Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational Film

in Education, Science, Television | March 13th, 2025

Pro­duced between 1956 and 1964 by AT&T, the Bell Tele­phone Sci­ence Hour TV spe­cials antic­i­pate the lit­er­ary zani­ness of The Mup­pet Show and the sci­en­tif­ic enthu­si­asm of Cos­mos. The “ship of the imag­i­na­tion” in Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos reboot may in fact owe some­thing to the episode above, one of nine, direct­ed by none oth­er than It’s A Won­der­ful Life’s Frank Capra. “Strap on your wits and hop on your mag­ic car­pet,” begins the spe­cial, “You’ve got one, you know: Your imag­i­na­tion.” As a guide for our imag­i­na­tion, The Strange Case of the Cos­mic Rays enlists the humanities—specifically three pup­pets rep­re­sent­ing Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dick­ens, and, some­what incon­gru­ous­ly for its detec­tive theme, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, who plays the foil as an incu­ri­ous spoil­sport. The show’s host, Frank Bax­ter (“Dr. Research”) was actu­al­ly a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at UCLA and appears here with Richard Carl­son, explain­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts with con­fi­dence.

The one-hour films became very pop­u­lar as tools of sci­ence edu­ca­tion, but there are good reasons—other than their dat­ed­ness or Dr. Baxter’s expertise—to approach them crit­i­cal­ly. At times, the degree of spec­u­la­tion indulged by Bax­ter and the writ­ers strains creduli­ty. For exam­ple, writes Geoff Alexan­der in Aca­d­e­m­ic Films for the Class­room: A His­to­ry, 1958’s The Unchained God­dess (above) “intro­duces the view­er to bizarre con­cepts such as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ‘steer­ing’ hur­ri­canes away from land by cre­at­ing bio-haz­ards such as ocean borne oil-slicks and intro­duc­ing oil-based ocean fires.” These grim, fos­sil fuel indus­try-friend­ly sce­nar­ios nonethe­less open­ly acknowl­edged the pos­si­bil­i­ty of man-made cli­mate change and looked for­ward to solar ener­gy.

Along with some dystopi­an weird­ness, the series also con­tains a good deal of explic­it Chris­t­ian pros­e­ly­tiz­ing, thanks to Capra. As a con­di­tion for tak­ing the job, “the renowned direc­tor would be allowed to embed reli­gious mes­sages in the films.” As Capra him­self said to AT&T pres­i­dent Cleo F. Craig:

If I make a sci­ence film, I will have to say that sci­en­tif­ic research is just anoth­er expres­sion of the Holy Spir­it… I will say that sci­ence, in essence, is just anoth­er facet of man’s quest for God.

At times, writes Alexan­der, “the reli­gious per­spec­tive is tak­en to extremes,” as in the first episode, Our Mr. Sun, which begins with a quo­ta­tion from Psalms and admon­ish­es “view­ers who would dare to ques­tion the causal rela­tion­ship between solar ener­gy and the divin­i­ty.” The Unchained God­dess, above, is the fourth in the series, and Capra’s last.

After­ward, a direc­tor named Owen Crump took over duties on the next four episodes. His films, writes Alexan­der, “did not overt­ly pros­e­ly­tize” and “relied less on ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters inter­act­ing with Dr. Bax­ter.” (Watch the Crump-direct­ed Gate­ways to the Mind above, a more sober-mind­ed, yet still strange­ly off-kil­ter, inquiry into the five sens­es.) The last film, The Rest­less Sea was pro­duced by Walt Dis­ney and direct­ed by Les Clark, and starred Dis­ney him­self and Bax­ter’s replace­ment, Ster­ling Hol­loway.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oscar-Win­ning Direc­tor Frank Capra Made an Edu­ca­tion­al Sci­ence Film Warn­ing of Cli­mate Change in 1958

The Great­est Shot in Tele­vi­sion: Sci­ence His­to­ri­an James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene … and Nailed It

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

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

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Where The Simpsons Began: Discover the Original Shorts That Appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–1989)

in Animation, Comedy, Television | March 3rd, 2025

When it first went on air in the late nine­teen-eight­ies, Fox had to prove itself capa­ble of play­ing in a tele­vi­su­al league with the likes of NBC, CBS, and ABC. To that end, it began build­ing its prime-time line­up with two orig­i­nal pro­grams more the­mat­i­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly dar­ing than any­thing on those staid net­works: the sit­com Mar­ried… with Chil­dren and the sketch com­e­dy series The Tracey Ull­man Show. Before and after com­mer­cial breaks, the lat­ter treat­ed its ear­ly view­ers to a series of irrev­er­ent ani­mat­ed shorts cre­at­ed by an acclaimed car­toon­ist and fea­tur­ing the vocal tal­ents of Dan Castel­lan­e­ta, Julie Kavn­er, and Nan­cy Cartwright. I speak, of course, of Dr. N!Godatu.

