Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in History, Yale | July 25th, 2021

From Yale Uni­ver­si­ty comes an unfor­tu­nate­ly time­ly course, Epi­demics in West­ern Soci­ety Since 1600. Record­ed before the out­break of COVID-19, the 25 lec­ture course, pre­sent­ed by his­to­ri­an Frank Snow­den, cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

This course con­sists of an inter­na­tion­al analy­sis of the impact of epi­dem­ic dis­eases on west­ern soci­ety and cul­ture from the bubon­ic plague to HIV/AIDS and the recent expe­ri­ence of SARS and swine flu. Lead­ing themes include: infec­tious dis­ease and its impact on soci­ety; the devel­op­ment of pub­lic health mea­sures; the role of med­ical ethics; the genre of plague lit­er­a­ture; the social reac­tions of mass hys­te­ria and vio­lence; the rise of the germ the­o­ry of dis­ease; the devel­op­ment of trop­i­cal med­i­cine; a com­par­i­son of the social, cul­tur­al, and his­tor­i­cal impact of major infec­tious dis­eases; and the issue of emerg­ing and re-emerg­ing dis­eases.

You can watch the lec­tures on YouTube above, or on iTunes (Video — Audio). You can also read Snow­den’s relat­ed book: Epi­demics and Soci­ety: From the Black Death to the Present.

If you want to hear what Snow­den has to say about COVID-19, we have two inter­views below.

Coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) Update: Epi­demics in His­to­ry

How Will COVID-19 Change the World? His­to­ri­an Frank Snow­den on Epi­demics From the Black Death to Now

Epi­demics in West­ern Soci­ety Since 1600 will be added to our list of Free Online His­to­ry cours­es, a sub­set of our meta­col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

The His­to­ry of the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, “The Dead­liest Epi­dem­ic of All Time”: Three Free Lec­tures from The Great Cours­es

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

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Sylvia Plath’s Tarot Cards (Which Influenced the Poems in Ariel) Were Just Sold for $207,000

in Games, Life, Literature, Poetry | July 23rd, 2021

We cel­e­brat­ed my birth­day yes­ter­day: [Ted] gave me a love­ly Tarot pack of cards and a dear rhyme with it, so after the oblig­a­tions of this term are over your daugh­ter shall start her way on the road to becom­ing a seer­ess & will also learn how to do horo­scopes, a very dif­fi­cult art which means reviv­ing my ele­men­tary math. 

- Sylvia Plath, in a let­ter to her moth­er, 28 Octo­ber 1956

Sylvia Plath’s Tarot cards, a 24th birth­day present from her hus­band, poet Ted Hugh­es, just went for £151,200 in an auc­tion at Sotheby’s.

That’s approx­i­mate­ly £100,000 more than this lot, a Tarot de Mar­seille deck print­ed by play­ing card man­u­fac­tur­er B.P. Gri­maud de Paris, was expect­ed to fetch.

The auc­tion house’s descrip­tion indi­cates that a few of the cards were dis­col­ored —  evi­dence of use, as sup­port­ed by Plath’s numer­ous ref­er­ences to Tarot in her jour­nals.

Recall Tarot’s appear­ance in “Dad­dy,” her most wide­ly known poem, and her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Hang­ing Man card, in a poem of the same name:

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.

I siz­zled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eye­lid :

A world of bald white days in a shade­less sock­et.

A vul­tur­ous bore­dom pinned me in this tree.

If he were I, he would do what I did.

This cen­tu­ry has seen her col­lec­tion Ariel restored to its author’s intend­ed order.
The orig­i­nal order is said to cor­re­spond quite close­ly to Tarot, with the first twen­ty-two poems sym­bol­iz­ing the cards of the Major Arcana.

The next ten are aligned with the num­bers of the Minor Arcana. Those are fol­lowed by four rep­re­sent­ing the Court cards. The collection’s final four poems can be seen to ref­er­ence the pen­ta­cles, cups, swords and wands that com­prise the Tarot’s suits.

Ariel’s man­u­script was rearranged by Hugh­es, who dropped some of the “more lac­er­at­ing” poems and added oth­ers in advance of its 1965 pub­li­ca­tion, two years after Plath’s death by sui­cide. (Hear Plath read poems from Ariel here.)

Daugh­ter Frie­da defends her father’s actions and describes how dam­ag­ing they were to his rep­u­ta­tion in her Fore­word to Ariel: The Restored Edi­tion.

