The Only Footage of Bruce Lee Fighting for Real (1967)

in History, Sports | August 6th, 2021

Two years after the release of Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, peo­ple are still argu­ing about its brief por­tray­al of Bruce Lee. Whether it accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent­ed his per­son­al­i­ty is one debate, but much more impor­tant for mar­tial-arts enthu­si­asts is whether it accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent­ed his fight­ing skills. This could eas­i­ly be deter­mined by hold­ing the scene in ques­tion up against footage of the real Bruce Lee in action, but almost no such footage exists. While Lee’s per­for­mances in films like Enter the Drag­on and Game of Death con­tin­ue to win him fans 48 years after his death, their fights — how­ev­er phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing — are, of course, thor­ough­ly chore­o­graphed and rehearsed per­for­mances.

Hence the way, in Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, Brad Pit­t’s rough-hewn stunt­man Cliff Booth dis­miss­es screen mar­tial artists like Lee as “dancers.” Those are fight­ing words, and indeed a fight ensues, though one meant to get laughs (and to illu­mi­nate the char­ac­ters’ oppos­ing phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al natures) rather than seri­ous­ly to recre­ate a con­test between trained mar­tial artist and sim­ple bruis­er.

As for how Lee han­dled him­self in actu­al fights, we have no sur­viv­ing visu­al evi­dence but the clips above, shot dur­ing a cou­ple of match­es in 1967. The event was the Long Beach Inter­na­tion­al Karate Cham­pi­onships, where three years ear­li­er Lee’s demon­stra­tion of such improb­a­ble phys­i­cal feats as two-fin­ger push-ups and one-inch punch­es got him the atten­tion in the U.S. that led to the role of Kato on The Green Hor­net.

In these 1967 bouts, the now-famous Lee uses the tech­niques of Jeet Kune Do, his own hybrid mar­tial-arts phi­los­o­phy empha­siz­ing use­ful­ness in real-life com­bat. “First he fights Ted Wong, one of his top Jeet Kune Do stu­dents,” says Twist­ed Sifter. “They are alleged­ly wear­ing pro­tec­tive gear because they weren’t allowed to fight with­out them as per Cal­i­for­nia state reg­u­la­tions.” Lee is the one wear­ing the gear with white straps — as if he weren’t iden­ti­fi­able by sheer speed and con­trol alone. Seen today, his fight­ing style in this footage reminds many of mod­ern-day mixed mar­tial arts, a sport that might not come into exis­tence had Lee nev­er pop­u­lar­ized the prac­ti­cal com­bi­na­tion of ele­ments drawn from all fight­ing styles. Whether the man him­self was as arro­gant as Taran­ti­no made him out to be, he must have sus­pect­ed that mar­tial-arts would only be catch­ing up with him half a cen­tu­ry lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee’s Only Sur­viv­ing TV Inter­view, 1971: Lost and Now Found

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bruce Lee Gets Explored in a New Pod­cast

The Poet­ry of Bruce Lee: Dis­cov­er the Artis­tic Life of the Mar­tial Arts Icon

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

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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Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inaugural Broadcast (August 1, 1981)

in Music | August 6th, 2021

Not every­one on August 1, 1981 had a VCR at their dis­pos­al, and not every­body stayed up until mid­night. But for­tu­nate­ly at least one per­son did, in order to tape the first two hours of a new cable chan­nel called MTV: Music Tele­vi­sion. Did they know it would be his­toric? MTV cer­tain­ly hoped it would be: they equat­ed the pre­miere of this 24/7 video ver­sion of radio with the moon land­ing. Peo­ple born long after this time might won­der why a MTV Music Video award stat­uette was hon­or­ing Buzz Aldrin. But at the time, it made sense. “Ladies and Gen­tle­men, Rock and Roll.” It was a state­ment: less than three decades after the first rock and roll sin­gle, this genre of music had won—-it had col­o­nized the plan­et. And beyond the plan­et, the next stop: the uni­verse.

