How 99% of Ancient Literature Was Lost

in History, Literature | March 13th, 2023

Ancient Greece and Rome had plen­ty of lit­er­a­ture, but prac­ti­cal­ly none of it sur­vives today. What exact­ly became of almost every­thing writ­ten down in West­ern antiq­ui­ty is the sub­ject of the video above by ancient-his­to­ry Youtube chan­nel Told in Stone, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its inves­ti­ga­tions into every­thing from the Colos­se­um and the Pan­theon to Roman nightlife and the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius. But none of its past videos has quite as much rel­e­vance to this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry as the one on the burn­ing of the Library of Alexan­dria.

Described by nar­ra­tor Gar­ret Ryan as “the great­est of all ancient libraries,” the Library of Alexan­dria could have con­tained between 532,800 and 700,000 vol­umes in scroll form, all of them lost by the time Julius Cae­sar burned it down in 48 B.C..

Even so, “the loss of all but a tiny frac­tion of ancient lit­er­a­ture was not brought about by the dis­ap­pear­ance of a sin­gle library. It was, instead, the con­se­quence of the basic fragili­ty of texts before the advent of print­ing.” Papyrus, the pre-paper writ­ing mate­r­i­al first devel­oped in ancient Egypt, cer­tain­ly could­n’t stand the test of time: in rel­a­tive­ly humid west­ern Europe, “most papyri had to be recopied every cen­tu­ry or so.”

Plus ça change: even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, in our dig­i­tal era, long-term data archival has turned out to neces­si­tate reg­u­lar move­ment from one stor­age medi­um to the next. But per­haps our civ­i­liza­tion will prove luck­i­er with the process than the Roman Empire, whose col­lapse meant that “the elites who had tra­di­tion­al­ly com­mis­sioned new copies all but van­ished. Far few­er man­u­scripts were pro­duced, and those that were tend­ed to serve the par­tic­u­lar pur­pos­es of reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, and the tech­ni­cal dis­ci­plines.” For these and oth­er rea­sons, very few clas­sics made it to the Mid­dle Ages, and thus to the Renais­sance. But even if you don’t have much to study, so the lat­ter era glo­ri­ous­ly demon­strat­ed, you can more than com­pen­sate by study­ing it hard.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Was Actu­al­ly Lost When the Library of Alexan­dria Burned?

How Egypt­ian Papyrus Is Made: Watch Arti­sans Keep a 5,000-Year-Old Art Alive

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

How Ancient Scrolls, Charred by the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, Are Now Being Read by Par­ti­cle Accel­er­a­tors, 3D Mod­el­ing & Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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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An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

in Architecture, Art, Design, History, Travel | March 13th, 2023

With 26 lines and 472 sta­tions, the New York City sub­way sys­tem is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing organ­ism, and way too big a top­ic to tack­le in a short video.

Archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flood­ing, night and week­end ser­vice dis­rup­tions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-spe­cial sound qual­i­ty of the announce­ments in the above episode of Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Blue­prints web series, but he gives an excel­lent overview of its evolv­ing design, from the sta­tions them­selves to side­walk entrances to the plat­form sig­nage.

First stop, the old City Hall sta­tion, whose chan­de­liers, sky­lights, and Guas­tavi­no tile arch­ing in an alter­nat­ing col­ors her­ring­bone pat­tern made it the star attrac­tion of the just-opened sys­tem in 1904.

(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy tran­sit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignor­ing the conductor’s announce­ment to exit the down­town 6 train at its last stop, then look­ing out the win­dow as it makes a U‑turn, pass­ing through the aban­doned sta­tion to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Tran­sit Muse­um also hosts pop­u­lar thrice year­ly tours.)

Express tracks have been a fea­ture of New York’s sub­way sys­tem since the begin­ning, when Inter­bor­ough Rapid Tran­sit Com­pa­ny enhanced its exist­ing ele­vat­ed line with an under­ground route capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers from City Hall to Harlem for a nick­el fare.

