George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Will Be Retold from a Woman’s Point of View

in Books, Literature | December 9th, 2021

Nine­teen Eighty-Four has been a byword for total­i­tar­i­an dystopia longer than most of us have been read­ing books. But apart from its the title and cer­tain words from its invent­ed “newspeak” — dou­ble­plus­good, unper­son, thought­crime — how deeply is George Orwell’s best-known nov­el embed­ded into the cul­ture? Most of us rec­og­nize the name Win­ston Smith, and many of us may even remem­ber details of his job at the Min­istry of Truth, where the facts of his­to­ry are con­tin­u­al­ly rewrit­ten to suit ever-shift­ing polit­i­cal exi­gen­cies. But how much do we know about the oth­er major char­ac­ter: Julia, Win­ston’s fel­low min­istry employ­ee who becomes his clan­des­tine co-dis­si­dent and for­bid­den lover?

“In some ways she was far more acute than Win­ston, and far less sus­cep­ti­ble to Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da,” writes Orwell in Nine­teen Eighty-Four. “But she only ques­tioned the teach­ings of the Par­ty when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the offi­cial mythol­o­gy, sim­ply because the dif­fer­ence between truth and false­hood did not seem impor­tant to her.” Juli­a’s amoral­i­ty throws the rigid­i­ty of Win­ston’s own atti­tudes into con­trast, and also shows up their imprac­ti­cal­i­ty. Now, in the hands of nov­el­ist San­dra New­man, Julia will become not just star of the sto­ry but its nar­ra­tor.

Or so it looks, at least, from the brief pas­sage quot­ed in the Guardian’s announce­ment of Julia, a re-telling of Nine­teen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate and to be pub­lished in time for the 75th anniver­sary of the orig­i­nal. Though it has no firm pub­li­ca­tion date yet, Julia will come out some time after New­man’s next book The Men, in which, as the Guardian’s Ali­son Flood puts it, “every sin­gle per­son with a Y chro­mo­some van­ish­es from the world.” It will join an abun­dance of recent retellings from the wom­an’s point of view, includ­ing every­thing from “Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a ver­sion of the Ili­ad from the per­spec­tive of Bri­seis, to Mag­gie O’Farrell’s Ham­net, which cen­ters on the life of Shakespeare’s wife.”

Entrust­ing a lit­er­ary prop­er­ty to a writer of anoth­er era, cul­ture, and sen­si­bil­i­ty is a tricky busi­ness, but there arguably has nev­er been a more oppor­tune time to put out a book like Julia. It seems the dystopia-hun­gry pub­lic has nev­er been read­ier to iden­ti­fy the “Orwellian” in life, nor more respon­sive to re-inter­pre­ta­tions and expan­sions of long-estab­lished bod­ies of pop­u­lar myth. And what with women hav­ing con­quered the world of fic­tion, there will nat­u­ral­ly be great inter­est in Juli­a’s take on life under Big Broth­er — as well as in its inevitable tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion.

via The Guardian/Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Live TV Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four, the Most Con­tro­ver­sial TV Dra­ma of Its Time (1954)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

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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Taschen Publishes the First 21 Stories of Spider Man in a High Resolution, Extra-Large Format Art Book

in Comics/Cartoons | December 9th, 2021

Mar­vel Comics and art book pub­lish­er TASCHEN have announced an agree­ment to pub­lish Marvel’s rarest clas­sic comics “in their orig­i­nal glo­ry, in an extra-large for­mat.” And it all starts with Spi­der Man. The first vol­ume in the Mar­vel-TASCHEN series repro­duces the first 21 sto­ries of Spi­der Man, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished between 1962–1964. TASCHEN has attempt­ed to “cre­ate an ide­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of these books as they were pro­duced at the time of pub­li­ca­tion.” The edi­tions fea­ture super-high-res­o­lu­tion pho­tographs of each page, “using mod­ern retouch­ing tech­niques to cor­rect prob­lems with the era’s inex­pen­sive, imper­fect print­ing.”

