Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books

Nobody reads books any­more. Whether or not that notion strikes you as true, you’ve prob­a­bly heard it expressed fair­ly often in recent decades — just as you might have had you lived in the Roman Empire of late antiq­ui­ty. Dur­ing that time, as ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan explains in the new Told in Stone video above, the “book trade declined with the edu­cat­ed elite that had sup­port­ed it. The copy­ing of sec­u­lar texts slowed, and final­ly ceased. The books in Roman libraries, pub­lic and pri­vate, crum­bled on their shelves. Only a small con­tin­gent of sur­vivors found their way into monas­ter­ies.” As went the read­ing cul­ture of the empire, so went the empire itself.

Some may be tempt­ed to draw par­al­lels with cer­tain coun­tries in exis­tence today. But what may be more sur­pris­ing is the extent of Roman read­ing at its height. Though only about one in ten Romans could read, Ryan explains, “the Roman elite defined them­selves by a sophis­ti­cat­ed lit­er­ary edu­ca­tion, and filled their cities with texts.”

Those includ­ed the Acta Diur­na, a kind of pro­to-news­pa­per carved into stone or met­al and dis­played in pub­lic places. But from the reign of Augus­tus onward, “the city of Rome boast­ed an impres­sive array of pub­lic libraries,” filled with texts writ­ten on papyrus scrolls, and lat­er — espe­cial­ly in the third and fourth cen­turies — on codices, whose for­mat close­ly resem­bles books as we know them today.

Rome even had taber­nae librari­ae, which we’d rec­og­nize as book­stores, whose tech­niques includ­ed paint­ing the titles of best­sellers on their exte­ri­or columns. Some of them also pub­lished the books they sold, set­ting an ear­ly exam­ple of what we’d call “ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion.” Roman read­ers of the first cen­tu­ry would all have had at least some famil­iar­i­ty with Mar­tial’s Epi­grams, but even such a big con­tem­po­rary hit would have been out­sold by a clas­sic like the Aeneid, “the one book that any fam­i­ly with a library owned.” With 99 per­cent of its lit­er­a­ture lost to us, we’re unlike­ly ever to deter­mine if, like mod­ern-day Amer­i­ca, ancient Rome was real­ly sat­u­rat­ed with less-respectable works, its own equiv­a­lents of self help, busi­ness mem­oir, and genre fic­tion. Who knows? Per­haps Rome, too, had roman­ta­sy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Was Actu­al­ly Lost When the Library of Alexan­dria Burned?

How Ancient Scrolls, Charred by the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, Are Now Being Read by Par­ti­cle Accel­er­a­tors, 3D Mod­el­ing & Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

The First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion: Read Lucian’s 2nd-Cen­tu­ry Space Trav­el­ogue A True Sto­ry

How 99% of Ancient Lit­er­a­ture Was Lost

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The 1927 Film Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

Ultra-tall high-ris­es against dark skies. A huge dis­tance between the rich and the poor. Rob­ber barons at the helm of large-scale indus­tri­al oper­a­tions that turn man into machine. Machines that have become intel­li­gent enough to dis­place man. These have all been stan­dard ele­ments of dystopi­an visions so long that few of us could man­age to imag­ine a grim future with­out includ­ing at least a cou­ple of them. We’ve all seen these ele­ments used before, and they owe much of their stay­ing pow­er to the impact they first made in Fritz Lang’s cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle Metrop­o­lis, which pre­miered 98 years ago. Many imi­ta­tions have since passed through pop­u­lar cul­ture, most of which haven’t mas­tered the tech­niques that gave the orig­i­nal its pow­er.

“Set in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia, the film por­trays a divid­ed soci­ety where the wealthy elite live in lux­u­ri­ous sky­scrap­ers while the oppressed work­ing class toil under­ground,” writes Pruethicheth Lert-udom­pruk­sa at the IAAC blog. “The film explores themes of class strug­gle, social inequal­i­ty, and the dehu­man­iz­ing effects of indus­tri­al­iza­tion.”

