What Makes Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ a Timeless, Great Painting?

in Art | November 10th, 2021

Michelan­ge­lo Merisi da Car­avag­gio had many fol­low­ers. He was, after all, the most revered painter in Rome before he was exiled for mur­der. After his own death, his work fell into a peri­od of obscu­ri­ty and might have dis­ap­peared were it not for his many imi­ta­tors. Called Car­avaggisti or tene­brosi (“shad­ow­ists”), those who adopt­ed Caravaggio’s high-con­trast hyper­re­al­ism, includ­ing Dutch mas­ters like Rem­brandt, pro­duced the finest work of the Baroque peri­od. Some of Caravaggio’s dis­ci­ples were so good they pro­duced copies of his work that could fool experts. And some­times experts could be fooled into think­ing a Car­avag­gio was actu­al­ly the work of a copy­ist.

Such was the case with Caravaggio’s strik­ing can­vas, The Tak­ing of Christ, a depic­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment sto­ry of Jesus’ arrest and betray­al by his first dis­ci­ple, Peter. Com­mis­sioned by Roman noble­man Ciri­a­co Mat­tei in 1602, the paint­ing dis­ap­peared and was thought to have been lost until 1993, when it was found hang­ing in a Jesuit house in Ire­land. The Jesuits had thought it to be the work of Dutch artist Ger­ard van Hon­thorst, a painter who acquired the Ital­ian  nick­name Gher­ar­do del­li Not­ti (“Ger­ard of the nights”) after a vis­it to Rome inspired him to take up Caravaggio’s dra­mat­i­cal­ly lit style.

“Car­avag­gio’s approach to reli­gious art was shock­ing and con­tro­ver­sial in his time,” notes the video. “His work was cen­sored, dis­missed and crit­i­cized, but it would lead to an entire­ly new kind of Chris­t­ian art.” The vio­lent dynamism of his paint­ings “was matched only by his tem­pes­tu­ous lifestyle.” Dead at age 38, the painter left behind only around 90 paint­ings and draw­ings, and these inti­mate­ly reveal the marks of the artist. “Car­avag­gio’s tech­nique was as spon­ta­neous as his tem­per,” notes the Nation­al Gallery. “He paint­ed straight onto the can­vas with min­i­mal prepa­ra­tion.”

Such is the case in The Tak­ing of Christ. The Nation­al Gallery of Ire­land, which hous­es the rev­o­lu­tion­ary work, point out that “numer­ous pen­ti­men­ti (changes of mind)” on the can­vas, “now vis­i­ble due to changes over time in the paint lay­er, are a reminder of the artist’s uncon­ven­tion­al way of pos­ing mod­els in tableaux and alter­ing details as he worked.” He also seems to have lit­er­al­ly paint­ed him­self into the scrum: “Only the moon lights the scene. Although the man at the far right is hold­ing a lantern, it is, in real­i­ty, an inef­fec­tive source of illu­mi­na­tion. In that man’s fea­tures Car­avag­gio por­trayed him­self, aged 31.”

Car­avag­gio’s face and dis­tinc­tive­ly rapid tech­nique show up fre­quent­ly in his work, but so lit­tle was known about him for so long that schol­ars seemed to have a dif­fi­cult time telling an orig­i­nal from a copy. The Tak­ing of Christ has 12 such known copies, some believed to be by Car­avag­gio him­self. One hung in the Odessa Muse­um of West­ern and East­ern Art in Ukraine. It was lat­er claimed that the paint­ing was a faith­ful ren­di­tion by an obscure Ital­ian painter, made at the request of Asdrubale Mat­tei, broth­er of the orig­i­nal painter’s own­er. Car­avag­gio’s many imi­ta­tors paid him the high­est of com­pli­ments, and made cer­tain his influ­ence sur­vived his untime­ly death.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

How Car­avag­gio Paint­ed: A Re-Cre­ation of the Great Master’s Process

Liv­ing Paint­ings: 13 Car­avag­gio Works of Art Per­formed by Real-Life Actors

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Rare Book Featuring the Concept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune Goes Up for Auction (1975)

in Books, Film, History, Sci Fi | November 9th, 2021


Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s new adap­ta­tion of Frank Her­bert’s Dune has made a decent­ly promis­ing start to what looks set to shape up into an epic series of films. But how­ev­er many install­ments it final­ly com­pris­es, it’s unlike­ly to run any­where near as long as Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky’s ver­sion — had Jodor­owsky actu­al­ly made his ver­sion, that is. Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, that project promised to unite the tal­ents of not just the cre­ator of the Dune uni­verse and the direc­tor of The Holy Moun­tain, but those of Mœbius, H.R. Giger, Sal­vador Dalí, Pink Floyd, Orson Welles, and Mick Jag­ger. Even David Lynch’s Dune, for all its large-scale weird­ness, would sure­ly play like My Din­ner with Andre by com­par­i­son.

