Bambi Meets Godzilla: #38 on the List of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time

in Animation | September 6th, 2016

In 1994, Jer­ry Beck edit­ed the book, The 50 Great­est Car­toons: As Select­ed by 1,000 Ani­ma­tion Pro­fes­sion­als, which chal­lenged experts to cre­ate a rank­ing of the best short, cel ani­mat­ed car­toons ever made. To no one’s sur­prise, the experts chose 10 Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tions craft­ed by Chuck Jones. They also gave a nod to Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ orig­i­nal Super­man car­toon, Dis­ney’s first ani­ma­tion with Mick­ey Mouse (1928’s “Steam­boat Willie”), and the Don­ald Duck-star­ring WWII pro­pa­gan­da film,“Der Fuehrer’s Face.”

Yes, the big ani­ma­tion stu­dios (Warn­er Bros., Dis­ney, etc.) dom­i­nate the list. But a few “indies” man­age to squeak in there. Take for exam­ple Win­sor Mccay’s sem­i­nal 1914 cre­ation “Ger­tie the Dinosaur.” Or Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la. A stu­dent film cre­at­ed by Marv New­land in 1969, Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la (above) runs only 90 sec­onds. Of which, 48 sec­onds are devot­ed to the open­ing cred­its, and 27 sec­onds to the clos­ing cred­its, leav­ing only 12 sec­onds of “action,” which is most­ly still­ness. The tim­ing is the fun­ny.

The short film cir­cu­lat­ed in the­aters across the U.S., shown before screen­ings of Philippe de Bro­ca’s fea­ture film King of Hearts. Over the years the pub­licly-avail­able ver­sions of Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la became worn and fad­ed. So, in 2013, Coda Gard­ner pro­duced a frame-for-frame HD re-cre­ation. You can watch it below, and get a blow-by-blow account of the restora­tion here.

The Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da hosts more recent films by New­land, includ­ing 2005’s “Tête à Tête à Tête” and 2011’s “CMYK.”

via @joycecaroloates

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

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters (1914)

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Werner Herzog Narrates Pokémon Go: Imagines It as a Murderous Metaphor for the Battle to Survive

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Games | August 5th, 2016

Like film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog, I have exist­ed in near total igno­rance of Poké­mon Go, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty game that pur­ports to get play­ers on their feet and out in the real world.

With­out a smartphone—an item Wern­er refus­es to own for “cul­tur­al reasons”—one can­not par­tic­i­pate.

I have a smart­phone, but my data plan is so small, I’m afraid I’d blow it all in hot pur­suit of a Bul­basaur, what­ev­er the hell that is. My kids nev­er got into Poké­mon and thus, nei­ther did I. Reports that some car­toon was caus­ing seizures in Japan­ese child view­ers was my intro­duc­tion to the world of Poké­mon. Epilep­sy runs in the fam­i­ly. It wasn’t hard for me to steer clear.

I have noticed a large num­ber of Face­book friends prais­ing the game’s non-vir­tu­al aspects. Their chil­dren are emerg­ing into the light, gam­bol­ing through parks and pub­lic squares, find­ing com­mon ground with neigh­bors and oth­er play­ers.

Does Wern­er have Face­book friends?

I think we all know the answer to that.

We both got an unex­pect­ed crash course in Poké­mon Go, when Wern­er was inter­viewed by The Verge’s Emi­ly Yoshi­da about his online Mas­ter­Class in film­mak­ing and Lo and Behold, his new doc­u­men­tary about the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion.

Yoshi­da explained the Poké­mon Go phe­nom­e­non to him thus­ly:

It’s basi­cal­ly the first main­stream aug­ment­ed real­i­ty pro­gram. It’s a game where the entire world is mapped and you walk around with the GPS on your phone. You walk around in the real world and can catch these lit­tle mon­sters and col­lect them. And every­body is play­ing it.

Her­zog was most inter­est­ed in what hap­pens when the Poké­mon appear in the vir­tu­al crosshairs:

When two per­sons in search of a Poké­mon clash at the cor­ner of Sun­set and San Vicente is there vio­lence? Is there mur­der?… Do they bite each oth­er’s hands? Do they punch each oth­er?