It’s fit­ting the execs chose as their first selec­tion The Bug­gles “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Visu­als were not just going to be an adjunct to the music, they were going to become inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Either MTV was pre­scient about the visu­al decade to come or they in fact caused it to hap­pen. Music videos or short films had been around since the inven­tion of sound in the cin­e­ma, but MTV was *all* videos, *all the time*, brought to Amer­i­cans due to the dereg­u­la­tion of the tele­vi­sion indus­try in 1972 and the slow growth of cable chan­nels.

After a Pat Benatar video, the VJs intro­duce themselves—-Mark Good­man, Nina Black­wood, J.J. Jack­son, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn (all soon to be house­hold names and crushes)-—and then straight into a block of com­mer­cials: school binders, Super­man II, and Dol­by Noise Reduc­tion. A strange group of adver­tis­ers, to be sure. Good­man returns to ask, blind­ly, “Aren’t those guys the best?” Good­man has no idea what has pre­ced­ed him.

Yes, the first day of MTV was pret­ty rough. In fact, it’s a bit like a DJ who turns up to a gig to find they’ve left most of their records across town. In the first two hours we get two Rod Stew­art songs, two by the Pre­tenders, two by Split Ends, anoth­er Pat Benatar video, two from Styx, and two from the con­cert film for the Peo­ple of Kam­puchea. We also get com­plete­ly obscure videos: PH.D. “Lit­tle Susie’s on the Up”, Robin Lane and the Chart­busters “When Things Go Wrong”, Michael John­son “Bluer Than Blue”. This is D‑list stuff. No won­der MTV pre­miered at mid­night.

From these hum­ble begin­ning the chan­nel would soon find its groove and two years lat­er it would become ubiq­ui­tous in Amer­i­can house­holds.

Peo­ple pre­dict­ed the end of MTV right from the begin­ning. It would be a fad, or it would run out of videos to play. Forty years lat­er, the chan­nel has rebrand­ed itself into obliv­ion. And while music videos still get made-—YouTube’s Vevo megachan­nel is the cur­rent equivalent—-none have the effect that those first two decades had on gen­er­a­tions of view­ers. To para­phrase the Bug­gles, we have seen the play­back and it seems so long ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Watch David Bowie Take MTV to Task for Fail­ing to Play Music Videos by Black Artists (1983)

Watch Queen’s Drag­tas­tic “I Want to Break Free” Video: It Was More Than Amer­i­ca & MTV Could Han­dle (1984)

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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The First Museum Dedicated to Mary Shelley & Her Literary Creation, Frankenstein, Opens in Bath, England

in Literature, Museums, Travel | August 6th, 2021

Hal­loween came ear­ly this year!

Last week, Mary Shelley’s House of Franken­stein opened its doors in Bath, Eng­land, mere steps from the infi­nite­ly more staid Jane Austen Cen­tre.

Both authors had a con­nec­tion to Bath, a pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion since 43 CE, as evi­denced by the ruins of the Roman ther­mal spa that give the city its name and UNESCO World Her­itage Site sta­tus.

Austen lived there between 1801 and 1806, and used it as a set­ting for both Per­sua­sion and Northang­er Abbey.

The teenaged Shel­ley’s res­i­dence was briefer, but event­ful, and cre­ative­ly fer­tile.

It was here that she wed poet Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, learned of the sui­cides of his preg­nant first wife and her own half-sis­ter, attend­ed the birth of her ille­git­i­mate step-niece (daugh­ter of Lord Byron), attend­ed lec­tures on gal­vanism, or rean­i­ma­tion via elec­tri­cal cur­rent… and wrote the major­i­ty of Franken­stein.

Bath has long mined its con­nec­tion to Austen, but in embrac­ing Shel­ley, it stands to diver­si­fy the sort of lit­er­ary pil­grims it appeals to.

Vis­i­tors to the Jane Austen Cen­tre can try on bon­nets, exchange wit­ty repar­tee with one of her char­ac­ters, nib­ble scones with Dorset clot­ted cream in the tea room, and par­tic­i­pate in an annu­al cos­tume prom­e­nade.

