The True Meaning of Queen’s Rock Epic “Bohemian Rhapsody”

in Music | December 16th, 2021

We’ve all giv­en at least a lit­tle thought to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” I myself hap­pen to have giv­en it more than a lit­tle, since I and all my class­mates had to learn the song and sing it togeth­er back in sev­enth-grade music class. But I haven’t giv­en it as much thought as music Youtu­ber Poly­phon­ic, whose exe­ge­sis “The True Mean­ing of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” appears above. “The apex of the 1970s rock exper­i­ment,” Queen’s six-minute rock epic “some­how man­ages to take the trans­for­ma­tive struc­ture of pro­gres­sive rock and shove it into a form that could be a radio rock sta­ple and sell out are­nas world­wide.” It also deliv­ers “an oper­at­ic break­down, a leg­endary gui­tar solo, and icon­ic lyrics that per­fect­ly walk the line between ground­ed and cryp­tic.”

Like all the best lyrics — and espe­cial­ly all the best lyrics of elab­o­rate­ly pro­duced 1970s rock — the words to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” invite all man­ner of read­ings. Poly­phon­ic opts to take the con­cept of read­ing more lit­er­al­ly, visu­al­ly ren­der­ing his inter­pre­ta­tion of the song through a set of tarot cards.

With­in this tra­di­tion­al frame­work, he makes the thor­ough­ly mod­ern choice of ground­ing these often fan­tas­ti­cal- or even bizarre-sound­ing lyrics in the sex­u­al iden­ti­ty of Queen’s lead singer. Born in Zanz­ibar to a con­ser­v­a­tive Indi­an fam­i­ly, the boy who would become Fred­die Mer­cury would have had more than one rea­son to feel out of place in the world. Do we have here an artis­tic sub­li­ma­tion of his per­son­al iso­la­tion, alien­ation, and self-rein­ven­tion?

When it was released in 1975, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” met with a crit­i­cal recep­tion here and there impressed, but on the whole indif­fer­ent or per­plexed. Per­haps the song was sim­ply too much, not just musi­cal­ly but cul­tur­al­ly: it draws in a seem­ing­ly hap­haz­ard man­ner from the realms of cow­boys, of opera, of Chris­tian­i­ty, and of much else besides. But to Poly­phon­ic, all these ele­ments reflect the cen­tral theme of Mer­cury’s sur­vival in and ulti­mate defi­ance of a hos­tile world. “In the end,” his char­ac­ter real­izes, “peo­ple’s minds are not going to change, and his own iden­ti­ty isn’t going to change, so there’s no use hang­ing on in fear. Armed with this knowl­edge, Fred­die Mer­cury com­pletes his mag­nif­i­cent trans­for­ma­tion and ascends to rock god­hood.” Such an inter­pre­ta­tion was far from my own mind in mid­dle school, admit­ted­ly, but there were no doubt oth­er stu­dents who could feel the pow­er­ful inspi­ra­tion this son­ic spec­ta­cle con­tin­ues to offer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”: Take a Deep Dive Into the Icon­ic Song with Queen’s 2002 Mini Doc­u­men­tary

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Hear How Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Would Sound If Sung by John­ny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sina­tra & 38 Oth­er Artists

65,000 Fans Break Into a Sin­ga­long of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at a Green Day Con­cert in London’s Hyde Park

1910 Fair­ground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and It Works Like a Charm

Watch Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Act­ed Out Lit­er­al­ly as a Short Crime Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Almost Burns His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 16th, 2021

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tle above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today. It’s one of the many things you can check out when Owl Creek starts run­ning muse­um tours some time in the future.

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

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Free: Read the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Word Essay That Became Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

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The Dune Franchise Tries Again — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #110

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 16th, 2021

The world now has anoth­er Dune film, and this time Warn­er Bros. is seri­ous about a fran­chise, with at least one sequel planned and a pre­quel TV series in the works. With thou­sands of years worth of world build­ing, the books by Frank Her­bert and the world now being fleshed out by his son Bri­an Her­bert with Kevin J. Ander­son offer more source mate­r­i­al than Star Wars for poten­tial film­mak­ers to play with, but is this world any­where near as fun?

