras a lit­tle after Queen brought the house down and harangued view­ers.

Still, you have to hand it to the movie for hav­ing the stones to indulge in the full 20 minute set, despite sil­ly moves like cut­ting away to the movie’s “you’ll nev­er go any­where” record exec­u­tive for the line “no time for losers” dur­ing the final song. (D’oh!)

YouTube user Juan Dela Cruz, who assem­bled this side-by-side, has made two oth­er com­par­i­son videos using exist­ing footage and the film: Part One is here, and here’s Part Two.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen Rehearse & Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pare for Their Leg­endary 1985 Live Aid Per­for­mance

Watch 16 Hours of His­toric Live Aid Per­for­mances: Queen, Led Zep­pelin, Neil Young & Much More

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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3D Print 18,000 Famous Sculptures, Statues & Artworks: Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

in Art, Google, History, Photography, Technology | April 23rd, 2021

To recent news sto­ries about 3D print­ed guns, pros­thet­ics, and homes, you can add Scan the World’s push to cre­ate “an ecosys­tem of 3D print­able objects of cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.”

Items that took the ancients untold hours to sculpt from mar­ble and stone can be repro­duced in con­sid­er­ably less time, pro­vid­ed you’ve got the tech­nol­o­gy and the know-how to use it.

Since we last wrote about this free, open source ini­tia­tive in 2017, Scan the World has added Google Arts and Cul­ture to the many cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions with whom it part­ners, expand­ing both its audi­ence and the audi­ence of the muse­ums who allow items in their col­lec­tions to be scanned pri­or to 3D print­ing.


Com­mu­ni­ty con­trib­u­tors have uploaded scan data for over 18,000 sculp­tures and arti­facts onto the plat­form.

Chi­na and India are active­ly court­ing par­tic­i­pants to make some of their trea­sures avail­able.

Although Scan the World is search­able by col­lec­tion, artist, and loca­tion, with so many options, the com­mu­ni­ty blog is a great place to start.

Here you will find help­ful tips for begin­ners hop­ing to pro­duce real­is­tic look­ing skulls and sculp­tures — con­trol your tem­per­a­ture, shake your resin, and learn from your mis­takes.

Got an unreach­able object you’re itch­ing to print? Take a look at the drone pho­togram­me­try tuto­r­i­al to prep your­self for tak­ing a good scan — rotate slow­ly, remem­ber the impor­tance of light, and get up to speed on your drone by test-dri­ving it in an open loca­tion.

Keep an eye peeled for com­pe­ti­tions, like this one, which was won by a pho­to edi­tor and retouch­er with no for­mal 3‑D train­ing.

Art lovers with lit­tle incli­na­tion to crack out the 3D print­er will find inter­est­ing essays on such top­ics as the Gates of Hell, scan­ning in the pan­dem­ic, and the his­to­ry of hair­styles in sculp­ture

You can also embark on a vir­tu­al tour of some of the glob­al loca­tions whose splen­dors are being scanned, pro­grammed, and ren­dered in resin.

A vir­tu­al trip to Paris takes in some of the Louvre’s great­est 3‑dimensional hits: the Venus de Milo, Winged Vic­to­ry, and Psy­che Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.

(Any one of those ough­ta class up the ol’ bed­sit…)

The vir­tu­al trip to Aus­tria includes Kierling’s mon­u­ment to Franz Kaf­ka, the Beethoven memo­r­i­al in Vienna’s Heili­gen­städter Park, and Klaus Weber’s trib­ute to Hugo Rheinhold’s Dar­win­ian sculp­ture, Mon­key with Skull. (1,868 down­loads and count­ing!)

A Google map awaits those who would tour the orig­i­nal fla­vor inspi­ra­tions in per­son.