You can explore the new Spi­der Man edi­tions here. The next titles in ‘The Mar­vel Comics Library’ series will be Avengers. Vol. 1. 1963–1965, Fan­tas­tic Four. Vol. 1. 1961–1963 and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca. They’re sched­uled for release in 2022 and 2023. Keep an eye out…

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:

Every Spi­der-Man Movie and TV Show Explained By Kevin Smith

Hear an Hour of the Jazzy Back­ground Music from the Orig­i­nal 1967 Spi­der-Man Car­toon

The Math­e­mat­ics of Spi­der­man and the Physics of Super­heroes

Free: Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

How to Make Comics: A Four-Part Series from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art

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Edvard Munch’s Famous Painting “The Scream” Animated to Pink Floyd’s Primal Music

in Art, Music | December 9th, 2021

In this short video, Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor brings togeth­er two haunt­ing works from dif­fer­ent times and dif­fer­ent media: The Scream, by Nor­we­gian Expres­sion­ist painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944), and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

Munch paint­ed the first of four ver­sions of The Scream in 1893. He lat­er wrote a poem describ­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision behind it:

I was walk­ing along the road with two Friends
the Sun was set­ting — the Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melan­choly — I stood
Still, death­ly tired — over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on — I remained behind
– shiv­er­ing with anx­i­ety — I felt the Great Scream in Nature

Munch’s hor­rif­ic Great Scream in Nature is com­bined in the video with Floy­d’s oth­er­world­ly “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the sig­na­ture pieces from the band’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, Dark Side of the Moon. The vocals on “The Great Gig” were per­formed by an unknown young song­writer and ses­sion singer named Clare Tor­ry.

Tor­ry had been invit­ed by pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons to come to Abbey Road Stu­dios and impro­vise over a haunt­ing piano chord pro­gres­sion by Richard Wright, on a track that was ten­ta­tive­ly called “The Mor­tal­i­ty Sequence.”  The 25-year-old singer was giv­en very lit­tle direc­tion from the band. “Clare came into the stu­dio one day,” said bassist Roger Waters in a 2003 Rolling Stone inter­view, “and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ ”

Forty-two years lat­er, that “bit of a sing” can still send a shiv­er down any­one’s spine. For more on the mak­ing of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and Tor­ry’s amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion, see the clip below to hear Tor­ry’s sto­ry in her own words.

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:

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Stun­ning

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969) 

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

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‘The Character of Physical Law’: Richard Feynman’s Legendary Course Presented at Cornell, 1964

in Online Courses, Physics | December 8th, 2021

Lec­ture One, The Law of Grav­i­ta­tion:

“Nature,” said physi­cist Richard Feyn­man, “uses only the longest threads to weave her pat­terns, so that each small piece of her fab­ric reveals the orga­ni­za­tion of the entire tapes­try.”

With those words Feyn­man end­ed the first of his famous 1964 Mes­sen­ger Lec­tures at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, a talk enti­tled “The Law of Grav­i­ta­tion, an Exam­ple of Phys­i­cal Law.” (See above.) The lec­tures were intend­ed by Feyn­man as an intro­duc­tion, not to the fun­da­men­tal laws of nature, but to the very nature of such laws. The lec­tures were lat­er tran­scribed and col­lect­ed in The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law, one of Feyn­man’s most wide­ly read books. In the intro­duc­tion to the Mod­ern Library edi­tion, writer James Gle­ick gives a brief assess­ment of the charis­mat­ic man at the lectern:

Feyn­man, then forty-six years old, did the­o­ret­i­cal physics as spec­tac­u­lar­ly as any­one alive. He was due to win the Nobel Prize the next year for his ground­break­ing work in the 1940s in quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, a the­o­ry that tied togeth­er in an exper­i­men­tal­ly per­fect pack­age all the var­ied phe­nom­e­na at work in light, radio, mag­net­ism, and elec­tric­i­ty. He had tak­en the cen­tu­ry’s ear­ly, half-made con­cep­tions of waves and par­ti­cles and shaped them into tools that ordi­nary physi­cists could use and under­stand. This was eso­teric science–more so in the decades that followed–and Feyn­man was not a house­hold name out­side physics, but with­in his field he had devel­oped an astound­ing stature. He had a mys­tique that came in part from sheer prag­mat­ic brilliance–in any group of sci­en­tists he could cre­ate a dra­mat­ic impres­sion by slash­ing his way through a dif­fi­cult problem–and in part, too, from his per­son­al style–rough-hewn, Amer­i­can, seem­ing­ly uncul­ti­vat­ed.

All sev­en of Feyn­man’s lec­tures were record­ed by the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and pre­sent­ed as part of BBC Two’s “Fur­ther Edu­ca­tion Scheme.” In 2009 Bill Gates bought the rights to the videos and made them avail­able to the pub­lic on Microsoft­’s Project Tuva Web site.