One of those the­me’s strongest icons is the Tow­er of Babel, a loom­ing sky­scraper that “sym­bol­izes the stark divi­sion between the priv­i­leged and the oppressed.” As Paul Bat­ters writes at the Sil­ver Screen Clas­sics blog, “like the zig­gu­rats of Ur, the pyra­mids and tem­ples of Egypt,” that build­ing and oth­er ele­ments real­ized by the film’s ground­break­ing visu­al design add up to a tit­u­lar “city that dom­i­nates human­i­ty.”

The loss of human­i­ty is the prime con­cern of the Junkies video essay at the top of the post, which explains sev­er­al ways Lang and his col­lab­o­ra­tors con­vey that phe­nom­e­non through light, shad­ow, and per­spec­tive — light, shad­ow, and per­spec­tive being the main tools avail­able to a black-and-white silent film. The One Hun­dred Years of Cin­e­ma video essay just above cov­ers more such aspects of the pic­ture’s con­struc­tion, as well as its his­tor­i­cal con­text: “In nine­teen-twen­ties Europe, a rad­i­cal form of nation­al­ism called fas­cism was com­ing to promi­nence, and six years after the film’s release, Lang found him­self exiled to Amer­i­ca for his refusal to join the Nazi par­ty.”

For quite some time, the ver­sions of Metrop­o­lis that peo­ple could see were cen­sored or oth­er­wise incom­plete cuts; only in 2008 did it under­go a com­plete restora­tion. But now, it’s eas­i­er than ever to see that its “win­ning com­bi­na­tion of cam­era shots and angles, light­ing con­trasts, and shot com­po­si­tion real­ly do well to depict human­i­ty as becom­ing sub­servient to tech­nol­o­gy. And so, per­haps today, more so than in 1927, it is eas­i­er to read the mes­sage that Lang is try­ing to por­tray through the cin­e­mat­ic devices he employs.” Watch­ing the impov­er­ished work­ers of Metrop­o­lis become part of the machine they work for, while its idle rich “become part of the machine by sub­mis­sion [to] plea­sure,” we might reflect upon the astute­ness of the choice to set the film’s sto­ry in the year 2026.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Film in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

Behold Beau­ti­ful Orig­i­nal Movie Posters for Metrop­o­lis from France, Swe­den, Ger­many, Japan & Beyond

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity

Despite its sta­tus as one of the most wide­ly known and stud­ied epic poems of all time, Home­r’s Ili­ad has proven sur­pris­ing­ly resis­tant to adap­ta­tion. How­ev­er much inspi­ra­tion it has pro­vid­ed to mod­ern-day nov­el­ists work­ing in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions, it’s trans­lat­ed some­what less pow­er­ful­ly to visu­al media. Per­haps peo­ple still watch Wolf­gang Petersen’s Troy, the very loose, Brad Pitt-star­ring cin­e­mat­ic Ili­ad adap­ta­tion from 2004. But chances are, a cen­tu­ry or two from now, human­i­ty on the whole will still be more impressed by the 52 illus­tra­tions of the Ambrosian Ili­ad, which was made in Con­stan­tino­ple or Alexan­dria around the turn of the sixth cen­tu­ry.

As not­ed at HistoryofInformation.com, “along with the Vergilius Vat­i­canus [pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture] and the Vergilius Romanus, [the Ambrosian Ili­ad] is one of only three illus­trat­ed man­u­scripts of clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture that sur­vived from antiq­ui­ty.” It’s also the only ancient man­u­script that depicts scenes from the Ili­ad. Its illus­tra­tions, which “show the names of places and char­ac­ters,” offer “an insight into ear­ly man­u­script illu­mi­na­tion.” They “show a con­sid­er­able diver­si­ty of com­po­si­tion­al schemes, from sin­gle com­bat to com­plex bat­tle scenes,” as Kurt Weitz­mann writes in Late Antique and Ear­ly Chris­t­ian Book Illu­mi­na­tion. “This indi­cates that, by that time, Ili­ad illus­tra­tion had passed through var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment and thus had a long his­to­ry behind it.”

