They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell Releases an EP of Songs in Latin

in Language, Music | July 20th, 2021

Those who know Latin know Wheelock’s Latin as the time-hon­ored resource for learn­ing the lan­guage of the Cae­sars. They also know how many years of inten­sive study and prac­tice goes into trans­lat­ing the textbook’s hefty clas­si­cal pas­sages. Read­ing Latin is one thing — writ­ing in the lan­guage is quite anoth­er: some­thing very few peo­ple do for any rea­son, oth­er than a per­verse kind of enjoy­ment that is most def­i­nite­ly a niche affair.

What about songwrit­ing in Latin? Pro­fes­sor Whee­lock doesn’t offer any spe­cif­ic instruc­tions for com­pos­ing pop music in the dead lan­guage, though clas­sics teacher and for­mer British Labour Par­ty MP Eddie O’Hara once trans­lat­ed Bea­t­les songs (see “O Teneum Manum” and “Dei Duri Nox” here). For a more casu­al approach, one could turn to a resource more in line with con­tem­po­rary teach­ing meth­ods — Duolin­go, where you can “learn a lan­guage for free. For­ev­er.”

For some rea­son, John Lin­nell, one of the two Johns in 90s alt-rock band They Might Be Giants, decid­ed on the Duolin­go approach while hun­kered down at home dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, and — because he’s a song­writer, and a right good one, at that — he decid­ed to com­pose some catchy pop songs in Latin. Catchy, he could do (I’m still singing the cho­rus of “Bird­house in Your Soul” thir­ty-two years lat­er.) But the Latin, not so much.

After tak­ing a short course, Lin­nell writes, “I fig­ured I could write a few songs… I was soon dis­abused of the notion. I can bare­ly string two words togeth­er in Latin, and to bor­row from Mark Twain, I would rather decline two drinks than one Latin noun.” A career Latin­ist and child­hood friend Lin­nell calls “School­mas­ter Smith” came to his aid, trans­lat­ing his Eng­lish lyrics into Latin for him. “All cred­it for any suc­cess in this project is due to him,” he avers, “and any mis­takes and fail­ures are entire­ly mine.”

Trapped at home with his son Hen­ry, who played gui­tar on the 4‑track EP, Lin­nell record­ed and released Roman Songs (along with a t‑shirt!). Why? “All I can tell you,” he shrugs, “is that I’m deeply jeal­ous of peo­ple who are flu­ent in a sec­ond lan­guage and can apply that skill to their cre­ative work in a way that doesn’t seem like cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion of the most offen­sive and embar­rass­ing kind.”

No ancient Romans around to accuse Lin­nell of steal­ing their cul­ture, but they’d be hard pressed to rec­og­nize if they were. “HAEC QVOQVE EST RES” (“This is Also the Case”) and “TECVM CIRCVMAMBVLARE NOLO” (“I Don’t Want to Walk Around with You”) sound like clas­sic They Might Be Giants tunes. (The oth­er John, Mr. Flans­burgh, “strong­ly encour­aged this project and art direct­ed the pack­age,” Lin­nell writes.)

In fact, they sound so much like They Might Be Giants songs, I almost wish they were in Eng­lish, but as a lover of Latin I have to admit, it’s fun to learn these phras­es and melodies and walk around singing them like a Roman pop star. Lin­nell may be a lit­tle in the dark about his moti­va­tions, but I say, good on him: if there’s any way to make Latin live again, this may be it. Now we just need some­one tal­ent­ed and real­ly bored to step up and deliv­er clas­si­cal raps to keep momen­tum going…. Pick up Lin­nel­l’s Roman Songs EP here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Learn Latin?: 5 Videos Make a Com­pelling Case That the “Dead Lan­guage” Is an “Eter­nal Lan­guage”

Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Trans­lat­ed Bea­t­les Songs into Latin for His Stu­dents: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

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

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The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s Spellbinding Triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights

in Art, History, Television | July 20th, 2021

Hierony­mus Bosch was born Jheron­imus van Aken. We know pre­cious lit­tle else about him, not even the year of his birth, which schol­ar Nicholas Baum guess­es must have been right in the mid­dle of the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry. But we do know that the artist was born in the Dutch town of ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, bet­ter known as Den Bosch, to which his assumed name pays trib­ute. It is thus to Den Bosch that Baum trav­els in the The Mys­ter­ies of Hierony­mus Bosch, the 1983 BBC TV movie above, in search of clues to an inter­pre­ta­tion of Bosch’s mys­te­ri­ous, grotesque, and some­times hilar­i­ous paint­ings. What man­ner of place could pro­duce an artis­tic mind capa­ble of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights?

