From the December 6, 1938 issue of LOOK magazine comes this vintage “infographic” showing “The Wonders Within Your Head.” It takes the human brain/head and presents it as a series of rooms, each carrying out a different function. Drawn a little more than a decade after Calvin Coolidge famously declared “The business of America is business,” it’s not surprising that the cognitive functions are depicted in corporate or industrial terms.
Besides for this visualization, the same edition of LOOK featured articles on Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, President Roosevelt, and the Tragedy of the European Jews. Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” had taken place a month before in Nazi Germany — another sign that the world was about to become a very, very dark place.
While the print magazine industry as a whole has seen better days, publications dedicated to women’s fashion still go surprisingly strong. Perhaps as a result, they’ve continued to attract criticism, not least for their highly specific, often highly altered visions of the supposedly ideal body image emblazoned across their covers. One critic called it an “overbred, exhausted, even decadent style of beauty,” with nearly all of the women on display “immensely elongated” with narrow hips and “slender, non-prehensile hands like those of a lizard.”
This hardly counts as a recent phenomenon; that particular criticism comes from 1946, the critic none other than Animal Farm and 1984author George Orwell. He lodged his complaint against an “American fashion magazine which shall be nameless” in his “As I Please” column for the British Tribune. The New Republic, which subsequently ran Orwell’s broadside stateside, re-published it on their web site last year. On the magazine’s cover Orwell sees a photograph of “the usual elegant female, standing on a chair while a gray-haired, spectacled, crushed-looking man in shirtsleeves kneels at her feet” — a tailor about to take a measurement. “But to a casual glance he looks as though he were kissing the hem of the woman’s garment—not a bad symbolical picture of American civilization.”
But this wouldn’t count as an Orwellian indictment of the state of Western society without a harsh assessment of the language used, and the author of “Politics and the English Language” doesn’t neglect to make one here. In the fashion magazine Orwell finds “an extraordinary mixture of sheer lushness with clipped and sometimes very expensive technical jargon. Words like suave-mannered, custom-finished, contour-conforming, mitt-back, inner-sole, backdip, midriff, swoosh, swash, curvaceous, slenderize and pet-smooth are flung about with evident full expectation that the reader will understand them at a glance. Here are a few sample sentences taken at random”:
“A new Shimmer Sheen color that sets your hands and his head in a whirl.” “Bared and beautifully bosomy.” “Feathery-light Milliken Fleece to keep her kitten-snug!” “Others see you through a veil of sheer beauty, and they wonder why!” “An exclamation point of a dress that depends on fluid fabric for much of its drama.” “The miracle of figure flattery!” “Molds your bosom into proud feminine lines.” “Isn’t it wonderful to know that Corsets wash and wear and whittle you down… even though they weigh only four ounces!” “The distilled witchery of one woman who was forever desirable… forever beloved… Forever Amber.” And so on and so on and so on.
From what I can tell by the fashion magazines of 2015 my girlfriend leaves around the house, while the specific terminology might have changed, the brand-strewn overall wordscape of meaninglessness and obscurantism remains. Orwell surely didn’t foresee that lamentable linguistic and aesthetic situation changing any time soon — though it might surprise him that, despite it all, American civilization itself, in its characteristically unsleek, inelegant, and provisional way, has continued lumbering on.
Perform an internet search on the phrase “David Bowie Paper Doll” and what do you get? Hint: it’s not a cover of the Mills Brothers hit. David Bowie paper dolls are proliferating in astonishing numbers.
Elusive designer Vodka Caramel’s Amazing 70’s Bowie Paper Doll celebrates some of our hero’s most glamorous looks, but saddles him with the crotch of a Ken doll and no fewer than four interchangeable heads! And we thought the Thin White Paper Doll’s crew socks were an indignity.
A Spanish fan observed Bowie’s 65th birthday by updating the abbreviated tighty whities of a notorious 1973 photo shoot to a modest pair of standard issue Y‑fronts. Interestingly, this paper doll’s suspendered Halloween Jack suit arrives with bulge intact.
Points to Serge Baeken above for recognizing the paper doll possibilities in the Pierrot costume Bowie sported in the video for 1980’s “Ashes to Ashes.” (Fun fact: Bowie made his theatrical debut—and wrote the music for—a bizarre 1968 pantomime about Pierrot.… His character’s name was “Cloud”)
Artist Claudia Varosio’s entry in the Bowie paper doll stakes could pass as illustrations for a 1970’s children’s book. Title? Boys Keep Swinging, after a cut from Bowie’s 1979 Lodger album. Chaste young girls would love the t‑shirted, non-threatening Bowie.
