Director Robert Rodriguez Teaches The Basics of Filmmaking in Under 10 Minutes

in Education, Film | August 6th, 2014

Orson Welles once claimed that Gregg Toland, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er for Cit­i­zen Kane, taught him every­thing he need­ed to know about shoot­ing movies in a half hour. Direc­tor Robert Rodriguez — who start­ed off as the poster boy for ‘90s indie cin­e­ma and is cur­rent­ly mak­ing a healthy liv­ing turn­ing out movies like Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – claims that he can reduce that time by a third. In 10 Minute Film School, which you can watch above, Rodriguez quick­ly hits on some of the key points of movie mak­ing while espous­ing the same rebel DIY spir­it that made him a suc­cess. Remem­ber, this is a guy who made a fea­ture film, El Mari­achi, for $7000.

Rodriguez’s basic phi­los­o­phy doesn’t dwell on learn­ing the fine points of Aris­totelian act struc­ture or the tech­ni­cal nuances of the Red cam­era. He just wants you to start shoot­ing stuff. “Don’t dream about being a film­mak­er,” he pro­claims in the video, which looks like it was shot some time dur­ing the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. “You are a film­mak­er. Now let’s get down to busi­ness.”

He tells aspir­ing film­mak­ers to become tech­ni­cal — learn the tools of the trade. If you don’t, you might become over­ly reliant on the techies who may or may not be inter­est­ed in real­iz­ing your vision. He also doesn’t put too much stock in screen­writ­ing books like Save the Cat. “Any­one know how to write?” he asks the audi­ence. “No? Good. Every­one else writes the same way. Start writ­ing your way. That makes you unique.”

He also advis­es against sto­ry­boards. “Make a blank screen for your­self and sit there and watch your movie. Imag­ine your movie, shot for shot, cut for cut…Write down the shots you see and then go get those shots.”

The video shows its age when Rodriguez starts to talk about equip­ment. No aspir­ing film­mak­er aside from a cel­lu­loid fetishist is going to shoot a first fea­ture on 16mm when cheap­er, eas­i­er dig­i­tal cam­eras are avail­able. Yet the core of his mes­sage is still valid. “You don’t want any­thing too fan­cy,” he states over and over. Fan­cy equip­ment makes for life­less, dull films, lack­ing in that reck­less, adven­tur­ous spir­it of the new­bie moviemak­er.

Essen­tial­ly, Rodriguez wants to keep the “inde­pen­dent” in inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing. Just as he tells his charges to get tech­ni­cal, Rodriguez also tells them to keep their bud­gets low. The more mon­ey a stu­dio sinks into a pro­duc­tion, the more they can dic­tate how that mon­ey is spent. Rodriguez had a gui­tar case, a tur­tle and a small Tex­an town at his dis­pos­al when he was start­ing out, and, with that, he strung togeth­er the sto­ry of El Mari­achi. In the 20 plus years since, Rodriguez has main­tained cre­ative con­trol over just about all of his movies.

One final note. “Don’t both­er going to film school,” he says. As some­one with an over­priced MFA in film, I have to say that he’s prob­a­bly right.

via Film­mak­er IQ

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

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 one new pic­ture of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Drawings

in Comics/Cartoons, Education, K-12, Literature | July 28th, 2014

OdysseyComixmain2

The next time some know-it-all moral­ist blames any num­ber of social ills on vio­lent video games or action films, ask them if they’d rather kids stick to the clas­sics. When they invari­ably reply in the affir­ma­tive, you can smug­ly direct their atten­tion to Greek Myth Comix’s aston­ish­ing info­graph­ic detail­ing the mul­ti­tude of grue­some killings in the Ili­ad. Homer’s epic unflinch­ing­ly describes, for exam­ple, in graph­ic detail, the death of Lycon, who in Book 16 has a sword thrust through his neck: “noth­ing held but a piece of skin, and from that, Lycon’s head dan­gled down.” And if you’ve held on to your lunch, you may be inter­est­ed to know the gris­ly cir­cum­stances of the oth­er two can­di­dates for “grimmest death.” Just below, see a sec­tion of the com­ic cel­e­brat­ing “stand out per­for­mances in bat­tle.” Can Zack Snyder’s King Leonidas match kills with Homer’s Achilles? Only one way to find out….