“My first reac­tion was dis­ap­point­ment,” Baum says of Den Bosch. “I was­n’t expect­ing such a very ordi­nary, very com­mer­cial, very provin­cial lit­tle town. I could­n’t for the life of me fit any­body as extra­or­di­nary as Bosch into a sleepy lit­tle place like this.” A hard­work­ing every­day Dutch­man might laugh at Baum’s Eng­lish imag­i­na­tion hav­ing got away with him; per­haps he’d even quote his coun­try’s well-worn proverb about nor­mal human behav­ior being crazy enough.

Nev­er­the­less, fueled by a near-life­long fas­ci­na­tion with Bosch’s fan­tas­ti­cal and for­bid­ding art, Baum goes deep­er: quite lit­er­al­ly deep­er, in one case, descend­ing to the dank cel­lar beneath the house where the artist grew up in order to take in “the authen­tic smell and feel of Bosch’s own day.”

Fur­ther insights come when Baum inves­ti­gates Bosch’s mem­ber­ship in the Catholic fra­ter­ni­ty of the Com­mon Life. A few decades lat­er, that same order would also edu­cate north­ern Renais­sance philoso­pher Eras­mus, whose reli­gios­i­ty is well known. Bosch must have been no less pious, but for cen­turies that did­n’t fig­ure as thor­ough­ly into the inter­pre­ta­tion of his paint­ings as it might have. Focused on the vivid images of bac­cha­na­lia Bosch incor­po­rat­ed into his work, some spec­u­lat­ed on his involve­ment in orgy-ori­ent­ed secret soci­eties. But Baum’s jour­ney con­vinces him that Bosch was “a fierce and pious Chris­t­ian” who paint­ed with the goal of turn­ing a glut­to­nous, wealth- and plea­sure-obsessed human­i­ty back toward the teach­ings of the Bible. And half a mil­len­ni­um lat­er, it is his wild­ly imag­i­na­tive ren­der­ings of sin that con­tin­ue to com­pel us — as well as hold out the promise of fur­ther secrets yet unex­plained.

For any­one inter­est­ed, Taschen now pub­lish­es an Bosch: The Com­plete Works, a beau­ti­ful and exhaus­tive explo­ration of the painter’s work. It includes a spe­cial chap­ter on The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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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When Rage Against the Machine Interviewed Noam Chomsky (1999)

in Music, Politics | July 20th, 2021

“The first great [eco­nom­ic] exper­i­ment was a ‘bad idea’ for the sub­jects, but not for the design­ers and local elites asso­ci­at­ed with them. This pat­tern con­tin­ues until the present: plac­ing prof­it over peo­ple.” — Noam Chom­sky, Prof­it Over Peo­ple

“A glob­al decom­po­si­tion is tak­ing place. We call it the Fourth World War: neoliberalism’s glob­al­iza­tion attempt to elim­i­nate that mul­ti­tude of peo­ple who are not use­ful to the pow­er­ful — the groups called ‘minori­ties’ in the math­e­mat­ics of pow­er, but who hap­pen to be the major­i­ty pop­u­la­tion in the world.” — Sub­co­man­dante Mar­cos

Whether we think of glob­al neolib­er­al­ism — to the extent that we think about it — as the iner­tia of cen­turies-old eco­nom­ic the­o­ry or as delib­er­ate geno­cide, the effects are the same. The major­i­ty of the world’s pop­u­la­tion suf­fers under mas­sive inequal­i­ty, includ­ing, now, vac­cine inequal­i­ty, lead­ing to rag­ing COVID epi­demics in some parts of the world as oth­er places emerge from lock­downs and resume “nor­mal” oper­a­tions. The “Cap­i­tal­ist Hydra,” as Zap­atista leader Sub­co­man­dante Mar­cos once called it, always seems to grow more heads.