One won­ders if it’s sig­nif­i­cant that Plath’s Page of Cups, a card asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive mes­sages relat­ed to fam­i­ly and loved ones, has a rip in it?

We also won­der who paid such a stag­ger­ing price for those cards.

Will they give the deck a moon bath or salt bur­ial to cleanse it of Plath’s neg­a­tive ener­gy?

Or is the win­ning bid­der such a diehard fan, the chance to han­dle some­thing so inti­mate­ly con­nect­ing them to their lit­er­ary hero neu­tral­izes any occult mis­giv­ings?

We rather wish Plath’s Tarot de Mar­seille had been award­ed to Phillip Roberts in Ship­ley, Eng­land, who planned to exhib­it them along­side her tarot-influ­enced poems in a pop up gallery at the Saltaire Fes­ti­val. To finance this dream, he launched a crowd-fund­ing cam­paign, pledg­ing that every £100 donor could keep one of the cards, to be drawn at ran­dom, with all con­trib­u­tors invit­ed to sub­mit new art or writ­ing to the mini-exhi­bi­tion: Save Sylvia Plath’s cards from liv­ing in the draw­ers of some wealthy col­lec­tor, and let’s make some art togeth­er!

Alas, Roberts and friends fell  £148,990 short of the win­ning bid. Bet­ter luck next time, mate. We applaud your gra­cious­ness in defeat, as well as the spir­it in which your project was con­ceived.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Artis­tic & Mys­ti­cal World of Tarot: See Decks by Sal­vador Dalí, Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger & More

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

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

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How The Pink Panther Painted The Mona Lisa’s Smile: Watch the 1975 Animation, “Pink Da Vinci”

in Animation, Comedy | July 23rd, 2021

Just a lit­tle fun to send you into the sum­mer week­end. Above, we present the 1975 ani­mat­ed short, “Pink Da Vin­ci,” which IMDB frames as fol­lows:

Anoth­er bat­tle of the paint­brush between the Pink Pan­ther and a diminu­tive painter, who this time is Leonar­do Da Vin­ci, paint­ing his mas­ter­piece, the Mona Lisa. The lit­tle Da Vin­ci paints a pout­ing mouth on the Mona Lisa, but the Pink Pan­ther decides to covert­ly replace the pout with a smile. When the smile wins the appre­ci­a­tion of an art patron, Da Vin­ci is enraged and repaints the pout. The Pink Pan­ther repeat­ed­ly changes the pout to a smile while the lit­tle painter is not look­ing, and ulti­mate­ly it is the Pink Pan­ther’s ver­sion of the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Lou­vre.

If this whets your appetite, watch 15 hours of Pink Pan­ther ani­ma­tions here.

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 

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

Watch 15 Hours of The Pink Pan­ther for Free

Watch La Lin­ea, the Pop­u­lar 1970s Ital­ian Ani­ma­tions Drawn with a Sin­gle Line

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The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Oldest-Known Work of Literature in World History

in History, Literature | July 22nd, 2021

You’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with The Epic of Gil­gamesh, the sto­ry of an over­bear­ing Sumer­ian king and demi-god who meets his match in wild man Enkidu. Gil­gamesh is hum­bled, the two become best friends, kill the for­est guardian Hum­ba­ba, and face down spurned god­dess Ishtar’s Bull of Heav­en. When Enkidu dies, Gil­gamesh goes look­ing for the only man to live for­ev­er, a sur­vivor of a leg­endary pre-Bib­li­cal flood. The great king then tries, and fails, to gain eter­nal life him­self. The sto­ry is packed with episodes of sex and vio­lence, like the mod­ern-day comics that are mod­eled on ancient mythol­o­gy. It is also, as you may know, the old­est-known work of lit­er­a­ture on Earth, writ­ten in cuneiform, the old­est-known form of writ­ing.

This is one ver­sion of the sto­ry. But Gil­gamesh beaks out of the tidy frame usu­al­ly put around it. It is a “poem that exists in a pile of bro­ken pieces,” Joan Aco­cel­la writes at The New York­er, “in an extreme­ly dead lan­guage.”