IliadStandouts

The Ili­ad graph­ic is great fun—as well as a suc­cinct way to ren­der mod­ern scolds speechless—but Greek Myth Comix doesn’t stop there… Oh no! Fans of Homer’s Odyssey will not be dis­ap­point­ed; Books 5–7, and much of 9, 10, and 12 also get the “comix” treat­ment. The art­work is admit­ted­ly crude, but the text comes from a much more author­i­ta­tive source than 300, no dis­re­spect to Frank Miller. Lau­ren Jenk­in­son is a “Clas­si­cal Civil­i­sa­tion and Lit­er­a­ture teacher, writer and, appar­ent­ly, artist,” and her online adap­ta­tions are intend­ed pri­mar­i­ly to help stu­dents pass their GCSE (OCR), the British sec­ondary exams whose near­est equiv­a­lent in the States might per­haps be the SATs.

homeric-hero-1

But Greek Myth Comix won’t only appeal to strug­gling stu­dents in the British Isles. Edu­ca­tors will find much to love here, as will lovers of mythol­o­gy in gen­er­al. Online access to the site is free, and you can pur­chase copies of the comix in PDF—either indi­vid­u­al­ly, in bulk, or in poster-size res­o­lu­tion. The site’s full archive has oth­er good­ies like the above, “What Makes a Home­r­ic Hero?” And with such recent updates, no doubt Greek Myth Comix has much more in store for those strug­gling to enjoy or under­stand Homer’s bloody-mind­ed epics, and those who sim­ply love their myths in com­ic form as well as ancient lyric.

via HolyKaw

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

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

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Steven Pinker Uses Theories from Evolutionary Biology to Explain Why Academic Writing is So Bad

in Education, English Language, Harvard, Psychology | July 4th, 2014

I don’t know about oth­er dis­ci­plines, but aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing in the human­i­ties has become noto­ri­ous for its jar­gon-laden wordi­ness, tan­gled con­struc­tions, and seem­ing­ly delib­er­ate vagary and obscu­ri­ty. A pop­u­lar demon­stra­tion of this comes via the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s aca­d­e­m­ic sen­tence gen­er­a­tor, which allows one to plug in a num­ber of stock phras­es, verbs, and “-tion” words to pro­duce cork­ers like “The reifi­ca­tion of post-cap­i­tal­ist hege­mo­ny is always already par­tic­i­pat­ing in the engen­der­ing of print cul­ture” or “The dis­course of the gaze ges­tures toward the lin­guis­tic con­struc­tion of the gen­dered body”—the point, of course, being that the lan­guage of acad­e­mia has become so mean­ing­less that ran­dom­ly gen­er­at­ed sen­tences close­ly resem­ble and make as much sense as those pulled from the aver­age jour­nal arti­cle (a point well made by the so-called “Sokal hoax”).

There are many the­o­ries as to why this is so. Some say it’s sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of schol­ars poor­ly imi­tat­ing famous­ly dif­fi­cult writ­ers like Hegel and Hei­deg­ger, Lacan and Der­ri­da; oth­ers blame a host of post­mod­ern ‑isms, with their politi­cized lan­guage games and sec­tar­i­an schisms. A recent dis­cus­sion cit­ed schol­ar­ly van­i­ty as the cause of incom­pre­hen­si­ble aca­d­e­m­ic prose. A more prac­ti­cal expla­na­tion holds that the pub­lish or per­ish grind forces schol­ars to turn out deriv­a­tive work at an unrea­son­able pace sim­ply to keep their jobs, hence stuff­ing jour­nals with rehashed argu­ments and fan­cy-sound­ing puffery that sig­ni­fies lit­tle. In the above video, Har­vard cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist and lin­guist Steven Pinker offers his own the­o­ry, work­ing with exam­ples drawn from aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing in psy­chol­o­gy.

For Pinker, the ten­den­cy of aca­d­e­mics to use “pas­sives, abstrac­tions, and ‘zom­bie nouns’” stems not pri­mar­i­ly from “nefar­i­ous motives” or the desire to “sound sophis­ti­cat­ed and recher­ché and try to bam­boo­zle their read­ers with high-falutin’ ver­biage.” He doesn’t deny that this takes place on occa­sion, but con­tra George Orwell’s claim in “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage” that bad writ­ing gen­er­al­ly hopes to dis­guise bad polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic motives, Pinker defers to evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, and refers to “men­tal habits” and the “mis­match between ordi­nary think­ing and speak­ing and what we have to do as aca­d­e­mics.” He goes on to explain, in some fair­ly aca­d­e­m­ic terms, his the­o­ry of how our pri­mate mind, which did not evolve to think thoughts about soci­ol­o­gy or lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, strug­gles to schema­tize “learned abstrac­tions” that are not a part of every­day expe­ri­ence. It’s a plau­si­ble the­o­ry that doesn’t rule out oth­er rea­son­able alter­na­tives (like the per­fect­ly straight­for­ward claim that clear, con­cise writ­ing pos­es a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge for aca­d­e­mics as much as any­one else.)