The comparatively conservative, full-faced Bowie above comes to us via Swedish family magazine Året Runt. I may never learn another word of Swedish, but thanks to David Bowie, I can now say paper doll (klippdockor). In appreciation, allow me to share another example of David Bowie klippdockor…
If it all starts seeming a bit rote, mix things up by having artist Mel Elliot’s paper doll Bowie swap duds with fellow pop star / style icon paper dolls, Beyonce, Debbie Harry, and Rihanna.
Humorist James Thurber never tired of subjecting puny male milquetoasts to powerful female bullies.
In his view, members of the fairer sex were never femme fatales or fussy matrons, but rather battle-loving warriors in simple Wilma Flintstone-esque frocks. They are immune to the traditionally feminine concerns of the period—hair, children, the living room drapes… they get their pleasure dominating Walter Mitty and his ilk.
(Was he terrified of Woman? Resentful of her? The story he stuck to was that he’d conceived of his comic portrayal for the sole purpose of “egging her on.”)
There is one memorable instance where the little guy was allowed to come out on top. “The Unicorn in the Garden” is a story first published in The New Yorker on October 31, 1939. No spoilers, but there’s a close resemblance to Harvey, Mary Chase’s much-produced play about a mild-mannered gent whose devotion to a 6’ tall invisible rabbit drives his domineering sister around the bend.
The 1953 cartoon adaptation above brought Thurber’s drawings to life, whilst preserving the dialogue of the original in its entirety. The original story was published with only a single illustration, but director William T. Hurtz’s had hundreds of New Yorker cartoons to draw upon. Legend has it that Hurtz purposefully assigned some of United Productions of America’s least gifted animators to the project, hoping to duplicate Thurber’s ”nice, lumpy look.” The plan was for “The Unicorn in the Garden” to be part of a full-length Thurber feature,but alas, the studio pulled the plug on Men, Women and Dogs before it could be completed. Moral: Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.
I can well remember the first time I read Mad Magazine. I was probably around Bart Simpson’s age, but nowhere near his degree of wiseass-ness. I found the humor of the adult world mostly mystifying and also pretty tame, given my rather sheltered existence. It was my discovery of Mad—stacks and stacks of old Mads, to be precise, in the rec room of a family acquaintance—that cracked the shell, one of those formative loss-of-innocence moments that are ultimately edifying. At the time, I couldn’t tell sophisticated satire from puerile parody, and the average issue of Mad was no Gulliver’s Travels. Nonetheless, its gleeful skewering of the American civil religion of politics, celebrity, professional sports, commerce, and middle class comfort hooked me instantly, and taught me about the value of freethought before I’d ever heard the name Jonathan Swift.
Founded as a comic book by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952, Mad and its gap-toothed mascot Alfred E. Newman (still active today!) pioneered populist satire and inspired many lesser imitators. One distinctive feature of the magazine for almost its entire existence was its ability to run without advertising, allowing it to tear apart materialist culture without fear of biting the hands that fed it. Instead, for decades, the magazine ran fake spoof ads like those you see here. At the top, for example, see a 1963 ad for the “1963 ¾ Edsel,” an update of the “1963 ½ models—which made all ’63 models obsolete.” The text goes on to state frankly, “we’re taking the first steps toward “Planned Monthly Obsolescence—when every car owner will be shamed into trading in his old June ’64 car for a brand new shiny July ’64 model.” Apple, take note.
In the 1960 spoof ad above, military culture gets a send-up with “Aspire Boot-Lick Polish,” made for “The Man in Command: Pompous… Pig-headed… Pathological.” The flavored boot polish—“licorice, caviar, chocolate, caramel, molasses, borscht, halavah, and Moxie in a base of chicken fat”—is said to make “boot-licking a little more tasty when you gotta do it.” A clever inset links the U.S. chain of command with previous empires, showing a cartoon European naval officer of centuries past getting his boots licked by a subordinate sailor.
Just above, the disturbing 1969 fake ad for “Cemetery Filler Cigarettes” predates the tobacco trials of the 1990s by decades. Long promoted for their health benefits, calming effects, sophistication, and taste—as in that memorable first episode of Mad Men—cigarettes are exposed for the mass killers they are by none other than “Adolph Hitler”. (Another 1970 fake ad for “Winsom Cigarettes” uses an actual cemetery to similar effect.)
While cigarette companies were a frequent target of Mad’s fake ads, just as often they took on the inanity of the entire ad industry itself, as in the above 1965 meta-ad for “Let’s Kill Off Ridiculous Ad Campaigns.” The text reads, “If you advertisers have to blow your own horns, why tie your products to unrelated activities? Mainly, what’s eating a Breakfast Cereal got to do with playing a musical instrument? Boy… we just can’t swallow that!” Another regular feature was “Mad’s Great Moments in Advertising,” a kind of highlight blooper reel of ads gone wrong. The example below, also from 1965, spoofs the promises of cleaning product ads to make the lives of housewives easier with a product that works just a little too well.
