The Beautiful Anarchy of the Earliest Animated Cartoons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Early Animations

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons | December 29th, 2023

Ear­ly in his col­lect­ing odyssey, ani­ma­tion his­to­ri­an, archivist, and edu­ca­tor Tom­my José Stathes earned the hon­orif­ic Car­toon Cryp­to­zo­ol­o­gist from Cinebeasts, a “New York-based col­lec­tive of film nerds, vid­iots, and pro­gram­mers inves­ti­gat­ing the fur­thest reach­es of the mov­ing image uni­verse.”

More recent­ly, George Wille­man, a nitrate film expert on the Library of Con­gress’ film preser­va­tion team dubbed him “the King of Silent Ani­ma­tion.”

The seed of Stathes’ endur­ing pas­sion took root in his 90s child­hood, when slapped togeth­er VHS antholo­gies of car­toons from the 30s and 40s could be picked up for a cou­ple of bucks in gro­ceries and drug­stores. These finds typ­i­cal­ly includ­ed one or two silent-era rar­i­ties, which is how he became acquaint­ed with Felix the Cat and oth­er favorites who now dom­i­nate his Ear­ly Ani­ma­tion Archive.

He squeezed his par­ents and grand­par­ents for mem­o­ries of car­toons screened on tele­vi­sion and in the­aters dur­ing their youth, and began research­ing the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion.

Real­iz­ing how few of the ear­ly car­toons he was learn­ing about could be wide­ly viewed, he set out to col­lect and archive as many exam­ples as pos­si­ble, and to share these trea­sures with new audi­ences.

His col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly con­sists of some 4,000 ani­mat­ed reels, truf­fled up from antique shops, flea mar­kets, and eBay. In addi­tion to his Car­toons on Film YouTube chan­nel, he hosts reg­u­lar in-per­son Car­toon Car­ni­vals, often curat­ed around hol­i­day themes.

Stathes’ pas­sion project is giv­ing many once-pop­u­lar char­ac­ters a sec­ond and in some cas­es, third act.

Take Farmer Alfal­fa, (occa­sion­al­ly ren­dered as Al Fal­fa), the star of 1923’s The Fable of the Alley Cat, an install­ment in the Aesop’s Fables series, which ran from 1921 to 1929.

His first appear­ance was in direc­tor Paul Ter­ry’s Down on Phoney Farm from 1915, but as Stathes observes, baby boomers grew up watch­ing him on TV:

Near­ly all of these folks who men­tion the char­ac­ter will also ref­er­ence ‘hun­dreds’ of mice. Few may have real­ized that, while the Farmer Alfal­fa car­toons run­ning on tele­vi­sion at that time were already old, the films starred one of the ear­li­est recur­ring car­toon char­ac­ters, and one that enjoyed an incred­i­bly long career com­pared with his car­toon con­tem­po­raries.

The Fable of the Alley Cat honks a lot of famil­iar vin­tage car­toon horns — slap­stick, may­hem, David tri­umph­ing over Goliath… cats and mice.

Stathes describes it as “a rather sin­is­ter day in the life of Farmer Al Fal­fa — It’s clear that the ani­mal king­dom tends to despise him! — and his doc­u­men­ta­tion is metic­u­lous:

The ver­sion seen here was pre­pared for TV dis­tri­b­u­tion in the 1950s by Stu­art Pro­duc­tions. The music tracks were orig­i­nal­ly com­posed by Win­ston Sharples for the Van Beuren ‘Rain­bow Parade’ car­toons in the mid-1930s.

The mis­matched duo, Mutt and Jeff, got their start in dai­ly news­pa­per comics, before mak­ing the leap to ani­mat­ed shorts.

Ani­ma­tion con­nois­seurs go bananas for the per­spec­tive shift at the 14 sec­ond mark of Laugh­ing Gas (1917), a rar­i­ty Stathes shares as a ref­er­ence copy from the orig­i­nal 35mm nitrate form, with the promise of a full restora­tion in the future.

(A num­ber of Stathes’ acqui­si­tions have dete­ri­o­rat­ed over the years or sus­tained dam­age through improp­er stor­age.)