Since then the series has become avail­able on YouTube for eas­i­er view­ing. As you scroll down the page you can access the videos which, “more than any oth­er record­ed image or doc­u­ment,” writes physi­cist Lawrence Krauss in Quan­tum Man: Richard Feyn­man’s Life in Sci­ence, “cap­ture the real Feyn­man, play­ful, bril­liant, excit­ed, charis­mat­ic, ener­getic, and no non­sense.”

You can find the remain­ing video lec­tures below:

Lec­ture Two, The Rela­tion of Math­e­mat­ics to Physics:

Lec­ture Three, The Great Con­ser­va­tion Prin­ci­ples:

Lec­ture Four, Sym­me­try in Phys­i­cal Law:

Lec­ture Five, The Dis­tinc­tion of Past and Future:

Lec­ture Six, Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Uncertainty–The Quan­tum Mechan­i­cal View of Nature:

Lec­ture Sev­en, Seek­ing New Laws:

You can find this course indexed in our list of Free Online Physics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

How Richard Feynman’s Dia­grams Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Physics

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

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Download 215,000 Japanese Woodblock Prints by Masters Spanning the Tradition’s 350-Year History

in Archives, Art, Museums | December 8th, 2021

If you enjoy Japan­ese wood­block prints, that appre­ci­a­tion puts you in good com­pa­ny: with Vin­cent van Gogh, for exam­ple, and per­haps even more flat­ter­ing­ly, with many of your fel­low read­ers of Open Cul­ture. So avid is the inter­est in ukiyo‑e, the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” that you might even have missed one of the large, free online col­lec­tions we’ve fea­tured over the years. Take, for instance, the one made avail­able by the Van Gogh Muse­um itself, which fea­tures the work of such well-known mas­ters as Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, artist of The Great Wave off Kanaza­wa, and Uta­gawa Hiroshige, he of the One Hun­dred Views of Edo.

Edo was the name of Tokyo until 1868, a decade after Hiroshige’s death — an event that itself marked the end of an aes­thet­i­cal­ly fruit­ful era for ukiyo‑e. But the his­to­ry of the form itself stretch­es back to the 17th cen­tu­ry, as reflect­ed by the Unit­ed States Library of Con­gress’ online col­lec­tion “Fine Prints: Japan­ese, pre-1915.”

There you’ll find plen­ty of Hoku­sai and Hiroshige, but also oth­ers who took the art form in their own direc­tions like Uta­gawa Yoshi­fu­ji, whose prints include depic­tions of not just his coun­try­men but vis­it­ing West­ern­ers as well. (The results are some­what more real­is­tic than the ukiyo‑e Lon­don imag­ined in 1866 by Uta­gawa Yoshi­to­ra, anoth­er mem­ber of the same artis­tic lin­eage.)

As if all this was­n’t enough, you can also find more than 220,000 Japan­ese wood­block prints at Ukiyo‑e.org. Quite pos­si­bly the most expan­sive such archive yet cre­at­ed, it includes works from Hiroshige and Hoku­sai’s 19th-cen­tu­ry “gold­en age of print­mak­ing” as well as from the devel­op­ment of the art form ear­ly in the cen­tu­ry before. Even after its best-known prac­ti­tion­ers were gone, ukiyo‑e con­tin­ued to evolve: through Japan’s mod­ern­iz­ing Mei­ji peri­od in the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, through var­i­ous aes­thet­ic move­ments in the years up to the Sec­ond World War, and even on to our own time, which has seen the emer­gence even of pro­lif­ic non-Japan­ese print­mak­ers.

Of course, these ukiyo‑e prints weren’t orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed to be viewed on the inter­net; the works of Hoku­sai and Hiroshige may look good on a tablet, but not by their design. Still, they did often have the indi­vid­ual con­sumer in mind: these are artists “known today for their wood­block prints, but who also excelled at illus­tra­tions for deluxe poet­ry antholo­gies and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art cura­tor John Car­pen­ter. His words greet the vis­i­tor to the Met’s online col­lec­tion of more than 650 illus­trat­ed Japan­ese books, which presents ukiyo‑e as it would actu­al­ly have been seen by most peo­ple when the form first explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty — not that, even then, its enthu­si­asts could imag­ine how many appre­ci­a­tors it would one day have around the world.