Indeed, most plans to alle­vi­ate glob­al pover­ty and dis­ease seem to fur­ther enrich the archi­tects and immis­er­ate the tar­gets of their pur­port­ed care. Noam Chom­sky has point­ed out repeat­ed­ly that neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic rules are only applied to sub­ject pop­u­la­tions, since the wealthy ignore the strict con­di­tions they impose by force and coer­cion on oth­ers, call­ing the out­comes a nat­ur­al sort­ing of “win­ners and losers.” Ongo­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic prac­tices have accel­er­at­ed a cli­mate cri­sis that impacts the major­i­ty of the world’s (poor) pop­u­la­tion, send­ing mil­lions on a col­li­sion course with bru­tal­i­ty at the bor­ders as they flee to oth­er parts of the world for bare sur­vival.

The mul­ti­ple crises we now face were clear­ly evi­dent at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when Rage Against the Machine played Mex­i­co City for the first time in 1999. They released the con­cert footage in a video titled The Bat­tle of Mex­i­co City in 2001, the same year the indige­nous guer­ril­la force EZLN — pop­u­lar­ly known as the Zap­atis­tas — marched on Mex­i­co City. (Con­cert audio was released on vinyl this past June.) The video release includ­ed inter­views with Chom­sky and then-EZLN mil­i­tary leader Mar­cos, and you can see them both here.

At the top, Chom­sky responds to a ques­tion about NAFTA, a “free-trade” agree­ment that proved his point about how such poli­cies do the oppo­site of what they pro­pose, ben­e­fit­ting the very few instead of the many. Chom­sky, who ana­lyzed the ways that the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate media man­u­fac­tured con­sent for their poli­cies dur­ing the Viet­nam War, wasn’t tak­en in by the hype. The agree­ment nev­er had any­thing to do with free trade, he says, but with lock­ing Mex­i­co into pro­grams of “struc­tur­al adjust­ment” that kept peo­ple in pover­ty and the coun­try depen­dent on eco­nom­ic terms dic­tat­ed from out­side its bor­ders.

From the per­spec­tive of the indige­nous peo­ple in Mex­i­co fight­ing for an autonomous region in Chi­a­pas, the strug­gle is not only against the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment, but also an inter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic order that impos­es its will on the coun­try and its cit­i­zens, who then turn on the poor­est and most dis­pos­sessed among them in con­di­tions of man­u­fac­tured scarci­ty. Indige­nous Mex­i­cans, like oth­er inter­nal­ly sub­ject­ed peo­ple around the world, are deemed expend­able, fig­ured as a “prob­lem” to be solved or elim­i­nat­ed. What is so strik­ing about these per­spec­tives, twen­ty years after the release of The Bat­tle of Mex­i­co City, is just how pre­scient, even prophet­ic, they sound today.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent and How the Media Cre­ates the Illu­sion of Democ­ra­cy

Requiem for the Amer­i­can Dream: Noam Chom­sky on the 10 Prin­ci­ples That Have Led to Unprece­dent­ed Inequal­i­ty in the US 

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

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Ground­break­ing Lin­guis­tic The­o­ries

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

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Neil Young Plays “Hey, Hey, My, My” with Devo: Watch a Classic Scene from the Improvised Movie Human Highway (1980)

in Film, Music | July 19th, 2021

For Neil Young fans, the words “Human High­way” can mean one of three dif­fer­ent things, two of which are so unlike the third, it’s as if they came from dif­fer­ent artists. First, there’s “Human High­way,” the song, one of Young’s gen­tle acoustic rags, with Nico­lette Lar­son­’s soft vocal har­monies and lots of ban­jo and fid­dle. It land­ed on 1978’s Comes a Time but debuted five years ear­li­er, near­ly becom­ing the title track for a CSNY album that nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, a leg­endary fol­low-up to Déjà Vu.

None of this has any­thing to do with Human High­way, the 1980 film direct­ed by Neil Young (as “Bernard Shakey”) and Dean Stock­well, which tells the “sto­ry,” if it can be called, of a crooked din­er own­er in a small town next to a nuclear pow­er plant staffed by the mem­bers of Devo as “nuclear garbageper­sons.” The cast is cult film roy­al­ty: “Den­nis Hop­per is a psy­chot­ic cook named Crack­ers,” notes crit­ic Steven Puchal­s­ki, “Sal­ly Kirk­land is a belea­guered wait­ress; [Stock­well] is the new own­er, Young Otto (son of the late Old Otto); plus Neil Young and Russ Tam­blyn are fright­en­ing­ly con­vinc­ing as two noo­dle-head­ed gas pump oper­a­tors, Lionel and Fred.”