Above, you can see the Ambrosian Ili­ad’s illus­tra­tions of the cap­ture of Dolon (top), Achilles sac­ri­fic­ing to Zeus for Patro­clus’ safe return (mid­dle), and Hec­tor killing Patro­clus as Autome­don escapes (bot­tom). You can find more scans at the War­burg Insti­tute Icono­graph­ic Data­base, along with oth­er Ili­ad-relat­ed arti­facts. Some of the lat­er artis­tic ren­di­tions of Homer in that col­lec­tion date from the fif­teenth, sev­en­teenth, eigh­teenth, and even the nine­teenth cen­turies, each inter­pret­ing these age-old poems for their own time. Indeed, the Ili­ad and Odyssey have proven endur­ing­ly res­o­nant for the bet­ter part of three mil­len­nia, and there’s no rea­son to believe that they won’t con­tin­ue to find new artis­tic forms for just as long to come. But there’s some­thing espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful about see­ing Homer ren­dered by artists who, though they may have come cen­turies and cen­turies after the blind poet him­self, knew full well what it was to live in antiq­ui­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vat­i­can Dig­i­tizes a 1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid

One of the Best Pre­served Ancient Man­u­scripts of the Ili­ad Is Now Dig­i­tized: See the “Bankes Homer” Man­u­script in High Res­o­lu­tion (Cir­ca 150 C.E.)

A Handy, Detailed Map Shows the Home­towns of Char­ac­ters in the Ili­ad

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

See the Ili­ad Per­formed as a One-Woman Show in a Mon­tre­al Bar by McGill Uni­ver­si­ty Clas­sics Pro­fes­sor Lynn Kozak

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence

For all the means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and exchange we’ve estab­lished between the cul­tures of the world, no mat­ter how dis­tant they may be from one anoth­er, we still have no tru­ly uni­ver­sal sin­gle human lan­guage. The rea­son could date back to antiq­ui­ty, when we first attempt­ed a grand col­lec­tive project: that of build­ing a tow­er that would reach the heav­ens. Deter­mined to pun­ish our effron­tery, God not only destroyed the work in progress, but ren­dered our lan­guages mutu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble in order to hin­der any fur­ther attempts to do it again. Or at least that’s how one sto­ry goes.

You may not sub­scribe to a lit­er­al read­ing of the account of the Tow­er of Babel as it appears in the Bible’s Book of Gen­e­sis, but accord­ing to the Hochela­ga video above, the struc­ture does have a fair­ly plau­si­ble basis in his­to­ry.

It could be a leg­endary ver­sion of Ete­me­nan­ki, a Mesopotami­an zig­gu­rat built to hon­or the god Mar­duk at such a scale that it inspired tall tales, as it were, spread far and wide in the ancient world, such as the rumor that its con­struc­tion required mobi­liz­ing the man­pow­er of all human­i­ty. But it real­ly did exist, as evi­denced by its ruins dis­cov­ered at the site of the ancient city of Baby­lon — which, in Hebrew, was called Babel.

A cuneiform-cov­ered tablet con­ve­nient­ly found at the same loca­tion describes a con­struc­tion project of Ete­me­nanki’s size as using mate­ri­als like bitu­men and baked brick, which aligns with bib­li­cal details of the Tow­er of Babel, as do the Greek his­to­ri­an Herodotus’s ref­er­ences to its lay­out and struc­ture. Also rel­e­vant is the Baby­lo­ni­ans’ 587 BC inva­sion of Jerusalem, which brought cap­tives to the cap­i­tal. It’s hard­ly impos­si­ble that some of those dis­placed Jews would have the loom­ing Ete­me­nan­ki in mind when they went on to write the his­to­ries that would ulti­mate­ly find their way into the Hebrew Bible. They may have had no hope of return­ing to their home­land, but they must, at least, have felt rea­son­ably cer­tain that Mar­duk’s days were num­bered.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map of All the Coun­tries Men­tioned in the Bible: What The Coun­tries Were Called Then, and Now

Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Northrop Frye Teach­es “The Bible and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture”: All 25 Lec­tures Free Online

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Appear in Medieval Chris­t­ian Art?: A Video Essay

Vis­it the Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

Years ago, back in 2016, we fea­tured a 1950 Super­man poster that urged stu­dents to defend the Amer­i­can way and fight dis­crim­i­na­tion every­where. Today, we present anoth­er chap­ter from Super­man’s lit­tle-known his­to­ry as a Civ­il Rights defend­er.

The year is 1946. World War II has come to an end. And now mem­ber­ship in the Ku Klux Klan starts to rise again. Enter Stet­son Kennedy, a human rights activist, who man­ages to infil­trate the KKK and then fig­ures out an inge­nious way to take them down. He con­tacts the pro­duc­ers of the pop­u­lar Adven­tures of Super­man radio show, and pitch­es them on a new sto­ry­line: Super­man meets and defeats the KKK. Need­ing a new ene­my to van­quish, the pro­duc­ers green­light the idea.

The 16-episode series, “The Clan of the Fiery Cross,” aired in June 1946 and effec­tive­ly chipped away at the Klan’s mys­tique, grad­u­al­ly reveal­ing their secret code­words and rit­u­als. Lis­ten to the episodes above. And take heart in know­ing this: Accord­ing to Stephen J. Dub­n­er and Steven Levitt, the authors of Freako­nom­icsThe Clan of the Fiery Cross was “the great­est sin­gle con­trib­u­tor to the weak­en­ing of the Ku Klux Klan.” Mocked and triv­i­al­ized, the Klan’s num­bers went back into decline.

For more infor­ma­tion on this chap­ter in super­hero his­to­ry, read the well-reviewed YA book, Super­man Ver­sus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Sto­ry of How the Icon­ic Super­hero Bat­tled the Men of Hate. Also find more infor­ma­tion on these episodes at the Super­man Home­page.

To hear more orig­i­nal Super­man radio shows, head over to Archive.org.

Note: There is a lit­tle bit of a con­tro­ver­sy about the exact role Stet­son Kennedy played in infil­trat­ing the Klan. You can read up on that here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

1950 Super­man Poster Urged Kids to Defend All Amer­i­cans, Regard­less of Their Race, Reli­gion or Nation­al Ori­gin

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

75 Years of Super­man in 2 Min­utes

Nine Clas­sic Super­man Car­toons Restored and Now on YouTube

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An Introduction to Tseng Kwong Chi

Once, the Unit­ed States was known for send­ing forth the world’s most com­plained-about inter­na­tion­al tourists; today, that dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion arguably belongs to Chi­na. But it was­n’t so long ago that the Chi­nese tourist was a prac­ti­cal­ly unheard-of phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly in the West. That’s an impor­tant con­tex­tu­al ele­ment to under­stand when con­sid­er­ing the work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tseng Kwong Chi, who trav­eled around Amer­i­ca tak­ing pic­tures of him­self at var­i­ous rec­og­niz­able mon­u­ments and land­marks while wear­ing a suit most com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Chair­man Mao. The fig­ure that emerged from this project is the sub­ject of the new Nerd­writer video above.

“He called this char­ac­ter ‘an ambigu­ous ambas­sador,’ and, in a series he called ‘East Meets West,’ posed him — posed him­self — in front of var­i­ous icons of touris­tic Amer­i­ca,” writes Bri­an Dil­lon in New York­er piece on Tsen­g’s work. “He leaps into the air in front of the Brook­lyn Bridge, stands impas­sive beside Mick­ey Mouse at Dis­ney­land, gazes off into the dis­tance with Nia­gara Falls behind him.”