A quick note: Nature announced yesterday that it will make all of its articles free to view, read, and annotate online. That applies to the historic science journal (launched in 1869) and to 48 other scientific journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Other titles include Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics.
All research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a proprietary screen-view format that can be annotated but not copied, printed or downloaded… The content-sharing policy … marks an attempt to let scientists freely read and share articles while preserving NPG’s primary source of income — the subscription fees libraries and individuals pay to gain access to articles.
But wait, there are a few more caveats. The archives will be made available to subscribers (e.g., researchers at universities) as well as 100 media outlets and blogs, and they can then share the articles (as read-only PDFs) with the rest of the world. This is all part of a one-year experiment.
If you have managed to keep your attention span intact during this distracting information age, then you’re almost certainly familiar with Longform.org, a web site that makes it easy to find something great to read online, especially if you like reading informative, well-crafted works of non-fiction. Last week, Longform enhanced its service with the release of a new, free app for iPhone and iPad. It’s the “only 100% free app that filters out the internet junk and delivers nothing but smart, in-depth reads.” And, drawing on material from 1,000 publishers, the app lets readers “create their own custom feeds of high quality, feature-length journalism,” and then read it all on the go. It’s a mission that certainly aligns with ours, so we’re more than happy to give the new app a plug.
Sign up for our daily email and, once a day, we’ll bundle all of our daily posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read format. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!
Founded by William Phillips and Philip Rahv in February of 1934, leftist arts and politics magazine Partisan Review came about initially as an alternative to the American Communist Party’s publication, New Masses. While Partisan Review (PR) published many a Marxist writer, its politics diverged sharply from communism with the rise of Stalin. Perhaps this turn ensured the magazine’s almost 70-year run from ’34 to 2003, while New Masses folded in 1948. Partisan Review nonetheless remained a venue for some very heated political conversations (see more on which below), yet it has equally, if not more so, been known as one of the foremost literary journals of the 20th century.
PR first published James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” in Summer 1957 and two of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets in 1940, for example, as well as Delmore Schwartz’s brilliant story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” in a 1937 issue that also featured Wallace Stevens, Edmund Wilson, Pablo Picasso (writing on Franco), James Agee, and Mary McCarthy. “More a literary event,” writes Robin Hemley at The Believer, “than a literary magazine,” even issues sixty or more years old can still carry “the punch of revelation.”
Now you can assess the impact of that punch by accessing all 70-years’ worth of issues online at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. BU began hosting the magazine in 1978 after it moved from Rutgers, where founding editor William Phillips taught. Now the university has finished digitizing the entire collection, in handsome scans of vintage copies that readers can page through like an actual magazine. The collection is searchable, though this function is a little clunky (all links here direct you to the front cover of the issue. You’ll have to navigate to the actual pages yourself.)
In a post on the Gotlieb Center project, Hyperallergic points us toward a few more highlights:
In art, Partisan Review is perhaps best known as the publisher of Clement Greenberg, who contributed over 30 articles from 1939 to 1981, most notably his Summer 1939 essay entitled “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” (Greenberg even made a posthumous appearance in the Spring 1999 issue.) Beyond Greenberg’s voluble legacy we encounter such landmark texts as Dwight Macdonald’s “Masscult and Midcult,” from the Spring 1960 issue, and Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” from Winter 1964, as well as the seminal popular-culture criticism of Robert Warshow (his essay on the Krazy Kat comic strip in the November-December 1946 issue is especially great) and the work of Hilton Kramer, the conservative iconoclast who went on to found The New Criterion.
Partisan Review also served as an outlet for George Orwell, who lambasted leftist pacifists—calling them, more or less, fascist sympathizers—in his series of articles between January 1941 and the summer of 1946, which he called “London Letters.” Orwell did not hesitate to name names; he also reported in 1945 of the “most enormous crimes and disasters” committed by the Soviets, including “purges, deportations, massacres, famines, imprisonment without trial, aggressive wars, broken treaties….” These things, Orwell remarked “not only fail to excite the big public, but can actually escape notice altogether.”
Partisan Review, however, was not aimed at “the big public.” Its “rarified principles,” writes Sam Tanenhaus of Slate—who calls PR “Trotskyist” for its interventionist boosterism—“attracted only 15,000 subscribers at its peak.”PR began in the age of the “little magazine,” a “term of honor” for the small journals that nurtured the high culture of their day, and which seem now so antiquated even as beleaguered publishers keep pushing them out to preciously small cliques of devoted readers. But charges of elitism can ring hollow, and given all we have to thank “little magazines” like Partisan Review for, it would probably behoove to pay attention to their successors. Enter the archive here.
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