Dinky Doo­dle and his dog Weak­heart were 1920s Bray Stu­dios crowd­pleasers whose stint on tele­vi­sion is evi­denced by the mid­cen­tu­ry voice over that was added to Dinky Doo­dle’s Bed­time Sto­ry (1926).

The char­ac­ters’ cre­ator, direc­tor Wal­ter Lantz appears as “Pop” in the above live sequences.

Car­toons On Film has coaxed Koko the Clown, Flip the Frog, Bon­zo the Pup, and Mick­ey Mouse pre­cur­sor, Oswald the Lucky Rab­bit, out of moth­balls for our view­ing plea­sure.

Stathes’ col­lec­tion also dredges up some objec­tion­able peri­od titles and con­tent, Lit­tle Black Sam­bo, Red­skin Blues, and Korn Plas­tered in Africa to name a few.

Stathes is mind­ful of con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ties, but stops short of allow­ing them to scrub these works from the his­toric record. He warns would-be view­ers of The Chi­na­man that it con­tains a “racist speech bal­loon as well as an inter­ti­tle that was cut from the lat­er TV ver­sion for obvi­ous rea­sons:”

Such was the vul­gar ter­mi­nol­o­gy in those days. To ques­tion or cen­sor these films would be deny­ing our his­to­ry.

Begin your explo­rations of Tom­my José Stathes’ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tion Archive here and if so inclined, con­tribute to the cost­ly stor­age of these rar­i­ties with a Ko-fi dona­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

The First Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film: The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

– 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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An Introduction to Vince Guaraldi, the Jazz Composer Who Created the Best Christmas Album Ever, A Charlie Brown Christmas

in Animation, Music | December 23rd, 2023

When A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas first aired 58 years ago, few had any con­fi­dence that it would be a hit. Its sto­ry and ani­ma­tion, bare-bones even by the stan­dards of mid-nine­teen-six­ties tele­vi­sion, made a pos­i­tive impres­sion on nei­ther CBS’ exec­u­tives nor on many of the spe­cial’s own cre­ators. They did­n’t expect that this very sim­plic­i­ty would turn it into a peren­ni­al hol­i­day favorite — nor, pre­sum­ably, that its sound­track by the Vince Guaral­di Trio would become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums in exis­tence. Now that we’re well into the sea­son when the music from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is heard every day in homes, cafés, and shop­ping malls all around the world, why not get an intro­duc­tion to Guaral­di, the man and his music, from pop cul­ture video essay­ist Matt Drap­er?

“Born in San Fran­cis­co in 1928, Guaral­di cred­it­ed his two uncles with spark­ing his inter­est in jazz as a child, with the future musi­cian already learn­ing the piano by age sev­en,” says Drap­er. After serv­ing in the Kore­an War and return­ing home to study music at San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, Guaral­di began to “pur­sue his love of jazz in local clubs.”

He soon formed his trio, and record­ing their first albums in the mid-nine­teen-fifties, he “expand­ed his use of Latin jazz and bossa nova.” In 1962 Guaral­di scored his first hit with “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” a sin­gle from an album inspired by Mar­cel Camus’ Black Orpheus. It was a radio broad­cast of that song, so the sto­ry goes, that caught the ear of Lee Mendel­son, who would pro­duce A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, as he crossed the Gold­en Gate Bridge in a taxi­cab.

Mendel­son ini­tial­ly com­mis­sioned Guaral­di to com­pose the music for A Boy Named Char­lie Brown, a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary that ulti­mate­ly nev­er aired. But its record­ing ses­sions brought forth “Linus and Lucy,” which became Peanuts’ de fac­to theme song, and when Coca-Cola agreed to spon­sor a Peanuts Christ­mas spe­cial in 1965 — a scant six months before Christ­mas itself — Guaral­di was called back to score it. “A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is a rather melan­cholic sto­ry cen­ter­ing on Char­lie’s search for mean­ing and worth in the hol­i­day sea­son,” says Drap­er, “so it’s fit­ting that a large por­tion of Guaraldi’s score is tinged with sad­ness.” Yet “Guaraldi’s melan­choly isn’t over­wrought or forced; rather, it’s minor and sub­tle,” unlike the aver­age film score that tries to “beat its lis­ten­ers over the head with emo­tion.”