Wyet­zn­er effi­cient­ly sketch­es the open exca­va­tion design of the ear­ly IRT sta­tions — “cut and cov­er” trench­es less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, plat­forms, and no frills sup­port columns that are near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous white sub­way tiles.

For the most part, New York­ers take the sub­way for grant­ed, and are always pre­pared to beef about the fare to ser­vice ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when rid­ers went out of their way to take the Q train.

Fol­low­ing years of delays, aggra­vat­ing con­struc­tion noise and traf­fic con­ges­tion, every­one want­ed to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way project, which extend­ed the line by three impres­sive­ly mod­ern, airy col­umn-free sta­tions.

(The mas­sive drills used to cre­ate tun­nels and sta­tions at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in prepa­ra­tion for Phase 2, which is slat­ed to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)

The design­ers of the sub­way placed a pre­mi­um on aes­thet­ics, as evi­denced by the domed Art Nou­veau IRT entrance kiosks and beau­ti­ful per­ma­nent plat­form signs.

From the orig­i­nal mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones pay­ing trib­ute to the for­tune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of his­to­ry hid­ing in plain sight.

The mid-80s ini­tia­tive to bring pub­lic art under­ground has filled sta­tions and pas­sage­ways with work by some mar­quee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Weg­man, Nick Cave, Tom Otter­ness, Roy Licht­en­stein and Yoko Ono.

Wyet­zn­er also name checks graph­ic design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li who was brought aboard in 1966 to stan­dard­ize the infor­ma­tion­al sig­nage.

The white-on-black sans serif font direct­ing us to our desired con­nec­tions and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.

Per­haps 21st-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions like count­down clocks and dig­i­tal screens list­ing real-time ser­vice changes and alter­na­tive routes will too, one of these days.

If Wyet­zn­er is open to film­ing the fol­low-up view­ers are clam­or­ing for in the com­ments, per­haps he’ll weigh in on the new A‑train cars that debuted last week, which boast secu­ri­ty cam­eras, flip-up seat­ing to accom­mo­date rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, and wider door open­ings to pro­mote quick­er board­ing.

(Yes, they’re still the quick­est way to get to Harlem…)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

The Sound of Sub­ways Around the World: A Glob­al Col­lec­tion of Sub­way Door Clos­ing Announce­ments, Beeps & Chimes

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

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Behold 900+ Magnificent Botanical Collages Created by a 72-Year-Old Widow, Starting in 1772

in Art, Biology, Creativity, Nature | March 10th, 2023

“I have invent­ed a new way of imi­tat­ing flow­ers,” Mary Delany, a 72-year-old wid­ow wrote to her niece in 1772 from the grand home where she was a fre­quent guest, hav­ing just cap­tured her host­ess’ gera­ni­um’s like­ness, by col­lag­ing cut paper in a near­ly iden­ti­cal shade.

Nov­el­ty rekin­dled the cre­ative fire her husband’s death had damp­ened.

For­mer pur­suits such as needle­work, sil­hou­ette cut outs, and shell dec­o­rat­ing went by the way­side as she ded­i­cat­ed her­self ful­ly to her botan­i­cal-themed “paper mosaicks.”

Over the next decade Mrs. Delany pro­duced 985 aston­ish­ing­ly flo­ral rep­re­sen­ta­tions from metic­u­lous­ly cut, hand col­ored tis­sue, which she glued to hand paint­ed black back­ings, and labeled with the spec­i­mens’ tax­o­nom­ic and com­mon names, as well as a col­lec­tion of num­bers, date and prove­nance.

In the begin­ning, she took inspi­ra­tion from a giant col­lec­tion of botan­i­cal spec­i­mens amassed by the cel­e­brat­ed botanist Sir Joseph Banks, with whom she became acquaint­ed while spend­ing sum­mers at Bul­strode, the Buck­ing­hamshire estate of her friend Mar­garet Bentinck, duchess of Port­land and a fel­low enthu­si­ast of the nat­ur­al world.