He declined Yoshida’s offer to bor­row her cell phone in order to try the game out, at which point Slate’s Daniel Hub­bard and For­rest Wick­man stepped in, cut­ting togeth­er footage of the game and the ani­mat­ed series with some of the most mem­o­rable nar­ra­tion from Herzog’s oevure.

Seen through the above lens, Poké­mon Go becomes a reflec­tion of our ongo­ing bat­tle for sur­vival, rife with for­ni­ca­tion, asphyx­i­a­tion, and rot. The trees and birds are in mis­ery, and the pen­guins are insane.

It almost makes me want to play! Though in truth, I think anoth­er of Herzog’s activ­i­ties —ven­tur­ing into the coun­try­side “to look a chick­en in the eye with great intensity”—is more my speed.

Read the com­plete inter­view on The Verge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Start Your Day with Wern­er Her­zog Inspi­ra­tional Posters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch “Traffic Stop,” an Emmy-Nominated, Animated Film About a Traffic Stop Gone Horribly Wrong

in Animation, Current Affairs, Law, Life | August 1st, 2016

As the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has come to occu­py a greater swath of America’s atten­tion span, a con­ver­sa­tion has arisen around the pit­falls of ally­ship, a term that lends itself to dis­cus­sions of gen­der and dis­abil­i­ty, as well as race.

Sim­ply put, the self-pro­claimed allies are mem­bers of a more priv­i­leged major­i­ty, eager to lend sup­port through word and deed.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, their enthu­si­asm often turns them into micro­phone hogs in what activist Princess Har­mo­ny Rodriguez has referred to as “ally the­ater.”

A num­ber of would-be allies con­fuse humil­i­ty with the seek­ing of brown­ie points. If they real­ly got it, those at the cen­ter of the move­ment say, they would not expect mem­bers of the minor­i­ty to rearrange their to-do lists to bring them up to speed on what it’s like to be a per­son of col­or (or a trans­gen­dered per­son or a dis­abled per­son).

Would-be allies are there­fore advised to step out of the spot­light, stuff a sock in it, and edu­cate them­selves, by work­ing to find exist­ing essays and nar­ra­tives, authored by those with whom they would be in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Human nature ensures that tem­pers will flare and hurt feel­ings will be aired. The hor­ri­fy­ing social ill that gave rise to the movement—the shoot­ing of unarmed black men by those charged with pro­tect­ing the whole of the public—is elbowed off­stage, so that a phe­nom­e­non such as ally­ship can be the num­ber one top­ic of debate on col­lege cam­pus­es, web­sites, and social media.

“Traf­fic Stop,” above, pro­vides a rare moment of racial accord, stem­ming from yet anoth­er ghast­ly tale of police bru­tal­i­ty.

The short ani­ma­tion was born of a con­ver­sa­tion record­ed by Alex Lan­dau and Pat­sy Hath­away in a Sto­ryCorps booth, a mas­sive oral his­to­ry project designed to attract a wide diver­si­ty of par­tic­i­pants.

Lan­dau is African-Amer­i­can.

His adop­tive moth­er, Hath­away, is white.

Those who would clas­si­fy adopt­ing a child of anoth­er race as “ally­ship” must con­cede that, if so, it is cer­tain­ly of no casu­al stripe.

The events of Jan­u­ary 15, 2009, when Den­ver police stopped the 19-year-old Lan­dau and a white friend for mak­ing an ille­gal left turn, caused Hath­away to rethink the col­or­blind world­view she had espoused while rais­ing her son.

“I thought that love would con­quer all and skin col­or real­ly did­n’t mat­ter,” Hath­away tells Lan­dau. “I had to learn the real­ly hard way when they almost killed you.”

Had the attack hap­pened a few years lat­er, Landau’s friend might have man­aged to doc­u­ment the pro­ceed­ings with a cell phone, despite the hand­cuffs that were placed on him after a bag of mar­i­jua­na was found in his pock­et.

Instead, this ani­ma­tion, and the gris­ly graph­ic pho­to that fol­lows of Landau’s face pri­or to receiv­ing 45 stitch­es, will have to suf­fice. His rec­ol­lec­tion of the laugh­ter and racial epi­thets direct­ed his way as he lay bleed­ing on the ground are stom­ach-churn­ers, too.