The sound­track album, which you can hear (and see accom­pa­nied by a Yule fire­place) on the offi­cial Vince Guaral­di Youtube chan­nel, offers musi­cal vari­ety from the “ton of swing­ing style” in its ver­sion of “O Tanen­baum” to the “waltz brim­ming with ener­gy” of “Skat­ing” to “Christ­mas Is Com­ing,” with its “hints of rock-and-roll.” In the video just above, com­pos­er-Youtu­ber Charles Cor­nell explains what makes it “with­out a doubt, the best Christ­mas album ever” (a title held along with that of the best-sell­ing jazz album in his­to­ry after Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue), not least its being less “in-your-face Christ­mas” than oth­er sim­i­lar­ly themed record­ings. Yet he also acknowl­edges that Guaraldi’s most beau­ti­ful com­po­si­tion for a Peanuts spe­cial isn’t in A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, but It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown, from 1966. When next fall fall rolls around, do make “Great Pump­kin Waltz” the first song you hear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

Why “White Christ­mas,” “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Oth­er Clas­sic Christ­mas Songs Come from the 1940s

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

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 Beatles Versus the Stones: An Animated Battle of the Bands

in Animation, Music | December 11th, 2023

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The Bea­t­les or the Stones? We’ve been debat­ing that ques­tion for the past 60 years. Above, the Lon­don-based com­pa­ny Dog & Rab­bit con­tin­ues the con­ver­sa­tion with a clever video that ani­mates Bea­t­les and Stones album cov­ers. From there, all kinds of high jinks ensue.

The “Bea­t­les vs The Stones” ani­ma­tion has won awards at var­i­ous fes­ti­vals. Recent­ly made avail­able online, you can watch it above.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Bea­t­les Release Their Final Song, “Now and Then”: Hear the Song & Watch the Music Video Direct­ed by Peter Jack­son

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores to Music by Radio­head, Talk­ing Heads, LCD Soundsys­tem, Photek & Oth­er Elec­tron­ic/­Post-Punk/A­vant-Garde Musi­cians

Ani­mat­ed Series Drawn & Record­ed Tells “Untold Sto­ries” from Music His­to­ry: Nir­vana, Leonard Cohen, Blind Willie John­son & More

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The Evolution of Bugs Bunny’s Appearance Over His Eight Decade Career

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons | November 17th, 2023

Bugs Bun­ny is a quick-think­ing, fast-talk­ing, was­cal­ly force of nature, and a preter­nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed phys­i­cal come­di­an, too.

But unlike such last­ing greats as Char­lie Chapin and Buster Keaton, it took him a while to find his icon­ic look.

His first appear­ance, as “Hap­py Rab­bit” in the 1938 black and white the­atri­cal short, Porky’s Hare Hunt, might remind you of those year­book pho­tos of celebri­ties before they were famous.

In a video essay con­sid­er­ing how Bugs Bunny’s look has evolved over his eight-decade career, ani­ma­tion fan Dave Lee of the pop­u­lar YouTube series Dave Lee Down Under breaks down some ear­ly char­ac­ter­is­tics, from an unde­fined, small body and oval-shaped head to white fur and a fluffy cot­ton ball of a tail.

His voice was also a work in progress, more Woody Wood­peck­er than the hybrid Brook­lyn-Bronx patois that would make him, and voice actor Mel Blanc, famous.

The fol­low­ing year, the rab­bit who would become Bugs Bun­ny returned in Prest‑o Change‑o, a Mer­ry Melodies Tech­ni­col­or short direct­ed by Chuck Jones.

A few months lat­er char­ac­ter design­er (and for­mer Dis­ney ani­ma­tor) Char­lie Thor­son sub­ject­ed him to a pret­ty notice­able makeover for Hare-um Scare-um, anoth­er rab­bit hunt­ing-themed romp.