Below you can find a list of pri­or posts fea­tur­ing archives of Japan­ese wood­block prints. Please feel free to explore them at your leisure.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

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

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

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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Punks, Goths, and Mods on TV (1983)

in Fashion, Music, Television | December 8th, 2021

The Riv­et­head pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with fash­ion is inescapably relat­ed to their anx­i­ety over being con­fused for sub­cul­tures they pro­fess to hate: Goths, Punks, Met­al­heads, Death Rock­ers… The fact that so many sub­cul­tures claim black as their col­or of choice con­tributes to the con­fu­sion.

There are two points upon which the­o­rists of post-indus­tri­al British sub­cul­tures gen­er­al­ly agree: 1) No mat­ter the music or the fash­ion, the bound­aries between one sub­cul­ture and anoth­er were rig­or­ous­ly, even vio­lent­ly, enforced (hence the wars between the mods and rock­ers), and; 2) The music and fash­ions of every sub­cul­ture were sub­ject to coop­ta­tion by the machin­ery of cap­i­tal­ism, to be mass pro­duced, pack­aged, and sold as off-the-rack com­mod­i­ty, a phe­nom­e­non that occurred almost as soon as punks, mods, rock­ers, goths, ted­dy boys, skin­heads, New Roman­tics, etc. began appear­ing on tele­vi­sion — as in the post-Grundy Irish TV appear­ance of four young indi­vid­u­als above from 1983.

The inter­view­er intro­duces these punks, goths, and mods by refer­ring first to their employ­ment — or lack of employ­ment — sta­tus, and then to the num­ber of chil­dren in their fam­i­ly. Com­ments drip­ping with class dis­dain sit along­side a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of var­i­ous sub­cul­tures as “gangs” — the Hell’s Angels thrown in among them just to dri­ve the point home. Of course, there’s more to say about the denizens of ear­ly-80s UK sub­cul­tur­al street cor­ners — more than these four rep­re­sen­ta­tives have to say them­selves. It is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through per­for­mance rather than ver­bal expo­si­tion, through the affil­i­a­tions of cloth­ing, music, and pose — as in the mini-his­tor­i­cal slideshow of late-20th cen­tu­ry British sub­cul­tures below, from the 50s to the 80s.

In 1979, British the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge pub­lished what many con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive analy­sis of these work­ing-class scenes, which fre­quent­ly cen­tered around forms of racial and cul­tur­al exchange — as with mods who loved jazz or punks who loved ska and dub reg­gae; or racial and cul­tur­al exclu­sion — as with fas­cist skin­heads and chau­vin­ist ted­dy boys who glo­ri­fied the past, while oth­er sub­cul­tur­al ide­olo­gies looked to the future (or, as the case may be, no future).

Hebdige’s Sub­cul­ture: the Mean­ing of Style begins with a sto­ry about French writer Jean Genet, humil­i­at­ed in prison by homo­pho­bic guards over his pos­ses­sion of a tube of Vase­line:

Like Genet, we are inter­est­ed in sub­cul­ture – in the expres­sive forms and rit­u­als of those sub­or­di­nate groups – the ted­dy boys and mods and rock­ers, the skin­heads and the punks – who are alter­nate­ly dis­missed, denounced and can­on­ized; treat­ed at dif­fer­ent times as threats to pub­lic order and as harm­less buf­foons.

The irony of sub­cul­tures is that they iden­ti­fy with social out­siders, while re-enforc­ing bound­aries that cre­ate exclu­siv­i­ty (cf. the quote at the top, from Heb­di­ge-inspired Sub­cul­tures List). When the nov­el­ty and shock recedes, they become ripe fod­der for com­mer­cial coop­ta­tion, even lux­u­ry brand­ing.

What we usu­al­ly don’t get from tame ret­ro­spec­tives, or from patron­iz­ing mass media of the time, are deviant out­siders like Genet who can­not be reab­sorbed into the sys­tem because their very exis­tence pos­es a threat to the social order as so con­strued. So much of the fash­ion and music of post-war Britain was direct­ly cre­at­ed or inspired by West Indi­an migrants of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion, for exam­ple. In too many pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions of post­war British sub­cul­tures, that essen­tial part of the work­ing class UK sub­cul­ture sto­ry has been entire­ly left out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 300 Tracks: A 13-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to Present

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

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How Well Can You Move in Medieval Armor?: Medievalist Daniel Jaquet Gives It a Try in Real Life

in Design, History, Life, Sports | December 7th, 2021

If you’ve ever run a marathon in cos­tume, or for that mat­ter, board­ed pub­lic trans­porta­tion with a large musi­cal instru­ment or a bulky bag of ath­let­ic equip­ment, you know that gear can be a bur­den best shed.