On an alter­nate time­line, per­haps the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al adven­tures of that near-unflap­pable psy­chother­a­pist were spun off into their own hit series that broke every record for prime-time ani­ma­tion and is now in its 36th sea­son.

Here in our real­i­ty, how­ev­er, that’s been the des­tiny of The Simp­sons, which also began as The Tracey Ull­man Show’s bumper enter­tain­ment. Dr. N!Godatu van­ished after a few weeks, nev­er to be seen again, but the Simp­son fam­i­ly remained for two full years, mak­ing their final short-from appear­ance in May of 1989. Sev­en months lat­er, The Simp­sons made its Christ­mas-spe­cial debut — an event that, if you don’t remem­ber watch­ing, I can’t count you as a mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion.

Not that, giv­en my young age, I’d ever actu­al­ly seen The Tracey Ull­man Show at the time. But the hard pro­mo­tion­al push lead­ing up to that first real Simp­sons offered glimpses into an ani­mat­ed world that looked and felt com­plete­ly nov­el. (Hav­ing grown accus­tomed over gen­er­a­tions to the show’s aes­thet­ic, we eas­i­ly for­get how bizarre its yel­low-skinned, uni­ver­sal­ly over­bite-afflict­ed char­ac­ters once looked.) Many who tuned in would­n’t have been aware that that look and feel had­n’t been cre­at­ed out of whole cloth, but rather had emerged through the evo­lu­tion­ary process you can wit­ness in the 48 orig­i­nal Simp­sons shorts col­lect­ed in the Youtube playlist at the top of the post (and the hour-long con­sol­i­dat­ed video here).

To even a casu­al Simp­sons view­er, every­thing in these shorts will seem at once famil­iar and “off” in myr­i­ad ways. The design of the char­ac­ters looks both harsh­er and loos­er than it would lat­er become, and cer­tain of their voic­es, espe­cial­ly Castel­lan­e­ta’s Wal­ter Matthau-esque Homer, have yet to reflect the per­son­al­i­ties they would lat­er devel­op. The con­ven­tion­al­ly “car­toony” ani­ma­tion also dis­torts bod­ies and faces in ways that have long since been pro­hib­it­ed by the show’s offi­cial style guide­lines. Even so, there are occa­sion­al jokes and even haunt­ing moments of the kind we know from the first cou­ple of sea­sons, if noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar to fore­shad­ow The Simp­sons’ nine­teen-nineties gold­en age — or the three decades’ worth of episodes that have fol­lowed it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of The Simp­sons: An In-Depth Video Essay Explores What Made the Show Great, and When It All Came to an End

Before The Simp­sons: Homer Groen­ing Directs a 1969 Short Film, The Sto­ry, Star­ring His Kids Mag­gie, Lisa & Matt

27 Movies Ref­er­ences in The Simp­sons Put Side-by-Side with the Movie Scenes They Paid Trib­ute To

Before The Simp­sons, Matt Groen­ing Illus­trat­ed a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Com­put­ers (1989)

The Simp­sons Reimag­ined as a Russ­ian Art Film

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

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.

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A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of Saturday Night Live’s Iconic Studio

in Comedy, Television | February 21st, 2025

To help cel­e­brate SNL’s 50th anniver­sary, Archi­tec­tur­al Digest has released a new video fea­tur­ing Hei­di Gard­ner, Chloe Fine­man, and Ego Nwodim giv­ing a tour of the Sat­ur­day Night Live set. The show has been broad­cast­ing live from Stu­dio 8H, locat­ed at 30 Rock­e­feller, since SNL first pre­miered in 1975. In this 22-minute tour, you’ll vis­it Stu­dio 8H itself, the Make­up Lab, the wardrobe and hair sta­tions, the dress­ing rooms, and the NBC Page Desk, all while meet­ing some of the crew that makes the show run behind the scenes. Enjoy!