Mean­while, over at the House of Franken­stein, expect omi­nous, unset­tling sound­scapes, shock­ing spe­cial effects, ghoul­ish inter­preters in blood-spat­tered aprons, “bespoke scents,” a “dank, fore­bod­ing base­ment expe­ri­ence” and an 8‑foot automa­ton of you-know-who.

(No, not Mary Shel­ley!)

Com­ing soon — Vic­tor Frankenstein’s “mis­er­able attic quar­ters” repack­aged as an escape room “strewn with insane equa­tions, strange arte­facts, and mis­cel­la­neous body parts.”

Co-founder Chris Har­ris explains the cre­ators’ immer­sive phi­los­o­phy:

We are try­ing to play on people’s fears, but we’re not tak­ing our­selves mas­sive­ly seri­ous­ly. With Mary Shelley’s House of Franken­stein, we are cre­at­ing an expe­ri­ence that, hope­ful­ly, peo­ple will real­ly enjoy in a vis­cer­al way. We want them to come out feel­ing that the expe­ri­ence was unnerv­ing, but also feel­ing hap­py. That’s the ulti­mate aim.

The BBC reports that the attrac­tion also promis­es to explore Shel­ley’s “trag­ic per­son­al life, lit­er­ary career and the nov­el­’s con­tin­u­ing rel­e­vance today in regards to pop­u­lar cul­ture, pol­i­tics, and sci­ence.”

May not be suit­able for chil­dren (or tim­o­rous Austen fans) as it con­tains “omi­nous and fore­bod­ing audio and visu­al effects, dark­ened envi­ron­ments and some scenes and depic­tions of a dis­turb­ing nature.”

Lovers of Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies, how­ev­er, should be sure to exit through the gift shop.

Vis­it the House of Franken­stein on Insta­gram where the week­ly #Franken­ste­in­Fol­low­er­Fri­day should appeal to mon­ster movie buffs of all ages.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Read­ing Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein on Its 200th Anniver­sary: An Ani­mat­ed Primer to the Great Mon­ster Sto­ry & Tech­nol­o­gy Cau­tion­ary Tale

Watch the First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein (1910): It’s New­ly Restored by the Library of Con­gress

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script of Franken­stein: This Is “Ground Zero of Sci­ence Fic­tion,” Says William Gib­son

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

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Jocelyn Bell Burnell Changed Astronomy Forever; Her Ph.D. Advisor Won the Nobel Prize for It

in Astronomy, Gender, History, Science | August 5th, 2021

A few years back, we high­light­ed a series of arti­cles called The Matil­da Effect — named for the fem­i­nist Matil­da Joslyn Gage, whose 1893 essay “Woman as an Inven­tor” inspired his­to­ri­ans like Cor­nell University’s Mar­garet Rossiter to recov­er the lost his­to­ries of women in sci­ence. Those his­to­ries are impor­tant not only for our under­stand­ing of women’s con­tri­bu­tions to sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment, but also because they tell us some­thing impor­tant about our­selves, who­ev­er we are, as film­mak­er Ben Proud­foot sug­gests in his “Almost Famous” series of short New York Times doc­u­men­taries.

Proud­foot casts a wide net in the telling, gath­er­ing sto­ries of an unknown woman N.B.A. draftee, a would-be first Black astro­naut who nev­er got to fly, a man who could have been the “next Colonel Sanders,” and a for­mer mem­ber of the Black Eyed Peas who quit before the band hit it big. Not all sto­ries of loss in “Almost Famous” are equal­ly trag­ic. Joce­lyn Bell Burnell’s sto­ry, which she her­self tells above, con­tains more than enough strug­gle, tri­umph, and crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment for a com­pelling tale.