But what if that gear is your first, nay, best line of defense against a fel­low knight fix­ing to smite you in the name of their liege?

Such gear is non-option­al.

Curi­ous about the degree to which 15th-cen­tu­ry knights were encum­bered by their pro­tec­tive plat­ing, medieval­ist Daniel Jaquet com­mis­sioned a top armor spe­cial­ist from the Czech Repub­lic to make a suit spe­cif­ic to his own per­son­al mea­sure­ments. The result is based on a 15th cen­tu­ry spec­i­men in Vien­na that has been stud­ied by the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion’s archaeomet­al­lur­gist Alan Williams. As Jaquet recalled in Sci­ences et Avenir:

We had to make com­pro­mis­es in the copy­ing process, of course, because what inter­est­ed me above all was to be able to do a behav­ioral study, to see how one moved with this equip­ment on the back rather than attach­ing myself to the num­ber of exact rivets…we knew the com­po­si­tion and the hard­ness of the parts that we could com­pare to our repli­ca.

The accom­plished mar­tial artist test­ed his mobil­i­ty in the suit with a vari­ety of high­ly pub­lic, mod­ern activ­i­ties: reach­ing for items on the high­est super­mar­ket shelves, jog­ging in the park, scal­ing a wall at a climb­ing gym, tak­ing the Metro …

It may look like show­boat­ing, but these move­ments helped him assess how he’d per­form in com­bat, as well as low­er stress activ­i­ties involv­ing sit­ting down or stand­ing up.

Out of his met­al suit, Jaquet has been known to amuse him­self by ana­lyz­ing the verisimil­i­tude of Game of Thrones’ com­bat scenes. (Con­clu­sion: some lib­er­ties were tak­en, armor-wise, in that grue­some face off between the Moun­tain and the Viper.)

An invi­ta­tion to trav­el to New York City to present at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art offered an unex­pect­ed test­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, com­pli­ments of the airline’s bag­gage restric­tions:

For rea­sons of weight, space and cost, the solu­tion to wear the armor over me was con­sid­ered the best.

(The TSA offi­cers at Newark were not amused...)

His armored expe­ri­ence sheds light on those of ear­ly 15th-cen­tu­ry knight Jean le Main­gre, aka Bouci­caut, whose impres­sive career was cut short in 1415, when he was cap­tured by the Eng­lish at the Bat­tle of Agin­court.

Bouci­caut kept him­self in tip top phys­i­cal con­di­tion with a reg­u­lar armored fit­ness reg­i­men. His chival­ric biog­ra­phy details gear­ing up for exer­cis­es that include run­ning, chop­ping wood, vault­ing onto a horse, and work­ing his way up a lad­der from the under­side, with­out using his feet.

Jaquet dupli­cates them all in the above video.

(Reminder to those who would try this at home, make sure you’re capa­ble of per­form­ing these exer­cis­es in light­weight shorts and t‑shirt before attempt­ing to do them in armor.)

Like Boucicault’s, Jaquet’s armor is bespoke. Those who’ve strug­gled to lift their arms in an off-the-rack jack­et will appre­ci­ate the trade off. It’s worth spend­ing more to ensure suf­fi­cient range of move­ment.

In Boucicault’s day, ready-made pieces of less­er qual­i­ty could be pro­cured at mar­kets, trad­ing fairs, and shops in pop­u­lous areas. You could also try your luck after bat­tle, by strip­ping the cap­tive and the dead of theirs. Size was always an issue. Too small and your move­ment would be restrict­ed. Too big, and you’d be haul­ing around unnec­es­sary weight.

Jaquet describes his load as being on par with the weight 21st-cen­tu­ry sol­diers are required to car­ry. Body armor is a life­saver, accord­ing to a 2018 study by the Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty, but it also reduces mobil­i­ty, increas­es fatigue, and reduces mis­sion per­for­mance.

Giz­mo­do’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette finds that medieval knights faced sim­i­lar chal­lenges:

The legs alone were car­ry­ing an extra 15 to 18 pounds, so the mus­cles had to work that much hard­er to over­come iner­tia to set the legs in motion. There is also evi­dence that the thin slits in the face mask, and tight chest plate, restrict­ed oxy­gen flow even fur­ther.

Read a detailed, schol­ar­ly account of Jaquet’s armor exper­i­ment in His­tor­i­cal Meth­ods: A Jour­nal of Quan­ti­ta­tive and Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary His­to­ry.