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 

Watch the His­toric First Episode of Sat­ur­day Night Live with Host George Car­lin (1975)

Inside SNL: Al Franken Reveals How Sat­ur­day Night Live Is Craft­ed Every Week

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Every­thing You Need to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Sea­son of the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show

 

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When William S. Burroughs Appeared on Saturday Night Live: His First TV Appearance (1981)

in Comedy, Literature, Television | February 17th, 2025

Though he nev­er said so direct­ly, we might expect that Sit­u­a­tion­ist Guy Debord would have includ­ed Sat­ur­day Night Live in what he called the “Spec­ta­cle”—the mass media pre­sen­ta­tion of a total­iz­ing real­i­ty, “the rul­ing order’s non­stop dis­course about itself, its nev­er-end­ing mono­logue of self-praise.” The slick­ness of TV, even live com­e­dy TV, masks care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed maneu­vers on the part of its cre­ators and adver­tis­ers. In Debor­d’s analy­sis, noth­ing is exempt­ed from the spec­ta­cle’s con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er; it co-opts every­thing for its pur­pos­es. Even seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions with­in the spectacle—the skew­er­ing of polit­i­cal fig­ures, for exam­ple, to their seem­ing displeasure—serve the pur­pos­es of pow­er: The spec­ta­cle, wrote Debord, “is the oppo­site of dia­logue.”

So I won­der, what he might have made of the appear­ance of cult writer and Beat pio­neer William S. Bur­roughs on the com­e­dy show in 1981? Was Burroughs—a mas­ter­mind of the counterculture—co-opted by the pow­ers that be? The author of Junkie, Naked Lunch, and Cities of the Red Night also appeared in a Nike ad and sev­er­al films and music videos, becom­ing a “pres­ence in Amer­i­can pop cul­ture,” writes R.U. Sir­ius in Every­body Must Get Stoned.

David Seed notes that Bur­roughs “is remem­bered by many mem­bers of the intel­li­gentsia and glit­terati as din­ner part­ner for the likes of Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Mick Jag­ger,” though he had “been a mod­el for the polit­i­cal and social left.” Had he been neutered by the 80s, his out­ra­geous­ly anar­chist sen­ti­ments turned to rad­i­cal kitsch?

Or maybe Bur­roughs dis­rupt­ed the spec­ta­cle, his dron­ing, monot­o­nous deliv­ery giv­ing view­ers of SNL exact­ly the oppo­site of what they were trained to expect. The appear­ance was his widest expo­sure to date (imme­di­ate­ly after­ward, he moved from New York to Lawrence, Kansas). One of the show’s writ­ers con­vinced pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol to put Bur­roughs on. In rehearsal, writes Bur­roughs’ biog­ra­ph­er Ted Mor­gan, Eber­sol “found Bur­roughs ‘bor­ing and dread­ful,’ and ordered that his time slot be cut from six to three and a half min­utes. The writ­ers, how­ev­er, con­spired to let his per­for­mance stand as it was, and on Novem­ber 7, he kicked off the show sit­ting behind a desk, the light­ing giv­ing his face a sepul­chral gaunt­ness.”

In the grainy video above, Bur­roughs reads from Naked Lunch and cut-up nov­el Nova Express, bring­ing the sadis­tic Dr. Ben­way into Amer­i­ca’s liv­ing rooms, as the audi­ence laughs ner­vous­ly. Sound effects of bombs and strains of the nation­al anthem play behind him as he reads. It stands as per­haps one of the strangest moments in live tele­vi­sion. “Bur­roughs had posi­tioned him­self as the Great Out­sider,” writes Mor­gan, “but on the night of Novem­ber 7 he had reached the posi­tion where the actress Lau­ren Hut­ton could intro­duce him to an audi­ence of 100 mil­lion view­ers as Amer­i­ca’s great­est liv­ing writer.” I’m sure Bur­roughs got a kick out of the descrip­tion. In any case, the clip shows us a SNL of bygone days that occa­sion­al­ly dis­rupt­ed the usu­al state of pro­gram­ming, as when it had punk band Fear on the show.

Per­haps Bur­roughs’ com­mer­cial appear­ances also show us how the coun­ter­cul­ture gets co-opt­ed and repack­aged for mid­dle-class tastes. Then again, one of the great ironies of Bur­roughs’ life is that he both began and end­ed it as “a true mem­ber of the mid­west­ern tax-pay­ing mid­dle class.” The fol­low­ing year in Lawrence, Kansas, he “caught up on his cor­re­spon­dence.” One stu­dent in Mon­tre­al wrote, imag­in­ing him in “a male whore­house in Tang­i­er.” Bur­roughs replied, “No… I live in a small house on a tree-lined street in Lawrence, Kansas, with my beloved cat Rus­ki. My hob­bies are hunt­ing, fish­ing, and pis­tol prac­tice.” Did Bur­roughs, who spent his life destroy­ing mass cul­ture with cut-ups and curs­es, sell out—as he once accused Tru­man Capote of doing—by becom­ing a celebri­ty?