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Bri­an Casey (broth­er of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life’s Dylan Casey) and Three if By Space senior edi­tor Erin Con­rad to talk about whether this series is real­ly adapt­able to the screen at all, and we con­sid­er past attempts by David Lynch and Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky (rather slight­ing the tedious TV ver­sion). Is the new ver­sion more suc­cess­ful? More fem­i­nist? Less colo­nial­ist?

Is the lore just too packed into the books to con­vey ade­quate­ly? When Frank Her­bert jumps for­ward 3000 years, is that a path that movie­go­ers will want to fol­low, even if famil­iar char­ac­ters can still be present as talk­a­tive ances­tral mem­o­ries in new char­ac­ters’ heads or come back as clones?

For points of com­par­i­son, we touch on not only Star Wars, but Out­lander, Picard, The Orville, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Walk­ing Dead, The Dark Tow­er, and more.

Some arti­cles that fed into our dis­cus­sion include:

Fol­low Erin @ErinConrad2.

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.

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New York’s Lost Skyscraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tower

in Architecture | December 15th, 2021

New York is nev­er just one city; it’s always sev­er­al, inter­act­ing with – or push­ing out – each oth­er. This goes for the city’s archi­tec­ture as much as for its pop­u­la­tion. Its stra­ta of pub­lic works projects, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, depart­ment stores, hotels, hos­tels, hous­ing, and sky­scrap­ing office build­ings tell the sto­ry of its evo­lu­tion. Now, artists, urban­ists, and archi­tects protest face­less con­dos and big box stores. In decades past, they fought the face­less tow­ers that rose into the atmos­phere and blocked the sun. Such oppo­si­tion stretch­es back well over 100 years, to the turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry New York of the Flat­iron Build­ing and Beaux Arts won­ders like Penn Sta­tion, a build­ing, The New York Times writes, that “once made trav­el­ers feel impor­tant.”

“In the 1890’s,” writes Christo­pher Gray, Paris-trained archi­tect Ernest Flagg “denounced the grow­ing crop of sky­scrap­ers, and by the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry he was hor­ri­fied by the dark­ened streets and raw side walls pro­duced by such build­ings.” Flagg’s opin­ions were of lit­tle inter­est to his New York employ­ers, so he “shift­ed his focus to reform­ing sky­scraper design” instead of decry­ing them out­right.

The endeav­or pro­duced a mod­ern mar­vel, “a one-of-a-kind tow­er” ris­ing above the New York City sky­line, notes the video above, “a total mas­ter­piece of archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing unlike any­thing seen before” — the Singer Tow­er, built for the Singer Sewing Machine Com­pa­ny in 1908.

So impres­sive was it for its time that Flag­g’s build­ing won com­par­isons to the pyra­mids of Ancient Egypt. For a brief moment, between the years 1908 and 1909, it was the tallest build­ing in the world, until it lost the title to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life Insur­ance Com­pa­ny Tow­er, anoth­er unusu­al build­ing unlike the rec­tan­gu­lar sky­scrap­ers against which Flagg railed. Uncon­cerned with max­i­miz­ing avail­able real estate, he “urged that sky­scraper tow­ers more than 10 or 15 sto­ries high should be set back from the prop­er­ty lines, so that the tow­er occu­pied only one-quar­ter of the lot,” writes Gray. “All four sides could then be treat­ed archi­tec­tural­ly, and ‘we should soon have a city of tow­ers instead of a city of dis­mal ravines.’ ”

Work­ing in a Beaux-Arts style, Flagg put his the­o­ries to the test in the Singer Tow­er, also called the Singer Build­ing, expand­ing an orig­i­nal 10-sto­ry base to 14 sto­ries, then build­ing a small­er 33 ‑sto­ry tow­er atop it. Capped by a dome with a lantern and flag­pole ris­ing from it, the tow­er’s “bul­bous top became one of New York’s best known land­marks.” Its lob­by had the ornate lux­u­ry “seen in world’s fair and expo­si­tion archi­tec­ture of the peri­od.” But Flag­g’s vision of “a city of free-stand­ing tow­ers” would remain the dream of a sin­gle archi­tect. Despite his work for leg­is­la­tion to curb sky­scrap­ers that took up entire city blocks, such build­ings, includ­ing the 34-sto­ry City Invest­ing Build­ing, would con­tin­ue to rise around the dis­tinc­tive Singer Tow­er.