The film is set on the last day before a nuclear apoc­a­lypse, a slap­stick take on the time’s nuclear anx­i­ety and Young’s stance against nuclear pow­er. His nerdy Lionel idol­izes rock star Frankie Fontaine (also Young), then becomes him in a dream sequence full of “wood­en Indi­ans” — his back­ing band. He then jams out with Devo for ten min­utes (top) one of the high­lights of the film, a per­for­mance of “Hey, Hey, My, My” with Mark Moth­ers­baugh tak­ing lead vocals as Devo char­ac­ter “Boo­ji Boy” (pro­nounced “boo­gie boy”).

“By nor­mal stan­dards,” Puchal­s­ki writes, “the movie sucks, but it’s a Mutant Must-See for Rock-‘N’-Schlock Com­pletists.” It could also be one of the most influ­en­tial indie films of the eight­ies, argues Den of Geek’s Jim Knipfel, leav­ing its mark on every­thing from Alex Cox’s Repo Man to David Lynch’s Blue Vel­vet (in which Hop­per and Stock­well play some­what sim­i­lar char­ac­ters) and Twin Peaks (in which Russ Tam­blyn appears), to Tim Bur­ton’s Pee Wee Her­man’s Big Adven­ture.

Or maybe Young “was sim­ply cursed to be ten min­utes ahead of his time,” giv­en that hard­ly any­one saw Human High­way in 1982. Shot over four years, and most­ly financed by Young him­self, Human High­way saw a lim­it­ed release in L.A. then dis­ap­peared until a 1996 VHS edit of the film brought it some renown and crit­i­cal reap­praisal. (Its cov­er quot­ed an agent at William Mor­ris say­ing, “It’s so bad, it’s going to be huge.”) The film has since become a cult clas­sic, war­rant­i­ng spe­cial screen­ings like a reunion in 2016 at L.A.‘s Regal The­ater fea­tur­ing Young, Tam­blyn, Devo’s Ger­ald Casale, actress Char­lotte Stew­art, and Cameron Crowe. (See a trail­er for the DVD direc­tor’s cut release just above.)

At one point dur­ing the Q&A, Young turned to Crowe and asked, “Do you think we could get this movie made today?”. The film was made under unique con­di­tions: “no script, impro­vised dia­logue and a dai­ly rou­tine that began with some­one ask­ing him ‘What’s the plan today, Neil?’ to which he always replied ‘The plan today is no plan!’ ” It could get made, if Neil want­ed to finance it (and a younger cast could han­dle the amount of drugs that clear­ly went into mak­ing the film). Giv­en the num­ber of dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels and Young’s fame, it could also very like­ly find a wide audi­ence.

But in 1982, releas­ing a self-financed film, even if you were Neil Young, proved much more chal­leng­ing. And in the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies, one of the few ways for inno­v­a­tive New Wave bands like Devo to get wider notice was to catch the ear of stars like Young, who dis­cov­ered them on stage in 1977 and knew he had to get them on film — before “Whip It” and their first defin­ing hits came out — and show the rest of us what we were miss­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Releas­es a Nev­er-Before-Heard Ver­sion of His 1979 Clas­sic, “Pow­derfin­ger”: Stream It Online

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Presents His Per­son­al Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Who Is Neil Young?: A Video Essay Explores the Two Sides of the Ver­sa­tile Musician–Folk Icon and Father of Grunge

When Neil Young & Rick “Super Freak” James Formed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

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

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Watch 15 Hours of The Pink Panther for Free

in Animation, Film, K-12 | July 19th, 2021

Remem­ber Sat­ur­day morn­ings?

If you’re an Amer­i­can of a cer­tain age, you prob­a­bly spent a good chunk of them sprawled in front of the TV, absorb­ing a steady stream of net­work car­toons pep­pered with ads for toys and sug­ared cere­al.

One of Sat­ur­day morn­ing’s ani­mat­ed stars stood out from the crowd, a lanky, bipedal feline of a dis­tinct­ly rosy hue.

He shared Bugs Bunny’s anar­chic streak, with­out the hopped-up, motor­mouthed inten­si­ty.

In fact, he bare­ly spoke, and soon went entire­ly mute, rely­ing instead on Hen­ry Mancini’s famous theme, which fol­lowed him every­where he went.