Pinker’s talk was part of a larg­er Har­vard con­fer­ence called “Styl­ish Aca­d­e­m­ic Writ­ing” and spon­sored by the Office of Fac­ul­ty Devel­op­ment & Diver­si­ty. The full con­fer­ence seems designed pri­mar­i­ly as pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment for oth­er aca­d­e­mics, but lay­folks may find much here of inter­est as well. See more talks from the con­fer­ence, as well as a num­ber of unre­lat­ed videos on good aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing here. Or, for more amuse­ment at the expense of clunky aca­d­e­m­ic prose, see the results of the Phi­los­o­phy and Lit­er­a­ture bad writ­ing con­test, which ran from 1995–98 and turned up some almost shock­ing­ly unread­able sen­tences from a vari­ety of schol­ar­ly texts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

“Lol My The­sis” Show­cas­es Painful­ly Hilar­i­ous Attempts to Sum up Years of Aca­d­e­m­ic Work in One Sen­tence

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

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Six Animations of Stories and Poems by Shel Silverstein

in Animation, Education, K-12, Poetry | May 22nd, 2014

Shel Sil­ver­stein, beloved poet, song­writer, children’s author, and illus­tra­tor, per­fect­ed an instant­ly rec­og­niz­able visu­al and lit­er­ary style that has imprint­ed itself on sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions. We remem­ber the heart­felt whim­sy of sto­ries like The Giv­ing Tree (1964) and poet­ry col­lec­tions like Where the Side­walk Ends (1974) and A Light in the Attic (1981) as we remem­ber child­hood best friends, first crush­es, and sum­mer camp exploits. Many of us raised on his work have gone on to have kids of our own, so we get to revis­it those books we loved, with their weird, irrev­er­ent twists and turns and wild imag­i­na­tive flights. Our kids get a bonus, though, thanks to the web, since they can also see sev­er­al Sil­ver­stein poems and sto­ries in ani­mat­ed form on Youtube. Today, we bring you six of those ani­ma­tions. Sate your nos­tal­gia, share with your kids, and redis­cov­er the utter­ly dis­tinc­tive voice of the pre-emi­nent children’s poet.

We don’t get to hear Silverstein’s actu­al voice in the ani­ma­tions of “Runny’s Hind Keart”and “Run­ny on Rount Mush­more,” above, two of many poems made almost entire­ly of spooner­isms from the book and audio CD Run­ny Bab­bit: A Bil­ly Sook, posthu­mous­ly pub­lished in 2005.

Instead, Sil­ver­stein sound-alike Den­nis Locor­riere—for­mer lead singer of the band Dr. Hook—narrates. (Sil­ver­stein wrote a num­ber of songs for the band.) The poems are as fun for kids to read aloud as they are to untan­gle. Read full text here.

Just above, we get vin­tage Sil­ver­stein, read/singing “Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too” from Where the Side­walk Ends. Accom­pa­nied by an acoustic gui­tar, Sil­ver­stein turns the poem into a folk bal­lad, his voice ris­ing and crack­ing off-key. You may know that Sil­ver­stein wrote the John­ny Cash hit “A Boy Named Sue”—you may not know that he record­ed his own ver­sion and sev­er­al dozen more songs besides. The video above offers a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his musi­cal style.

Sil­ver­stein pub­lished his award-win­ning col­lec­tion of poet­ry Falling Up in 1996, three years before his death and many years after my child­hood, so I didn’t have the plea­sure of read­ing poems like “The Toy Eater” as a kid. The poem is an excel­lent exam­ple of what Poets.org calls Silverstein’s “deft mix­ing of the sly and the seri­ous, the macabre, and the just plain sil­ly.”

Hear Sil­ver­stein above read “Back­wards Bill,” a poem I remem­ber quite well as one of my favorites from A Light in the Attic. His raspy sing-song nar­ra­tion turns the poem into a fun­ny lit­tle melody kids will remem­ber and love singing along to.