Like his moth­er, Landau’s child­hood per­cep­tion of an all-inclu­sive, benev­o­lent world was shat­tered. They mourned it togeth­er when they were reunit­ed in the emer­gency room on the night of the ill-fat­ed traf­fic stop.

Look and lis­ten.

Then, if you are ready to wade into thornier ter­ri­to­ry, read the hun­dreds of com­ments view­ers have post­ed on youtube.

Ulti­mate­ly, the City of Den­ver award­ed Lan­dau a $795,000 set­tle­ment, while the Den­ver Police Depart­ment, cit­ing a lack of evi­dence, cleared all three offi­cers of mis­con­duct. Fol­low up arti­cles from 2011 and 2013 are avail­able here and here.

Traf­fic Stop was ani­mat­ed by  Gina Kamentsky & Julie Zam­marchi (read an inter­view with them here). It was recent­ly nom­i­nat­ed for an Emmy award last week.

via West­word

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Online Key Doc­u­ments from the Fer­gu­son Grand Jury: Wit­ness Tes­ti­mo­ny, Foren­sic Evi­dence & More

‘Tired of Giv­ing In’: The Arrest Report, Mug Shot and Fin­ger­prints of Rosa Parks (Decem­ber 1, 1955)

Pep­per Spray­ing Peace­ful Pro­tes­tors Con­tin­ues; This Time at UC Davis

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

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Why Economics is for Everyone!, Explained in a New RSA Animated Video

in Animation, Economics | July 20th, 2016

It has been a while, but RSA has returned with anoth­er one of their white­board ani­mat­ed videos. Dur­ing the ear­ly days of YouTube, they broke some aes­thet­ic ground by ani­mat­ing Slavoj Zizek on the Sur­pris­ing Eth­i­cal Impli­ca­tions of Char­i­ta­ble Giv­ing; Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich (author of Nick­el and Dimed) on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy; Daniel Pink on The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us, and Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time. Now, they’re back with the influ­en­tial Cam­bridge econ­o­mist Ha-Joon Chang explain­ing “why every sin­gle per­son can and SHOULD get their head around basic eco­nom­ics.” Here, Chang “pulls back the cur­tain on the often mys­ti­fy­ing lan­guage of deriv­a­tives and quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing, and explains how eas­i­ly eco­nom­ic myths and assump­tions become gospel,” help­ing you to “arm your­self with some facts” and take part in “dis­cus­sions about the fun­da­men­tals that under­pin our day-to-day lives.” If you want to get up to speed on eco­nom­ics, some of the resources below will undoubt­ed­ly give you a hand.

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:

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

Mor­gan Spur­lock, Wern­er Her­zog & Oth­er Stars Explain Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry in 20 Short Films

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in New MOOC

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Can You Solve These Animated Brain Teasers from TED-Ed?

in Animation, Education, Games, K-12, Math | July 8th, 2016

Zom­bies, alien over­lords, sharks, a mad dictator…math is a dan­ger­ous propo­si­tion in the hands of TED Ed script writer Alex Gendler.

The recre­ation­al math­e­mat­ics puz­zles he retro­fits for TED’s edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tive have been around for hun­dreds, even thou­sands of years. In the past, sto­ry­lines tend­ed to rely on bias­es 21st-cen­tu­ry puz­zle solvers would find objec­tion­able. As math­e­mati­cian David Singmas­ter told Sci­ence News:

One must be a lit­tle care­ful with some of these prob­lems, as past cul­tures were often bla­tant­ly sex­ist or racist. But such prob­lems also show what the cul­ture was like.… The riv­er cross­ing prob­lem of the jeal­ous hus­bands is quite sex­ist and trans­forms into mas­ters and ser­vants, which is clas­sist, then into mis­sion­ar­ies and can­ni­bals, which is racist. With such prob­lems, you can offend every­body!

Gendler’s updates, ani­mat­ed by Artrake stu­dio, derive their nar­ra­tive urgency from the sort of crowd pleas­ing sci fi predica­ments that fuel sum­mer block­busters.