An astronomer, Bell Bur­nell was instru­men­tal in the dis­cov­ery of pul­sars — a dis­cov­ery that changed the field for­ev­er. While her Ph.D. advi­sor Antony Hewish would be award­ed the Nobel Prize for the dis­cov­ery in 1974, Bell Burnell’s involve­ment was vir­tu­al­ly ignored, or treat­ed as a nov­el­ty. “When the press found out I was a woman,” she said in 2015, “we were bom­bard­ed with inquiries. My male super­vi­sor was asked the astro­phys­i­cal ques­tions while I was the human inter­est. Pho­tog­ra­phers asked me to unbut­ton my blouse low­er, whilst jour­nal­ists want­ed to know my vital sta­tis­tics and whether I was taller than Princess Mar­garet.”

In the film, Bur­nell describes a life­long strug­gle against a male-dom­i­nat­ed estab­lish­ment that mar­gin­al­ized her. She also tells a sto­ry of sup­port­ive Quak­er par­ents who nur­tured her will to fol­low her intel­lec­tu­al pas­sions despite the obsta­cles. Grow­ing up in Ire­land, she says, “I knew I want­ed to be an astronomer. But at that stage, there weren’t any women role mod­els that I knew of.” She com­ments, with under­stand­able anger, how many peo­ple con­grat­u­lat­ed her on her mar­riage and said “noth­ing about mak­ing a major astro­phys­i­cal dis­cov­ery.”

Many of us have sto­ries to tell about being denied achieve­ments or oppor­tu­ni­ties through cir­cum­stances not of our own mak­ing. We often hold those sto­ries close, feel­ing a sense of fail­ure and frus­tra­tion, mea­sur­ing our­selves against those who “made it” and believ­ing we have come up short. We are not alone. There are many who made the effort, and a few who got there first but didn’t get the prize for one unjust rea­son or anoth­er. The lack of offi­cial recog­ni­tion doesn’t inval­i­date their sto­ries, or ours. Hear­ing those sto­ries can inspire us to keep doing what we love and to keep push­ing through the oppo­si­tion. See more short “Almost Famous” doc­u­men­taries in The New York Times series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

How the Female Sci­en­tist Who Dis­cov­ered the Green­house Gas Effect Was For­got­ten by His­to­ry

Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Per­son to Win Twice, and the Only Per­son in His­to­ry to Win in Two Dif­fer­ent Sci­ences

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

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Footage of Cities Around the World in the 1890s: London, Tokyo, New York, Venice, Moscow & More

in History | August 5th, 2021

It is called the Belle Époque, a phrase which brings to mind styl­ish graph­ic adver­tis­ing posters, the baroque Art Nou­veau style of Alphonse Mucha, the Beaux Arts archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments of Paris, Chica­go, and New­port. These images seem sta­t­ic, back­ward-look­ing. Despite their pop­u­lar­i­ty on the poster mar­ket, they can­not cap­ture (how could they?) the full expres­sion of what cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans also call the fin de siè­cle. The term is French for “end of the cen­tu­ry,” but it describes a peri­od of rad­i­cal change in glob­al cul­ture in ways that will be with us for anoth­er hun­dred years or more..

In oth­er words, there was a lot hap­pen­ing in the 1890s. As one descrip­tion of the peri­od puts it, “change became the nature of things, and peo­ple believed that fur­ther improve­ment was not only pos­si­ble but inevitable.” So much of this change man­i­fest­ed in the arts. In France, for exam­ple, Impres­sion­ism began receiv­ing its due in art world cir­cles, lead­ing to two Impres­sion­ist works on dis­play at the 1900 World’s Fair, which also saw the open­ing of the Eif­fel Tow­er. In 1895, Paul Ver­laine pub­lished Arthur Rim­baud’s com­plete works, posthu­mous­ly, and Sym­bol­ist poet­ry broke Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­ary tra­di­tions irrev­o­ca­bly.