Begin your explo­rations of Scan the World here, and do let us know in the com­ments if you have plans for print­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Earth Archive Will 3D-Scan the Entire World & Cre­ate an “Open-Source” Record of Our Plan­et

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, and some­times, a French Cana­di­an bear known as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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30,000 People Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Grocery Store Shelves Run Empty (1990)

in Food & Drink, History | April 23rd, 2021

Every­one has wait­ed in a long line — for burg­ers, Broad­way tick­ets, Black Fri­day sales… But few us have the noto­ri­ous queu­ing resilience of the Sovi­ets. “When the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the city went mad,” Boris Egorov writes at Rus­sia Beyond. “Thou­sands of Mus­covites flocked to the new burg­er joint, form­ing lines sev­er­al kilo­me­ters long in the cen­ter of Moscow on Pushkin­skaya Square.” On its first day, the restau­rant oblit­er­at­ed the pre­vi­ous record for most McDonald’s cus­tomers (9,100 in Budapest), serv­ing over 30,000 peo­ple, a tes­ta­ment to the for­ti­tude of the employ­ees. The CBC news seg­ment on the open­ing above quotes a line from Pushkin to set the scene: “a feast in a time of plague.”

Stereo­types of fast food work­ers as lack­ing in skill and ambi­tion did not find pur­chase here. “The first work­ers,” Egorov notes, “were the crème de la crème of Sovi­et youth: stu­dents from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties who could speak for­eign lan­guages with bril­liant cus­tomer ser­vice skills.” Their cheer­ful­ness so unnerved some cus­tomers that they were asked to tone it down for Rus­sians “accus­tomed to rude, boor­ish ser­vice.”

Cus­tomers seemed less awed by the iconog­ra­phy than the “sim­ple sight of polite shop work­ers,” wrote an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist. The restau­rant, once a tourist attrac­tion, notes trav­el site Bridge to Moscow, had “more than 700 seats inside and 200 out­side,” and was once the largest McDonald’s in the world.

The Moscow McDonald’s rep­re­sent­ed more for Rus­sians than an Amer­i­can nov­el­ty. Orig­i­nal cus­tomer Kse­nia Oski­na had nev­er heard of McDonald’s before she vis­it­ed. She lat­er saved her Big Mac box. “I used that Big Mac box for a long time and put my sand­wich in there instead of a lunch­box,” she tells The Wash­ing­ton Post. “I’d clean it, dry it on the heater and then use it again.” It was­n’t about brand recog­ni­tion for many who duti­ful­ly lined up to pay half a day’s wages for a cou­ple “thin slabs of meat and sliced veg­eta­bles between buns of bread.” (Sor­ry… “two all-beef pat­ties, spe­cial sauce, let­tuce, cheese, and a sesame seed bun…..”)

What did Sovi­et Rus­sians, who had not been raised to sing fast food adver­tis­ing jin­gles, see in the new restau­rant? Capitalism’s promis­es of abun­dance. One Sovi­et jour­nal­ist wrote of McDonald’s as “the expres­sion of America’s ratio­nal­ism and prag­ma­tism toward food.” Just months after­ward, the first Piz­za Hut arrived. As the Sovi­et Union dis­solved less than two years lat­er, the coun­try saw the cre­ation of more desire for high-calo­rie, ultra-processed foods with West­ern-style TV ads: most famous­ly a Piz­za Hut spot from 1997 fea­tur­ing the U.S.S.R.’s last pre­mier, Mikhail Gor­bachev. (“Because of him, we have Piz­za Hut!”)

The pol­i­tics may have mat­tered lit­tle to the aver­age Mus­covite McDonald’s cus­tomer in 1990. “Vis­it­ing the restau­rant was less a polit­i­cal state­ment than an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy a small plea­sure in a coun­try still reel­ing from dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic prob­lems and inter­nal polit­i­cal tur­moil,” notes History.com. Large, seem­ing­ly abstract prob­lems had tan­gi­ble effects: the emp­ty gro­cery stores for which the fail­ing empire became famous.

The Moscow McDonald’s was a col­or­ful oasis for its first cus­tomers, who had no sen­ti­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions with burg­ers and fries. Now, those tastes are nos­tal­gic. “I love it,” said Oski­na thir­ty years lat­er. “For some rea­son in Amer­i­ca, it’s not as tasty as it is here.” Insert your own dat­ed Yakov Smirnoff ref­er­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whopper–While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

The Beau­ti­ful, Inno­v­a­tive & Some­times Dark World of Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da (1925–1984)