And for­tu­nate­ly for those of us whose brains are per­ma­nent­ly stuck in beach mode, he nev­er fails to explain how the char­ac­ters pre­vail, out­wit­ting or out­run­ning the afore­men­tioned zom­bies, aliens, sharks, and mad dic­ta­tor.

(No wor­ries if you’re deter­mined to find the solu­tion on your own. Gendler gives plen­ty of fair warn­ing before each reveal.)

Put your brain in gear, pull the skull-embossed lever, and remem­ber, team­work — and induc­tive log­ic — car­ry the day!

The pris­on­er hat rid­dle, above, hinges on a hier­ar­chy of beliefs and the alien overlord’s will­ing­ness to give its nine cap­tives a few min­utes to come up with a game plan.

Go deep­er into this age old puz­zle by view­ing the full les­son.

Gendler’s spin on the green-eyed log­ic puz­zle, above, con­tains two brain teasers, one for the hive mind, and one for an indi­vid­ual act­ing alone, with a strat­e­gy culled from philoso­pher David Lewis’ Com­mon Knowl­edge play­book. Here’s the full les­son.

Rar­ing for more? You’ll find a playlist of TED-Ed puz­zles by Gendler and oth­ers here. The full les­son for the bridge prob­lem at the top of the post is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es 

200 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion 

Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge: 4 Bril­liant Math­e­mati­cians & Their Drift to Insan­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be lead­ing a free col­lab­o­ra­tive zine work­shop  at the Glue­stick Fest in Indi­anapo­lis Sat­ur­day, July 9. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Terry Gilliam Explains His Never-Ending Fascination with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”

in Animation, Art, Film | July 1st, 2016

As I recall, if you asked men in the 1990s to describe ide­al the woman, a great many would have made ref­er­ences to Uma Thur­man, who spent that decade play­ing high-pro­file roles in acclaimed movies like Pulp Fic­tion and Gat­ta­ca—as well as less-acclaimed movies like The Avengers and Bat­man & Robin (but hey, you can’t pick win­ners all the time). But ani­ma­tor, direc­tor, Amer­i­can Mon­ty Python mem­ber and all-around vision­ary Ter­ry Gilliam made use of the pow­er­ful appeal of Thur­man’s pres­ence even ear­li­er, when—making The Adven­tures of Baron Mun­chausen—-he need­ed just the right young lady for a scene recre­at­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li’s Renais­sance paint­ing The Birth of Venus.

“The cast­ing direc­tor in L.A. said, ‘You’ve got to meet this girl,’ ” Gilliam remem­bers in the clip from this year’s BBC Arts doc­u­men­tary Bot­ti­cel­li’s Venus: The Mak­ing on an Icon at the top of the post. “There she was: stat­uesque, beau­ti­ful, intelligent—incredibly intel­li­gent.” He com­pares the orig­i­nal can­vas itself to a “widescreen cin­e­ma,” as well as, just as apt­ly, to a low­er art form entire­ly: “The winds are blow­ing, her hair starts bil­low­ing out, the dress­ing girl is bring­ing in the robe — it’s a real­ly fun­ny paint­ing, look­ing at it again, because she’s there, sta­t­ic, ele­gant, naked, sexy. The robe would­n’t look so good if the winds weren’t blow­ing, nor would her hair look so beau­ti­ful. It’s like, this is a com­mer­cial for sham­poo!”

As Mon­ty Python fans all know, Gilliam had worked with The Birth of Venus before, using his sig­na­ture cutout ani­ma­tion tech­nique, which defined much of the look and feel of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, to make Venus dance. “I like test­ing how much I like some­thing, or how beau­ti­ful some­thing is, by mak­ing fun of it,” he says to his BBC inter­view­er. “If it with­stands my silli­ness, it’s real­ly great art.” Fur­ther props to Bot­ti­cel­li come at the end of the clip, when she asks Gilliam if he thinks Venus rep­re­sents “the ulti­mate male fan­ta­sy.” “Oh, why not?” he imme­di­ate­ly replies. “You don’t do much bet­ter than that. I think he real­ly cracked that one.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Ter­ry Gilliam’s Debut Ani­mat­ed Film, Sto­ry­time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Surrealist Filmmaker Jan Švankmajer Is About to Make His Final Feature Film, and You Can Help Produce It