In Eng­lish, pop­u­lar genre fic­tion explod­ed, as the Goth­ic nov­el reached its apoth­e­o­sis in Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la and the rise of detec­tive fic­tion began with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries. These works par­al­leled a ris­ing inter­est in the occult and the ear­ly stir­rings of New Age spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Mean­while, Russ­ian Mod­ernism took shape in the rad­i­cal work of Vladimir Mayakovsky; the Argen­tine Tan­go began to express its “world­view of con­flict­ing nation­al dis­lo­ca­tions”; Mei­ji era Japan began rapid­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing and import­ing “jazz, cin­e­ma… auto­mo­biles, air­planes, and avant-gardes, from futur­ism to sur­re­al­ism,” writes Christo­pher Bush, even as the West devoured all things Japan­ese; African art began to trans­form the work of painters like Picas­so.…

The rev­o­lu­tions of fin de siè­cle Vien­na were so world-chang­ing as to war­rant a major study of the peri­od titled Fin-De-Siè­cle Vien­na. Even in the still quite-provin­cial U.S., where rob­ber barons built Beaux Arts palaces, mod­ernist rev­o­lu­tions ges­tat­ed in the Arts & Crafts move­ment. The world was chang­ing too quick­ly for some, not quick­ly enough for oth­ers. For mil­lions more, life went on more or less as it had a half-cen­tu­ry ear­li­er. It would be decades before many peo­ple around the world expe­ri­enced either the mate­r­i­al improve­ments or the rad­i­cal cul­tur­al dis­lo­ca­tions of the era.

You can see the faces, smil­ing, scowl­ing, going about their busi­ness, of a few thou­sand city-dwellers around the world from the peri­od in a mon­tage of film footage above. Most of the passers­by cap­tured on film could not have known they lived in a time of unprece­dent­ed change — the all-impor­tant fin de siè­cle of cul­tur­al his­to­ry. How could they? But they did live in a time of unprece­dent­ed anx­i­ety about change, a time in which many keen­ly felt “the dis­crep­an­cy between mate­r­i­al advance and spir­i­tu­al dejec­tion,” notes Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press. “For most peo­ple the peri­od was far from ele­gant.”

Only time will tell what crit­i­cal his­to­ri­ans of the future make of our era. But even as we expe­ri­ence incred­i­ble lev­els of anx­i­ety about change, per­haps few of us are tru­ly aware of just how rad­i­cal the changes of our time will turn out to be a cen­tu­ry or so from now.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Down­load 200+ Belle Époque Art Posters: An Archive of Mas­ter­pieces from the “Gold­en Age of the Poster” (1880–1918)

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

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

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

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

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When Mahatma Gandhi Met Charlie Chaplin (1931)

in Film, History | August 4th, 2021

Mahat­ma Gand­hi and Char­lie Chap­lin were both forged in the 19th cen­tu­ry, and both went on to become icons of the 20th. His­to­ry has remem­bered one as a tire­less lib­er­a­tor and the oth­er as a tire­less enter­tain­er; decades after their deaths, both con­tin­ue to com­mand the respect of many in the 21st cen­tu­ry. It’s under­stand­able then, that a meet­ing between Gand­hi and Chap­lin at the peak of their fame would cause some­thing of a fuss. “East-Enders, in the thou­sands, turn out to greet the two famous lit­tle men,” announces the title card of the British Pathé news­reel clip above. Cries of “Good old Char­lie!” and “Good old Gand­hi!” were heard.

The occa­sion for this encounter was the Round Table Con­fer­ences, a series of meet­ings between the British gov­ern­ment and polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of India held with an eye toward con­sti­tu­tion­al reform. “The buzz was that Mahat­ma Gand­hi would be com­ing to Britain for the first time since he joined the Free­dom move­ment,” writes blog­ger Vijaya­mad­hav. The buzz proved cor­rect, but more his­toric than the results of that par­tic­u­lar con­fer­ence ses­sion was what tran­spired there­after. “Gand­hi was prepar­ing for his depar­ture when a telegram reached him. A cer­tain Charles Chap­lin, who was in Britain at that time, had request­ed per­mis­sion to be grant­ed an audi­ence with him.”