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

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Critics Celebrate Two-Lane Blacktop, the 1971 Existential Road-Movie Masterpiece by Monte Hellman (RIP), Starring James Taylor & Dennis Wilson

in Film | April 23rd, 2021

The road movie has long since proven itself as one of the great Amer­i­can cul­tur­al forms, not least by cap­tur­ing the imag­i­na­tion of oth­er soci­eties, no mat­ter how dis­tant or dif­fer­ent. As New York Times crit­ic A.O. Scott declares in the video above, “one of the finest road movies, and per­haps the purest of them all, is Monte Hell­man’s Two-Lane Black­top.” In his orig­i­nal 1971 review of the film, a Roger Ebert described Hell­man as “an Amer­i­can direc­tor whose work is much prized by the French, who have a knack for find­ing exis­ten­tial truths in movies we thought were West­erns.” In some sense Two-Lane Black­top is indeed a West­ern, but Hell­man’s death ear­li­er this week will prompt many to revis­it the film and see that it’s also much more — as well as much less.

Two-Lane Black­top osten­si­bly tells the sto­ry of a cross-coun­try race from New Mex­i­co to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. In one car, a cus­tomized 1955 Chevro­let 150, are qua­si-hip­pie gear­heads known only as the Dri­ver and the Mechan­ic (joined for a stretch by a hitch­hik­ing Girl). In the oth­er, a brand-new GTO, is a mid­dle-aged man known only as GTO. “The mys­ti­cism of this movie is in its absence of mys­ti­cism,” says Scott. “It’s so lit­er­al-mind­ed, so bare-bones, so absurd, and it expos­es not only the romance of the open road and the car cul­ture, but the empti­ness, the nihilism.” Hell­man, as the New York­er’s Richard Brody puts it in his own video essay, “shears this com­po­si­tion down to its exis­ten­tial bare bones,” leav­ing not much more in its real­i­ty than what Ebert calls “mis­cel­la­neous estab­lish­ments thrown up along the sides of the road to sup­port life: motels, gas sta­tions, ham­burg­er stands.”

As stripped-down as its ’55 Chevy, Two-Lane Black­top rolled up in the wake of Den­nis Hop­per’s Easy Rid­er, whose suc­cess con­vinced more than a few stu­dios that cheap­ly pro­duced, counter-cul­tur­al­ly themed road movies could hit the box-office jack­pot. Though unsuc­cess­ful upon its ini­tial release just shy of 50 years ago, the film has only con­sol­i­dat­ed its pow­er since. Some of that pow­er comes from unex­pect­ed sources, such as the cast­ing of singer-song­writer James Tay­lor and the Beach Boys’ Den­nis Wil­son as the Dri­ver and the Mechan­ic. These musi­cians, to Brody’s mind, “exert a neg­a­tive charis­ma: their pres­ence is both pow­er­ful and blank, deeply expres­sive in its neu­tral­i­ty.” Scott sees Tay­lor’s turn in par­tic­u­lar as occu­py­ing “a realm beyond act­ing, in a kind of dead­pan, stoned, zen state of non-per­for­mance.”

As GTO, War­ren Oates brings all the tra­di­tion­al act­ing chops Two-Lane Black­top requires, shift­ing between brag­gado­cio, pathos, and a kind of post­mod­ern pos­tur­ing as often as he changes his bold­ly col­ored V‑neck sweaters. “This name­less dri­ver has bought the James Bond ide­al of the well-round­ed man,” writes Kent Jones in his essay on the film for the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, “but he pre­fig­ures Woody Allen’s Zelig in the des­per­ate speed with which he adapts him­self to every new sit­u­a­tion and pas­sen­ger.” These ten­den­cies can’t save him on the entrop­ic open road, only empha­siz­ing as it does what Brody calls “the impos­si­bil­i­ty of soli­tude, the ten­dril-like encroach­ment of the out­side world.” But then, nei­ther can the mechan­i­cal sin­gle-mind­ed­ness of the Dri­ver and Mechan­ic. This is the Amer­i­can con­di­tion, but only in that it’s a high-octane dis­til­la­tion of the human one.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

Rock Stars Who Died Before They Got Old: What They Would Look Like Today

Tom Waits Names 14 of His Favorite Art Films

A Hulk­ing 1959 Chevy Bel Air Gets Oblit­er­at­ed by a Mid-Size 2009 Chevy Mal­ibu in a Crash Test

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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