Final­ly, we bring you an ani­mat­ed excerpt from Silverstein’s beloved 1963 fable Laf­ca­dio: The Lion Who Shot Back, Silverstein’s first book writ­ten exclu­sive­ly for chil­dren. He is so well known as a writer and illus­tra­tor for kids that it’s easy to for­get that Sil­ver­stein first made a career in the fifties and six­ties as a car­toon­ist for adults, pub­lish­ing most of his work in Play­boy. Sil­ver­stein nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied poet­ry and hadn’t con­sid­ered writ­ing it until his edi­tor at Harp­er & Row, Ursu­la Nord­strom, urged him to. With­out her inter­ven­tion, he’d sure­ly still be remem­bered for his icon­ic visu­al style and song­writ­ing, but mil­lions of kids would have missed out on the weird­ness of his warped imag­i­na­tion. Sil­ver­stein showed us we didn’t have to be sen­ti­men­tal or schmaltzy to be open-heart­ed, car­ing, and curi­ous. His work endures because he had the unique abil­i­ty to speak to chil­dren in a lan­guage they under­stand with­out con­de­scend­ing or dumb­ing things down. See sev­er­al more short ani­ma­tions at Silverstein’s offi­cial web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

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

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

in Education, Literature | May 9th, 2014

milton and kerouac

Here at Open Cul­ture, we don’t just fea­ture edu­ca­tion in your rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly serv­ings of cul­tur­al­ly wide-rang­ing video, audio, text, and image — we also fea­ture it in a form that goes deep: whole cours­es you can down­load to your com­put­er or mobile device of choice and expe­ri­ence at your own pace. If you nev­er quite stud­ied all the lit­er­a­ture you want­ed to — or if you sim­ply can’t get enough study of the stuff — pay a vis­it to our col­lec­tion of over 50 free lit­er­a­ture cours­es online. Some of them may even cov­er the same tex­tu­al ground as the class­es you felt curi­ous about tak­ing in col­lege but could nev­er quite fit into your sched­ule: “Dante in Trans­la­tion” (Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio - Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als), for instance, or “Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture” (Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio – Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als), or “Intro­duc­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture (Free Online Video).

Our col­lec­tion offers cours­es with rel­a­tive­ly broad lit­er­ary sub­ject mat­ter, such as “Amer­i­can Pas­sages: A Lit­er­ary Sur­vey” (Free Online Video) and “Con­tem­po­rary Lit­er­a­ture” (Free Online Video – Free Video Down­load), and oth­ers spe­cif­ic to one peri­od or even one writer, like “Oscar Wilde” (Free Online Audio ). and the Allen Gins­berg-taught “Jack Ker­ouac” (Free Online Audio Part 1 and Part 2). Oth­er offer­ings in our col­lec­tion more close­ly resem­ble the cours­es you may have always want­ed to take, but nev­er found offered, like these from “Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Corey Olsen:

And yes, for those tru­ly intent on con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion in Mid­dle-Earth, Olsen also offers a “Sil­mar­il­lion Sem­i­nar” (Free Online Video & Audio). If none of these appeal to your own intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, how­ev­er, do vis­it the col­lec­tion’s page for more options from exis­ten­tial­ism to George Eliot to Shake­speare. (Nor should you miss our com­plete list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, which includes oth­er sub­jects like phi­los­o­phy, com­put­er sci­ence, psy­chol­o­gy, physics, reli­gion and more.) And if you feel like some­thing lighter, might I sug­gest John Green’s crash course on lit­er­a­ture?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968)

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | May 2nd, 2014


Exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cian and inven­tor Bruce Haack’s com­po­si­tions expand­ed many a young con­scious­ness, and taught kids to dance, move, med­i­tate, and to be end­less­ly curi­ous about the tech­nol­o­gy of sound. All of this makes him the per­fect guest for Fred Rogers, who despite his total­ly square demeanor loved bring­ing his audi­ence unusu­al artists of all kinds. In the clips above and below from the first, 1968 sea­son of Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood, Haack intro­duces Rogers and a group of young­sters to the “musi­cal com­put­er,” a home­made ana­log syn­the­siz­er of his own invention—one of many he cre­at­ed from house­hold items, most of which inte­grat­ed human touch and move­ment into their con­trols, as you’ll see above. In both clips, Haack and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Esther Nel­son sing and play charm­ing songs as Nel­son leads them in var­i­ous move­ment exer­cis­es. (The remain­der of the sec­ond video most­ly fea­tures Mr. Roger’s cat.)

Although he’s seen a revival among elec­tron­ic musi­cians and DJs, Haack became best known in his career as a com­pos­er of children’s music, and for good rea­son. His 1962 debut kid’s record Dance, Sing & Lis­ten is an absolute clas­sic of the genre, com­bin­ing a dizzy­ing range of musi­cal styles—country, clas­si­cal, pop, medieval, and exper­i­men­tal electronic—with far-out spo­ken word from Haack and Nel­son. They fol­lowed this up with two more iter­a­tions of Dance, Sing & Lis­ten, then The Way Out Record for Chil­dren, The Elec­tron­ic Record for Chil­dren, the amaz­ing Dance to the Music, and sev­er­al more, all them weird­er and more won­der­ful than maybe any­thing you’ve ever heard. (Don’t believe me? Take a lis­ten to “Soul Trans­porta­tion,” “EIO (New Mac­Don­ald),” or the absolute­ly enchant­i­ng “Saint Basil,” with its Doors‑y organ out­ro.) A psy­che­del­ic genius, Haack also made grown-up acid rock in the form of 1970’s The Elec­tric Lucifer, which is a bit like if Andrew Lloyd Web­ber and Tim Rice had writ­ten Jesus Christ Super­star on heavy dos­es of LSD and banks of ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