For those look­ing for a lighter read, here is Jaque­t’s account of tak­ing a com­mer­cial flight in armor (and some best prac­tice tips for those attempt­ing the same.)

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What It’s Like to Actu­al­ly Fight in Medieval Armor

Watch Accu­rate Recre­ations of Medieval Ital­ian Longsword Fight­ing Tech­niques, All Based on a Man­u­script from 1404

How to Make and Wear Medieval Armor: An In-Depth Primer

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Stephen Fry Explains How to Deal with Bullying

in Life | December 7th, 2021

Stephen Fry got sent off to a far­away board­ing school at the age of sev­en. His sub­se­quent years of stu­dent life far from home taught him, among oth­er things, a set of effec­tive strate­gies to deflect bul­ly­ing. (“I sup­pose it all began when I came out of the womb,” he once said when asked at what point he acknowl­edged his sex­u­al­i­ty, and that must have giv­en him plen­ty of time to con­sid­er what it was to stand out­side the main­stream.) The par­tic­u­lar line he rec­om­mends deliv­er­ing in the Q&A clip above (record­ed at The Oxford Union) may not be for every­one, but he also has a larg­er point to make, and he makes it with char­ac­ter­is­tic elo­quence. The eter­nal threat of bul­ly­ing, he says, is “why nature gave us, or enough of a per­cent­age of us, wit — or at least what might pass for it.”

Wit, which Fry pos­sess­es in a famous abun­dance, must sure­ly have car­ried him through a great many sit­u­a­tions both pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al. A mod­ern-day intel­lec­tu­al and aes­thet­ic heir to Oscar Wilde, Fry has the advan­tage of hav­ing lived in a time and place with­out being sub­ject to the kind of pun­ish­ment vis­it­ed on the author of “The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol.” But that does­n’t mean he’s had an easy time of it. He cites an “ancient metaphor” he’s kept in mind: “No mat­ter how dark it is, the small­est light is vis­i­ble; no mat­ter how light it is, a bit of dark is noth­ing.” The chal­lenges he’s faced in life — none of them a mil­lion miles, pre­sum­ably, from the kind endured by those seen to be dif­fer­ent in oth­er ways — have sent him to the wells of his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, and even mythol­o­gy. 

“We have to return to Niet­zsche,” Fry says, and specif­i­cal­ly The Birth of Tragedy. “He argued that tragedy was born out of ancient Greece, out of a spir­it that the Athe­ni­ans had as they grew up as a spe­cial tribe that some­how man­aged to com­bine two qual­i­ties of their twelve Olympic deities.” Some of these qual­i­ties were embod­ied in Athena, god­dess of wis­dom, and Apol­lo, god of har­mo­ny, music, math­e­mat­ics, and rhetoric. But then we have Diony­sius, “god of wine and fes­ti­val and riot. Absolute riot.” Tragedies, accord­ing to Niet­zsche, “look at the fact that all of us are torn in two,” with part of us inclined toward Athen­ian and Apol­lon­ian pur­suits, where anoth­er part of us “wants to wrench our clothes off, dive into the grapes, and make slurp­ing, hor­ri­ble nois­es of love and dis­cord.”

This all comes down to the thor­ough­ly mod­ern myth that is Star Trek. On the Enter­prise we have Mr. Spock, who embod­ies “rea­son, log­ic, cal­cu­la­tion, sci­ence, and an absolute inabil­i­ty to feel”; we have Bones, “all gut reac­tion”; and “in the mid­dle, try­ing to be a per­fect mix of the two of them,” we have Cap­tain Kirk, “who want­ed the human­i­ty of Bones, but some of the rea­son­ing judg­ment of Spock.” The Enter­prise, in a word, is us: “Each one of us, if we exam­ine our­selves, knows there is an inner beast who is capa­ble of almost any­thing — in mind, at least — and there is an inner monk, an inner har­mo­nious fig­ure.” Each side keeps get­ting the bet­ter of the oth­er, turn­ing even the bul­lied into bul­lies on occa­sion. The best you can do, in Fry’s view, is to “go forth, be mad, be utter­ly proud of who you are — what­ev­er you are — and for God’s sake, try every­thing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Stephen Fry on the Pow­er of Words in Nazi Ger­many: How Dehu­man­iz­ing Lan­guage Laid the Foun­da­tion for Geno­cide

How Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Learned to Deal With Super­fi­cial, Demean­ing Inter­view­ers

PBS Short Video “Bad Behav­ior Online” Takes on the Phe­nom­e­non of Cyber­bul­ly­ing

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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