Bul­strode also pro­vid­ed her with abun­dant source mate­r­i­al. The estate boast­ed botan­ic, flower, kitchen, ancient and Amer­i­can gar­dens, as well a staff botanist, the Swedish nat­u­ral­ist Daniel Solan­der charged with cat­a­logu­ing their con­tents accord­ing to the Lin­naean sys­tem.

Sir Joseph Banks com­mend­ed Mrs. Delany’s pow­ers of obser­va­tion, declar­ing her assem­blages “the only imi­ta­tions of nature” from which he “could ven­ture to describe botan­i­cal­ly any plant with­out the least fear of com­mit­ting an error.”

They also suc­ceed as art.

Mol­ly Pea­cock, author of The Paper Gar­den: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, appears quite over­come by Mrs. Delany’s Pas­si­flo­ra lau­ri­fo­lia — more com­mon­ly known as water lemon, Jamaican hon­ey­suck­le or vine­gar pear:

The main flower head … is so intense­ly pub­lic that it’s as if you’ve come upon a nude stody. She splays out approx­i­mate­ly 230 shock­ing­ly vul­vu­lar pur­plish pink petals in the bloom, and inside the leaves she places the slen­der­est of ivory veins also cut sep­a­rate­ly from paper, with vine ten­drils fin­er that a girl’s hair. It is so fresh that it looks wet and full of desire, yet the Pas­si­flo­ra is dull and mat­te

Mrs. Delany’s exquis­ite­ly ren­dered paper flow­ers became high soci­ety sen­sa­tions, fetch­ing her no small amount of invi­ta­tions from titled hosts and host­esses, clam­or­ing for spec­i­mens from their gar­dens to be immor­tal­ized in her grow­ing Flo­ra Delan­i­ca.

She also received dona­tions of exot­ic plants at Bal­strode, where green­hous­es kept non-native plants alive, as she glee­ful­ly informed her niece in a 1777 let­ter, short­ly after com­plet­ing her work:

I am so plen­ti­ful­ly sup­plied with the hot­house here, and from the Queen’s gar­den at Kew, that nat­ur­al plants have been a good deal laid aside this year for for­eign­ers, but not less in favour. O! How I long to show you the progress I have made. 

Her work was in such demand, that she stream­lined her cre­ation process from neces­si­ty, col­or­ing paper in batch­es, and work­ing on sev­er­al pieces simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Her fail­ing eye­sight forced her to stop just shy of her goal of one thou­sand flow­ers.

She ded­i­cat­ed the ten vol­umes of Flo­ra Delan­i­ca to her friend, the duchess of Port­land, mis­tress of Bal­strode “(whose) appro­ba­tion was such a sanc­tion to my under­tak­ing, as made it appear of con­se­quence and gave me courage to go on with con­fi­dence.”

She also reflect­ed on the great under­tak­ing of her sev­enth decade in a poem:

        Hail to the hap­py hour! When fan­cy led

My pen­sive mind this flow’ry path to tread;

And gave me emu­la­tion to pre­sume

With timid art to trace fair Nature’s bloom.

Explore The British Museum’s inter­ac­tive archive of Mary Delany’s botan­i­cal paper col­lages here.

All images © The Trustees of the British Muse­um, repub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

The New Herbal: A Mas­ter­piece of Renais­sance Botan­i­cal Illus­tra­tions Gets Repub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful 900-Page Book by Taschen

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

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

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

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A New Dutch Reality TV Show Challenges Contestants to Paint Like Vermeer–and It’s a Hit!

in Art, Television | March 10th, 2023

Jokes about “real­i­ty tele­vi­sion” being a con­tra­dic­tion in terms go as far back in pop-cul­ture his­to­ry as the for­mat itself. But the fact remains that, delib­er­ate­ly or oth­er­wise, its pro­grams do reflect cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics of the soci­eties that pro­duce them. Before turn­ing into one of the most glob­al­ly suc­cess­ful fran­chis­es of this cen­tu­ry’s real­i­ty-TV boom, the once-con­tro­ver­sial strangers-in-a-house show Big Broth­er pre­miered in the Nether­lands. It will be left as an exer­cise to the read­er what that says about the Dutch, who have been tun­ing in to a very dif­fer­ent kind of real­i­ty pro­gram­ming in the past month: De Nieuwe Ver­meer, or The New Ver­meer.