Alas, none of us will ever get to see Jodor­owsky’s Dune, now one of the most sto­ried of all unmade films. But one of us — one of the deep-pock­et­ed among us, at least — now has a chance to own the book. Not Her­bert’s nov­el: the book assem­bled cir­ca 1985 as a pitch­ing aid, meant to show stu­dios the exten­sive pre-pro­duc­tion work Jodor­owsky, pro­duc­er Michel Sey­doux, and their col­lab­o­ra­tors had done.

“Filled with the script, sto­ry­boards, con­cept art, and more, the book is basi­cal­ly as close as any­one can get to see­ing Jodorowsky’s ver­sion of Dune,” writes io9’s Ger­main Lussier. “But, of course, the direc­tor and his team only cre­at­ed a hand­ful of copies and this was decades ago. This isn’t a book you can just get on Ama­zon.”


But you can get it at Christie’s, on whose auc­tion block it’s expect­ed to go for between €25,000 and €35,000 (around USD $30,000–40,000). Reck­on­ing that only ten to twen­ty copies were ever print­ed, the house­’s list­ing describes the book as “an extra­or­di­nary arti­fact” from “a doomed project which inspired legions of film-mak­ers and movie­go­ers alike.” Despite all of Hol­ly­wood ulti­mate­ly pass­ing on this enor­mous­ly ambi­tious adap­ta­tion, “all of this was not in vain.” Jodor­owsky him­self claims that, though unre­al­ized, his Dune set a prece­dent for “a larg­er-than-life sci­ence fic­tion movie, out­side of the sci­en­tif­ic rig­or of 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Its influ­ence, accord­ing to Christie’s, is present in 1970s films like Star Wars and Alien. Would it be too much to sense a trace of the Jodor­owskyan in Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune as well?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Mœbius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Dune Graph­ic Nov­el: Expe­ri­ence Frank Herbert’s Epic Sci-Fi Saga as You’ve Nev­er Seen It Before

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Watch the First Trail­er for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s Adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Nov­el

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Fascinating 3D Animation Shows the Depths of the Ocean

in Animation, Nature, Science | November 9th, 2021

Deep sea explo­ration and the sci­ence of oceanog­ra­phy began 150 years ago when British sur­vey ship HMS Chal­lenger set off from Portsmouth with 181 miles of rope. The Roy­al Soci­ety tasked the expe­di­tion, among oth­er things, with “investigat[ing] the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of the deep sea… in regard to depth, tem­per­a­ture cir­cu­la­tion, spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty and pen­e­tra­tion of light.” It was the first such voy­age of its kind.

To accom­plish its objec­tives, Chal­lenger swapped all but two of its guns for spe­cial­ized equip­ment, includ­ing — as assis­tant ship’s stew­ard Joseph Matkin described in a let­ter home — “thou­sands of small air tight bot­tles and lit­tle box­es about the size of Valen­tine box­es packed in Iron Tanks for keep­ing spec­i­mens in, insects, but­ter­flies, moss­es, plants, etc… a pho­to­graph­ic room on the main deck, also a dis­sect­ing room for carv­ing up Bears, Whales, etc.”

Find­ings from the four-year voy­age totaled almost thir­ty-thou­sand pages when pub­lished in a report. But the Chal­lenger’s most famous lega­cy may be its dis­cov­ery of the Mar­i­ana Trench. The ship record­ed a sound­ing of 4,475 fath­oms (26,850 ft.) in a south­ern part of the trench sub­se­quent­ly called Chal­lenger Deep, and now known as the deep­est part of the ocean and the “low­est point on Earth.” The most recent sound­ings using advanced sonar have mea­sured its depth at some­where between 35,768 to 36,037 feet, or almost 7 miles (11 kilo­me­ters).