Final­ly, Flag­g’s quirks proved too much for New York’s real estate elite. When the Singer com­pa­ny moved its head­quar­ters in 1961, inter­est in the Tow­er remained low “because the small square footage of the build­ing’s nar­row tow­er was anti­thet­i­cal to the boom­ing growth of mod­ern busi­ness, which demand­ed more, not less, office space,” writes Katie Hiler. Decon­struc­tion of the first sky­scraper “ever to be peace­ful­ly demol­ished” began in 1967, five years after the demo­li­tion of Penn Sta­tion. In place of the Singer Tow­er would rise the 54-sto­ry One Lib­er­ty Plaza, a har­bin­ger of things to come in the city’s new finan­cial hub, the World Trade Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph of 11 Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

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

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Before Bauhaus: How Goth Became Goth

in Music | December 15th, 2021

“You look so goth today” one might say to a friend wear­ing too much eye­lin­er or black nail pol­ish or leather pants. But goth is so much more than just a look, the mak­er of the above video claims, walk­ing view­ers through a brief his­to­ry of the blues, rock, punk, post-punk, and new roman­tic waves made to the sound and style of what came to be called goth rock (though none of these artists described them­selves that way). The video essay claims goth has been hijacked by ersatz pre­tenders like Mar­i­lyn Man­son and My Chem­i­cal Romance, who might look the part but bear lit­tle resem­blance son­i­cal­ly or cul­tur­al­ly to fore­bears like The Doors, The Cure, The Birth­day Par­ty, or (this video’s stop­ping point) goth rock dar­lings Bauhaus.

Maybe the dis­tinc­tions seem like triv­ial sub­cul­tur­al squab­bling, but the essay rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion about the ori­gin of the word “goth” as a sub­cul­tur­al­ly descrip­tive term. It’s easy to see how some­one might mis­take oughties emo rock­ers for 80s goths; it’s per­haps more of a stretch to see how 70s and 80s goth rock car­ried forth the cre­ative spir­it of a medieval archi­tec­tur­al style or a 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary genre. Super­fi­cial­ly, we might say the oper­a­tive link is “dark and scary,” but if that’s all it takes to be “goth,” then we’re back to goth as cos­tume rather than a set of artis­tic tenets. Exam­in­ing the Goth­ic a bit more close­ly may give us clues to the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Goth.

Author Nick Groom iden­ti­fies a his­tor­i­cal ten­sion with­in the Goth­ic. First used in the 16th cen­tu­ry to describe the ornate pan-Euro­pean style that arose back in the 12th cen­tu­ry, the term was pejo­ra­tive, imply­ing that the glo­ries of Rome had been replaced by the bar­barism of the Ger­man Goths (despite the fact that Goth­ic style orig­i­nat­ed in France). The Goth­ic was revived in the 18th and 19th cen­turies — at first almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly by Horace Wal­pole, who wrote the first Goth­ic nov­el and turned his home, Straw­ber­ry Hill, into a Goth­ic theme park of sorts. By this point, says Groom above, the Goth­ic had tak­en on dual con­no­ta­tions in Eng­lish usage — pos­i­tive­ly, the Goth­ic was a rebel­lious spir­it: The Magna Car­ta was Goth. Mar­tin Luther was Goth.

On the oth­er hand, the Goth­ic referred to the occult, to Medieval Catholic rites and super­sti­tions, to ancient ruins, mon­sters, and gar­goyles. This is the Goth­ic with which we’re famil­iar, but it comes to us — via Wal­pole, Bram Stok­er, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. — as kitsch. “Goth­ic fic­tion began as a sophis­ti­cat­ed joke,” John Mul­lan observes of Walpole’s weird nov­el, The Cas­tle of Otran­to. For all its invest­ment in the dark­er regions of human expe­ri­ence, the Goth­ic, and there­by the Goth, has always had a cer­tain sense of humor about itself, cre­at­ing cav­ernous sounds that evoke cathe­dral acoustics, per­formed with an iron­ic the­atri­cal­i­ty that dra­ma­tizes lit­er­ary, Roman­tic excess­es — qual­i­ties, it must be said, few bands before or since embod­ied quite so suc­cinct­ly as goth rock dar­lings Bauhaus.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

“A Brief His­to­ry of Goths”: From the Goths, to Goth­ic Lit­er­a­ture, to Goth Music