Per­haps we should let him answer the charge. In answer to a fan from Eng­land who called him “God,” Bur­roughs wrote, “You got me wrong, Ray­mond, I am but a hum­ble prac­ti­tion­er of the scriven­er’s trade. God? Not me. I don’t have the qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Old Sarge told me years ago: ‘Don’t be a vol­un­teer, kid.’ God is always try­ing to foist his lousy job not some­one else. You got­ta be crazy to take it. Just a Tech Sergeant in the Shake­speare Squadron.” Bur­roughs may have used his celebri­ty sta­tus to his lit­er­ary advan­tage, and used it to pay the bills and work with artists he admired and vice-ver­sa, but he nev­er saw him­self as more than a writer (and per­haps lay magi­cian), and he abjured the hero wor­ship that made him a cult fig­ure.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

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Watch the Historic First Episode of Saturday Night Live with Host George Carlin (1975)

in Comedy, Television | February 17th, 2025

50 years of Sat­ur­day Night Live. It all start­ed here with this first episode, aired on Octo­ber 11, 1975. George Car­lin host­ed the show. Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian served up the music. Jim Hen­son staged an elab­o­rate pup­pet show. And “the Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers” (Belushi, Aykroyd, Gil­da, Jane, Chevy, Gar­rett, Laraine and the rest) pro­vid­ed the com­e­dy, per­form­ing the first of 10,000 sketch­es that have since aired over SNL’s long his­to­ry. SNL added the com­plete episode to its YouTube chan­nel, and you can now watch how it all began. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

 

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Inside SNL: Al Franken Reveals How Saturday Night Live Is Crafted Every Week

in Comedy, Television | February 16th, 2025

As Sat­ur­day Night Live cel­e­brates its 50th anniver­sary, Al Franken takes you inside the mak­ing of an SNL episode. He should know a thing or two about the sub­ject. Part of the orig­i­nal SNL writ­ing team, Franken spent 15 years writ­ing and per­form­ing for the show. (Any­one remem­ber Stu­art Smal­l­ey giv­ing a moti­va­tion­al pep talk to Michael Jor­dan?) On his pod­cast, Franken walks you through what a typ­i­cal week on Sat­ur­day Night Live looks like. The week begins with the kick­off meet­ing on Mon­day, then moves mid-week to the writ­ing and selec­tion of sketch­es, and ends with dress rehearsals, the live show, and after-par­ty on Sat­ur­day. Above, Franken also talks about the role of the host and which ones excelled, and which ones flopped. If you would enjoy know­ing how the SNL sausage gets made, the 60-minute con­ver­sa­tion is well worth your while.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Gil­da Rad­ner Does a Com­ic Imper­son­ation of Pat­ti Smith: Watch the Clas­sic SNL Skit, “Rock Against Yeast” (1979)

Every­thing You Need to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Sea­son of the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show

When Was the Pin­na­cle of Sat­ur­day Night Live? A YouTu­ber Watch­es One Episode from Each Sea­son & Reports Back

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

 

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Revisit Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Series That Reinvented Music Videos & Pop Culture

in Music, Television | January 23rd, 2025

In the eight­ies, peo­ple lament­ed the atten­tion-span-short­en­ing “MTV-iza­tion” of visu­al cul­ture. By the mid-nineties, net­works were try­ing to fig­ure out how to get view­ers to sit through music videos at all. A solu­tion arrived in the form of Pop-Up Video, a pro­gram pitched by cre­ators Woody Thomp­son and Tad Low to VH1 when that much-less-cool MTV clone found itself strug­gling to stay car­ried by cable providers. It had an appeal­ing­ly low-bud­get con­cept: take exist­ing music videos, and spice them up with text bub­bles con­tain­ing facts about the artists, behind-the-scenes anec­dotes, and amus­ing (if semi-rel­e­vant) triv­ia.

“We got a lot of resis­tance from VH1. They owned Block­buster Video at the time, so they knew no one rent­ed for­eign films because no one want­ed to read the TV.” So recalls Low in a Bill­board inter­view about the his­to­ry of the show, which orig­i­nal­ly ran from 1996 to 2002 (with a brief revival in 2011 and 2012). Like many cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na beloved of mil­len­ni­als, Pop-Up Video has received the oral-his­to­ry treat­ment more than once: Uproxx also did one a cou­ple years ear­li­er. These arti­cles are enter­tain­ing in the same way as Pop-Up Video itself, open­ing up the doors of the fac­to­ry and offer­ing a glimpse of how pop-cul­tur­al sausage gets made.