Chal­lenger Deep is so deep that if Ever­est were sub­merged into its depths, the moun­tain’s peak would still be rough­ly a mile and a half under­wa­ter. In 1960, a manned crew of two descend­ed into the trench. Dozens of remote oper­at­ed vehi­cles (ROVs) have explored its depths since, but it would­n’t be until 2012 that anoth­er human made the 2.5 hour descent, when Avatar and The Abyss direc­tor James Cameron financed his own expe­di­tion. Then in 2019, explor­er Vic­tor Vescoso made the jour­ney, set­ting the Guin­ness world record for deep­est manned sub­ma­rine dive when he reached the East­ern Pool, a depres­sion with­in Chal­lenger Deep. Just last year, he best­ed the record with his mis­sion spe­cial­ist John Rost, explor­ing the East­ern Pool for over four hours.

Last year’s descent brings the total num­ber of peo­ple to vis­it Chal­lenger Deep to five. How can the rest of us wrap our heads around a point so deep beneath us it can swal­low up Mount Ever­est? The beau­ti­ful­ly detailed, 3D ani­ma­tion at the top of the post does a great job of con­vey­ing the rel­a­tive depths of oceans, seas, and major lakes, show­ing under­sea tun­nels and ship­wrecks along the way, with man­made objects like the Eif­fel Tow­er (which marks, with­in a few meters, the deep­est scu­ba dive) and Burj Khal­i­fa placed at inter­vals for scale.

By the time the ani­ma­tion — cre­at­ed by Meta­Ball­Stu­dios’ Alvaro Gra­cia Mon­toya– sub­merges us ful­ly (with boom­ing, echo­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment) in the Mar­i­ana Trench, we may feel that we have had a lit­tle taste of the awe that lies at the deep­est ocean depths.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

What the Earth Would Look Like If We Drained the Water from the Oceans

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

Film­mak­er James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Martin Luther King, Jr. Wrote His Momentous “I Have a Dream” Speech (1963)

in History, Politics | November 9th, 2021

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech ranks as one of the most famous of Amer­i­can speech­es. As Evan Puschak, the Nerd­writer, says in his video above, it’s “arguably the most impor­tant and well-known speech of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” King’s pop­u­lar vision of a peace­ful, har­mo­nious, mul­tira­cial democ­ra­cy might explain why nine out of ten Amer­i­cans have a pos­i­tive atti­tude toward King now. That polling looks very dif­fer­ent by par­ty affil­i­a­tion. Even so, many more Amer­i­cans look fond­ly on King’s mem­o­ry than sup­port­ed (or now sup­port) the racial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice for which he fought. The cur­rent use of King as a white­washed mar­tyr fig­ure, Michael Har­riot argues, obscures the real­i­ty of “a dream yet unful­filled,” as King once called the U.S.

Even after King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton and his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize win, only about 37% of Amer­i­cans approved of his mes­sage in 1966 Gallup polling, a num­ber that dropped even low­er when he came out against the Viet­nam war in 1967. Approval for MLK “only start­ed to shift after his assas­si­na­tion in 1968,” writes Senior Data Sci­en­tist Lin­ley Sanders at YouGov.  King’s “Dream” speech at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al may be posthu­mous­ly remem­bered as his finest hour by those who weren’t there. For thou­sands of peo­ple who were, his address was also a fiery sum­ma­tion of the major themes up to that point in dozens of speech­es and ser­mons.

“Rid­dled with big dif­fi­cult terms and full of rhetor­i­cal devices that are inten­tion­al and prac­ticed,” Puschak says, the speech elo­quent­ly explained “why ful­ly 100 years after… the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion,” Black Amer­i­cans were still polit­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged. It did so through a series of dense allu­sions to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, the coun­try’s found­ing doc­u­ments, the song “My Coun­try ‘Tis of Thee,” and oth­er arti­facts of Amer­i­can nation­al iden­ti­ty, in an attempt to “frame civ­il rights in the larg­er Amer­i­can mythol­o­gy so that those who iden­ti­fy with that mythol­o­gy might incor­po­rate this strug­gle into that sto­ry.”