in Animation, Film | June 22nd, 2016

No film­mak­er com­bines live action with stop-motion quite like Jan Švankma­jer, and cer­tain­ly no film­mak­er has used that com­bi­na­tion to such imag­i­na­tive and trou­bling ends. An avowed sur­re­al­ist who got his start in ani­ma­tion more than half a cen­tu­ry ago in his home­land of the for­mer Czecho­slo­va­kia, he’s con­tin­ued to craft his dis­tinc­tive cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences how­ev­er and when­ev­er pos­si­ble through the decades. His fil­mog­ra­phy now includes such endur­ing trips as Dimen­sions of Dia­logue (see below), which no less a vision­ary than Ter­ry Gilliam calls one of the best ani­mat­ed films of all time; Alice, his dark inter­pre­ta­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land; and Lit­tle Otik, a mod­ern­iza­tion of a folk­tale about a tree stump that turns into a mon­strous baby.

But as well as he brings the bizarre to vivid life on screen, he’s always had high­er ambi­tions than that. “Švankma­jer is capa­ble of cre­at­ing dark yet play­ful worlds that dis­sect the very core of our soci­ety,” says the Indiegogo page now rais­ing the funds for his lat­est — and last — fea­ture film, Insects. “The civ­i­liza­tion we live in has lit­tle inter­est in authen­tic artis­tic cre­ation,” laments the film­mak­er. “What it needs is well-work­ing adver­tise­ment, the icono­graph­ic con­tem­po­rary art, push­ing peo­ple towards more and more mass con­sump­tion. It gets increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to fund inde­pen­dent art that scru­ti­nizes the very core of our soci­ety. Who would delib­er­ate­ly sup­port their own crit­ics?”

Now, in this age of crowd­fund­ing, you can sup­port one of its most enter­tain­ing crit­ics alive your­self. Insects has already suc­ceed­ed in rais­ing the first phase of its bud­get, but still has a way to go before it can assure its esteemed cre­ator and his col­lab­o­ra­tors full artis­tic free­dom (Švankma­jer is look­ing to raise $400,000 in total), so if you’d like to chip in, you can make your­self eli­gi­ble for such rewards as the first oppor­tu­ni­ty to down­load the film, its Blu-Ray edi­tion with an accom­pa­ny­ing art book, or even — if you’ve got $15,000 to put toward the cause — “a din­ner with Jan Švankma­jer at his man­sion in Czech Repub­lic and a com­ment­ed vis­it to his Kun­stk­abi­net.” Even now, work on Insects, its Indiegogo page assures us, is under­way, with Švankma­jer “very busy vis­it­ing ento­mo­log­i­cal auc­tions, buy­ing var­i­ous kinds of bugs, doing rehearsal shots with them and so on.”

If you’d like to learn more about the dra­ma that they’ll ulti­mate­ly act out, watch the pro­mo video at the top of the post. In it, Švankma­jer describes it as set in a pub, after hours, where an ama­teur the­ater group has gath­ered to rehearse The Insect Play by the Čapek broth­ers. But “as the rehearsal pro­gress­es, the char­ac­ters of the play are born and die with no regard to time,” and the actors “expe­ri­ence fright­en­ing trans­for­ma­tions.” Švankma­jer, who has planned not a direct adap­ta­tion of The Insect Play but a more com­plex work that draws inspi­ra­tion both from it and The Meta­mor­pho­sis by his oth­er well-known coun­try­man Franz Kaf­ka, puts the appeal of this sto­ry where “bugs behave as human beings, and peo­ple behave as insects” sim­ply: “The Čapek broth­ers’ play is very mis­an­throp­ic. I’ve always liked that.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­cot, Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion Film, by Wla­dys­law Starewicz

Dimen­sions of Dia­logue by Jan Svankma­jer (1982)

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated Introduction to Charles Dickens’ Life & Literary Works

in Animation, Literature | June 21st, 2016

The social role of the writer changes from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but at no time in the his­to­ry of lit­er­ary cul­ture have nov­el­ists and poets faced more com­pe­ti­tion for the atten­tion of their read­ers than they do today. Before visu­al media took over as the pri­ma­ry means of sto­ry­telling, how­ev­er, many writ­ers enjoyed the mea­sure of fame now giv­en to film and pop music stars. Or at least they did in the age of Charles Dick­ens, whose tire­less self-pro­mo­tion and pop­ulist sen­ti­ments endeared him to the pub­lic and made him one of the most famous men of his day.