The two-toned grey and white coat, oval muz­zle, and mis­chie­vous buck-toothed grin are much more aligned with the Bugs most of us grew up watch­ing.  

His pear-shaped bod’, long neck, high-rumped stance, and pon­toon feet allowed for a much greater range of motion.

A nota­tion on the mod­el sheet allud­ing to direc­tor Ben Hard­away’s nick­name — “Bugs” — gives some hint as to how the world’s most pop­u­lar car­toon char­ac­ter came by his stage name.

For 1940’s Elmer’s Can­did Cam­era, the pink-muz­zled Bugs dropped the yel­low gloves Thors­en had giv­en him and affect­ed some black ear tips.

Tex Avery, who was in line to direct the pair in the Acad­e­my Award-nom­i­nat­ed short A Wild Hare, found this look objec­tion­ably cute.

He tasked ani­ma­tor Bob Givens with giv­ing the rab­bit, now offi­cial­ly known as Bugs Bun­ny, an edgi­er appear­ance.

Ani­ma­tion his­to­ri­an Michael Bar­ri­er writes:


In the Givens design, Bugs was no longer defined by Thor­son­’s tan­gle of curves. His head was now oval, rather than round. In that respect, Bugs recalled the white rab­bit in Porky’s Hare Hunt, but Given­s’s design pre­served so many of Thor­son­’s refinements—whiskers, a more nat­u­ral­is­tic nose—and intro­duced so many others—cheek ruffs, less promi­nent teeth—that there was very lit­tle sim­i­lar­i­ty between the new ver­sion of Bugs and the Hare Hunt rab­bit. 

Bar­ri­er also details a num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties between the tit­u­lar rab­bit char­ac­ter from Disney’s 1935 Sil­ly Sym­phonies short, The Tor­toise and the Hare, and for­mer Dis­ney employ­ee Givens’ design.  

While Avery boast­ed to car­toon his­to­ri­an Milt Gray in 1977 that “the con­struc­tion was almost iden­ti­cal”, adding, “It’s a won­der I was­n’t sued,” Givens insist­ed in an inter­view with the Ani­ma­tion Guild’s oral his­to­ry project that Bugs wasn’t a Max Hare rip off. ( “I was there. I ought to know.”)

What­ev­er par­al­lels may exist between Givens’ Bugs and Disney’s Hare, YouTu­ber Lee sees A Wild Hare as the moment when Bugs Bunny’s char­ac­ter coa­lesced as “more of a lov­able prankster than a mali­cious deviant,” non­cha­lant­ly chomp­ing a car­rot like Clark Gable in It Hap­pened One Night, and turn­ing a bit of region­al Texas teen slang — “What’s up, Doc?”- into one of the most immor­tal catch phras­es in enter­tain­ment his­to­ry.

A star was born, so much so that four direc­tors — Jones, Avery, Friz Fre­leng and Bob Clam­pett — were enlist­ed to keep up with the demand for Bugs Bun­ny vehi­cles. 

This mul­ti-pronged approach led to some visu­al incon­sis­ten­cies, that were even­tu­al­ly checked by the cre­ation of defin­i­tive mod­el sheets, drawn by Bob McKim­son, who ani­mat­ed the Clam­pett-direct­ed shorts. 

His­to­ri­an Bar­ri­er takes stock:

Bugs’s cheeks were broad­er, his chin stronger, his teeth a lit­tle more promi­nent, his eyes larg­er and slant­ed a lit­tle out­ward instead of in. The most expres­sive ele­ments of the rab­bit’s face had all been strength­ened …but because the tri­an­gu­lar shape of Bugs’s head had been sub­tly accen­tu­at­ed, Bugs was, if any­thing, futher removed from cute­ness than ever before. McKim­son’s mod­el sheet must be giv­en some of the cred­it for the marked improve­ment in Bugs’s looks in all the direc­tors’ car­toons start­ing in 1943. Not that every­one drew Bugs to match the mod­el sheet, but the awk­ward­ness and uncer­tain­ty of the ear­ly for­ties were gone; it was if every­one had sud­den­ly fig­ured out what Bugs real­ly looked like.