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

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

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How George Martin Defined the Sound of the Beatles: From String Quartets to Backwards Guitar Solos

in Music | December 15th, 2021

Peter Jack­son’s new doc­u­men­tary series Get Back allows its view­ers to spend about eight hours watch­ing the Bea­t­les at work in the stu­dio. In that time, a fair few non-Bea­t­les linger in the frame as well: from Yoko Ono to key­boardist Bil­ly Pre­ston to a cou­ple of grumpy young police­man try­ing to shut down the cli­mac­tic rooftop con­cert. If you’ve seen Get Back, you’ll also have noticed one fel­low some­what taller, old­er, and more taste­ful­ly dressed than every­one else, who, though often in the stu­dio, seems not to have had much to do. This, as every Bea­t­les afi­ciona­do knows, is George Mar­tin: the EMI record pro­duc­er who, sev­en years ear­li­er, had been tasked with help­ing the not-yet-Fab Four start prop­er­ly record­ing their songs.

From then on Mar­tin kept work­ing close­ly with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and that, as Poly­phon­ic argues in the video above, grants him right­ful claim to the cov­et­ed title of “Fifth Bea­t­le.” Mar­tin, he explains, “was the pro­duc­er, com­pos­er, and arranger for most of the Bea­t­les’ career, and his con­tri­bu­tions are direct­ly respon­si­ble for some of the band’s most icon­ic songs.” Take “Yes­ter­day,” a sim­ple gui­tar-based num­ber enriched, at Mar­t­in’s sug­ges­tion, by a string quar­tet. Though Paul ini­tial­ly balked at this no doubt square-sound­ing addi­tion, he was per­suad­ed by the results. For the first time but not the last, the con­trast between the musi­cal back­grounds of band and pro­duc­er — the for­mer being obsessed with Amer­i­can rock-and-roll and the lat­ter hav­ing come out of the BBC’s clas­si­cal-music depart­ment — paid off.

The fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin con­tributed an even more pow­er­ful (and Psy­cho-inspired) string arrange­ment to “Eleanor Rig­by” as well as “all kinds of stu­dio exper­i­men­ta­tion,” includ­ing the run-in-reverse gui­tar solo on “I’m Only Sleep­ing” and the hyp­not­ic tape loops on “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.”  Despite not belong­ing to a gen­er­a­tion espe­cial­ly invest­ed in the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence, he made pos­si­ble the mind-blow­ing son­ic tex­tures of songs like “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” and “I Am the Wal­rus.” The unusu­al vari­ety of sound in the lat­ter owes a great deal to Mar­t­in’s tech­ni­cal know-how and will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment: “If I said ‘I want the radio on it,’ George would make it so that I could mix it in, and the radio would be com­ing through the machines,” John remem­bers in the 1975 inter­view clip below.

John acknowl­edges that Mar­tin did­n’t just real­ize the Bea­t­les’ uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cal ideas, but con­tributed his own more tra­di­tion­al but no less effec­tive ones: “He’d also come up with things like: ‘Well, have you heard an oboe?’ ” Because “he taught us a lot, and I’m sure we taught him a lot,” not much in the Bea­t­les’ record cat­a­log is ascrib­able sim­ply to him or them. By the time of Get Back, the Bea­t­les had decid­ed to return to their live-per­form­ing roots by record­ing an album with­out stu­dio over­dubs, and much few­er orches­tras and back­ward tape loops. Those ses­sions put Mar­tin in the back­ground, but there­after he “returned tri­umphant­ly” on Abbey Road. From the orches­tra­tion on “Here Comes the Sun” to the “ethe­re­al harp­si­chord riff” on “Because” to “some of the great­est moments ever record­ed” on the side-two med­ley, that album stands as per­haps the most com­pelling tes­ta­ment to the achieve­ments of the Fab Five. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Unique, Orig­i­nal Com­po­si­tions of George Mar­tin, Beloved Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er (RIP)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Break­ing Down the Bea­t­les’ Get Back Doc­u­men­tary: Stream Episode #111 of the Pret­ty Much Pop Pod­cast

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the 1907’s Nightmare-Inducing Short Film The Dancing Pig, Now Fully Colorized

in Film, History | December 14th, 2021

One could argue that cin­e­ma audi­ences in the 1900s were less sophis­ti­cat­ed than they are today. Mar­shal­ing the evi­dence, one might make an Exhib­it A of Le Cochon Danseur (The Danc­ing Pig), a Pathé-pro­duced silent short that show­cas­es the fig­ure of the title. “Appar­ent­ly based on a Vaude­ville act,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s Clarisse Loughrey, “it sees a pig dressed in a fan­cy tuxe­do attempt to seduce a young lady, who in turn rips off his clothes and forces him to dance despite his shame­ful naked­ness.”