Dick­ens was “a great show­man” says Alain de Bot­ton above in his School of Life intro­duc­tion to the author of Great Expec­ta­tions, Oliv­er Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and too many more great books to name. (Find them in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.) He was a nat­ur­al celebri­ty before radio and tele­vi­sion and, to the dis­may of his more high-mind­ed col­leagues, “enter­tain­ment was at the heart of what Dick­ens was up to.”

But Dick­ens used his pub­lic plat­form not only to advance his career, but also to “get us inter­est­ed in some pret­ty seri­ous things: the evils of an indus­tri­al­iz­ing soci­ety, the work­ing con­di­tions in fac­to­ries, child labor, vicious social snob­bery, the mad­den­ing inef­fi­cien­cies of gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy.” Then and now, these are hard­ly sub­jects read­ers want to be remind­ed of. And yet, then as now, great sto­ry­tellers can make us care despite our apa­thy and desire for escapist plea­sure. And few writ­ers have made read­ers care more than Dick­ens.

His “genius was to dis­cov­er that the big ambi­tions to edu­cate a soci­ety about its fail­ings didn’t have to be opposed to what his crit­ics called ‘fun’—racy plots, a chat­ty style, clown­ish char­ac­ters, weepy moments, and hap­py end­ings.” Yet Dick­ens didn’t only seek to edu­cate, de Bot­ton argues; he “believed that writ­ing could play a big role in fix­ing the prob­lems of the world.” In this he was not entire­ly wrong, despite the anti-polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments of so many aes­thetes who have argued oth­er­wise, from Oscar Wilde to W.H. Auden.

Though he opposed many work­ing class move­ments and had no “coher­ent doc­trine” of social change, says Hugh Cun­ning­ham, pro­fes­sor of social his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent, Dick­ens “helped cre­ate a cli­mate of opin­ion” by emo­tion­al­ly mov­ing peo­ple to sym­pa­thize with the poor and to take action in con­tro­ver­sies already rag­ing in the zeit­geist. In this role, Dick­ens pre­ced­ed dozens of writ­ers who—like himself—began their careers in jour­nal­ism and sought through fic­tion to moti­vate com­pla­cent read­ers: nat­u­ral­ist nov­el­ists like Emile Zola, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreis­er, and muck­rak­ing real­ists like Upton Sin­clair all owe some­thing to Dick­ens’ mode of social protest through nov­el-writ­ing.

De Bot­ton goes on in his intro­duc­tion to explain some of the bio­graph­i­cal ori­gins of Dick­ens’ sym­pa­thy for the afflict­ed, includ­ing his own time spent as a child labor­er and his father’s con­fine­ment in debtor’s prison. The con­di­tions Dick­ens and his char­ac­ters endured are unimag­in­able to most priv­i­leged read­ers, but not to mil­lions of peo­ple in pover­ty around the world who still live under the kind of squalid oppres­sion the Vic­to­ri­an poor suf­fered. Whether any author in the 21st cen­tu­ry can bring the same kind of sym­pa­thet­ic atten­tion to their lives that Dick­ens did in his time is debat­able, but De Bot­ton uses Dick­ens’ exam­ple to argue that art and enter­tain­ment can “seduce” us into com­pas­sion and tak­ing action for oth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Cel­e­brate the 200th Birth­day of Charles Dick­ens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Jane Austen

Fyo­dor Dostoyevsky’s Life & Lit­er­a­ture Intro­duced in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

What Are Lit­er­a­ture, Phi­los­o­phy & His­to­ry For? Alain de Bot­ton Explains with Mon­ty Python-Style Videos

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

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