Now one of the most rec­og­niz­able stars on earth, Bugs remained unmis­tak­ably him­self while spoof­ing Charles Dick­ens, Alfred Hitch­cock and Wag­n­er; held his own in live action appear­ances with such heavy hit­ters as Doris Day and Michael Jor­dan; and had a mem­o­rable cameo in the 1988 fea­ture Who Framed Roger Rab­bit, after pro­duc­ers agreed to a deal that guar­an­teed him the same amount of screen time as his far squar­er rival, Mick­ey Mouse. 

This mil­len­ni­um got off to a rock­i­er start, owing to an over-reliance on low bud­get, sim­pli­fied flash ani­ma­tion, and the tru­ly exe­crable trend of shows that reimag­ine clas­sic char­ac­ters as cloy­ing tod­dlers. 

In 2011, on the strength of her 2‑minute ani­mat­ed short I Like Pan­das, an ini­tial­ly reluc­tant 24-year-old Jes­si­ca Borut­s­ki was asked to “fresh­en up” Bugs’ look for The Looney Tunes Show, a series of longer for­mat car­toons which required its cast to per­form such 21st-cen­tu­ry activ­i­ties as tex­ting:

I made their heads a bit big­ger because I did­n’t like [how] in the ’60s, ’70s Bugs Bun­ny’s head start­ed to get real­ly small and his body real­ly long. He start­ed to look like a weird guy in a bun­ny suit.

Lee’s Evo­lu­tion of Bugs Bun­ny- 80 Years Explained was released in 2019. 

He has­n’t stopped evolv­ing. Giz­mod­o’s Sabi­na Graves “sat down with the cre­ative teams shep­herd­ing Warn­er Bros.’ clas­sic Looney Tunes char­ac­ters into new and reimag­ined car­toons” at San Diego Com­ic-Con 2022: 

In a push led by Looney Tunes Car­toons’ Alex Kirwan—who spear­heads the franchise’s cur­rent slate of shorts on HBO Max—the beloved ani­ma­tion icons will soon expand into even more con­tent. There’s the upcom­ing Tiny Toons Loooniver­si­ty revival, a Hal­loween spe­cial, Cartoonito’s Bugs Bun­ny Builders for kids, and two fea­ture-length ani­mat­ed movies on the way—and we have a feel­ing that’s not all, folks!

…to quote Bugs, “I knew I shoul­da tak­en that left turn at Albu­querque!”

Relat­ed Con­tent

How to Draw Bugs Bun­ny: A Primer by Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

The Proof That Mel Blanc–the Voice Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Porky Pig–Was a Genius

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

- 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.

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130 Animators Remake an Episode of Frasier, One Frame at a Time

in Animation, Television | October 18th, 2023

Behold a crowd­sourced, col­lab­o­ra­tive art project where more than 130 ani­ma­tors and film­mak­ers from 11 dif­fer­ent coun­tries joined togeth­er and remade a full episode of Frasi­er. (It’s the finale of Sea­son 1, “My Cof­fee with Niles.”) The pro­jec­t’s mas­ter­mind, Jacob Reed, asked indi­vid­ual artists to ani­mate dif­fer­ent scenes, each with a dif­fer­ent style, and then he stitched them all togeth­er. Above, you can see how every­thing hangs togeth­er.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch “Pass the Ball,” a Col­lab­o­ra­tive Ani­ma­tion Made by 40 Ani­ma­tors Across the Globe

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

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

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David Foster Wallace’s Famous Commencement Speech, “This is Water,” Gets Animated on a Whiteboard

in Animation, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature, Philosophy | October 16th, 2023

Author David Fos­ter Wal­lace titled his famous address to Keny­on Col­lege’s Class of 2005 “This is Water,” a ref­er­ence to its open­ing joke — self-mock­ing­ly framed as a “didac­tic lit­tle para­ble-ish sto­ry” that is “a stan­dard require­ment of US com­mence­ment speech­es:”

There are these two young fish swim­ming along and they hap­pen to meet an old­er fish swim­ming the oth­er way, who nods at them and says “Morn­ing, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then even­tu­al­ly one of them looks over at the oth­er and goes “What the hell is water?”

