The Simpsons Take on Ayn Rand: See the Show’s Satire of The Fountainhead and Objectivist Philosophy

in Comedy, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Television | June 25th, 2018

Say what you will about the tenets of Objectivism—to take a fan favorite line from a lit­tle film about bowl­ing and white Rus­sians. At least it’s an ethos. As for Ayn Rand’s attempts to real­ize her “absurd phi­los­o­phy” in fic­tion, we can say that she was rather less suc­cess­ful, in aes­thet­ic terms, than lit­er­ary philoso­phers like Albert Camus or Simone de Beau­voir. But that’s a high bar. When it comes to sales fig­ures, her nov­els are, we might say, com­pet­i­tive.

Atlas Shrugged is some­times said to be the sec­ond best-sell­ing book next to the Bible (with a sig­nif­i­cant degree of over­lap between their read­er­ships). The claim is gross­ly hyper­bol­ic. With some­where around 7 mil­lion copies sold, Rand’s most pop­u­lar nov­el falls behind oth­er cap­i­tal­ist clas­sics like Think and Grow Rich. Still, along with The Foun­tain­head and her oth­er osten­si­bly non-fic­tion­al works, Rand sold enough books to make her com­fort­able in life, even if she spent her last years on the dole.

Since her death, Rand’s books have grown in pop­u­lar­i­ty each decade, with a big spike imme­di­ate­ly after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. That pop­u­lar­i­ty isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to explain as an appeal to ado­les­cent self­ish­ness and grandios­i­ty, and it has made her works ripe tar­gets for satire—especially since they almost read like self-par­o­dy already. And who bet­ter to take on Rand than The Simp­sons, reli­able pop satirists of great Amer­i­can delu­sions since 1989?

The show’s take on The Foun­tain­head, above, has baby Mag­gie in the role of archi­tect Howard Roark, the book’s genius indi­vid­u­al­ist whose extra­or­di­nary tal­ent is sti­fled by a crit­ic named Ellsworth Toohey (a card­board car­i­ca­ture of British the­o­rist and politi­cian Harold Las­ki). In this ver­sion, Toohey is a vicious preschool teacher in tweed, who insists on edu­cat­ing his charges in banal­i­ty (“medi­oc­rity rules!”) and knocks down Maggie’s block cathe­dral with a snide “wel­come to the real world.”

In response to Toohey’s abuse, Mag­gie deliv­ers a pompous solil­o­quy about her own great­ness, as Rand’s heroes are wont to do. She is again sub­ject­ed to preschool repres­sion in the clip just above—this time not at the hands of a social­ist crit­ic but from the head­mistress of the Ayn Rand School for Tots. The dom­i­neer­ing dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an tells Marge her aim is to “devel­op the bot­tle with­in” and dis­suade her stu­dents from becom­ing “leech­es,” a dig at Rand’s tendency—one sad­ly par­rot­ed by her acolytes—to dehu­man­ize recip­i­ents of social ben­e­fits as par­a­sites.

Read­ers of Roald Dahl will be remind­ed of Matil­da’s Miss Trunch­bull, and the bar­racks-like day­care, its walls lined with Objec­tivist slo­gans, becomes a site for some Great Escape capers. These sly ref­er­ences hint at a deep­er critique—suggesting that the lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy of hyper-indi­vid­u­al­ism con­tains the poten­tial for tyran­ny and ter­ror as bru­tal as that of the most dog­mat­i­cal­ly col­lec­tivist of utopi­an schemes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

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

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Bill Murray Explains How He Pulled Himself Out of a Deep, Lasting Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Listened to the Music of John Prine

in Comedy, Life, Music, Psychology | June 22nd, 2018

Judg­ing by the out­pour­ing of affec­tion in online com­ment sec­tions, Chica­go folk musi­cian John Prine (may he rest in peace) has helped a great many of his fans through tough times with his human­ist, oft-humor­ous lyrics.

Add fun­ny man Bill Mur­ray to the list.

Tap­ing a video in sup­port of The Tree of For­give­ness, Prine’s first album of new mate­r­i­al in over a decade, Mur­ray recalled a grim peri­od in which a deep funk robbed him of all enjoy­ment. Though he care­ful­ly stip­u­lates that this “bum­mer” could not be diag­nosed as clin­i­cal depres­sion, noth­ing lift­ed his spir­its, until Gonzo jour­nal­ist Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son—whom Mur­ray embod­ied in the 1980 film, Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam—sug­gest­ed that he turn to Prine for his sense of humor.

Mur­ray took Thompson’s advice, and gave his fel­low Illi­nois­ian’s dou­ble great­est hits album, Great Days, a lis­ten.

This could have back­fired, giv­en that Great Days con­tains some of Prine’s most melancholy—and memorable—songs, from “Hel­lo in There” and “Angel from Mont­gomery” to “Sam Stone,” vot­ed the 8th sad­dest song of all time in a Rolling Stone read­ers’ poll.

But the song that left the deep­est impres­sion on Mur­ray is a sil­ly coun­try-swing num­ber “Lin­da Goes to Mars,” in which a clue­less hus­band assumes his wife’s vacant expres­sion is proof of inter­plan­e­tary trav­el rather than dis­in­ter­est.

To hear Mur­ray tell it, as he thumbs through a copy of John Prine Beyond Words, the moment was not one of gut-bust­ing hilar­i­ty, but rather one of self-aware­ness and relief, a sig­nal that the dark clouds that had been hang­ing over him would dis­perse.

A grate­ful Murray’s admi­ra­tion runs deep. As he told The Wash­ing­ton Post, when he was award­ed the Kennedy Cen­ter Mark Twain Prize for Amer­i­can Humor, he lobbied—unsuccessfully—to get Prine flown in for the cer­e­mo­ny:

I thought it would have been a nice deal because John Prine can make you laugh like no else can make you laugh.

Dit­to Prine’s dear friend, the late, great folk musi­cian, Steve Good­man, the author of “The Veg­etable Song,” “The Lin­coln Park Pirates” (about a leg­endary Chica­go tow­ing com­pa­ny), and “Go, Cubs, Go,” which Mur­ray trilled on Sat­ur­day Night Live with play­ers Dex­ter Fowler, Antho­ny Riz­zo, and David Ross short­ly before the Cub­bies won the 2016 World Series.

I just found out yes­ter­day that Lin­da goes to Mars

Every time I sit and look at pic­tures of used cars

She’ll turn on her radio and sit down in her chair

And look at me across the room as if I was­n’t there

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Some­thing, some­where, some­how took my Lin­da by the hand

And secret­ly decod­ed our sacred wed­ding band

For when the moon shines down upon our hap­py hum­ble home

Her inner space gets tor­tured by some out­er space unknown

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Now I ain’t seen no saucers ‘cept the ones upon the shelf

And if I ever seen one I’d keep it to myself

For if there’s life out there some­where beyond this life on earth

Then Lin­da must have gone out there and got her mon­ey’s worth

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Yeah, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Lis­ten to a Great Days Spo­ti­fy playlist here, though nei­ther Open Cul­ture, nor Bill Mur­ray can be held account­able if you find your­self blink­ing back tears.

Bonus: Below, watch Prine and Mur­ray “swap songs and sto­ries about the ear­ly days in Chica­go cross­ing paths with the likes of John Belushi, Steve Good­man and Kris Kristof­fer­son.” Plus more.


Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Steve Martin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Einstein & Picasso in a Smart Comedy Routine

in Comedy, Math, Physics | June 8th, 2018

Back in 2002, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor Robert Osser­man chat­ted with come­di­an and ban­jo play­er extra­or­di­naire Steve Mar­tin in San Francisco’s Herb­st The­atre. The event was called “Fun­ny Num­bers” and it was intend­ed to deliv­er an off-kil­ter dis­cus­sion on math. Boy did it deliv­er.

The first half of the dis­cus­sion was loose and relaxed. Mar­tin talked about his writ­ing, ban­jos and his child­hood inter­est in math. “In high school, I used to be able to make mag­ic squares,” said Mar­tin. “I like any­thing kind of ‘jumbly.’ I like ana­grams. What else do I like? I like sex.”

Then Robin Williams, that man­ic ball of ener­gy, showed up. As you can see from the five videos through­out this post, the night quick­ly spi­raled into com­ic mad­ness.

They riffed on the Osbournes, Hen­ry Kissinger, num­ber the­o­ry, and physics. “Schrödinger, pick up your cat,” barks Williams at the end of a par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired tear. “He’s alive. He’s dead. What a pet!”

When Mar­tin and Williams read pas­sages from Martin’s hit play, Picas­so at the Lapin Agile Williams read his part at dif­fer­ent points as if he were Mar­lon Bran­do, Peter Lorre and Elmer Fudd. At anoth­er time, Williams and Mar­tin riffed on the num­ber zero. Williams, for once act­ing as the straight man, asked Osser­man, “I have one quick ques­tion, up to the Cru­sades, the num­ber zero did­n’t exist, right? In West­ern civ­i­liza­tion.” To which Mar­tin bel­lowed, “That is a lie! How dare you imply that the num­ber zero…oh, I think he’s right.”

The videos are weird­ly glitchy, though the audio is just fine. And the com­e­dy is com­plete­ly hilar­i­ous and sur­pris­ing­ly thought pro­vok­ing.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Sep­tem­ber, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin Writes Song for Hymn-Deprived Athe­ists

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Ein­stein Explains His Famous For­mu­la, E=mc², in Orig­i­nal Audio

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Ozzy Osbourne’s Guitarist Zakk Wylde Plays Black Sabbath on a Hello Kitty Guitar

in Comedy, Music | June 8th, 2018

When Sanrio—that mega­lith­ic mak­er of kawaii icon Hel­lo Kitty—partnered with gui­tar com­pa­nies to make pas­tel-col­ored six-strings bear­ing the mouth­less kitten’s face, many a big-time musi­cian found the osten­si­bly kid’s‑oriented instru­ments irre­sistible. Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tars were “pos­si­bly the apex of Sanrio’s cross-media syn­er­gy-blitz,” wrote David McNamee in a cranky 2009 piece at The Guardian, “that has seen them slap the cold, vacant stare of their brand-lead­ing cash cow… on to every con­ceiv­able kind of con­sumer mer­chan­dise includ­ing vibra­tors (sor­ry, mas­sagers), assault rifles, tam­pons, con­doms, uri­nal cakes, cars, com­put­ers, booze and pet cos­tumes.”

The chirpy Lisa Loeb took to Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tars as part of a per­son­al brand makeover, which doesn’t much sur­prise since she even­tu­al­ly moved to writ­ing chil­dren’s music. But “a scan of YouTube,” McNamee goes on, “reveals that Hel­lo Kitty’s core audi­ence is actu­al­ly bald­ing, mid­dle-aged men, shred­ding out cov­ers of Yng­wie Malm­steen and Rush.”

I’m not sure how accu­rate this state­ment is in mar­ket research terms, but I can tes­ti­fy to know­ing at least two mid­dle-aged men who swear by pink Hel­lo Kit­ty Stra­to­cast­ers.

Go ahead, laugh it up, but you prob­a­bly wouldn’t do so in front of cer­tain San­rio shred­ders, like for­mer Ozzy Osbourne and cur­rent Black Label Soci­ety gui­tarist Zakk Wylde, who has made a side gig—as we not­ed in yes­ter­day’s post—play­ing cov­ers of heavy rock tunes on tiny, cutesy Hel­lo Kit­ty acoustic gui­tars. See for your­self in his Hel­lo Kit­ty take on Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” at the top and a ver­sion of his own orig­i­nal “Autumn Changes” fur­ther up. Would you laugh at seri­ous­ly ver­sa­tile Mar­i­lyn Man­son gui­tarist John 5 and his Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tar? Maybe, but reserve your judg­ment until after you’ve seen him start his “new career” in Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tar mar­ket­ing above.

Ris­ing to the chal­lenge, Mark Tremon­ti and Eric Fried­man decid­ed to take on Metallica’s “Wel­come Home (San­i­tar­i­um)” on a Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tar and ukulele, “refus­ing to skip the track’s var­i­ous solos,” points out Loud­wire. It’s ”a true jam on tru­ly crap­py instru­ments that the boys some­how made work.” What, exact­ly, is the appeal of these Hel­lo Kit­ty ses­sions to peo­ple who aren’t, pre­sum­ably, the usu­al Hel­lo Kit­ty tween demo­graph­ic?

Maybe it’s just some good clean fun from peo­ple who might seem to take them­selves a lit­tle too seri­ous­ly some­times. When rock stars show a sense of humor, it makes them more relat­able, right? Hey, even the Bea­t­les made their bones with musi­cal com­e­dy, so why shouldn’t Evanescence’s Amy Lee give us a mov­ing, can­dlelit ren­di­tion of Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Fol­low You into the Dark,” as played on a Hel­lo Kit­ty key­board?

See all of these videos and more—including Bumblefoot’s soul­ful Hel­lo Kit­ty met­al clas­sics cov­ers and a pot­ty-mouthed Mike Port­noy bash­ing away on a Hel­lo Kit­ty drumk­it—at Loudwire’s YouTube chan­nel.

via Gui­tar World

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

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

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

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

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Peter Sellers Gives a Quick Demonstration of British Accents

in Comedy | May 3rd, 2018

A while ago we brought you a hilar­i­ous series of record­ings of the British comedic actor Peter Sell­ers read­ing The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in four dif­fer­ent accents. Today we have a brief clip from a tele­phone call by Sell­ers on the set of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb (in which Sell­ers played three dif­fer­ent roles). Here he demon­strates the nuances of a few of the many accents around Great Britain. From cock­ney to upper class and from Lon­don to Edin­burgh, it’s clas­sic Sell­ers all the way.

If this whets your appetite, don’t miss the items in the Relat­eds below.

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:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in 4 Dif­fer­ent Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cock­ney, Irish & Upper Crust

Peter Sell­ers Recites The Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night” in the Style of Shakespeare’s Richard III

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

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Charlie Chaplin Films a Scene Inside a Lion’s Cage in 200 Takes

in Comedy, Film | May 1st, 2018

Char­lie Chap­lin was an actor and film­mak­er com­mit­ted to his craft–a per­fec­tion­ist, in short. When direct­ing City Lights (1931), Chap­lin demand­ed as many as 342 takes of a fair­ly straight­for­ward three-minute scene. That’s what it took to get it right.

Above, we find an ear­li­er exam­ple of the film­mak­er’s atten­tion to detail … and his appetite for risk. In the 1928 film, The Cir­cus, Chap­lin took more than 200 takes to com­plete the Lion’s Cage scene shown above. Many of those takes, the offi­cial Char­lie Chap­lin web­site reminds us, took place inside the lion’s cage itself. As the scene unfolds, the ten­sion builds and Chap­lin puts in a per­for­mance that helped him secure his first Acad­e­my Award.

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, 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:

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Watch Char­lie Chap­lin Demand 342 Takes of One Scene from City Lights

When Char­lie Chap­lin Entered a Chap­lin Look-Alike Con­test and Came in 20th Place

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

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Pre-Flight Safety Demonstration Gets Performed as a Modern Dance: A Creative Video from a Taiwanese Airline

in Comedy, Dance, Life, Travel | March 23rd, 2018

Tai­wanese air­line EVA Air’s pre-flight safe­ty video is a gen­uine odd­i­ty in a field lit­tered with cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions.

Ten years ago, air­lines were straight­for­ward about com­ply­ing with the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, and oth­er gov­ern­ing bod­ies’ require­ments.  These instruc­tions were seri­ous busi­ness. Chil­dren and oth­er first time trav­el­ers paid strict atten­tion to infor­ma­tion about tray tables, exits, and inflat­able life vests that jad­ed fre­quent fly­ers ignored, con­fi­dent that most take offs and land­ings tend to go accord­ing to plan, and the over­whelm­ing num­ber of planes tend stay in the air for the dura­tion of one’s flight.

What about the ones that don’t though? There are times when a too-cool-for-school busi­ness trav­el­er seat­ed next to an emer­gency exit could spell dis­as­ter for every­one onboard.

Vir­gin America’s 2007 ani­mat­ed safe­ty video, below, was the first to recap­ture pas­sen­gers’ atten­tion, with a blasé nar­ra­tive style that poked fun at the stan­dard tropes:

For the .0001% of you who have nev­er oper­at­ed a seat­belt before, it works like this…

The cocky tone was dialed down for more crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion, like how to assist the child in the seat next to you when the yel­low oxy­gen masks drop from the over­head com­part­ment. (Imag­ine the may­hem if indie ani­ma­tor Bill Plymp­ton had been in the pilot’s seat for this one…)

The irrev­er­ent approach was a hit. The FAA took note, encour­ag­ing cre­ativ­i­ty in a 2010 Advi­so­ry Cir­cu­lar:

Every air­line pas­sen­ger should be moti­vat­ed to focus on the safe­ty infor­ma­tion in the pas­sen­ger brief­ing; how­ev­er, moti­vat­ing peo­ple, even when their own per­son­al safe­ty is involved, is not easy. One way to increase pas­sen­ger moti­va­tion is to make the safe­ty infor­ma­tion brief­in­gs and cards as inter­est­ing and attrac­tive as pos­si­ble.

For a while EVA Air, an inno­va­tor whose fleet includes sev­er­al Hel­lo Kit­ty Jets, played it safe by stick­ing to crowd pleas­ing schtick. Its 2012 CGI safe­ty demo video, below, must’ve played par­tic­u­lar­ly well with the Hel­lo Kit­ty demo­graph­ic.

…looks a bit 2012, no?

A few months ago, EVA took things in a direc­tion few indus­try pro­fes­sion­als could’ve pre­dict­ed: mod­ern dance, per­formed with utmost sin­cer­i­ty.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bulareyaung Pagarla­va, a mem­ber of Taiwan’s indige­nous Pai­wan com­mu­ni­ty, and a small crew of dancers spent three months trans­lat­ing the famil­iar direc­tives into a vocab­u­lary of sym­bol­ic ges­tures. See the results at the top of the post.

You’ll find none of the stock char­ac­ters who pop­u­late oth­er air­lines’ videos here—no sneaky smok­ers, no con­cerned moms, no sleepy busi­ness­peo­ple. There’s bare­ly a sug­ges­tion of a cab­in.

Unfet­tered by seats or over­head bins, the bright­ly clad, bare­foot dancers leap and roll as they inter­act with 3D pro­jec­tions, behav­ior that would cer­tain­ly sum­mon a flight atten­dant if per­formed on an actu­al plane.

Does it work?

The answer may depend on whether or not the plane on which you’re trav­el­ing takes a sud­den nose dive.

In “No Jok­ing,” an essay about air­port secu­ri­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pro­fes­sor Mark B. Salter writes that it is “dif­fi­cult to moti­vate pas­sen­gers to con­tem­plate their own mor­tal­i­ty.” The fash­ion for jok­i­ness in safe­ty videos “nat­u­ral­izes areas of anx­i­ety,” a men­tal trick of which Freud was well aware.

What then are we to make of the EVA Air dancer at the 4:35 minute mark, who appears to be falling back­ward through the night sky?

Would you show a jet’s worth of trav­el­ers the mod­ern dance equiv­a­lent of Air­plane 1975, Fear­less, or Snakes on a Plane before they taxi down the run­way?

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the nar­ra­tor steps in to remind pas­sen­gers that smok­ing is pro­hib­it­ed, before the dig­i­tal­ly pro­ject­ed dark waters can swal­low the writhing soloist up.

There’s also some ques­tion as to whether the video ade­quate­ly address­es the ques­tion of tray table oper­a­tion.

Read­ers, what do you think? Does this new video make you feel secure about tak­ing flight?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

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

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David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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