If Gil­gamesh were based on a real king of Ur, he would have lived around 2700 BC. The first sto­ries writ­ten about him come from some 800 years after that time, dur­ing the Old Baby­lon­ian peri­od, after the last of the Sumer­ian dynas­ties had already end­ed. The ver­sion we tend to read in world lit­er­a­ture and mythol­o­gy cours­es comes from sev­er­al hun­dred years lat­er, notes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Ira Spar:

Some time in the twelfth cen­tu­ry B.C., Sin-leqi-unnin­ni, a Baby­lon­ian schol­ar, record­ed what was to become a clas­sic ver­sion of the Gil­gamesh tale. Not con­tent to mere­ly copy an old ver­sion of the tale, this schol­ar most like­ly assem­bled var­i­ous ver­sions of the sto­ry from both oral and writ­ten sources and updat­ed them in light of the lit­er­ary con­cerns of his day, which includ­ed ques­tions about human mor­tal­i­ty and the nature of wis­dom…. Sin-leqi-unnin­ni recast Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s com­pan­ion and brought to the fore con­cerns about unbri­dled hero­ism, the respon­si­bil­i­ties of good gov­er­nance, and the pur­pose of life. 

This so-called “Stan­dard Baby­lon­ian Ver­sion,” as you’ll learn in the TED-Ed video at the top by Soraya Field Fio­rio, was itself only dis­cov­ered in 1849 — very recent by com­par­i­son with oth­er ancient texts we reg­u­lar­ly read and study. The first archae­ol­o­gists to dis­cov­er it were search­ing not for Sumer­ian lit­er­a­ture but for evi­dence that proved the Bib­li­cal sto­ries. They thought they’d found it in Nin­eveh, in the exca­vat­ed library of King Ashur­ba­n­i­pal, the old­est library in the world. Instead, they dis­cov­ered the bro­ken, incom­plete tablets con­tain­ing the sto­ry of Gil­gamesh and Utnapish­tim, who, like Noah from the Hebrew Bible, built an enor­mous boat in advance of a divine­ly ordered flood. The first per­son to trans­late the pas­sages was so excit­ed, he stripped off his clothes.

The flood sto­ry wasn’t the knock-down proof Chris­t­ian schol­ars hoped for, but the dis­cov­ery of the Gil­gamesh epic was even more impor­tant for our under­stand­ing of the ancient world. What we know of the sto­ry, how­ev­er, was already edit­ed and redact­ed to suit a mil­len­nia-old agen­da. The Epic of Gil­gamesh “explains that Gil­gamesh, although he is king of Uruk, acts as an arro­gant, impul­sive, and irre­spon­si­ble ruler,” Spar writes. “Only after a frus­trat­ing and vain attempt to find eter­nal life does he emerge from imma­tu­ri­ty to real­ize that one’s achieve­ments, rather than immor­tal­i­ty, serve as an endur­ing lega­cy.”

Oth­er, much old­er ver­sions of his sto­ry show the myth­i­cal king and his exploits in a dif­fer­ent light. So how should we read Gil­gamesh in the 21st cen­tu­ry, a few thou­sand years after his first sto­ries were com­posed? You can begin here with the TED-Ed sum­ma­ry and Crash Course in World Mythol­o­gy video fur­ther up. Dig much deep­er with the lec­ture above from Andrew George, Pro­fes­sor of Baby­lon­ian at the Uni­ver­si­ty of London’s School of Ori­en­tal and African Stud­ies (SOAS).

George has pro­duced one of the most high­ly respect­ed trans­la­tions of Gil­gamesh, Aco­cel­la writes, one that “gives what remains of Sin-leqi-unnin­ni’s text” and appends oth­er frag­men­tary tablets dis­cov­ered in Bagh­dad, show­ing how the mean­ing of the cuneiform sym­bols changed over the course of the mil­len­nia between the Old Baby­lon­ian sto­ries and the “New Baby­lon­ian Ver­sion” of the Epic of Gil­gamesh we think we know. Hear a full read­ing of Gil­gamesh above, as trans­lat­ed by N.K. Sanders.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

20 New Lines from The Epic of Gil­gamesh Dis­cov­ered in Iraq, Adding New Details to the Sto­ry

World Lit­er­a­ture in 13 Parts: From Gil­gamesh to Gar­cía Márquez

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

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Discover The Grammar of Ornament, One of the Great Color Books & Design Masterpieces of the 19th Century

in Art, Books, Design | July 22nd, 2021

In the mid-17th cen­tu­ry, young Eng­lish­men of means began to mark their com­ing of age with a “Grand Tour” across the Con­ti­nent and even beyond. This allowed them to take in the ele­ments of their civ­i­liza­tion­al her­itage first-hand, espe­cial­ly the arti­facts of clas­si­cal antiq­ui­ty and the Renais­sance. After com­plet­ing his archi­tec­tur­al stud­ies, a Lon­don­er named Owen Jones embarked upon his own Grand Tour in 1832, rather late in the his­to­ry of the tra­di­tion, but ide­al tim­ing for the research that inspired the project that would become his lega­cy.