Aired in con­junc­tion with the Rijksmu­se­um’s largest Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion ever staged, the show invites “two pro­fes­sion­al painters and dozens of ama­teur artists to com­pete to rein­vent the lost works of the 17th-cen­tu­ry mas­ter,” writes the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal.

“The results are judged by Ver­meer experts from the Rijksmu­se­um, the Dutch nation­al muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, and from the Mau­rit­shuis, a col­lec­tion of old mas­ters in The Hague.” The pro­fes­sion­als face such tasks as faith­ful­ly recon­struct­ing Ver­meer’s lost works, whether they van­ished cen­turies ago or in the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um theft of 1990. The ama­teurs work in their own media, includ­ing “stained glass, print­mak­ing and even Lego.”

All this has made The New Ver­meer “an instant sen­sa­tion in the Nether­lands, with 1.3 mil­lion view­ers (in a coun­try of 17 mil­lion) tun­ing in for the first episode.” Like any suc­cess­ful real­i­ty TV show these days, it has also inspired a wealth of sup­ple­men­tary con­tent, includ­ing a pod­cast and an online gallery show­ing all the art­work cre­at­ed by the con­tes­tants. “You can’t cur­rent­ly watch the series in the U.S., writes Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, “but the net­work is stream­ing a week­ly YouTube ‘Mas­ter­class’ ” offer­ing “step-by-step instruc­tions on how to cre­ate your own Ver­meer can­vas.” At the moment, those videos are avail­able only in Dutch, pre­sum­ably on the assump­tion that The New Ver­meer won’t trav­el well out­side the Nether­lands. But if, by some slim chance, it turned into a Big Broth­er-scale phe­nom­e­non, imag­ine the gold­en age of real­i­ty TV that would lie ahead.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

A Guid­ed Tour Through All of Vermeer’s Famous Paint­ings, Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Why is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring Con­sid­ered a Mas­ter­piece?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Meet Noto­ri­ous Art Forg­er Han Van Meegeren, Who Fooled the Nazis with His Coun­ter­feit Ver­meers

Lis­ten to Last Seen, a True-Crime Pod­cast That Takes You Inside an Unsolved, $500 Mil­lion Art Heist

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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The Map of Mathematics: An Animated Video Shows How All the Different Fields in Math Fit Together

in Math | March 9th, 2023

If you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you have hope­ful­ly thor­ough­ly immersed your­self in The Map of Physics, an ani­mat­ed video–a visu­al aid for the mod­ern age–that mapped out the field of physics, explain­ing all the con­nec­tions between clas­si­cal physics, quan­tum physics, and rel­a­tiv­i­ty.

You can’t do physics with­out math. Hence we now have The Map of Math­e­mat­ics. Cre­at­ed by physi­cist Dominic Wal­li­man, this new video explains “how pure math­e­mat­ics and applied math­e­mat­ics relate to each oth­er and all of the sub-top­ics they are made from.” Watch the new video above. You can buy a poster of the map here. And you can down­load a ver­sion for edu­ca­tion­al use here. Enjoy.

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 and BlueSky.

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 

Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle: Watch the 1977 Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion That Demys­ti­fies Geom­e­try

How the Ancient Greeks Shaped Mod­ern Math­e­mat­ics: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

How to Defeat the US with Math: An Ani­mat­ed North Kore­an Pro­pa­gan­da Film for Kids

Free Online Math Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beauty of Traditional Japan

in Art | March 9th, 2023

We’ve fea­tured the work of Span­ish film­mak­er Cristóbal Vila before: His short film “Inspi­ra­tions” cel­e­brat­ed the math­e­mat­i­cal art of M.C. Esch­er. “Falling­wa­ter” ani­mat­ed one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s finest cre­ations. And “Nature by Num­bers” showed us geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las found in nature.