Inspired by Richard Nixon’s 1972 vis­it to Chi­na and Deng Xiaop­ing’s 1979 vis­it to the U.S., Tseng pro­duced most of these pho­tos in the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies, and even “took the ambigu­ous ambas­sador to Europe, where he appears hero­ic before the Arc de Tri­om­phe, and diminu­tive between two police­men at the Tow­er of Lon­don.”

Born in British Hong Kong, then par­tial­ly raised in Cana­da and edu­cat­ed in Paris, Tseng arrived in New York in 1979, ready to join the down­town scene that includ­ed Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ann Mag­nu­son, Cindy Sher­man, and Kei­th Har­ing. It’s for his doc­u­men­ta­tion of Har­ing’s work, in fact, that he remains most wide­ly known, 35 years after his own AIDS-relat­ed death. But now, as tak­ing pic­tures of one­self in famous places around the world becomes an increas­ing­ly uni­ver­sal prac­tice, “East Meets West” draws more and more atten­tion. Maybe, in an art world where cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty is so fierce­ly declared and defend­ed, the very ambi­gu­i­ty of the ambas­sador por­trayed by Tseng — who, as Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak empha­sizes, “did­n’t want to be known as a Chi­nese artist, or an Asian-Amer­i­can artist, or a gay artist; he just want­ed to be an artist” — has become that much more com­pelling.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Icon­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of Gor­don Parks: An Intro­duc­tion to the Renais­sance Amer­i­can Artist

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

How Dorothea Lange Shot Migrant Moth­er Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Activist Graf­fi­ti Art of Kei­th Har­ing: A Video Essay

The Pho­to That Trig­gered China’s Dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (1966)

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham (RIP) on Liv­ing La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis (1942)

Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, the Luther­an pas­tor Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer took to the air­waves. Before his radio broad­cast was cut off, he warned his coun­try­men that their führer could well be a ver­führer, or mis­leader. Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s anti-Nazism last­ed until the end of his life in 1945, when he was exe­cut­ed by the regime for asso­ci­a­tion with the 20 July plot to assas­si­nate Hitler. Even while impris­oned, he kept think­ing about the ori­gins of the polit­i­cal mania that had over­tak­en Ger­many. The force of cen­tral impor­tance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he con­clud­ed, but stu­pid­i­ty.

“Stu­pid­i­ty is a more dan­ger­ous ene­my of the good than mal­ice,” Bon­ho­ef­fer wrote in a let­ter to his co-con­spir­a­tors on the tenth anniver­sary of Hitler’s acces­sion to the chan­cel­lor­ship. “One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, pre­vent­ed by use of force. Evil always car­ries with­in itself the germ of its own sub­ver­sion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stu­pid­i­ty we are defense­less.” When pro­voked, “the stu­pid per­son, in con­trast to the mali­cious one, is utter­ly self-sat­is­fied and, being eas­i­ly irri­tat­ed, becomes dan­ger­ous by going on the attack.”

Fight­ing stu­pid­i­ty, to Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s mind, first neces­si­tates under­stand­ing it. “In essence not an intel­lec­tu­al defect but a human one,” stu­pid­i­ty can descend upon prac­ti­cal­ly any­one: “under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, peo­ple are made stu­pid or that they allow this to hap­pen to them.” And it hap­pens most notice­ably when a par­tic­u­lar fig­ure or move­ment seizes the atten­tion of the pub­lic. “Every strong upsurge of pow­er in the pub­lic sphere, be it of a polit­i­cal or of a reli­gious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stu­pid­i­ty,” he writes. Since such phe­nom­e­na could hard­ly arise with­out blind­ly obe­di­ent mass­es, it seems that “the pow­er of the one needs the stu­pid­i­ty of the oth­er.”