Mark Wood­ing, founder of After Skool, a YouTube chan­nel “com­mit­ted to find­ing the most pow­er­ful con­tent and deliv­er­ing it in the most engag­ing way pos­si­ble” gave his white­board ani­ma­tion of the speech a dif­fer­ent title: “Your Mind is an Excel­lent Ser­vant, but a Ter­ri­ble Mas­ter.”

It’s the “old cliche” Wal­lace invoked mid­way through, not­ing that “like many clichés, so lame and unex­cit­ing on the sur­face, (it) actu­al­ly express­es a great and ter­ri­ble truth:”

It is not the least bit coin­ci­den­tal that adults who com­mit sui­cide with firearms almost always shoot them­selves in: the head. They shoot the ter­ri­ble mas­ter. And the truth is that most of these sui­cides are actu­al­ly dead long before they pull the trig­ger.

Wal­lace him­self died by sui­cide a lit­tle more than three years after deliv­er­ing the speech, prompt­ing author Tom Bis­sell to write in an essay for the New York Times that “the ter­ri­ble mas­ter even­tu­al­ly defeat­ed David Fos­ter Wal­lace, which makes it easy to for­get that none of the cloud­less­ly sane and true things he had to say about life in 2005 are any less sane or true today, how­ev­er trag­ic the truth now seems:”

This Is Water does noth­ing to lessen the pain of Wallace’s defeat. What it does is remind us of his strength and good­ness and decen­cy — the parts of him the ter­ri­ble mas­ter could nev­er defeat, and nev­er will.

We braced a bit won­der­ing how Wood­ing would han­dle this por­tion of the speech.

It would have been a good time for one of his more abstract flights of fan­cy.

In truth, some­times Wooding’s dry erase draw­ings clut­tered our head­space unnec­es­sar­i­ly, dis­tract­ing from Wallace’s mes­sage. Isn’t that iron­ic? A large part of the speech deals with choos­ing what to pay atten­tion to, and how to pay atten­tion to it.

In an attempt to fol­low Wallace’s advice and push back against the “basic self-cen­tered­ness …that is our default set­ting, hard-wired into our boards at birth”, we’ll con­cede that Wood­ing’s ani­ma­tion may help the speech land with those who’d give a pass on lis­ten­ing to an audio record­ing or read­ing a tran­script.

As Wood­ing told the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, “Some peo­ple are visu­al learn­ers, some learn by hear­ing things, some have to do it… what I’ve tried to do with After Skool is com­bine every style of learn­ing to make the ideas as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, to take ideas that are kind of com­plex and make it so that an eighth-grad­er can under­stand it.”

The wick­et grows a bit stick­i­er when Wood­ing delves into the long pas­sages where­in Wal­lace unleash­es a tor­rent of grouchy self-serv­ing thoughts born of bore­dom, rou­tine and pet­ty frus­tra­tion… as an “exam­ple of how NOT to think”, he says in an aside.

Wal­lace pre­sent­ed this unvar­nished ugli­ness as a set up, some­thing to throt­tle back from — an illus­tra­tion of how our lizard brains’ snap judg­ments need not get the final word:

… if you’re aware enough to give your­self a choice, you can choose to look dif­fer­ent­ly at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the check­out line. Maybe she’s not usu­al­ly like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights hold­ing the hand of a hus­band who is dying of bone can­cer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehi­cle depart­ment, who just yes­ter­day helped your spouse resolve a hor­rif­ic, infu­ri­at­ing, red-tape prob­lem through some small act of bureau­crat­ic kindness…If you’re auto­mat­i­cal­ly sure that you know what real­i­ty is, and you are oper­at­ing on your default set­ting, then you, like me, prob­a­bly won’t con­sid­er pos­si­bil­i­ties that aren’t annoy­ing and mis­er­able. But if you real­ly learn how to pay atten­tion, then you will know there are oth­er options.