Today, we bring you Vila’s “Wabi-Sabi: A Hand­ful of Mem­o­ries from Tra­di­tion­al Japan.” As he notes on his site, the ani­ma­tion cap­tures the “aspects that inter­est me the most about tra­di­tion­al Japan,” fea­tur­ing “scenes inspired by nature, gar­dens, archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or scenes, etc.” And it attempts to “cre­ate a calm and bal­anced atmos­phere through the use of light, com­po­si­tion, mate­ri­als, move­ment… and the choice of the motifs them­selves.”

Above, you can watch “Wabi-Sabi,” a Japan­ese term that refers to “the [aes­thet­ic] beau­ty of the imper­ma­nent, the imper­fect, the rus­tic, and the melan­choly,” as explains The School of Life video below. If you’re entranced by Vila’s short film, also watch the “Mak­ing of” video (mid­dle).

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 and BlueSky.

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:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Kintsu­gi, the Japan­ese Art of Repair­ing Bro­ken Pot­tery and Find­ing Beau­ty in Imper­fec­tion

A Med­i­ta­tive Look at a Japan­ese Artisan’s Quest to Save the Bril­liant, For­got­ten Col­ors of Japan’s Past

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Nature by Num­bers: Short Film Cap­tures the Geo­met­ri­cal & Math­e­mat­i­cal For­mu­las That Reveal Them­selves in Nature

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Bored at Work? Here’s What Your Brain Is Trying to Tell You

in Life, Neuroscience, Psychology | March 8th, 2023

That we spend much, if not most, of our lives work­ing is, in itself, not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing — unless, that is, we’re bored doing it. In the Big Think video above, Lon­don Busi­ness School Pro­fes­sor of Orga­ni­za­tion­al Behav­ior Dan Cable cites Gallup polls show­ing that “about 70 per­cent of peo­ple are not engaged in what they do all day long, and about eigh­teen per­cent of peo­ple are repulsed.” This may sound nor­mal enough, but Cable calls these per­cep­tions of work as “a thing that we have to get through on the way to the week­end” a “human­is­tic sick­ness”: a bad con­di­tion for peo­ple, of course, but also for the “orga­ni­za­tions who get lack­lus­ter per­for­mance.”

Cable traces the civ­i­liza­tion­al roots of this at-work bore­dom back to the decades after the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion. In the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, a shoe-shop­per would go to the local cob­bler. “Each of the peo­ple in the store would watch the cus­tomer walk in, and then they’d make a shoe for that cus­tomer.” But toward the end of the cen­tu­ry, “we got this dif­fer­ent idea, as a species, where we should not sell two pairs of shoes each day, but two mil­lion.”

This vast increase of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty entailed “break­ing the work into extreme­ly small tasks, where most of the peo­ple don’t meet the cus­tomer. Most of the peo­ple don’t invent the shoe. Most of the peo­ple don’t actu­al­ly see the shoe made from begin­ning to end.”

It entailed, in oth­er words, “remov­ing the mean­ing from work” in the name of ever-greater scale and effi­cien­cy. The nature of the tasks that result don’t sit well with a part of our brain called the ven­tral stria­tum. Always “urg­ing us to explore the bound­aries of what we know, urg­ing us to be curi­ous,” it sends our minds right out of jobs that no longer offer us the chance to learn any­thing new. One solu­tion is to work for small­er orga­ni­za­tions, whose mem­bers tend to play mul­ti­ple roles in clos­er prox­im­i­ty to the cus­tomer; anoth­er is to engage in big-pic­ture think­ing by stay­ing aware of what Cable calls “the why of the work,” its larg­er impact on the world, as well as how it fits in with your own pur­pose. But then, bore­dom at work isn’t all bad: a bout of it may well, after all, have led you to read this post in the first place.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ben­e­fits of Bore­dom: How to Stop Dis­tract­ing Your­self and Get Cre­ative Ideas Again

The Phi­los­o­phy of “Opti­mistic Nihilism,” Or How to Find Pur­pose in a Mean­ing­less Uni­verse