Just how deeply the orig­i­nal French audi­ences thrilled to these pro­ceed­ings is lost to his­to­ry; but then, so is the name of the film’s direc­tor. This aura of mys­tery made Le Cochon Danseur an object of fas­ci­na­tion a cen­tu­ry after its release. But that was­n’t the only fac­tor in play: the design of the pig cos­tume remains impres­sive today, let alone when con­sid­ered by the pre­sumed stan­dards of 1907.

The film­mak­ers must have known this, since the film’s end­ing cuts — in a time when edit­ing of any kind was a rar­i­ty in the cin­e­ma — to a close-up of the over­sized porcine head express­ing a well-artic­u­lat­ed look of sat­is­fac­tion.

We see the pig “flap­ping his ears, bog­gling his eyes, flail­ing his tongue, and chuck­ling evil­ly, bear­ing his sharp, scary teeth,” as the Vil­lains Wiki puts it. “This implies that he pos­si­bly ate the woman and revealed him­self to be a hor­rid mon­ster.” It is this final sequence that has made the danc­ing pig “a pop­u­lar Inter­net meme vil­lain” over the past decade and a half. You’ve almost cer­tain­ly spot­ted him once or twice, though prob­a­bly not the col­orized ver­sion seen in the restored and enhanced video at the top of the post. The orig­i­nal black-and-white film, the inspi­ra­tion for so many memes and so many night­mares, appears just above.

“Some­how, I feel like I’m actu­al­ly look­ing at a hell­ish human-pig hybrid, not just a 20th-cen­tu­ry human in a 20th-cen­tu­ry ver­sion of a mas­cot suit,” writes cinephile Tris­tan Ettle­man in his own con­sid­er­a­tion of the pic­ture. Per­haps Le Cochon Danseur has proven even more com­pelling to us ful­ly con­nect­ed 21st-cen­tu­ry sophis­ti­cates than it did to its first view­ers. Or per­haps it sim­ply taps into a uni­ver­sal truth of exis­tence: to para­phrase a much-quot­ed obser­va­tion attrib­uted to Mar­garet Atwood, giant anthro­po­mor­phic pigs are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid giant anthro­po­mor­phic pigs will eat them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

The First Sur­re­al­ist Film The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man, Brought to You By Ger­maine Dulac & Antonin Artaud (1928)

Footage of the Last Known Tas­man­ian Tiger Restored in Col­or (1933)

When Sal­vador Dalí Viewed Joseph Cornell’s Sur­re­al­ist Film, Became Enraged & Shout­ed: “He Stole It from My Sub­con­scious!” (1936)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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18 Male Leonard Cohen Fans Over the Age of 65 Star in an Oddly Moving A Cappella Version of “I’m Your Man”

in Art, Creativity, Life, Music | December 14th, 2021

It’s going to be a tear­jerk­er, I think — artist Can­dice Bre­itz

Watch 18 diehard Leonard Cohen fans over the age of 65 ardent­ly fum­bling their way through the title track of his 1988 album, I’m Your Man, for a deep reminder of how we are trans­port­ed by the artists we love best.

These men, select­ed from a pool of over 400 appli­cants, don’t appear over­ly both­ered by the qual­i­ty of their singing voic­es, though clear­ly they’re giv­ing it their all.

Instead, their chief con­cern seems to be com­muning with Cohen, who had died the year before, at the age of 82.

Artist Can­dice Bre­itz zeroed in on the like­li­est can­di­dates for this project using a 10-page appli­ca­tion, in which inter­est­ed par­ties were asked to describe Cohen’s role in their lives.

Almost all were based in Cohen’s home­town of Mon­tre­al.

Many have been fans since they were teenagers.