We wish Wood­ing had leaned out rather than in when Wallace’s bad mood makes him view the peo­ple suf­fer­ing through traf­fic jams, crowd­ed aisles, and long check­out lines with him as “repul­sive”, “stu­pid”, “cow-like”, and “dead-eyed”.

Know­ing that Wal­lace was wind­ing up to reveal these knee jerk assess­ments as the fab­ri­ca­tions of a testy, self-absorbed mind oper­at­ing on autopi­lot, the illus­tra­tions might have bet­ter served the mes­sage had they been a step or two ahead of the mes­sen­ger. Doo­dles depict­ing these peo­ple as far more neu­tral look­ing than the delib­er­ate­ly vit­ri­olic por­trait Wal­lace was paint­ing could have added some dimen­sion.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that these visu­als aren’t ani­mat­ed in the tra­di­tion­al sense. They’re manip­u­lat­ed time lapse draw­ings. Unless Wood­ing breaks out the eras­er and dou­bles back to make mod­i­fi­ca­tions, they’re fixed on the white­board and in our minds.

This may explain in part why the fed up mom in the check out line appears to get a fair­er shake in The Glos­sary’s live action adap­ta­tion of excerpts from the same speech, below.

If you’d rather not gild the lily with white­board ani­ma­tion, you can lis­ten to Wallace’s speech and read the tran­script here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

– 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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Stream Hundreds of Hours of Studio Ghibli Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Film, Music | September 26th, 2023

The Boy and the Heron, the lat­est fea­ture from mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, opened in Japan this past sum­mer. In that it marks his lat­est emer­gence from his sup­posed “retire­ment,” we could label it not just as late Miyaza­ki, but per­haps even “post-late” Miyaza­ki. But the film nev­er­the­less shares sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­ties with his ear­li­er work, not least a score com­posed by Joe Hisaishi. Since Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind — which opened in 1984, even before the foun­da­tion of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li — Hisaishi’s music has done near­ly as much to estab­lish the sen­si­bil­i­ty of Miyaza­k­i’s films as their lav­ish, imag­i­na­tive ani­ma­tion, and you can stream hun­dreds of hours of it with this Youtube playlist.

Each of the playlist’s 121 two-hour videos offers musi­cal selec­tions from a mix of Ghi­b­li movies, includ­ing Miyaza­ki favorites like My Neigh­bor Totoro, Por­co Rosso, and Spir­it­ed Away, and also the works of oth­er direc­tors: Yoshi­fu­mi Kondō’s Whis­per of the Heart, Hiro­masa Yonebayashi’s Arri­et­ty,  Gorō Miyaza­k­i’s From Up on Pop­py Hill.

If you’ve seen those pic­tures, these qui­et, often min­i­mal ren­di­tions of their music will sure­ly bring their ani­mat­ed fan­tasies right back to mind. Even if you haven’t, they can still ful­fill the func­tion promised by the videos’ titles of set­ting a mood con­ducive to study, work, or sim­ple relax­ation.

So beloved are Hisaishi’s scores, for Miyaza­ki and oth­ers (most notably come­di­an-auteur Takeshi Kitano), that it’s pos­si­ble to know the music long before you’ve seen the movies. And even in per­for­mances con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent from the ver­sions heard on the actu­al sound­tracks, they always sound imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able as Hisaishi’s work. Shaped by an eclec­tic set of influ­ences (born Mamoru Fuji­sawa, he took on his pro­fes­sion­al name as an homage to Quin­cy Jones), he devel­oped a com­po­si­tion­al style nei­ther strict­ly East­ern nor West­ern. The same can be said about Ghi­b­li movies them­selves, which often pos­sess both fairy-tale Euro­pean set­tings and Japan­ese philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings. Wher­ev­er you place your­self on the cul­tur­al map, you’d do well to make their music the sound­track of your own life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