While Haack­’s Mr. Rogers appear­ance may not have seemed like much at the time, in hind­sight this is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of an artist who’s been called “The King of Tech­no” for his for­ward-look­ing sounds meet­ing the cut­ting edge in children’s pro­gram­ming. It’s a tes­ta­ment to how much the coun­ter­cul­ture influ­enced ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion. Many of the pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ments of the six­ties have since become his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, replaced by insipid cor­po­rate mer­chan­dis­ing. What Haack and Nel­son’s musi­cal approach tells me is that we’d do well to revis­it the edu­ca­tion­al cli­mate of that day and take a few lessons from its freeform exper­i­men­ta­tion and open­ness. I’ll cer­tain­ly be play­ing these records for my daugh­ter.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

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

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Oxford University Press Gives You Free Access to Books, Dictionaries & More During National Library Week

in e-books, Education | April 15th, 2014

oup_logo

It’s Nation­al Library Week, and to cel­e­brate Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press is mak­ing many of its online resources free for users in the U.S. and Cana­da this week. Access will be open until the end of Sat­ur­day, the 19th. You will be able to read Oxford’s online dic­tio­nar­ies, online schol­ar­ly edi­tions, exten­sive ref­er­ence mate­ri­als, and the pop­u­lar series of Very Short Intro­duc­tions, which “offer con­cise intro­duc­tions to a diverse range of sub­ject areas from Cli­mate to Con­scious­ness, Game The­o­ry to Ancient War­fare, Pri­va­cy to Islam­ic His­to­ry, Eco­nom­ics to Lit­er­ary The­o­ry.” (To access the texts, type “library­week” as the user­name and pass­word in the Sub­scriber Login area. It appears halfway down the page, on the left.)

The open access peri­od excludes Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press schol­ar­ly jour­nals. This is unfor­tu­nate. As you prob­a­bly know, most of the research pub­lished by uni­ver­si­ty press­es resides behind pro­hib­i­tive pay­walls that make it dif­fi­cult for inde­pen­dent schol­ars and laypeo­ple to read cur­rent schol­ar­ship. It would be nice to see Oxford and oth­er press­es make such grace peri­ods more fre­quent and inclu­sive in the future. But for now, OUP’s open access week is a great way to entice non-pro­fes­sion­als into aca­d­e­m­ic schol­ar­ship and tem­porar­i­ly ease the bur­den on those with­out reg­u­lar access to their data­bas­es. Vis­it Oxford’s site and sign in with user­name and pass­word “library­week” to begin read­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

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

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Your Body During Adolescence: A Nakedly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

in Biology, Education, Film, K-12, Life | April 11th, 2014

A straight shoot­ing sex ed film from 1955? That’s hard to imag­ine. In my expe­ri­ence, the films of that peri­od tend to beat around the bush. The ret­i­cence of those shar­ing its play­ing field makes Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence (watch it online here) all the more remark­able. It does­n’t seem so at first. The first minute is devot­ed to observ­ing a group of coed, clean cut, and unsur­pris­ing­ly Cau­casian teens, pos­ing for a year­book pho­to.

The nar­ra­tor seems des­tined to soft ped­dle things, mild­ly tak­ing note of dif­fer­ences in height and weight. I freely admit that I under­es­ti­mat­ed him. The teens in whose class­rooms this work was screened may have audi­bly squirmed at the men­tion of cer­tain words, but our nar­ra­tor is undaunt­ed by penis­es, scro­ta and labia… Shout out to the edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tants, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, Dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta’s Med­ical School and Ani­ta Laton, an author and pro­fes­sor of Health and Hygiene at San Jose State. Alfred Kin­sey would’ve approved. The dia­grams are less straight­for­ward, but I kind of liked that. They look like Mid Cen­tu­ry Din­ner­ware pat­terns, which is to say, a lot sex­i­er than most of the sex organs one can find on the Inter­net. For fun and com­par­i­son, have a look at Fuzzy Bun­ny’s Guide to You Know What, the Simp­sons’ infa­mous “sex educ­ta­tion” film.

I’d say they both get it right.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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