How Ramen Became the Currency of Choice in Prison, Beating Out Cigarettes

in Finance, Food & Drink, Life | July 5th, 2021

The last decade ush­ered in a slew of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese-style ramen restau­rants — enough to jus­ti­fy ramen maps to New York City, Chica­go, and the Bay Area.

Yet most Amer­i­cans still con­ceive of ramen as the pack of sea­son­ing and dehy­drat­ed instant noo­dles that have long sus­tained broke artists and col­lege stu­dents.

Add incar­cer­at­ed per­sons to the list of pack­aged ramen’s most ardent con­sumers.

In the above episode of Vox’s series, The Goods, we learn how those ubiq­ui­tous cel­lo­phane pack­ages have out­stripped cig­a­rettes and postage stamps as the pre­ferred form of prison cur­ren­cy.

Ramen is durable, portable, pack­aged in stan­dard units, avail­able in the prison com­mis­sary, and high­ly prized by those with a deep need to pad their chow hall meals.

Ramen can be used to pay for cloth­ing and hygiene prod­ucts, or ser­vices like laun­dry, bunk clean­ing, dic­ta­tion, or cus­tom illus­tra­tion. Gam­blers can use it in lieu of chips.

Ramen’s sta­tus as the pre­ferred form of exchange also speaks to a sharp decline in the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of food in Amer­i­can penal insti­tu­tions.

Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Michael Gib­son-Light, who spent a year study­ing home­grown mon­e­tary prac­tices among incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tions, notes that slashed prison bud­gets have cre­at­ed a cul­ture of “puni­tive fru­gal­i­ty.”

Called upon to mod­el a demon­stra­bly tough on crime stance and cut back on expen­di­tures, the insti­tu­tions are unof­fi­cial­ly shunt­ing many of their tra­di­tion­al costs onto the pris­on­ers them­selves.

In response, those on the inside have piv­ot­ed to edi­ble cur­ren­cy:

What we are see­ing is a col­lec­tive response — across inmate pop­u­la­tions and secu­ri­ty lev­els, across prison cliques and racial groups, and even across states — to changes and cut­backs in prison food services…The form of mon­ey is not some­thing that changes often or eas­i­ly, even in the prison under­ground econ­o­my; it takes a major issue or shock to ini­ti­ate such a change. The use of cig­a­rettes as mon­ey in U.S. pris­ons hap­pened in Amer­i­can Civ­il War mil­i­tary pris­ons and like­ly far ear­li­er. The fact that this prac­tice has sud­den­ly changed has poten­tial­ly seri­ous impli­ca­tions.

Ramen may be a rel­a­tive­ly new devel­op­ment in the prison land­scape, but culi­nary exper­i­men­ta­tion behind bars is not. From Pruno prison wine to Martha Stewart’s prison grounds crabap­ple jel­ly, it’s a noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained type of deal. Work with what you’ve got.

Gus­ta­vo “Goose” Alvarez, who appears in Vox’s video, col­lect­ed a num­ber of the most adven­tur­ous recipes in his book, Prison Ramen: Recipes and Sto­ries from Behind Bars. Any­one can bring some vari­ety on the spur of the moment by sprin­kling some of your ramen’s sea­son­ing pack­et into your drink­ing water, but amass­ing the ingre­di­ents for an ambi­tious dish like Orange Porkies — chili ramen plus white rice plus ½ bag of pork skins plus orange-fla­vored punch — takes patience and per­se­ver­ance.

Alvarez’s Egg Ramen Sal­ad Sand­wich recipe earns praise from actor Shia LeBoeuf, whose time served is both mul­ti­ple and min­i­mal.

Some­one serv­ing a longer sen­tence has a more com­pelling rea­son to search for the ramen-cen­tered sense of har­mo­ny and well­be­ing on dis­play in Tam­popo, the first “ramen west­ern”:

Appre­ci­ate its gestalt. Savor the aro­mas.

Joe Guer­rero, host of YouTube’s After­Pris­on­Show, is not immune to the plea­sures of some of his ramen-based con­coc­tions, below, despite being on the out­side for sev­er­al years now.

You’re free to wrin­kle your nose at the thought of snack­ing on a crum­bled brick of uncooked ramen, but Guer­rero points out that some­one serv­ing a long sen­tence craves vari­ety in any form they can get. Expe­ri­enc­ing it can tap into the same sense of pride as self-gov­er­nance.

Guerrero’s recipes require a microwave (and a block of ramen).