You can see Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s the­o­ry of stu­pid­i­ty explained in the illus­trat­ed Sprouts video above, and you can learn more about the man him­self from the doc­u­men­tary Bon­ho­ef­fer. Or, bet­ter yet, read his col­lec­tion, Let­ters and Papers from Prison. Though root­ed in his time, cul­ture, and reli­gion, his thought remains rel­e­vant wher­ev­er humans fol­low the crowd. “The fact that the stu­pid per­son is often stub­born must not blind us to the fact that he is not inde­pen­dent,” he writes, which held as true in the pub­lic squares of wartime Europe as it does on the social-media plat­forms of today. “In con­ver­sa­tion with him, one vir­tu­al­ly feels that one is deal­ing not at all with a per­son, but with slo­gans, catch­words and the like, that have tak­en pos­ses­sion of him.” What­ev­er would sur­prise Bon­ho­ef­fer about our time, he would know exact­ly what we mean when we call stu­pid peo­ple “tools.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

When The Twilight Zone Imagined Fascism in America in a 1963 Episode Starring Dennis Hopper

Watch through The Twi­light Zone, and you’ll find your­self spot­ting no end of famil­iar faces: Julie New­mar, Burt Reynolds, Robert Red­ford, Eliz­a­beth Mont­gomery, William Shat­ner, even Buster Keaton. The 1963 episode “He’s Alive” is at least dou­bly notable in that respect, fea­tur­ing as it does a young (but in act­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, almost ful­ly formed) Den­nis Hop­per as Peter Vollmer, a ne’er-do-well made into an aspir­ing dic­ta­tor by none oth­er than Adolf Hitler. Played by Curt Con­way, a spe­cial­ist in doc­tors, judges, and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures, the undead Führer offers his young dis­ci­ple instruc­tions like the above, from an ear­ly scene before his iden­ti­ty is revealed.

“How do you move a mob, Mr. Vollmer? How do you excite them? How do you make them feel as one with you?” Hitler asks. The answer, which he then pro­vides, is first to join them: “When you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a mem­ber of the mob. Speak to them in their lan­guage, on their lev­el. Make their hate your hate. If they are poor, talk to them of pover­ty. If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears. And if they are angry, Mr. Vollmer… if they are angry, give them objects for their anger. But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, Mr. Vollmer, is that you make this mob an exten­sion of your­self.”

If accused of scape­goat­ing minori­ties, he should address the throng thus: “Should I tell you who are the minori­ties? Should I tell you? We! We are the minori­ties.” Soon, we see Peter in full neo-Nazi gear deliv­er­ing just such a harangue, thor­ough­ly Hop­per-ized in dic­tion, to a mod­est­ly attend­ed ral­ly. How could these ordi­nary-look­ing atten­dees be a minor­i­ty? “Because patri­o­tism is a minor­i­ty. Because love of coun­try is the minor­i­ty. Because to live in a free, white Amer­i­ca seems to be of a minor­i­ty opin­ion!” Though hard­ly art­ful, this rhetoric even­tu­al­ly makes him into a pop­u­lar fig­ure, albeit one whose rise is cut short when he turns to con­spir­a­cy to accel­er­ate his rise to pow­er.

And what of the spir­it of Hitler? “Where will he go next, this phan­tom from anoth­er time, this res­ur­rect­ed ghost of a pre­vi­ous night­mare?” Twi­light Zone cre­ator Rod Ser­ling asks in his episode-clos­ing mono­logue. “Any place, every place where there’s hate, where there’s prej­u­dice, where there’s big­otry.” It was against such broad social phe­nom­e­na that Ser­ling so often used his scripts to argue, and with “He’s Alive,” he made use of an unusu­al­ly vivid ide­o­log­i­cal exam­ple. A vet­er­an of the Sec­ond World War, which had end­ed less than twen­ty years ear­li­er, Ser­ling sure­ly had even fresh­er mem­o­ries of the threat of Hitler than did the gen­er­al Amer­i­can pub­lic — and under­stood even more clear­ly what could hap­pen if those mem­o­ries were to fade away.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Rod Ser­ling Turned TV Pitch­man: See His Post-Twi­light Zone Ads for Ford, Maz­da, Gulf Oil & Smokey Bear

When 20,000 Amer­i­cans Held a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

More in this category... »
Quantcast