Gand­hi, said to have seen only two films in his life (one of them in Hin­di), “did not know who this gen­tle­man was,” and so “replied that it would be hard for him to find time and asked his aides to send a reply declin­ing the request.” But it seems that Gand­hi’s cir­cle con­tained Chap­lin fans, or at least advi­sors aware of the polit­i­cal val­ue of a pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty with the most beloved Eng­lish­man alive, who pre­vailed upon him to take the meet­ing. And so, on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1931, “hun­dreds of peo­ple crowd­ed around the house” — the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly hum­ble lodg­ings off East India Dock Road — “to catch a glimpse of the famous vis­i­tors.” Some “even clam­bered over gar­den fences to look through the win­dows.”

Chap­lin opened with a ques­tion to Gand­hi about his “abhor­rence of machin­ery.” Gand­hi’s reply, as record­ed in The Print: “Machin­ery in the past has made us depen­dent on Eng­land, and the only way we can rid our­selves of that depen­den­cy is to boy­cott all goods made by machin­ery,” espe­cial­ly those machines he saw as rob­bing Indi­ans of their liveli­hoods. Chap­lin lat­er wrote of hav­ing received in this con­ver­sa­tion “a lucid object les­son in tac­ti­cal maneu­ver­ing in India’s fight for free­dom, inspired, para­dox­i­cal­ly, by a real­is­tic, vir­ile-mind­ed vision­ary with a will of iron to car­ry it out.” He might also have got the idea for 1935’s Mod­ern Times, a comedic cri­tique of indus­tri­al­ized moder­ni­ty that now ranks among Chap­lin’s most acclaimed works. The abstemious Gand­hi nev­er saw it, of course, and whether it would have made him laugh is an open ques­tion. But apart, per­haps, from its glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of drug use, he could hard­ly have dis­agreed with it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

Watch Gand­hi Talk in His First Filmed Inter­view (1947)

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Mahat­ma Gandhi’s List of the 7 Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Liv­ing the Bad Life

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

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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Is the Viral “Red Dress” Music Video a Sociological Experiment? Performance Art? Or Something Else?

in Life, Media, Music | August 4th, 2021

Before it set itself on fire, HBO’s Game of Thrones res­onat­ed deeply with con­tem­po­rary moral­i­ty, becom­ing the most meme-wor­thy of shows, for good or ill, online. Few scenes in the show’s run — per­haps not even the Red Wed­ding or the nau­se­at­ing finale — elicit­ed as much gut-lev­el reac­tion as Cer­sei Lannister’s naked walk of shame in the Sea­son 5 finale, a scene all the more res­o­nant as it hap­pened to be based on real events.

In 1483, one of King Edward IV’s many mis­tress­es, Jane Shore, was marched through London’s streets by his broth­er Richard III, “while crowds of peo­ple watched, yelling and sham­ing her. She wasn’t total­ly naked,” notes Men­tal Floss, “but by the stan­dards of the day, she might as well have been,” wear­ing noth­ing but a kir­tle, a “thin shift of linen meant to be worn only as an under­gar­ment.”

What are the stan­dards of our day? And what is the pun­ish­ment for vio­lat­ing them? Sarah Brand seemed to be ask­ing these ques­tions when she post­ed “Red Dress,” a music video show­cas­ing her less than stel­lar singing tal­ents inside Oxford’s North Gate Church. In less than a month, the video has gar­nered well over half a mil­lion views, “impres­sive for a musi­cian with hard­ly any social media foot­print or fan base,” Kate Fowler writes at Newsweek.