Even if you’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on eat­ing the fin­ished prod­uct, there’s a sci­ence project appeal to his Ramen Noo­dle Cook­ie. It calls for no addi­tion­al  ingre­di­ents, just ten min­utes cook­ing time, an out­ra­geous prospect in a com­mu­nal set­ting with only one microwave.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

What Goes Into Ramen Noo­dles, and What Hap­pens When Ramen Noo­dles Go Into You

Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Quentin Tarantino Releases His First Novel: A Pulpy Novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

in Film | July 5th, 2021

There’s no busi­ness like show busi­ness. Or maybe — as Bart Simp­son once wrote on the black­board — “there are plen­ty of busi­ness­es like show busi­ness.”

Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, fol­lows aging TV star, Rick Dal­ton, being pushed into play­ing vil­lain­ous char­ac­ter roles. Drunk and depressed, Dal­ton and his side­kick­/hang­er-on/s­tunt dou­ble Cliff Booth watch reruns of his show and get into a series of increas­ing­ly seri­ous scrapes as the actor search­es for a role that will redeem him. The film’s outline–shorn of his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences that made crit­ics lion­ize it as “a love let­ter to old Hollywood”–sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like anoth­er media prop­er­ty in the mid­dle of its final sea­son that sum­mer.

Called a Mad Men replace­ment, Netflix’s satir­i­cal adult car­toon series Bojack Horse­man also fol­lows an aging for­mer TV star and his sidekicks/hanger(s)-on through their mis­ad­ven­tures in Hol­ly­wood (“Hol­ly­woo”). Along the way they con­front issues that fall under the rubric of “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty,” such as work­place harass­ment, emo­tion­al imma­tu­ri­ty, and the abuse of pow­er in an indus­try with wild­ly unequal pow­er dynam­ics. The show makes clear that nei­ther old, nor new, Hol­ly­wood deserves a love let­ter — no more than oth­er indus­tries that allow such behav­ior. (It also fea­tures a car­i­ca­ture of Taran­ti­no.)

Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, by con­trast, cel­e­brates the old star sys­tem and its priv­i­leges — or so Richard Brody argues at The New York­er — in an “obscene­ly regres­sive vision of the 60s” that scrubs the decade of its protests and bru­tal crack­downs. The premise under­ly­ing Tarantino’s alter­nate-his­to­ry dram­e­dy seems to be: “If only the old-line Hol­ly­wood peo­ple of the fifties and six­ties had main­tained their pride of place—if only the times hadn’t changed, if only the keys to the king­dom hadn’t been hand­ed over to the free­thinkers and deca­dents of the sixties—then both Hol­ly­wood and the world would be a bet­ter, safer, hap­pi­er place.”

Taran­ti­no sets up “hip­pies,” a favorite pejo­ra­tive of his char­ac­ters, as fall guys for the Man­son Fam­i­ly mur­ders, rather than Manson’s own white suprema­cist beliefs. As many crit­ics not­ed at the time, “the only sub­stan­tial char­ac­ter of col­or, Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), is played… as a haughty par­o­dy” who gets “dra­mat­i­cal­ly humil­i­at­ed” by Pitt’s swash­buck­ling stunt­man — who is rumored to have mur­dered his wife and who dis­patch­es the film’s female Man­son cult vil­lains with the sadis­tic glee of a true psy­chopath, a scene, Brody writes, “that only ham­mers [Tarantino’s] doc­trine home.”

Cel­e­bra­tion there may be in the film, but there is also mourn­ing. Christo­pher Hooten at Lit­tle White Lies scoffs at the “love let­ter” idea and sees the film instead as a lament for the end of cinema’s “free­thinkers”:

This is Tarantino’s pas­sion project – poten­tial­ly his last film – and it comes across as him try­ing to sneak out a movie with a ’70s sen­si­bil­i­ty and tone before it’s no longer pos­si­ble. Once the likes of Taran­ti­no and Mar­tin Scors­ese have bowed out, that might well be it for auteur-dri­ven film­mak­ing on a block­buster scale. We’ve reached a polar­i­sa­tion in the indus­try where a direc­tor either works as a hired (and fre­quent­ly fired) gun for a Dis­ney or a Warn­er Bros, or else goes cap in hand in the hope of scrap­ing togeth­er a few mil­lion dol­lars to make some­thing more per­son­al and unique.

The Taran­ti­nos of the world might be a dying breed, but Taran­ti­no isn’t leav­ing his art behind so much as turn­ing his hand to “more per­son­al and unique” projects – in this case a nov­el, and more specif­i­cal­ly, “the pulpi­est of pulp fic­tion — the nov­el­iza­tion,” writes Peter Brad­shaw at The Guardian. Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood: A Nov­el finds him “crank­ing up the back­sto­ries, mulching up real­i­ty and alt.reality pas­tiche, ladling in new episodes,” and flex­ing his for­mi­da­ble strengths as a writer of crack­ling dia­logue and action. The book also promis­es an end­ing view­ers of the film won’t see com­ing.