Launched well before the age of Wikipedia, Pop-Up Video required inten­sive research. That meant not just inter­net search­es, but phone calls to direc­tors, pro­duc­tion design­ers, hair­styl­ists, car­pen­ters, cater­ers, and any­one else who might have worked on a par­tic­u­lar music video (if not the musi­cians, few of whom knew how their videos were made, and even few­er of whom were will­ing to dish dirt on them­selves). These often com­pli­cat­ed, rushed, and oth­er­wise trou­bled pro­duc­tions tend­ed to pro­duce mem­o­rable sto­ries, which par­tic­i­pants turned out to be hap­py to tell years lat­er — not that the net­work or the artists’ man­age­ment were always hap­py with the results.

Also like many cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na beloved of mil­len­ni­als, the show was sat­u­rat­ed with the famous­ly irrev­er­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty of Gen­er­a­tion X. Tasked with deliv­er­ing fun facts, its writ­ers did­n’t hes­i­tate to knock celebri­ties off their pedestals while they were at it, and with a sense of humor that came to be rec­og­nized as decep­tive­ly intel­li­gent. (Head writer Alan Cross has spo­ken of being inspired by Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Low by a favorite writer who made “exten­sive use of foot­notes,” which brings anoth­er three-ini­tial name to mind.) You can watch over 100 “popped” music videos on this Youtube playlist, with more at the Inter­net Archive. Alas, many have nev­er come avail­able online, but then, Pop-Up Video did make a virtue of ephemer­al­i­ty.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Revis­it Episodes of Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion, MTV’s 90s Show­case of Fun­ny, Irrev­er­ent & Bizarre Ani­ma­tion

How Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” Went from 80s Pop Smash to Bas­tion of Inter­net Cul­ture: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

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.

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Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting from Start to Finish: Every Episode from 31 Seasons in Chronological Order

in Art, Television | January 15th, 2025

Bob Ross the man died near­ly thir­ty years ago, but Bob Ross the arche­typ­al TV painter has nev­er been more wide­ly known. “With his dis­tinc­tive hair, gen­tle voice, and sig­na­ture expres­sions such as ‘hap­py lit­tle trees,’ he’s an endur­ing icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020. “His like­ness appears on a wide assort­ment of objects: paints and brush­es, toast­ers, socks, cal­en­dars, dolls, orna­ments, and even a Chia Pet.” Here in Korea, where I live, he’s uni­ver­sal­ly called Bob Ajeossi, ajeossi being a kind of col­lo­qui­al title for mid­dle-aged men. It’s quite an after­life for a soft-spo­ken pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host from the eight­ies.

Ross quick­ly became a pop-cul­tur­al fig­ure in that era, star­ring in semi-iron­ic MTV spots by the ear­ly nineties. But over the decades, writes Mooney, “the appre­ci­a­tion of Bob Ross has mor­phed into some­thing near­ly uni­ver­sal­ly earnest.” It helps that he has “the ulti­mate calm­ing pres­ence,” which has drawn spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry: “More than a decade before most ther­a­pists were telling clients to be mind­ful and present, Ross was telling his view­ers to appre­ci­ate their every breath.” This med­i­ta­tive, pos­i­tive mood per­vades all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s more than 400 record­ed broad­casts, and they even deliv­er the sooth­ing effects of what YouTube-view­ing gen­er­a­tions know as “unin­ten­tion­al ASMR.”

Now you can watch almost all those broad­casts on a sin­gle YouTube playlist, which includes all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s 31 sea­sons, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1983 and 1994. (The videos come from the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel of The Joy of Paint­ing and Bob Ross.) Despite hav­ing end­ed its run well before any of us had ever imag­ined watch­ing video online, the show now feels prac­ti­cal­ly made for the inter­net, what with not just its ASMR qual­i­ties, but also the paraso­cial friend­li­ness of Ross’ per­son­al­i­ty, the instruc­tion­al val­ue and sheer quan­ti­ty of its con­tent, and the high­ly con­sis­tent for­mat. Every time, Ross paints a com­plete pic­ture from start to fin­ish: usu­al­ly a land­scape fea­tur­ing mighty moun­tains, free­dom-lov­ing clouds, and hap­py lit­tle trees, but occa­sion­al­ly some­thing just dif­fer­ent enough to keep it inter­est­ing. And so the man Mooney describes as “prob­a­bly America’s most famous painter” lives on as a beloved YouTu­ber.

Relat­ed com­ment:

The Bob Ross Vir­tu­al Art Gallery: A New Site Presents 403 Paint­ings from The Joy of Paint­ing Series

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Watch a Mas­ter Japan­ese Print­mak­er at Work: Two Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Relax­ing ASMR Videos

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.

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