“It takes only a few sec­onds,” Fowler gen­er­ous­ly remarks, “to real­ize that Brand may not have the voice of an angel.” Or, as one clever com­menter put it, “She is actu­al­ly hit­ting all the notes… only of oth­er songs. And at ran­dom.” Is she ludi­crous­ly un-self-aware, an heiress with delu­sions of grandeur, a sad casu­al­ty of celebri­ty cul­ture, forc­ing her­self into a role that doesn’t fit? Or does she know exact­ly what she’s doing…

The judg­ments of medieval mobs have noth­ing on the inter­net, Brand sug­gests. “Red Dress” presents what she calls “a cin­e­mat­ic, holis­tic por­tray­al of judg­ment,” one that includes inter­net sham­ing in its cal­cu­la­tions. Giv­en the amount of online ran­cor and ridicule her video pro­voked, it “did what it set out to do,” she tells the BBC. And giv­en that Brand is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a master’s degree in soci­ol­o­gy at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, many won­der if the project is a soci­o­log­i­cal exper­i­ment for cred­it. She isn’t say­ing.

Jane Shore’s walk end­ed with years locked in prison. Brand offered her­self up for the scorn and hatred of the mobs. No one is point­ing a pike at her back. She paid for the priv­i­lege of hav­ing peo­ple laugh at her, and she’s espe­cial­ly enjoy­ing “some very, very wit­ty com­ments” (like those above). She’s also very much aware that she is “no pro­fes­sion­al singer.”

The style in which I sing the song was impor­tant because it reflect­ed the sto­ry. The vocals don’t seem to quite fit, they seem out of place and they make peo­ple uncom­fort­able… and the video is this out­sider doing things dif­fer­ent­ly and caus­ing dis­com­fort and elic­it­ing all this judge­ment.

All of this is vol­un­tary per­for­mance art, in a sense, though Brand has shown pre­vi­ous aspi­ra­tions on social media to become a singer, and per­haps faced sim­i­lar ridicule invol­un­tar­i­ly. “Part of what this project deals with,” she says, is judg­ment “over­all as a cen­tral theme.” She cred­its her­self as the direc­tor, pro­duc­er, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, and edi­tor and made every cre­ative deci­sion, to the bemuse­ment of the actors, crew, and stu­dio musi­cians. Yet choos­ing to endure the gaunt­let does not make the gaunt­let less real, she sug­gests.

The shame rained down on Shore was part misog­y­ny, part pent-up rage over injus­tice direct­ed at a hat­ed bet­ter. When any­one can pre­tend (or pre­tend to pre­tend) to be a celebri­ty with a few hun­dred bucks for cin­e­matog­ra­phy and audio pro­duc­tion, the bound­aries between our “bet­ters” and our­selves get fuzzy. When young women are expect­ed to become brands, to live up to celebri­ty lev­els of online pol­ish for social recog­ni­tion, self-expres­sion, or employ­ment, the lines between choice and com­pul­sion blur. With whom do we iden­ti­fy in scenes of pub­lic sham­ing?

Brand is coy in her sum­ma­tion. “Judg­men­tal behav­ior does hurt the world,” she says, “and that is what I’m try­ing to bring to light with this project.” Judge for your­self in the video above and the … inter­est­ing… lyrics to “Red Dress” below.

 

Came to church to praise all love
Sit­ting, com­ing for some­one else
It didn’t stew well for me
But I said it was a lover’s deed

Didn’t trust my own feels
Let some­one else behind my wheel
Said it was love dri­ving me
But the only one who should steer is me

Cuz what they saw

They see me in a red dress
Hop­ping on the dev­il fest
Think­ing of lust
As they judge in dis­gust
What are you doing here?

They see me in a red dress
Hop­ping on the dev­il fest
Think­ing of lust
As I judge in dis­gust
What am I doing here?

Let­tin’ some­one else steer

I saw a love, pre­cious and fine
Thought I should do any­thing for time 
Time to change the hearts and minds
Of peo­ple not like me in break or stride

Shouldn’t be me, try­ing to change
Thought I’d be some­thing if I remained 
It just ain’t me singing of sins
Watch­ing exclu­sion get­ting its wins

Cuz what they saw

They see me in a red dress
Hop­ping on the dev­il fest
Think­ing of lust
As they judge in dis­gust
What are you doing here?

They see me in a red dress
Hop­ping on the dev­il fest
Think­ing of lust
As I judge in dis­gust
What am I doing here?