Accord­ing to the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, Jones vis­it­ed “Italy, Greece, Egypt and Turkey before arriv­ing in Grana­da, in Spain to car­ry out stud­ies of the Alham­bra Palace that were to cement his rep­u­ta­tion.”

He and French archi­tect Jules Goury, “the first to study the Alham­bra as a mas­ter­piece of Islam­ic design,” pro­duced “hun­dreds of draw­ings and plas­ter casts” of the his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and aes­thet­ic palimpsest of a build­ing com­plex. The fruit of their labors was the book Plans, Ele­va­tions, Sec­tions and Details of the Alham­bra, “one of the most influ­en­tial pub­li­ca­tions on Islam­ic archi­tec­ture of all time.”

Pub­lished in the 1840s, the book pushed the print­ing tech­nolo­gies of the day to their lim­its. In search of a way to do jus­tice to “the intri­cate and bright­ly col­ored dec­o­ra­tion of the Alham­bra Palace,” Jones had to put in more work research­ing “the then new tech­nique of chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy — a method of pro­duc­ing mul­ti-col­or prints using chem­i­cals.” In the fol­low­ing decade, he would make even more ambi­tious use of chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy — and draw from a much wider swath of world cul­ture — to cre­ate his print­ed mag­num opus, The Gram­mar of Orna­ment.

With this book, Jones “set out to reac­quaint his col­leagues with the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples that made art beau­ti­ful,” write Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art cura­tor Femke Speel­berg and librar­i­an Robyn Flem­ing. “Instead of writ­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic trea­tise on the sub­ject, he chose to assem­ble a book of one hun­dred plates illus­trat­ing objects and pat­terns from around the world and across time, from which these prin­ci­ples could be dis­tilled.” To accom­plish this he drew on his own trav­el expe­ri­ences as well as resources clos­er at hand, includ­ing “the muse­o­log­i­cal and pri­vate col­lec­tions that were avail­able to him in Eng­land, and the objects that had been on dis­play dur­ing the Uni­ver­sal Exhi­bi­tions held in Lon­don in 1851 and 1855.”

The Gram­mar of Orna­ment was pub­lished in 1856, emerg­ing into a Britain “dom­i­nat­ed by his­tor­i­cal revivals such as Neo­clas­si­cism and the Goth­ic Revival,” says the V&A. “These design move­ments were rid­dled with reli­gious and social con­no­ta­tions. Instead, Owen Jones sought a mod­ern style with none of this cul­tur­al bag­gage. Set­ting out to iden­ti­fy the com­mon prin­ci­ples behind the best exam­ples of his­tor­i­cal orna­ment, he for­mu­lat­ed a design lan­guage that was suit­able for the mod­ern world, one which could be applied equal­ly to wall­pa­pers, tex­tiles, fur­ni­ture, met­al­work and inte­ri­ors.”

Indeed, the pat­terns so lav­ish­ly repro­duced in the book soon became trends in real-world design. They weren’t always employed with the intel­lec­tu­al under­stand­ing Jones sought to instill, but since The Gram­mar of Orna­ment has nev­er gone out of print (and can even be down­loaded free from the Inter­net Archive), his prin­ci­ples remain avail­able for all to learn — and his painstak­ing­ly artis­tic print­ing work remains avail­able for all to admire — even in the cor­ners of the world that lay beyond his imag­i­na­tion.