The Amer­i­can sto­ry has jus­ti­fied oppres­sion and fear of the same peo­ple fight­ing for full inte­gra­tion into the nation­al poli­ty dur­ing the Civ­il Rights move­ment, a prob­lem­at­ic irony of which King was hard­ly unaware. He also drew from tra­di­tions old­er than the U.S. found­ing — the human­ism of Shake­speare and the prophet­ic voic­es of the Old Tes­ta­ment, for exam­ple. These were indeed prac­ticed maneu­vers. (King very much lived down the C he once got in a pub­lic speak­ing class.) But the rous­ing refrains in his speech’s con­clu­sion — which gave the speech its title and spread its fame around the world — were ad-libbed.

“I start­ed out read­ing the speech, and I read it down to a point… the audi­ence response was won­der­ful that day” King lat­er remem­bered. “And all of a sud­den this thing came to me that… I’d used many times before… ‘I have a dream.’ ” The ref­er­ence did­n’t come out of nowhere, says Clarence Jones, who helped King write the speech’s text just hours before it was deliv­ered. Jones recalled that King’s favorite gospel singer Mahalia Jack­son called out for the then-famil­iar (to her) theme:

As he was read­ing from the text of his pre­pared remarks, there came a point when Mahalia Jack­son, who was sit­ting on the plat­form, said, “Tell them about the dream, Mar­tin! Tell them about the dream.”

Now I have often spec­u­lat­ed that she had heard him talk in oth­er places… and make ref­er­ence to the dream. On June 23, 1963, in Detroit, he had made very express ref­er­ence to the dream.

When Mahalia shout­ed to him, I was stand­ing about 50 feet behind him… and I saw it hap­pen­ing in real time. He just took the text of his speech and moved it to the left side of the lectern. … And I said to some­body stand­ing next to me: “These peo­ple don’t know it, but they’re about to go to church.”

Before cel­e­brat­ing a redeemed inter­pre­ta­tion of the Amer­i­can dream in his extem­po­ra­ne­ous finale, King’s speech con­demned the nation’s real­i­ty as moral­ly cor­rupt and ille­git­i­mate. He urged restraint among his fol­low­ers through non­vi­o­lent “direct action,” but fore­saw worse to come before the coun­try could real­ize its poten­tial.

It would be fatal for the nation to over­look the urgency of the moment. This swel­ter­ing sum­mer of the Negro’s legit­i­mate dis­con­tent will not pass until there is an invig­o­rat­ing autumn of free­dom and equal­i­ty. 1963 is not an end, but a begin­ning. Those who hope that the Negro need­ed to blow off steam and will now be con­tent will have a rude awak­en­ing if the nation returns to busi­ness as usu­al.

“There will be nei­ther rest nor tran­quil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca until the Negro is grant­ed his cit­i­zen­ship rights,” King con­tin­ued. “The whirl­winds of revolt will con­tin­ue to shake the foun­da­tions of our nation until the bright day of jus­tice emerges.” Maybe it’s lit­tle won­der many white Amer­i­cans, hear­ing these remarks, turned away from King’s vision of racial jus­tice, which required reck­on­ing with “the unspeak­able hor­rors of police bru­tal­i­ty.” End­ing the “unearned suf­fer­ing” of Black Amer­i­cans, King knew, would come at too great a cost to unearned priv­i­lege. Indeed, the FBI heard King’s words as a direct threat to the coun­try’s his­toric pow­er struc­ture. After the “I Have Dream” speech, the Bureau seri­ous­ly inten­si­fied its pro­gram to sur­veil, dis­cred­it, and destroy him.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Got C’s in Pub­lic Speaking–Before Becom­ing a Straight‑A Stu­dent & a World Class Ora­tor

Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Explains the Impor­tance of Jazz: Hear the Speech He Gave at the First Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val (1964)