Let­tin’ some­one else steer

Came to church 
To praise love
Com­ing for
Some­one else

But all the eyes
Judg­ing in dis­guise
They don’t see me
Just the lies

They see me in a red dress
No dif­fer­ent from the rest
Start­ing to trust
As they join in a rush
What are we doing here?

They see me in a red dress
No dif­fer­ent from the rest
Start­ing to trust
As I lose my dis­gust
What am I doing here?

Strik­ing the fear

They see me in a red dress

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

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

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast — Season One Wrap: What Have We Learned? (#102)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 4th, 2021

After 101 episodes and a bit over two years, Open­Cul­ture’s first pod­cast offer­ing is mov­ing into a new phase. Here your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an hirt reflect on what we’ve learned and set a course for the future.

Our over­ar­ch­ing con­cern with this pod­cast has been how and why we con­sume. We may not have learned a great deal about this issue in a gen­er­al sense, but we’ve cer­tain­ly been shown the appeal of many forms that we might not have con­sid­ered before, and we’ve the­o­rized about why peo­ple like dra­ma or hor­ror, or what makes for com­pelling sci-fi or gam­ing, etc.

We’ve stretched over these episodes into some unex­pect­ed areas for a pop cul­ture pod­cast, like the phi­los­o­phy of pho­tog­ra­phy and why peo­ple obsess over con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. The cur­rent dis­cus­sion takes this on through a re-con­sid­er­a­tion of what pop cul­ture is. Of course, the title of the pod­cast has “pret­ty much” in it, which allows a cer­tain amount of lee­way, but the source of that ambi­gu­i­ty is not just that I want the free­dom to bring in any top­ic that inter­ests me, but because of two points cov­ered in this episode:

  • Func­tion­al­ly, indi­vid­u­als enter­tain them­selves with a vari­ety of things; they are our cul­tur­al food, and can include many obses­sions that have noth­ing to do with man­u­fac­tured media at all. If such fas­ci­na­tions are also used by mul­ti­ple peo­ple to bond over, then that’s cul­ture, and inso­far as bond­ing over that object is com­mon, then it’s pop cul­ture.
  • There’s a con­tin­u­um between cre­ation and spec­tat­ing. Cre­ators are first of all con­sumers and cre­ate large­ly through imi­tat­ing and tweak­ing past works. Though this pod­cast focus­es large­ly on the con­sumer side of the equa­tion, some of audi­ence appre­ci­a­tion is a mat­ter of respect for the craft, which increas­es through under­stand­ing and (at least vic­ar­i­ous) par­tic­i­pa­tion in the activ­i­ty. Though it’s not always the case that we get enjoy­ment through sym­pa­thy with the artis­tic choic­es a cre­ator makes (some­times we just mar­vel uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly), this is a sig­nif­i­cant dynam­ic in fan­dom. View­ers who liked Game of Thrones had many ideas about how it should have end­ed even if they had no oppor­tu­ni­ty or even tal­ent to real­ly pro­vide an alter­na­tive.

It all comes down to the dimen­sions of mime­sis, which means reflec­tion. We enjoy sto­ry­telling large­ly because it reflects us, either how we are, how we might like to be, or how we fear we could be. We get some of our ideas about who we are from these media reflec­tions. Mar­keters guess at who they think we are (again, in part based on media) and cre­ate prod­ucts to mar­ket at us. Artists cre­ate works reflect­ed from oth­er works which attempt to reflect us (or dis­tort us based on knowl­edge of a reflec­tion). Who we are as a cul­ture may be very much sto­ry­telling all the way down. So polit­i­cal myths are an essen­tial part of this, as are sex­u­al mores, ideas about what leisure activ­i­ties (and jobs, for that mat­ter) are respectable, man­ners tak­en more gen­er­al­ly, how we deal with our lega­cies of racism and sex­ism, what we find fun­ny and how that changes over time, and much much more.

Thanks, all, for lis­ten­ing. We’ll be back in a few weeks.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access 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.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.