Above all, he was sophis­ti­cat­ed, with a min­i­mal­ist aes­thet­ic and a long cig­a­rette hold­er.

Direc­tor Blake Edwards attrib­ut­es his last­ing appeal to his “promis­cu­ous, fun-lov­ing, dev­il­ish” nature.

John Cork’s short doc­u­men­tary Behind the Feline: The Car­toon Phe­nom­e­non, below, details how Edwards charged com­mer­cial ani­ma­tors David DePatie and Friz Fre­leng with cre­at­ing a car­toon per­sona for the Pink Pan­ther Dia­mond in his upcom­ing jew­el heist caper.

DePatie, Fre­leng and their team draft­ed over a hun­dred ren­der­ings in response to the char­ac­ter notes Edwards bom­bard­ed them with via telegram.

Edward’s favorite, designed by direc­tor Haw­ley Pratt, fea­tured the icon­ic cig­a­rette hold­er and appeared in the fea­ture film’s trail­er and title sequence, ulti­mate­ly upstag­ing a star stud­ded cast includ­ing David Niv­en, Clau­dia Car­di­nale, Robert Wag­n­er, and Peter Sell­ers as Inspec­tor Clouse­au.

The car­toon panther’s sen­sa­tion­al debut prompt­ed Unit­ed Artists to order up anoth­er 156 shorts, to be released over a four to five year peri­od. The first of these, The Pink Phink, not only estab­lished the tone, it also nabbed the Acad­e­my Award for 1964’s best ani­mat­ed short.

Although he was cre­at­ed with an adult audi­ence in mind — the nar­ra­tor of the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er asks him about bed­room scenes — his word­less tor­ment of the sim­pli­fied car­toon Inspec­tor proved to be mon­ey in the bank on Sat­ur­day morn­ings.

The Pink Pan­ther Show ran from 1969 to 1980, weath­er­ing var­i­ous title tweaks and a jump from NBC to ABC.

Syn­di­ca­tion and cable TV ensured a vibrant after­life, here and in oth­er coun­tries, where the character’s sophis­ti­ca­tion and reliance on body lan­guage con­tin­ues to be a plus.

The plots unfold­ed along pre­dictable lines — the groovy pan­ther spends 6 min­utes thwart­ing and bedev­il­ing a less cool, less pink-ori­ent­ed char­ac­ter, usu­al­ly the Inspec­tor.

Every episode’s title includes a ref­er­ence to the star’s sig­na­ture col­or, often to groan­ing degree — Pink of the Lit­ter, Pink-A-Boo, The Hand Is Pinker Than the Eye, Pinkcome Tax, The Scar­let Pinker­nel.…

We won’t ask you to guess the col­or of Pink Pan­ther Flakes, man­u­fac­tured under the aus­pices of Post, a Pink Pan­ther Show co-spon­sor.

“I thought it was just fine for the film,” Edwards says of the ani­mat­ed Pink Pan­ther in Cork’s 2003 doc­u­men­tary, “But I had no idea that it would take off like that, that it would have that kind of a life of its own… that kind of a mer­chan­dis­ing life of its own. Thank god it did!”

Stay cool this sum­mer with an 11-hour Pink Pan­ther marathon, com­prised of the fol­low­ing free com­pi­la­tions of Sea­sons 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Sea­son 1

Sea­son 2

Sea­son 3

Sea­son 4

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Looney Tunes & Oth­er Clas­sic Car­toons Helped Amer­i­cans Become Musi­cal­ly Lit­er­ate

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Voice

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Introduction to Japanese Kabuki Theatre, Featuring 20th-Century Masters of the Form (1964)

in Dance, Film, Theatre | July 19th, 2021

The Eng­lish lan­guage has adopt­ed kabu­ki as an adjec­tive, applied to sit­u­a­tions where exag­ger­at­ed appear­ances and per­for­mances are every­thing. Busi­ness, pol­i­tics, media: name any realm of moder­ni­ty, and the myr­i­ad ways in which its affairs can turn kabu­ki will spring to mind. A high­ly styl­ized form of dance-dra­ma orig­i­nat­ing in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, it con­tin­ues to stand today as a pil­lar of clas­si­cal Japan­ese cul­ture — and indeed, accord­ing to UNESCO, one piece of the Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage of Human­i­ty. The world­wide regard for kabu­ki owes in part to self-pro­mo­tion­al efforts on the part of Japan, whose Min­istry of For­eign Affairs com­mis­sioned the half-hour intro­duc­to­ry film above.