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 the Wind Blows: An Animated Tale of Nuclear Apocalypse With Music by Roger Waters & David Bowie (1986)

in Animation, History | August 28th, 2023

Human­i­ty has few fas­ci­na­tions as endur­ing as that with apoc­a­lypse. We’ve been telling our­selves sto­ries of civ­i­liza­tion’s destruc­tion as long as we’ve had civ­i­liza­tion to destroy. But those sto­ries haven’t all been the same: each era envi­sions the end of the world in a way that reflects its own imme­di­ate pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. In the mid nine­teen-eight­ies, noth­ing inspired pre­oc­cu­pa­tions quite so imme­di­ate as the prospect of sud­den nuclear holo­caust. The mount­ing pub­lic anx­i­ety brought large audi­ences to such major after­math-dra­ma­tiz­ing “tele­vi­sion events” as The Day After in the Unit­ed States and the even more har­row­ing Threads in the Unit­ed King­dom.

“As a young­ster grow­ing up in the nine­teen-eight­ies in a tiny vil­lage in the heart of the Cotswolds, I can attest to the fact that no part of the coun­try, how­ev­er remote and bucol­ic, was imper­vi­ous to the threat of the Cold War esca­lat­ing into a full-blown nuclear con­flict,” writes Neil Mitchell at the British Film Insti­tute.

“Pop­u­lar cul­ture was awash with nuclear war-themed films, com­ic strips, songs and nov­els.” This tor­rent includ­ed the artist-writer Ray­mond Brig­gs’ When the Wind Blows, a graph­ic nov­el about an elder­ly rur­al cou­ple who sur­vive a cat­a­stroph­ic strike on Eng­land. Jim and Hilda’s opti­mism and will­ing­ness to fol­low gov­ern­ment instruc­tions prove to be no match for nuclear win­ter, and how­ev­er inex­orable their fate, they man­age not to see it right up until the end comes.

In 1986, When the Wind Blows was adapt­ed into a fea­ture film, direct­ed by Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor Jim­my Muraka­mi. Among its dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic choic­es is the com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion for the char­ac­ters with pho­tographed minia­tures for the back­grounds, as well as the com­mis­sion­ing of sound­track music from the likes of Roger Waters, David Bowie, and Gen­e­sis — prop­er Eng­lish rock­ers for a prop­er Eng­lish pro­duc­tion. If the adap­ta­tion of When the Wind Blows is less wide­ly known today than oth­er nuclear-apoc­a­lypse movies, that may owe to its sheer cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty. It would be dif­fi­cult to pick the movie’s most Eng­lish scene, but a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong con­tender is the one in which Hil­da rem­i­nisces about how “it was nice in the war, real­ly: the shel­ters, the black­out, the cups of tea.”

“The cou­ple are fruit­less­ly nos­tal­gic for the Blitz spir­it of the Sec­ond World War, con­vinced the gov­ern­ment-issued Pro­tect and Sur­vive pam­phlets are worth the paper they’re print­ed on, and blind­ly under the assump­tion that there can be a win­ner in a nuclear war,” writes Mitchell. “These sweet, unas­sum­ing retirees rep­re­sent an ail­ing, rose-tint­ed world­view and way of life that’s woe­ful­ly unpre­pared for the mag­ni­tude of dev­as­ta­tion wrought by the bomb.” You can see fur­ther analy­sis of the film’s art and world­view in the video at the top of the post from ani­ma­tion-focused Youtube chan­nel Steve Reviews. In the event, human­i­ty sur­vived the long show­down of the Cold War, los­ing none of our pen­chant for apoc­a­lyp­tic fan­ta­sy as a result. How­ev­er com­pul­sive­ly we imag­ine the end of the world today, will any of our visions prove as mem­o­rable as When the Wind Blows?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pro­tect and Sur­vive: 1970s British Instruc­tion­al Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

The Atom­ic Café: The Cult Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary Made Entire­ly Out of Nuclear Weapons Pro­pa­gan­da from the Cold War (1982)

The Night Ed Sul­li­van Scared a Nation with the Apoc­a­lyp­tic Ani­mat­ed Short, A Short Vision (1956)

Duck and Cov­er: The 1950s Film That Taught Mil­lions of School­child­ren How to Sur­vive a Nuclear Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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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