You can pur­chase a com­plete and unabridged col­or edi­tion of The Gram­mar of Orna­ment online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Explore the Beau­ti­ful Pages of the 1902 Japan­ese Design Mag­a­zine Shin-Bijut­sukai: Euro­pean Mod­ernism Meets Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Design

A Beau­ti­ful 1897 Illus­trat­ed Book Shows How Flow­ers Become Art Nou­veau Designs

The Bauhaus Book­shelf: Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books, Jour­nals, Man­i­festos & Ads That Still Inspire Design­ers World­wide

Every Page of Depero Futur­ista, the 1927 Futur­ist Mas­ter­piece of Graph­ic Design & Book­mak­ing, Is Now Online

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

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When David Bowie Played Andy Warhol in Julian Schnabel’s Film, Basquiat

in Film | July 22nd, 2021

Many actors have played Andy Warhol over the years, but not as many as you might think. Crispin Glover played him in The Doors, Jared Har­ris played him in I Shot Andy Warhol, Guy Pearce played him in Fac­to­ry Girl, and Bill Had­er played him in Men in Black III, but with a twist: he is actu­al­ly an agent who is so bad as his cov­er role as an artist, he’s “paint­ing soup cans and bananas, for Christ sakes!” On tele­vi­sion John Cameron Mitchell has act­ed the Warhol role in Vinyl, and Evan Peters briefly por­trayed him in Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry: Cult.

But you might sus­pect our favorite Warhol would be the one act­ed by David Bowie in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 Basquiat, the biopic of the Black street artist who was tak­en into the art world fold by Warhol, and wound up col­lab­o­rat­ing with him in last works by both artists. Jef­frey Wright plays Basquiat in one of his ear­li­est roles.

Now, you might watch this scene from Basquiat above (and anoth­er below) and say, well, that’s just most­ly Bowie. But I would say, yes, that’s kind of the point. Andy Warhol is an enig­mat­ic fig­ure, a leg­end to many, a man who hid behind a con­struct­ed per­sona; David Bowie is too. When one plays the oth­er, a weird sort of mag­ic hap­pens. Fame leaks into fame. Many actors might do bet­ter with the man­ner­isms or the voice, but the charisma…that is all Bowie. After singing about the painter back in 1972, Bowie final­ly col­lapsed their visions togeth­er in the art of film, where real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy meet and meld.

Around this time in the mid 1990s, Bowie was very much a part of the New York/London art scene. He was on the edi­to­r­i­al board of Mod­ern Painters mag­a­zine and inter­viewed Basquiat direc­tor (and artist) Julian Schn­abel, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Balthus. A con­cep­tu­al artist-slash-ser­i­al killer became one of the main char­ac­ters of his over­looked 1995 Eno col­lab­o­ra­tion Out­side. He was both a col­lec­tor and an artist, which we’ve focused on before. And he was think­ing about the new world open­ing up because of the inter­net. Bowie’s artist brain saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties and the dan­gers, and also the raw cap­i­tal­ist poten­tial. He offered shares in him­self as an IPO in 1997 and released a sin­gle as Tao Jones Index, three puns in one. Bowie nev­er pre­dict­ed the idio­cy of the NFT, but he cer­tain­ly would have laughed wry­ly at it.

In this Char­lie Rose inter­view to pro­mote Basquiat, Bowie and Schn­abel dis­cuss the role of Warhol, the role of art, and the real­i­ty of the art world.

“It was more of an imper­son­ation, real­ly,” says Bowie about his Warhol. “That’s how I approach any­thing.” Of note, how­ev­er, is how quick­ly Bowie moves away from dis­cussing him­self or the film to talk about larg­er issues of art and com­merce. Bowie does admit that he and Schn­abel dis­agree on a lot of things, and you can see it in their body lan­guage. But there’s also a huge respect. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view, go watch the whole thing.

Bonus: Below watch Bowie meet­ing Warhol back dur­ing the day…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by Taschen

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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What’s the Role of a Director in Constructing Comedy? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #100

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 22nd, 2021

What makes for a good com­e­dy film or show? Fun­ny peo­ple read­ing (or impro­vis­ing) fun­ny lines is not enough; an good direc­tor needs to cap­ture (or recre­ate in the edit­ing room) com­ic tim­ing, con­struct shots so that the humor comes through and coach the actors to make sure that the tone of the work is con­sis­tent.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Heather Fink to dis­cuss the role of the direc­tor in mak­ing a com­e­dy (or any­thing else) actu­al­ly good. Heather has direct­ed for TV, film, and com­mer­cials and spent a lot of time doing sound (a boom oper­a­tor or sound util­i­ty) for pro­duc­tions like Sat­ur­day Night Live, Get Out, The Morn­ing Show, and Mar­vel’s Dare­dev­il.