Pro­duced in 1964, Kabu­ki: The Clas­sic The­atre of Japan holds up as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the art, as well as a view of some of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry’s mas­ter prac­ti­tion­ers. These actors include Jit­sukawa Enjaku III, Naka­mu­ra Utae­mon VI, and Ichikawa Dan­jūrō XI, whose stage names reflect their place in an unbro­ken pro­fes­sion­al lin­eage.

In fact, Ichikawa Dan­jūrō XI is a pre­de­ces­sor of Ichikawa Ebizō XI, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his work in kabu­ki Star Wars adap­ta­tions. The gen­er­a­tions shown here did­n’t go in for such pop-cul­tur­al hybridiza­tion, but rather plays from the tra­di­tion­al kabu­ki reper­toire like Shibaraku, Musume Dōjōji, and Sukeroku, scenes from all three of which appear in the film.

“Through elab­o­rate cos­tumes and vivid make­up, through beau­ti­ful­ly styl­ized act­ing and exag­ger­at­ed vocal­iza­tion, and high­light­ed with pic­turesque set­tings and col­or­ful music, the kabu­ki actors cre­ate dra­mat­ic effects of extra­or­di­nary inten­si­ty with­in a frame­work of pure enter­tain­ment,” explains the nar­ra­tor. And as in the ear­ly per­for­mances of Shake­speare, all the roles are played by males, spe­cial­ists known as onna­ga­ta. “Because the empha­sis in kabu­ki is on artis­tic per­for­mance, not real­ism, the onna­ga­ta is con­sid­ered more capa­ble of express­ing true fem­i­nin­i­ty than is pos­si­ble for an actress.” This may have struck West­ern view­ers in the 1960s as an odd notion, but the sheer for­eign­ness of kabu­ki — cul­tur­al, geo­graph­i­cal, and tem­po­ral — must have been as cap­ti­vat­ing back then as it remains today, no mat­ter how long we’ve been throw­ing its name around.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

Kabu­ki Star Wars: Watch The Force Awak­ens and The Last Jedi Rein­ter­pret­ed by Japan’s Most Famous Kabu­ki Actor

World Shake­speare Fes­ti­val Presents 37 Plays by the Bard in 37 Lan­guages: Watch Them Online

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost, Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from the Ear­ly Days of Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

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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Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji: A Deluxe New Art Book Presents Hokusai’s Masterpiece, Including “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”

in Art, Books, History | July 16th, 2021

Like most Japan­ese mas­ters of ukiyo‑e wood­block art, Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai is best known monony­mous­ly. But he’s even bet­ter known by his work — and by one piece of work in par­tic­u­lar, The Great Wave off Kana­gawa. Even those who’ve nev­er heard the name Hoku­sai have seen that print, arrest­ing in its some­how calm tur­bu­lence, or at least they’ve seen one of its count­less mod­ern par­o­dies and trib­utes (most recent­ly, a large-scale homage in the medi­um of LEGO). But when he died in 1849, the pro­lif­ic and long-lived artist left behind a body of work amount­ing to more than 30,000 paint­ings, sketch­es, prints, and illus­tra­tions (as well as a how-to-draw book).

None of those 30,000 works are quite as famous as his Great Wave off Kana­gawa, but very few indeed are as ambi­tions as the series to which it belongs, Thir­ty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. It is that two-year project, the artis­tic fruit of an obses­sion with Fuji and its envi­rons, that Taschen has tak­en as the mate­r­i­al for their new book Hoku­sai: Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Pro­duced in a 224-page “XXL edi­tion,” it gath­ers “the finest impres­sions from insti­tu­tions and col­lec­tions world­wide in the com­plete set of 46 plates along­side 114 col­or vari­a­tions” — all sewn togeth­er, appro­pri­ate­ly, with “Japan­ese bind­ing.”