Imag­in­ing the Mar­tin Luther King and Mal­colm X Debate That Nev­er Hap­pened

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When Nikola Tesla Claimed to Have Invented a “Death Ray,” Capable of Destroying Enemies 250 Miles Away & Making War Obsolete

in History, Technology | November 8th, 2021

Just last week I vis­it­ed Nia­gara Falls and beheld the noble-look­ing stat­ue of Niko­la Tes­la installed there. It struck me as a fit­ting trib­ute to the inven­tor of the Death Ray. But then, its pres­ence prob­a­bly had more to do with Tes­la’s hav­ing advised the builders of the falls’ pow­er plant to use two-phase alter­nat­ing cur­rent, the form of elec­tric­i­ty of which he’s now remem­bered as a pio­neer. And in any case, Tes­la nev­er actu­al­ly invent­ed a death ray, or at least he nev­er demon­strat­ed one. He did, how­ev­er, claim to have been work­ing on a sys­tem he called “tele­force,” which shot what he described as a “death beam” — rays, he insist­ed, would nev­er be fea­si­ble — both “thin­ner than a hair” and pow­er­ful enough to “destroy any­thing approach­ing with­in 200 miles,” mak­ing war­fare effec­tive­ly obso­lete.

These pro­nounce­ments attract­ed spe­cial media atten­tion in the 1930s. “Hype about the weapon real­ly took off in the run-up to World War II as Nazi Ger­many assem­bled a fear­some air force,” writes Sam Kean at the Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute. “Peo­ple in Tesla’s home­land, then called Yugoslavia, begged him to return home and install the rays to pro­tect them from the Nazi men­ace.” But no known evi­dence sug­gests that the elder­ly Tes­la had fig­ured out how to actu­al­ly make tele­force work.

At that point he had more press­ing prob­lems, not least the cost of the hotels in which he lived. “In 1915, his famous War­den­clyffe tow­er plant was sold to help pay off his $20,000 debt at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria,” writes Men­tal Floss’ Sta­cy Con­radt, and lat­er he racked up a sim­i­lar­ly large bill at the Gov­er­nor Clin­ton. “He couldn’t afford the pay­ment, so instead, Tes­la offered the man­age­ment some­thing price­less: one of his inven­tions.”

That “inven­tion” may have been the box exam­ined after Tes­la’s death in 1943 by physi­cist John G. Trump (uncle of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump). Left in a hotel vault, it was rumored to be “a pro­to­type of his death ray.” Tes­la had includ­ed a note, writes Kean, that “claimed the pro­to­type inside was worth $10,000. More omi­nous­ly, it said the box would det­o­nate if opened incor­rect­ly.” But when “the physi­cist steeled him­self and began tear­ing off the brown paper,” he “must have laughed at what he saw under­neath: a Wheat­stone bridge, a tool for mea­sur­ing elec­tri­cal resis­tance. It was a com­mon, mun­dane device — some old junk, real­ly. It was cer­tain­ly not a death ray, not even close.”

Though it must have been as pow­er­ful a dis­ap­point­ment as it was a relief, did that dis­cov­ery prove that Tes­la nev­er invent­ed a death ray? The U.S. gov­ern­ment did­n’t take its chances on the mat­ter: as History.com’s Sarah Pruitt tells it, agents “swooped in and took pos­ses­sion of all the prop­er­ty and doc­u­ments from his room at the New York­er Hotel” right after Tes­la’s death. And “while the FBI orig­i­nal­ly record­ed some 80 trunks among Tesla’s effects, only 60 arrived in Bel­grade,” home of the Niko­la Tes­la Muse­um, near­ly a decade lat­er. The idea of death rays has long sur­vived Tes­la him­self, tak­ing on forms from the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion’s “Star Wars” nuclear defense pro­gram to the mil­i­tary laser weapons test­ed in recent years. Few such tech­nolo­gies seem capa­ble of end­ing all war, as Tes­la promised. But if one ever does, we could hon­or his mem­o­ry by refer­ring to it, in the man­ner he pre­ferred, as not a death ray but a death beam.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1926, Niko­la Tes­la Pre­dicts the World of 2026

The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la: As Told by Tech­noil­lu­sion­ist Mar­co Tem­pest

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

John Cleese Presents His 5‑Step Plan for Shorter, More Productive Meetings (1976)

in Business, Comedy, Education, Politics | November 8th, 2021

Let’s face it, meet­ings are bor­ing at best and at worst, chaot­ic, volatile, and poten­tial­ly vio­lent. And let’s also face it: to get through life as func­tion­ing adults, we’re going to have to sit through one or two of them — or even one or two of them a week.

Maybe we’re the one who calls the meet­ings, and maybe they all feel like a waste of time. One solu­tion is to have more infor­mal meet­ings. This can be espe­cial­ly tempt­ing in the age of work-from-home, when it’s impos­si­ble to know how many meet­ing atten­dees are wear­ing pants. Few­er rules can raise the spon­tane­ity quo­tient, but allow­ing for the unex­pect­ed can invite dis­as­ter as well as epiphany.