Par­tic­i­pant Fer­gus Keyes described meet­ing Cohen at a 1984 sign­ing for his poet­ry col­lec­tion, Book of Mer­cy:

He told me he liked my name. He asked if he could use it in some future song. I said yes and he wrote it down in his lit­tle note­book. I said to him, ‘Some­times I don’t under­stand what you’re say­ing.’ And he said there was no wrong way of inter­pret­ing it, because he wrote for oth­ers and what­ev­er we inter­pret is right. 

There’s def­i­nite­ly a vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions on dis­play, above, in an excerpt of Bre­itz’ 40-minute work, I’m Your Man: A Por­trait of Leonard Cohen.

In per­son, it’s dis­played as an instal­la­tion in-the-round, with view­ers free to roam around in the mid­dle, as each par­tic­i­pant is pro­ject­ed on his own life-size video mon­i­tor for the dura­tion.

They’re our men.

Some stand­ing stiffly.

Oth­ers with eyes tight­ly shut.

Some can­not resist the temp­ta­tion to act out cer­tain choice lines.

One joy­ful unin­hib­it­ed soul beams and dances.

They keep time with their hands, feet, heads… a seat­ed man taps his cane.

One whis­tles, con­fi­dent­ly fill­ing the space most com­mon­ly occu­pied by an instru­men­tal, while the major­i­ty of the oth­ers fid­get.

There are suit jack­ets, a cou­ple of Cohen-esque fedo­ras, a t‑shirt from a 2015 Cohen event, and what appears to be a linen gown, topped with a chunky sweater vest.

Breitz’s only require­ment of the par­tic­i­pants was that they mem­o­rize the lyrics to the I’m Your Man album in its entire­ty, pri­or to enter­ing the record­ing stu­dio.

Each man laid his track down solo, singing along while lis­ten­ing to the album on ear­buds, unaware of exact­ly how his con­tri­bu­tion would be used. Sev­er­al pro­fessed shock to dis­cov­er, on open­ing night, that syn­chro­nous edit­ing had trans­formed them into mem­bers of an a cap­pel­la choir. 

The project may strike some view­ers as fun­ny, espe­cial­ly when an indi­vid­ual or group flubs a lyric or veers off tem­po, but the pur­pose is not mock­ery. Bre­itz worked to estab­lish trust, and the par­tic­i­pants’ will­ing­ness to extend it gives the piece its emo­tion­al foun­da­tion.

Vic­tor Shiff­man, co-cura­tor of the 2017 Cohen exhib­it A Crack in Every­thing at the com­mis­sion­ing Musée d’art con­tem­po­rain de Mon­tréal, told the Mon­tre­al Gazette:

They are not pre­cise­ly singers. They are just pas­sion­ate, ardent fans; their goal was to com­mu­ni­cate their devo­tion and love for Leonard by par­tic­i­pat­ing in this trib­ute. It is not about hit­ting the notes. The emo­tion comes through in the con­vic­tion these men por­tray and in the ded­i­ca­tion they show in hav­ing put them­selves out there. There is so much beau­ty in that work; it dis­arms us.

Hav­ing cen­tered sim­i­lar fan-based mul­ti­chan­nel video exper­i­ments around such works as Bob Marley’s Leg­end and John Lennon’s Work­ing Class Hero, Bre­itz explained the cast­ing of the Cohen project to CBC Arts:

I was real­ly inter­est­ed in this moment in life when one starts to look back and con­tem­plate what kind of a life one has lived and what kind of life one wish­es to con­tin­ue liv­ing as one approach­es the end of that life. And I think that even when he was a young man, Cohen was some­body who thought about and wrote about mor­tal­i­ty in very pro­found ways. So what I decid­ed to do was to invite a group of Cohen fans who real­ly would be up to the project of inter­pret­ing that com­plex­i­ty.

Pri­or to the work’s pre­miere, Bre­itz gath­ered the group for a toast, sug­gest­ing that the occa­sion was dou­bly spe­cial in that it was high­ly unlike­ly they would meet again.

Some­times artists are unaware of the pow­er­ful force they unleash.

Rather than going their sep­a­rate ways, the par­tic­i­pants formed friend­ships, reunite for non-solo Cohen sin­ga­longs, and in the words of one man, became “a real broth­er­hood… once you estab­lish that con­nec­tion, every­thing else dis­ap­pears.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Three Leonard Cohen Ani­ma­tions

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

Watch 4 Music Videos That Bring to Life Songs from Leonard Cohen’s Final Album, Thanks for the Dance

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.

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