Not only does the book repro­duce Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji with Taschen’s sig­na­ture atten­tion to image qual­i­ty, it presents The Great Wave off Kana­gawa in a way few actu­al­ly see it: in con­text. For that most wide­ly pub­lished of all Hoku­sai prints launched the series, which con­tin­ued on to Fine Wind, Clear Morn­ing, Thun­der­storm Beneath the Sum­mit, and Kajikaza­wa in Kai Province, that last being an image held in espe­cial­ly high esteem by ukiyo‑e enthu­si­asts. One such enthu­si­ast, east Asian art his­to­ri­an Andreas Marks, has per­formed this book’s edit­ing and writ­ing, as he did with Taschen’s pre­vi­ous Japan­ese Wood­block Prints (1680–1938). Expe­ri­enc­ing the whole of Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji, more than one read­er will no doubt become as trans­fixed by Hoku­sai as Hoku­sai was by his home­land’s most beloved moun­tain. You can pick up a copy of Hoku­sai: Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great Wave off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

The Evo­lu­tion of The Great Wave off Kanaza­wa: See Four Ver­sions That Hoku­sai Paint­ed Over Near­ly 40 Years

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave off Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

A Beau­ti­ful New Book of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: A Visu­al His­to­ry of 200 Japan­ese Mas­ter­pieces Cre­at­ed Between 1680 and 1938

See Clas­sic Japan­ese Wood­blocks Brought Sur­re­al­ly to Life as Ani­mat­ed GIFs

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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A Dancer Pays a Gravity-Defying Tribute to Claude Debussy

in Dance, Music, Physics | July 16th, 2021

Most dancers have an intu­itive under­stand­ing of physics.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Yoann Bour­geois push­es this sci­ence beyond the stan­dard lifts, leaps, and pirou­ettes, draw­ing on his train­ing at the Cen­tre Nation­al Des Arts du Cirque for a piece mark­ing the cen­te­nary of com­pos­er Claude Debussy’s death, above.

Giv­en the occa­sion, the choice of Clair de Lune, Debussy’s best loved piano work, feels prac­ti­cal­ly de rigueur, but the tram­po­line comes as a bit of a shock.

We may not be able to see it, but it plays such an essen­tial role, it’s tempt­ing to call this solo a pas de deux. At the very least, the tram­po­line is an essen­tial col­lab­o­ra­tor, along with pianist Alexan­dre Tha­rau and film­mak­er Raphaël Wertheimer.

Bour­geois’ expres­sive­ness as a per­former has earned him com­par­isons to Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton. His chore­og­ra­phy shows that he also shares their work eth­ic, atten­tion to detail, and love of jaw­drop­ping visu­al stunts.

Don’t expect any ran­dom boing­ing around on this tramp’.

For four and a half min­utes, Bour­geois’ every­man strug­gles to get to the top of a stark white stair­case. Every time he falls off, the tram­po­line launch­es him back onto one of the steps — high­er, low­er, the very one he fell off of…

Inter­pret this strug­gle how you will.

Psy­che, a dig­i­tal mag­a­zine that “illu­mi­nates the human con­di­tion through psy­chol­o­gy, philo­soph­i­cal under­stand­ing and the arts” found it to be “an abstract­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of a child­like expe­ri­ence of time.” One view­er won­dered if the num­ber of steps — twelve — was sig­nif­i­cant.

It’s no stretch to con­ceive of it as a com­ment on the nature of life — a con­stant cycle of falling down and bounc­ing back.

It’s love­ly to behold because Bour­geois makes it look so easy.

In an inter­view with NR, he spoke of how his cir­cus stud­ies led to the real­iza­tion that “the rela­tion­ship between phys­i­cal forces” is what he’s most inter­est­ed in explor­ing. The stairs and tram­po­line, like all of his sets (or devices, as he prefers to call them), are there to “ampli­fy spe­cif­ic phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non”:

In sci­ence, we’d call them mod­els – they’re sim­pli­fi­ca­tions of our world that enable me to ampli­fy one par­tic­u­lar force at a time. Togeth­er, this ensem­ble of devices, this con­stel­la­tion of con­struct­ed devices, ten­ta­tive­ly approach­es the point of sus­pen­sion. And so, this makes up a body of research; it’s a life’s research that doesn’t have an end in itself. 

The rela­tion­ship with phys­i­cal forces has an elo­quent capac­i­ty that can be very big; it has the kind of expres­sion that is uni­ver­sal.

Watch more of Youann Bour­geois’ physics-based chore­og­ra­phy on his YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1913

Quar­an­tined Dancer Cre­ates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final Dirty Danc­ing Scene with a Lamp as a Dance Part­ner

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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