On the oth­er end of the scale, we have the for­mal­i­ty of par­lia­men­tary rules of order, such as those intro­duced by U.S. Army offi­cer Hen­ry Mar­tyn Robert in 1876. Robert, whose father was the first pres­i­dent of More­house Col­lege, gained a wealth of expe­ri­ence with unpro­duc­tive meet­ings as he trav­eled around the coun­try with the Army. One par­tic­u­lar meet­ing became a defin­ing expe­ri­ence, as one account has it:

While in San Fran­cis­co, the local leader of his com­mu­ni­ty didn’t show up for a church meet­ing. Hen­ry Robert was asked to pre­side over the town hall (with­out any pri­or notice). Let’s just say that on this par­tic­u­lar evening in 1876, he did a bad job. An hour into the meet­ing, peo­ple were scream­ing and the church actu­al­ly erupt­ed into open con­flict.

Sad­ly, this sort of thing has become almost rou­tine at town halls and school board meet­ings. But it needn’t be so at the office. Nor, says John Cleese in the brief video above, do meet­ings need to fol­low the for­mal­i­ty of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure.

Cleese’s rules are sim­pler even than the sim­pli­fied Roberts or Rosen­berg’s Rules of Order, an even more sim­pli­fied ver­sion of Robert’s Rules. Fur­ther­more, Cleese avoids using words like “Rules” which can be a turn-off in our egal­i­tar­i­an times. Instead, he presents us with a “5‑Step Plan” for hold­ing bet­ter and short­er meet­ings.

1. Plan — Clear your mind about the pre­cise objec­tives of the meet­ing. Be clear why you need it and list the sub­jects.
2. Inform — Make sure every­one knows exact­ly what is being dis­cussed, why, and what you want from the dis­cus­sion. Antic­i­pate what infor­ma­tion and peo­ple may be need­ed and make sure they’re there.
3. Pre­pare — Pre­pare the log­i­cal sequence items. Pre­pare the time allo­ca­tion to each item on the basis of its impor­tance not its urgency.
4. Struc­ture and Con­trol — Take the evi­dence stage before the inter­pre­ta­tion stage and that before the action stage and stop peo­ple jump­ing ahead or going back over ground.
5. Sum­ma­rize all deci­sion and record them straight away with the name of the per­son respon­si­ble for any action

Easy, right? Well, maybe not so easy in prac­tice, but these steps can, at the very least, illu­mi­nate what’s wrong with your meet­ings, which may cur­rent­ly resem­ble one of Cleese’s many par­o­dies of busi­ness cul­ture. Nobody video­phoned it in at the time, but try­ing to fig­ure out who’s sup­posed to be doing what can still take up an after­noon. Let Cleese’s five steps bring order to the chaos.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Cre­ates Ads for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

John Cleese’s Very Favorite Com­e­dy Sketch­es

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the Jackson 5’s First Appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1969)

in Animation, Music, Television | November 8th, 2021

Who dis­cov­ered the Jack­son 5?

Motown founder Berry Gordy?

Empress of Soul Gladys Knight?

Diva Diana Ross?

Every­one in atten­dance for Ama­teur Night at the Apol­lo on August 13, 1967?

For many unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­cans, the answer may as well have been tele­vi­sion host Ed Sul­li­van, who intro­duced the “sen­sa­tion­al group” of five young broth­ers from Gary, Indi­ana to view­ers in Decem­ber 1969, two years after their Ama­teur Night tri­umph. Thir­teen years ear­li­er, a wall of sound ema­nat­ing from a live in-stu­dio audi­ence of teenage girls told Sullivan’s home view­ers that anoth­er young sen­sa­tion — Elvis Pres­ley — must be some­thing spe­cial.

The Jack­son 5 need­ed no such help.

While there are many close-ups of their fresh young faces, the con­trol room wise­ly chose to zoom out much of the time, in appre­ci­a­tion of the broth­ers’ pre­ci­sion chore­og­ra­phy.

The bright­est star was the youngest, eleven-year-old Michael, tak­ing lead vocals in pur­ple fedo­ra and fringed vest on a cov­er of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s “Stand.”