How to Take Advan­tage of Bore­dom, the Secret Ingre­di­ent of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Find­ing Pur­pose & Mean­ing In Life: Liv­ing for What Mat­ters Most — A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Why 1999 Was the Year of Dystopi­an Office Movies: What The Matrix, Fight Club, Amer­i­can Beau­ty, Office Space & Being John Malkovich Shared in Com­mon

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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Essential Japanese Cinema: A Journey Through 50 of Japan’s Beautiful, Often Bizarre Films

in Film | March 8th, 2023

In 2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The award itself came as less of a sur­prise than did the fact that Shoplifters was the first of Kore-eda’s films to win it, giv­en how long he’d been the most wide­ly acclaimed Japan­ese film­mak­er alive. And though it had been more than twen­ty years since the Palme last went to a Japan­ese movie — Shomei Ima­mu­ra’s The Eel, in 1997 — Japan had long since estab­lished itself at Cannes as the Asian coun­try to beat. Ima­mu­ra’s The Bal­lad of Naraya­ma had won the Palme in 1983, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Kage­musha in 1980, and Teinosuke Kin­u­gasa’s Gate of Hell in 1954, when West­ern cinephiles were only just start­ing to appre­ci­ate Japan­ese cin­e­ma.

Why has that appre­ci­a­tion proven so endur­ing? This is one ques­tion inves­ti­gat­ed by “The Essen­tial Japan­ese Cin­e­ma,” a video essay from The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy. Nar­ra­tor Luiza Liz Bond empha­sized the “height­ened aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty” of Japan­ese film­mak­ers, on dis­play in “the ten­der obser­va­tion of Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, the poet­ic rhap­sody of Kuro­sawa’s Dreams, the har­row­ing fem­i­nine gaze of Video­pho­bia.” But one can find exam­ples just as rich and even more var­i­ous in less­er-known films from Japan such as Shūji Ter­aya­ma’s engagé exper­i­men­tal dra­ma Throw Away Your Books, Ral­ly in the Streets, Kaizō Hayashi’s oneir­ic silent-film pas­tiche To Sleep as to Dream, and Gakuryū Ishi­i’s sub­tly psy­che­del­ic and sci­ence-fic­tion­al com­ing-of-age tale August in the Water.

The video orga­nizes these films and many oth­ers under a rubric of philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts drawn from Japan­ese cul­ture. These include bushidō, the code of the samu­rai West­ern­ers came to know through the pic­tures of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Masa­ki Kobayashi; wabi-sabi, an ide­al of beau­ty cen­tered on imper­fect things; mono no aware, a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the tran­sient and the ephemer­al; and guro, which push­es the unset­tling to its out­er lim­its. Their height­ened aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty “grants Japan­ese film­mak­ers the abil­i­ty to be fine-tuned to the grotesque and the grue­some,” Bond notes. They under­stand that we all enjoy beau­ty, but an appre­ci­a­tion of ugli­ness is nec­es­sary to mag­ni­fy this process. The beau­ty and the ugly are not oppo­sites, but dif­fer­ent aspects of the same thing.”

Of course, one need not be famil­iar with these ideas in order to enjoy Japan­ese cin­e­ma. The tex­ture-inten­sive eroti­cism of Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara’s Woman in the Dunes, the junk­yard body hor­ror of Shinya Tsukamo­to’s Tet­suo: The Iron Man, the relent­less­ly bizarre inven­tive­ness of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House: these could only be deliv­ered by film­mak­ers who under­stand first that they work in a medi­um of vis­cer­al pow­er. Even the work of Yasu­jirō Ozu, famed for its imper­turbable restraint, res­onates more deeply than ever with us six decades after his death. “It is impos­si­ble to speak of the sub­lime with­out speak­ing of his por­tray­al of human fragili­ty,” says Bond. “Ozu is nev­er too sen­ti­men­tal, nev­er too orna­men­tal.” Would that more mod­ern-day film­mak­ers, from Japan or any­where else, looked to his exam­ple.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

How One Sim­ple Cut Reveals the Cin­e­mat­ic Genius of Yasu­jirō Ozu

Hayao Miyaza­ki Meets Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: Watch the Titans of Japan­ese Film in Con­ver­sa­tion (1993)

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

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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