We talk about main­tain­ing com­e­dy through the tedious process of film­ing, putting actors through sex scenes and oth­er hard­ships, not telling them how to say their lines, come­di­ans in dra­mas, direct­ing improv/prank shows, and more. We touch on include Bad Trip, Bar­ry, and Ted Las­so, and more.

Watch some of Heather’s work:

  • Alleged, a short about dra­ma­tiz­ing accu­sa­tions against Steven Segal
  • Inside You, a film she wrote, direct­ed, and (reluc­tant­ly) starred in
  • The Focus Group, a short Heather direct­ed writ­ten by and star­ring Sara Ben­in­casa

We used some arti­cles to bring var­i­ous direc­tors and tech­niques to mind:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that 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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The Aesthetic of Evil: A Video Essay Explores Evil in the Films of Bergman, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Scorsese & Beyond

in Film | July 21st, 2021

Movies have heroes and vil­lains. Or at least chil­dren’s movies do; the more sophis­ti­cat­ed the audi­ence, the hazier the line between good and evil becomes, until it final­ly seems to van­ish alto­geth­er. Not that cin­e­ma direct­ed toward gen­uine­ly mature audi­ences dis­pens­es with those con­cepts entire­ly: rather, it makes art out of the ambi­gu­i­ty and inter­pen­e­tra­tion between them. This is true, to an extent, even in some of the recent wave of big-bud­get super­hero movies, in the main exer­cis­es in rolling an “adult” tex­ture onto sto­ries essen­tial­ly geared toward ado­les­cents. Hence the appear­ance of the Jok­er, Bat­man’s grin­ning arch-neme­sis, in “The Aes­thet­ic of Evil,” the Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy video essay above.

In the Jok­er of Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, “we see an evil that’s relent­less, pri­mar­i­ly because the core func­tion is com­plete and total anar­chy. What­ev­er order is estab­lished, who­ev­er it’s under ‚must be destroyed. As a result, an epoch is cre­at­ed where any rules or codes of con­duct are bro­ken. Any­thing that you antic­i­pate will hap­pen, will result in the oppo­site.”

This Jok­er made an out­sized cul­tur­al impact with not just the explic­it­ness of his dis­or­der-ori­ent­ed moral­i­ty, but also a mate­r­i­al-tran­scend­ing per­for­mance by Heath Ledger. In that same era, Jamie Hec­tor took a com­par­a­tive­ly min­i­mal­ist but equal­ly mem­o­rable turn in David Simon’s series The Wire as Mar­lo Stan­field, a drug king­pin “too vil­lain­ous for the vil­lains.” Like the Jok­er, Mar­lo is a law unto him­self, “will­ing to destroy the equi­lib­ri­um of any facet of the world there is, on a whim.”

These two rep­re­sent just one of the forms evil has tak­en in recent decades. The essay’s oth­er exam­ples range from Psy­cho’s Nor­man Bates and 2001’s HAL 9000 to The King of Com­e­dy’s Rupert Pup­kin and Fan­ny and Alexan­der’s step­fa­ther Edvard — or rather, the unwel­come trans­for­ma­tion of the fam­i­ly Edvard rep­re­sents. The most dia­bol­i­cal evil does not con­fine itself with­in the per­son of the antag­o­nist, espe­cial­ly not in the work of Michael Haneke, which twice appears in “The Aes­thet­ic of Evil.” Ben­ny’s Video is on one lev­el about a mur­der­ous ado­les­cent; on anoth­er, it’s about the “eva­sion of the real” that seduces us all. The White Rib­bon is on one lev­el about ran­dom acts of vio­lence in a small vil­lage; on anoth­er, it’s about how evil reflects “the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness of a soci­ety.” Haneke’s films have often been described as dif­fi­cult to watch, and that may well have less to do with what they show than what they know: even if we aren’t all vil­lains, we’re cer­tain­ly not heroes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles on the Art of Act­ing: ‘There is a Vil­lain in Each of Us’

Rare Video: Georges Bataille Talks About Lit­er­a­ture & Evil in His Only TV Inter­view (1958)

“The only thing nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil is for good men to do noth­ing,” a Quote False­ly Attrib­uted to Edmund Burke

Why Do Tech Bil­lion­aires Make for Good TV Vil­lains? Pret­ty Much Pop #93 Con­sid­ers “Made for Love,” et al.

The Aes­thet­ic of Ani­me: A New Video Essay Explores a Rich Tra­di­tion of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

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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