Jack­ie, Tito, Jer­maine, and Mar­lon pro­vide sup­port for a bit of hokum that posi­tions Michael at the cen­ter of an ele­men­tary school romance, by way of intro­duc­tion to a full throat­ed cov­er of Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lov­ing You”:

We toast­ed our love dur­ing milk break. I gave her my cook­ies! We fell out dur­ing fin­ger­paint­ing. 

Author Carvell Wal­lace reflects on this moment in his 2015 New York­er review of Steve Knopper’s biog­ra­phy MJ: The Genius of Michael Jack­son:

Halfway through, he for­gets his lines and freezes, look­ing back at his old­er broth­ers for help. It’s an alarm­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble moment, one only pos­si­ble in the era of live tele­vi­sion. You feel bad for him. It sud­den­ly doesn’t seem right that a kid should be made to per­form live in front of an entire coun­try. Yet he some­how finds his way back and stum­bles through.

When the music starts, we see some­thing else entire­ly. The first note he sings is as con­fi­dent, sure, and pur­pose­ful as any adult could ever be. He trans­forms from ner­vous child at a tal­ent show into time­less embod­i­ment of long­ing. Not only does he sing exact­ly on key but he appears to sing from the very bot­tom of his heart. He stares into the cam­era, shakes his head, and blinks back tears in per­fect imi­ta­tion of a six­ties soul man. And it feels, for a moment, as though there are two dif­fer­ent beings here. One is a child—a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more spe­cial than any oth­er child. He is sub­ject to the same laws of life—pain, age, con­fu­sion, fear—as we all are. The oth­er being seems to be a spir­it of sorts, one who knows only the truest expres­sion of human feel­ing. And this spir­it appears to have ran­dom­ly inhab­it­ed the body of this par­tic­u­lar mor­tal kid. In so doing, it has sen­tenced him to a life­time of inde­scrib­able enchant­ment and con­sum­mate suf­fer­ing.

Michael’s explo­sive per­for­mance of the Jack­son 5’s first nation­al sin­gle, “I Want You Back,” released just two months before their Sul­li­van Show appear­ance, gives us that “spir­it” in full force.

It’s also not hard to imag­ine that the broth­ers’ thrilling­ly exe­cut­ed chore­og­ra­phy is the result of a lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­ing rehearsal reg­i­men, a fac­tor of the King of Pop’s trou­bled lega­cy.

The Sul­li­van Show appear­ance ensured that there would be no stop­ping this train. Five months lat­er, when the Jack­sons returned to the Sul­li­van Show, “I Want You Back” had sold over a mil­lion copies, as had “ABC,” which they per­formed as a med­ley.

Boy­hood is fleet­ing, mak­ing Jack­son­ma­nia a carpe diem type sit­u­a­tion.

The peri­od from 1969 to 1972 saw an onslaught of Jack­son 5‑related merch and a funky Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon whose pilot tart­ed up the Diana Ross ori­gin sto­ry with an escaped pet snake.

It was good while it last­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elvis’ Three Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show: Watch His­to­ry in the Mak­ing and from the Waist Up (1956)

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

The Cho­rus Project Fea­tures Teenagers Per­form­ing Hits by the Kinks, David Byrne, the Jack­son 5 & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Board Game Ideology — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #108

in Games, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 8th, 2021

As board games are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with adults, we ask: What’s the rela­tion­ship between a board game’s mechan­ics and its nar­ra­tive? Does the “mes­sage” of a board game mat­ter?

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by game design­er Tom­my Maranges, edu­ca­tor Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason, and ex-philoso­pher Al Bak­er to talk about re-skin­ning games, design­ing play­er expe­ri­ences, play styles, game com­plex­i­ty, and more.

Some of the games we men­tion include Puer­to Rico, Monop­oly, Set­tlers of Catan, Sor­ry, Munchkin, Sushi Go, Wel­come To…, Code­names, Pan­dem­ic, Occam Hor­ror, Ter­ra Mys­ti­ca, chess, Tick­et to Ride, Splen­dor, Pho­to­syn­the­sis, Spir­it Island, Escape from the Dark Cas­tle, and Wingspan.

Some arti­cles that fed our dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

The two games Tom­my cre­at­ed that we bring up are Secret Hitler and Inhu­man Con­di­tions.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast