Gil Scott-Heron Spells Out Why “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | June 2nd, 2020

Con­sid­er the influ­ence of tele­vi­sion, even in the dig­i­tal age. Con­sid­er the pow­er that net­works like Fox and CNN con­tin­ue to wield over that neb­u­lous thing called pub­lic opin­ion; the con­tin­ued dom­i­nance of NBC and CBS. These giants don’t real­ly inform so much as sell pack­aged ide­o­log­i­cal con­tent paid for and approved by cor­po­rate spon­sors. There’s real­ly no need to update poet and musi­cian Gil Scott-Heron’s rad­i­cal, 1971 clas­sic “The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised,” unless we want­ed to change the names. His voice still speaks direct­ly to the moment we live in.

We exist on a con­tin­u­um of con­di­tions that have wors­ened since the late 1960s—despite promis­es and appear­ances to the contrary—until they have become intol­er­a­ble. Scott-Heron wrote and sang about those con­di­tions since his fiery 1970 debut.

“Dubbed the ‘God­fa­ther of Rap,’” notes Brook­lyn Rail in a 2007 inter­view, “Scott-Heron has become a ubiq­ui­tous and prac­ti­cal­ly de rigueur influ­ence for every­one from hip hop­pers and indie rock­ers to aging literati and dyed-in-the-wool aca­d­e­mics.”

One might think Scott-Heron’s clas­sic spo­ken-word tes­ta­ment “The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised” speaks for itself by now, but it still cre­ates con­fu­sion in part because peo­ple still mis­con­strue the nature of the medi­um. Why can’t you sit at home and watch jour­nal­ists cov­er protests and revolts on TV? If you think you’re see­ing “the Rev­o­lu­tion” instead of curat­ed, maybe spu­ri­ous, con­tent designed to tell a sto­ry and gin up views, you’re fool­ing your­self.

But Scott-Heron also had some­thing else in mind—you can’t see the rev­o­lu­tion on TV because you can’t see it at all. As he says above in a 1990s inter­view:

The first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you live and the way you move. The thing that’s going to change peo­ple is some­thing that nobody will ever be able to cap­ture on film. It’s just some­thing that you see and you’ll think, “Oh I’m on the wrong page,” or “I’m on I’m on the right page but the wrong note. And I’ve got to get in sync with every­one else to find out what’s hap­pen­ing in this coun­try.”

If we real­ize we’re out of sync with what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing, we can­not find out more on tele­vi­sion. The infor­ma­tion is where the bat­tles are being fought, at street lev­el, and in the mech­a­nisms of the legal process. “I think that the Black Amer­i­cans are the only real die-hard Amer­i­cans here,” Scott-Heron goes on, “because we’re the only ones who’ve car­ried the process through the process…. We’re the ones who marched… we’re the ones who tried to go through the courts. Being born Amer­i­can didn’t seem to mat­ter.” It still doesn’t, as we see in the killings of George Floyd and Bre­on­na Tay­lor and so many before them, and in the griev­ous injuries and deaths from uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, mil­i­tary-grade police esca­la­tions nation­wide since.

Scott-Heron asked us to ques­tion the nar­ra­tives. “How do they know?” he sang in “There’s a War Going On” at Wood­stock 94, above. How do the self-appoint­ed guardians of infor­ma­tion know what’s real­ly going on? Tele­vi­sion spreads igno­rance and mis­in­for­ma­tion, as does radio and, of course, social media. This much we should know. But we’ve mis­in­ter­pret­ed “The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised” if we think it’s real­ly about mass media, Scott-Heron always main­tained. Before we can engage mean­ing­ful­ly with cur­rent events, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary change must hap­pen from the inside out. No one’s broad­cast­ing the truths we first, most need to hear.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gil Scott-Heron, God­fa­ther of Rap, Rest in Peace

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

How Nina Simone Became Hip Hop’s “Secret Weapon”: From Lau­ryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

The Best Campaign Slogan of 2020 (So Far)

in Current Affairs | May 31st, 2020

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on The Best Campaign Slogan of 2020 (So Far) ) |

DEVO Is Now Selling COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment: Energy Dome Face Shields

in Current Affairs, Design, Fashion, Health, Music | May 18th, 2020

Accord­ing to DEVO’s co-prin­ci­ple song­writer and bassist Ger­ald Casale, the exper­i­men­tal art band turned ear­ly MTV pop-punk dar­lings were “pro-infor­ma­tion, anti stu­pid con­for­mi­ty and knew that the strug­gle for free­dom against tyran­ny is nev­er-end­ing.”

Their sin­gu­lar per­for­mance garb also set them apart, and none more so than the bright red plas­tic Ener­gy Dome hel­mets they donned 40 years ago this month, upon the release of their third album, Free­dom of Choice.

The record, which the band con­ceived of as a funk album, explod­ed into main­stream con­scious­ness. The visu­als may have made an even more last­ing impact than the music, which includ­ed the chart top­ping “Whip It.”

Even the most anti-New Wave met­al­head could iden­ti­fy the source of those domes, which have been likened to upturned flower pots, dog bowls, car uri­nals, and lamp shades.

What they prob­a­bly don’t know is the Ener­gy Dome was “designed accord­ing to ancient zig­gu­rat mount pro­por­tions used in votive wor­ship. Like the mounds, it col­lects ener­gy and recir­cu­lates it. In this case, the dome col­lects ener­gy that escapes from the crown of the human head and push­es it back into the Medu­la Oblon­ga­ta for increased men­tal ener­gy.”

Thus sayeth Casale, any­way.

DEVO’s 2020 con­cert plans were, of course, scotched by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, but the band has found an alter­na­tive way to mark the 40th anniver­sary of Free­dom of Choice and the birth of its icon­ic head­gear.

In addi­tion to face masks embla­zoned with the famil­iar red tiered shape, DEVO­tees with mon­ey and con­fi­dence to spare can ante up for a DIY Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment kit that trans­forms a stan­dard-issue Ener­gy Dome into a face shield.

It’s worth not­ing that before tak­ing your con­vert­ed ener­gy dome out for a par­ti­cle deflect­ing spin, you’ll have to truf­fle up a hard hat sus­pen­sion lin­er and install it for a prop­er fit.

Casale her­ald­ed the open­ing of DEVO’s merch store in a Face­book post:

Here we are 40 years lat­er, liv­ing in the alter­nate real­i­ty night­mare spawned by Covid 19 and the botched response of our world “lead­ers” to do the right thing quick­ly. We are not exag­ger­at­ing when we say that 2020 could be the last time you might be able to exer­cise your free­dom of choice. If you don’t use it, you can cer­tain­ly lose it.

Uh, he’s talk­ing about vot­ing, right, rather than storm­ing the capi­tol build­ing to demand the pre­ma­ture reopen­ing of inessen­tial busi­ness­es or mak­ing out­sized threats in response to gro­cery store mask poli­cies?

Per­haps the pow­er of the Ener­gy Dome is such that it could reawak­en the pro-infor­ma­tion, anti-stu­pid­i­ty sen­si­bil­i­ties of some dor­mant DEVO fans among the unmasked rank and file.

As Casale him­self posit­ed in an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer: “You make it taste good so that they don’t real­ize there’s med­i­cine in it.”

Pre-order masks and PPE kits from DEVO’s offi­cial merch store.

Down­load instruc­tions for installing a hard hat sus­pen­sion replace­ment inside the Ener­gy Dome pri­or to attach­ing the shield.

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Free Tem­plate for an Anti-Virus Face Shield: Down­load, and Then Use a Print­er, Paper & Scis­sors

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Presents His Per­son­al Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh & Oth­er Arists Tell Their Musi­cal Sto­ries in the Ani­mat­ed Video Series, “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

David Lynch Creates Daily Weather Reports for Los Angeles: How the Filmmaker Passes Time in Quarantine

in Current Affairs, Film | May 13th, 2020

David Lynch has­n’t direct­ed a fea­ture film in thir­teen years, but that does­n’t mean he’s been idle. Quite the oppo­site, in fact: in addi­tion to the acclaimed Show­time series Twin Peaks: The Return, he’s record­ed an album, writ­ten a mem­oir, taught a Mas­ter­class, over­seen the devel­op­ment of a Twin Peaks vir­tu­al real­i­ty game, and made a short film about ants devour­ing a piece of cheese. In his home stu­dio, he’s also con­tin­ued the visu­al art prac­tice he start­ed before turn­ing to film­mak­er in the 1970s. We may know Lynch best as the man behind Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, but he seems equal­ly com­fort­able work­ing in whichev­er form or medi­um is at hand. In this time of COVID-19 quar­an­tine, which has sus­pend­ed film­mak­ing, film­go­ing, and oth­er kinds of human activ­i­ty, one such medi­um is the weath­er report.

“Here in L.A.… kind of cloudy… some fog this morn­ing,” says the respect­ed film­mak­er in his weath­er-report video for May 11, 2020. “64 degrees Fahren­heit; around sev­en­teen Cel­sius. This all should burn off pret­ty soon, and we’ll have sun­shine and 70 degrees.” All just what one would expect from the cli­mate of Los Ange­les, the south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis where Lynch lives and which he often prais­es — and which, it’s recent­ly been report­ed, will like­ly extend its stay-at-home order for at least three more months.

The sud­den lack of move­ment in this famous­ly mobile city has done won­ders for the air qual­i­ty, but so far that ele­ment has­n’t fig­ured explic­it­ly into Lynch’s reports. “We’ve got clouds and kind of fog­gy weath­er, with some blue shin­ing through,” he says on the morn­ing of May 12th. But just as the day before, that fog “should burn off lat­er, and we’ll have sun­shine.” Long­time fol­low­ers of Lynch’s inter­net projects will rec­og­nize these as a sequel to the dai­ly video weath­er reports he post­ed in 2008:

They’ll also rec­og­nize most of the objects that sur­round Lynch in his office, from his set of draw­ers to his wall-mount­ed phone to his angu­lar-han­dled black cof­fee cup. But the dra­mat­ic increase in the res­o­lu­tion of inter­net video over the past dozen years has made every­thing vis­i­ble in a new­ly crisp detail, right down to the steam ris­ing from Lynch’s hot bev­er­age of choice. More dai­ly weath­er reports will pre­sum­ably appear on the David Lynch The­ater Youtube chan­nel, each one col­ored by his sig­na­ture (and, giv­en the unre­lent­ing­ly dis­turb­ing qual­i­ties of his best-known work, seem­ing­ly incon­gru­ous) opti­mism. “It’s going to be a dif­fer­ent world on the oth­er side,” he told Vice last month. “It’s going to be a much more intel­li­gent world. Solu­tions to these prob­lems are going to come and life’s going to be very good. The movies will come back. Every­thing will spring back and in a much bet­ter way, prob­a­bly.”

Find a playlist of Lynch’s weath­er reports here.

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:

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called Rab­bits: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Case for a Universal Basic Income in the Time of COVID-19

in Current Affairs, Economics | May 11th, 2020

The idea of Uni­ver­sal Basic Income (UBI) has been the sub­ject of much debate in the past few years. The can­di­da­cy of Andrew Yang for U.S. Pres­i­dent brought the issue to nation­al promi­nence, where it has remained dur­ing the spread of COVID-19. What is UBI? Put sim­ply, it pro­pos­es that the gov­ern­ment give every cit­i­zen a cer­tain amount of mon­ey each month to cov­er, at the least, basic liv­ing expens­es. As the video above by YouTube chan­nel Kurzge­sagt explains, those cit­i­zens are then free to live their lives as they like.

Unlike most wel­fare state mod­els, UBI usu­al­ly does not involve any means test­ing. In most schemes, every cit­i­zen, no mat­ter their cur­rent wealth or income, receives the ben­e­fit. (Though most stud­ies of the pro­gram have only giv­en it to poor or unem­ployed ben­e­fi­cia­ries.) Those who do not need the mon­ey can do what­ev­er they want with it, but so too can those who need it. UBI ensures that peo­ple do not have go home­less or hun­gry if they lose their liveli­hood, and that they can sur­vive with­out pater­nal­ist state agen­cies breath­ing down their necks.

UBI is not a new idea but dates back at least to Thomas Paine, whose Com­mon Sense inspired the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and whose Rights of Man defend­ed the French a few years lat­er. As Paine argued in anoth­er, lit­tle-read, pam­phlet, Agrar­i­an Jus­tice, no one could be tru­ly free if they had no means of sub­sis­tence. Since cap­i­tal­ism had placed most of those means under pri­vate own­er­ship, he rea­soned, cit­i­zens should be com­pen­sat­ed for being deprived of resources that belonged to them by nat­ur­al right as much as to any­one else.

This philo­soph­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t always enter into the con­ver­sa­tion, which is often framed in more prag­mat­ic terms as a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic expe­di­ent in times of cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis: in times, for exam­ple, like the present moment. The COVID-19 cri­sis has inten­si­fied calls for a UBI, as mil­lions of lay­offs point toward the inevitabil­i­ty of a depres­sion. Push­ing peo­ple back to work dur­ing the pan­dem­ic seems to be the only thing the U.S. gov­ern­ment plans to do, but no amount of coer­cion can stop the virus from forc­ing clo­sures all over again.

Even the famous­ly lib­er­tar­i­an econ­o­mist Mil­ton Fried­man once embraced a ver­sion of UBI—as an alter­na­tive to the lib­er­al social pro­grams he loathed. Under Richard Nixon, of all peo­ple, such a pol­i­cy almost came into being in 1969. Nei­ther Fried­man nor Nixon believed in the nat­ur­al right of all cit­i­zens to a share in the prof­its of a state’s nat­ur­al resources. But they could see the wis­dom of ensur­ing mil­lions of U.S. cit­i­zens weren’t rel­e­gat­ed to liv­ing in des­ti­tu­tion.

The pro­gram required test­ing, so the admin­is­tra­tion set up a tri­al run. “Tens of mil­lions of dol­lars were bud­get­ed to pro­vide a basic income for more than 8,500 Amer­i­cans” in five states across the coun­try, writes Rut­ger Breg­man at The Cor­re­spon­dent. Researchers want­ed to know: 1. if those who received a basic income would work sig­nif­i­cant­ly less, 2. if the pro­gram would be too expen­sive, and 3. if it would prove “polit­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble.” The find­ings? “No, no, and maybe.”

The chief objec­tion, idle­ness, held no water. As the chief data ana­lyst for the Den­ver exper­i­ment put it at the time, “The ‘lazi­ness’ con­tention is just not sup­port­ed by our find­ings.” The two groups who did cut back on hours, 20-some­things and moth­ers of young chil­dren, were peo­ple who most need­ed the mon­ey so they could go to col­lege or devote time to their kids. Oth­er­wise, recip­i­ents did not quit their jobs and lay around watch­ing TV.

Yet there remains a pow­er­ful species of human busy­body who can­not rest until they’re sure everyone’s work­ing. Such peo­ple con­tin­ue to object—whether in good faith or not—that “just giv­ing peo­ple mon­ey” will turn every­one into a slack­er, as though most peo­ple were only moti­vat­ed by the threat of star­va­tion. And so, tri­als con­tin­ue decades lat­er. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki recent­ly con­duct­ed a two-year study in Fin­land with a ran­dom selec­tion of 2,000 unem­ployed peo­ple across the coun­try. Each par­tic­i­pant was giv­en €560 (about $607) a month to ease their bur­den, and received the funds whether or not they sought or found a job.

“The scheme was not strict­ly speak­ing a uni­ver­sal basic income tri­al because the recip­i­ents came from a restrict­ed group and the pay­ments were not enough to live on,” points out Guardian cor­re­spon­dent Jon Hen­ley. Nonethe­less, the researchers found that recip­i­ents were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less stressed than a con­trol group—and that they could make dif­fer­ent choic­es than they might oth­er­wise. “Some said the basic income allowed them to go back to the life they had before they became unem­ployed,” the study authors write. “While oth­ers said it gave them the pow­er to say no to low-paid inse­cure jobs, and thus increased their sense of auton­o­my.”

Oth­er find­ings also showed how UBI could rad­i­cal­ize our rela­tion­ship to work. “Free­lancers and artists and entre­pre­neurs had more pos­i­tive views on the effects of the basic income, which some felt had cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to start busi­ness­es.” Peo­ple pro­vid­ing unpaid care for oth­ers felt their time was more val­ued. “The secu­ri­ty of the basic income allowed them to do more mean­ing­ful things, as they felt it legit­imized this kind of care work.” The find­ings are being tak­en seri­ous­ly by many Euro­pean gov­ern­ments.

In Spain, Scot­land, and else­where, lead­ers are propos­ing or con­sid­er­ing some form of UBI to com­bat mas­sive unem­ploy­ment due to the pan­dem­ic. While the idea may have lit­tle polit­i­cal future in the U.S. at the moment, where pri­or­i­ties are to use the country’s wealth to fur­ther enrich the wealthy, UBI is becom­ing tremen­dous­ly pop­u­lar else­where. (A recent poll found sup­port among 71% of Euro­peans sur­veyed.) No one believes UBI is a panacea for the world’s ills, but as the Wired video above argues, there may be no bet­ter time than now to make the case for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

To Save Civ­i­liza­tion, the Rich Need to Pay Their Tax­es: His­to­ri­an Rut­ger Breg­man Speaks Truth to Pow­er at Davos and to Fox’s Tuck­er Carl­son

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Drive-In Concerts and Even Raves Are Becoming the Rage in Europe

in Current Affairs | May 6th, 2020

If we are to remain social­ly dis­tant in the com­ing months of the pandemic—and near­ly every rep­utable health expert says we should—at least 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has pre­pared us for life lived in iso­la­tion. If we insist on going out, we may see a 20th cen­tu­ry inno­va­tion become even more pop­u­lar. The dri­ve-in the­ater has returned as a safe venue for movies, con­certs, and even raves, at least in Den­mark, where the city of Aarhus recent­ly staged a dri­ve-in con­cert by singer-song­writer Mads Langer. “500 tick­ets sold out in min­utes,” reports Forbes. “The fol­low­ing day, the stage became a dri­ve-in cin­e­ma” show­ing Star Wars Episode IX. 

The first in a series, the dri­ve-in shows are part of a larg­er trend in Europe. Pro­mot­ers in Lithua­nia have launched sim­i­lar events out­side Vil­nius. And if you’re won­der­ing what a dri­ve-in rave looks like, won­der no more—Germany held the first of many a few days back.

Does it look like a pre­cur­sor to the world of Mad Max: Fury Road? As some com­menters have sug­gest­ed, enough events like these around the world might be just what we need to accel­er­ate deser­ti­fi­ca­tion. But it’s a fun idea, with unde­ni­ably nos­tal­gic built-in brand­ing.

Dri­ve-in the­aters are dis­tinct­ly tied to teenage romances of the 1950s and envi­ron­men­tal­ly mon­strous vehi­cles large enough for very com­fort­able dou­ble dates. Their ori­gins are less roman­tic than the stereo­type. “The first patent­ed dri­ve-in was opened on June 6, 1933 by Richard Holling­shead in New Jer­sey,” notes the New York Film Acad­e­my. “He cre­at­ed it as a solu­tion for peo­ple unable to com­fort­ably fit into small­er movie the­ater seats after cre­at­ing a mini dri­ve-in for his moth­er. Appeal­ing to fam­i­lies, Holling­shead adver­tised his dri­ve-in as a place where ‘The whole fam­i­ly is wel­come, regard­less of how noisy the chil­dren are.’”

 

It is unlike­ly many par­ents today would sit through a dri­ve-in show with noisy chil­dren, when every­one can stay home with their own pri­vate screen. But for Matt Langer fan Signe Nygaard, a par­ent and for­mer gym­nast, the dri­ve-in made a dream come true. The singer invit­ed her onstage. “A few years ago,” she says, “I was sup­posed to dance at a con­ven­tion where Mads Langer sang live, but I couldn’t because I was preg­nant. Now I final­ly got the chance.” There will be feel­go­od sto­ries in the pan­dem­ic, but I do hope they stayed six feet apart.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Free: Austin City Lim­its Opens Up Video Archives Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic

Sooth­ing, Uplift­ing Resources for Par­ents & Care­givers Stressed by the COVID-19 Cri­sis

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Filmmaking Masterclass on Instagram

in Current Affairs, Film | May 4th, 2020

As the last liv­ing major French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard has become a kind of ora­cle for younger film­mak­ers and cinéastes. Despite hav­ing turned 89 last Decem­ber, he remains in a sense what film schol­ar David Bor­d­well not long ago called “the youngest film­mak­er at work today.” When Godard start­ed work­ing in cin­e­ma just about 65 years ago, it did­n’t take him long to make his name by break­ing its rules. Ever since, he’s ward­ed off com­pla­cen­cy by con­tin­u­ing to rethink, at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el, not just film but the nature of images, sounds and words them­selves. And he pur­sues this line of think­ing in any avail­able medi­um, includ­ing, as demon­strat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion above on “images in the time of the coro­n­avirus,” Insta­gram Live.

This form, as a film­mak­er like Godard would sure­ly appre­ci­ate, suits the sub­stance. No venue could be more of the moment than Insta­gram Live, as per­form­ers of all kinds have tak­en to stream­ing them­selves from home in the midst of the glob­al pan­dem­ic. But where many such fig­ures use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take view­ers’ minds off the coro­n­avirus, Godard and his inter­view­er Lionel Baier, head of the cin­e­ma depart­ment at Lau­san­ne’s ECAL Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design, use it as a start­ing point. What begins as a dis­cus­sion of Godard­’s news-watch­ing habits turns into a con­ver­sa­tion­al jour­ney across such sub­jects as film­mak­ing, writ­ing, paint­ing, phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, med­i­cine, law, and lan­guage. “I don’t believe in lan­guage,” goes one of Godard­’s char­ac­ter­is­tic pro­nounce­ments. “What needs to be changed is the alpha­bet. There are too many let­ters and we should delete lots of them.”

Per­haps that does­n’t come as a sur­prise from a direc­tor whose recent pic­tures include one called Good­bye to Lan­guage. But spo­ken or filmed, Godard­’s ideas on the mat­ter also reflect his per­son­al expe­ri­ence: he tells of hav­ing for a time lost the mem­o­ry of names of cer­tain fruits and veg­eta­bles, and con­se­quent­ly devel­op­ing a visu­al method of remem­ber­ing his gro­cery lists. Such every­day sto­ries come along with ref­er­ences to a wide range of artists, sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, and “adven­tur­ers” in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly from the his­to­ry of the Fran­coph­o­ne world. More than once aris­es the name of Nicéphore Niépce, the 19th-cen­tu­ry French inven­tor respon­si­ble for the first known pho­to­graph ever tak­en (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) and a sub­ject of one of Godard­’s cur­rent works-in-progress.

“In the film I’m going to make,” Godard explains, “I ask what Niépce believed he was doing or what his inten­tions were when he sim­ply want­ed to copy real­i­ty.” All through­out his decades as a film­mak­er, Godard has clear­ly kept ask­ing the same ques­tion about him­self: in mak­ing films, does he want to “copy real­i­ty” or do some­thing more inter­est­ing? For­tu­nate­ly for cin­e­ma, he always seems to have opt­ed for the lat­ter, back to his days with his Nou­velle Vague com­pa­tri­ots François Truf­faut, Jacques Riv­ette, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer, all of whom fig­ure into his rem­i­nis­cences here. And will COVID-19 fig­ure in a future Godard film? “It’ll have an influ­ence but not direct­ly,” he says. “The virus should def­i­nite­ly be talked about once or twice. With every­thing that comes with it, the virus is a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It does­n’t mean we’re going to die from it, but we might not live very well with it either.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Michigan Family Makes Everyone Passing Their House Do Monty Python Silly Walks, and Then Puts Recordings on Instagram

in Comedy, Current Affairs | April 30th, 2020

Even if you don’t know the Bea­t­les, you know “Love Me Do.” Even if you don’t know the Rolling Stones, you know “Sat­is­fac­tion.” Even if you don’t know Mon­ty Python, you know “The Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks.” Like an AM radio hit, the sketch works on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al lev­els while cap­ti­vat­ing audi­ences of dis­parate ages and cul­tures, all with­in the span of a few min­utes. As a satire of British gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy it com­pares, in its way, to Antony Jay and Jonathan Lyn­n’s series Yes Min­is­ter, which would debut on the BBC a decade lat­er. As sheer phys­i­cal com­e­dy, it draws its pow­er, as all those old songs do, from the innate char­ac­ter­is­tics of its per­form­ers. Or rather, from John Cleese, who not only looks the part of a born estab­lish­ment fig­ure, but stands near­ly six and a half feet tall.

Though few of us can sing like Paul McCart­ney or Mick Jag­ger, it does­n’t stop us from join­ing in when their songs come on the radio. By the same token, though few of us pos­sess the sheer leg length to walk as sil­ly as Cleese does, we can all gen­er­ate our own kind of lev­i­ty by giv­ing our best. And much of the Unit­ed States, locked down by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, lev­i­ty is just what’s need­ed. Hence the estab­lish­ment of York­shire Sil­ly Walks, which announces itself in no uncer­tain terms: “YOU HAVE ENTERED THE JURISDICTION OF THE MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS,” reads its signs. “COMMENCE SILLY WALKING IMMEDIATELY.” All who pass through this ter­ri­to­ry are cap­tured by a video cam­era, and some will lat­er find them­selves post­ed to York­shire Sil­ly Walks’ Insta­gram page — as long as they’ve walked with suf­fi­cient silli­ness.

They don’t have to do it for long: the juris­dic­tion of this Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks extends only across the side­walk in front of a sin­gle house in Grosse Pointe Park, Michi­gan. The home­’s York­shire Road address will con­jure up mem­o­ries of anoth­er beloved sketch in the minds of seri­ous Python fans — a group to which Liz Koto and her fam­i­ly, the house­’s occu­pants, must belong. They’ve post­ed to Insta­gram well over 100 videos, each cap­tur­ing a dif­fer­ent sil­ly walk exe­cut­ed by the peo­ple of their sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood out for a stroll — just about the only thing many Amer­i­cans can do to get out of the house these days. And they do it more joy­ful­ly than Cleese him­self, who has spo­ken of how, like a rock star con­demned to play the same hit over and over again, he grew deeply weary of play­ing the Min­is­ter of Sil­ly Walks on stage for Mon­ty Python’s live shows over the decades. After hav­ing under­gone two hip replace­ments, he’s sure­ly hap­py to leave sil­ly-walk­ing to the fans.

View this post on Insta­gram

Wood­stock called, they want their dancers back.

A post shared by York­shire Sil­ly Walks (@yorkshire.silly.walks) on

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

John Cleese on The Impor­tance of Mak­ing and Embrac­ing Mis­takes

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, Using Mate­ri­als Found Around the House

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.