The nov­el explores the inner lives of its female char­ac­ters, includ­ing, of course, Sharon Tate “and the fic­tion­al child actor Tru­di Fras­er,” and adds an even dark­er edge to Cliff Booth, who is said to admire a cer­tain char­ac­ter despite or because he is “uncon­scious­ly racist, con­scious­ly misog­y­nis­tic.” This is Taran­ti­no, after all, none of whose char­ac­ters are ever shin­ing exam­ples of virtue. But in the post-auteur, post-Wein­stein future, he seems to sug­gest, maybe old-Hol­ly­wood anti-heroes like Cliff Booth and Leonar­do DiCaprio’s washed-up star Rick Dal­ton will only shine on stream­ing TV shows and in the pages of throw­back pulp nov­els, “pack­aged like those New Eng­lish Library paper­backs that used to be on carousel dis­plays in super­mar­kets and drug­stores.” You can pick up a copy of Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood: A Nov­el here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

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

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Discover the 1820’s Color-Coded System for Memorizing Historical Events, Which Resembled Modern Art (1820)

in History | July 5th, 2021

On first encoun­ter­ing Antoni Jażwiński’s “Pol­ish Sys­tem,” I could­n’t help but think of Incan Quipu, the sys­tem that used knot­ted cords to keep offi­cial records. Like Quipu, Jażwiński’s sys­tem of col­ored squares relies on an extreme short­hand to tell com­plex sto­ries with mnemon­ic devices. But maybe that’s where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end. Jażwiński’s inven­tion (cir­ca (1820) does not so much resem­ble oth­er forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as it does the abstract art of the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry.

“Jażwiński’s Méth­ode polon­aise promis­es that the com­plex­i­ties of cen­turies can be refined into col­ors, lines, squares, and just a few marks,” writes Philip­pa Pitts at Sequitur. “Neat­ly arranged into a dia­gram that can be dili­gent­ly com­mit­ted to mem­o­ry, the twists and turns of bat­tles and rev­o­lu­tions are ren­dered as panes of pure gen­tle col­or, qui­et­ly plot­ted as coor­di­nates in a matrix, sub­sumed back into the order­ly progress of his­to­ry.”

His attempts to impose order on life may have come to lit­tle in the end, but as an arti­fact of visu­al cul­ture, the “Pol­ish Sys­tem” is sub­lime. Pitts goes on to write:

There is a won­der­ful res­o­nance between Jażwiński’s chrono­graphs and a wide range of artis­tic pro­duc­tion, despite the anachro­nism of such com­par­isons. They recall Piet Mondrian’s ear­ly checker­boards and Robert Delaunay’s simul­tane­ity. There is some­thing rem­i­nis­cent of process art here: They evoke the repet­i­tive, cat­a­logu­ing hand­work of Hanne Dar­boven or Agnes Mar­tin. There appears to be a com­mon calm, com­fort, cathar­sis, or sal­va­tion promised by the embrace of rule, order, and log­ic. 

Jażwińs­ki, a Pol­ish edu­ca­tor, invent­ed the sys­tem in the 1820s. It was “lat­er brought to pub­lic atten­tion in the 1830s and 1840s by Gen­er­al Józef Bem, a mil­i­tary engi­neer with a pen­chant for mnemon­ics,” notes the Pub­lic Domain Review. Such sys­tems cropped up every­where in 19th-cen­tu­ry edu­ca­tion, such as those pio­neered by Emma Willard, the first woman map­mak­er in the U.S. “Jażwiński’s con­tri­bu­tion (and its lat­er adap­ta­tions) proved one of the most pop­u­lar.”

He explained his sys­tem with long para­graphs of text (which you can read here, in French), lit­tle of which stu­dents were like­ly to remem­ber. What mat­tered was whether they could make sense of the col­or-cod­ing and sym­bols placed inside the grid sys­tem, with each grid stand­ing for an entire cen­tu­ry — 100 years of human his­to­ry reduced, for exam­ple, in the fig­ure above, to one name, Con­stan­tine the Great, and two sym­bols, a sword and cross. This was an exam­ple of a “chrono­log­i­cal con­stel­la­tion,” in which his­tor­i­cal events take par­tic­u­lar shapes, “some­times it’s a chair,” Jażwińs­ki wrote, “a sick­le, a boat, a let­ter of the alpha­bet, etc.”

Even the names neat­ly print­ed above the grids are redun­dant, Pitts sug­gests. In such sys­tems, called chrono­graphs, “deno­ta­tive text is of lim­it­ed use. It is con­no­ta­tive visu­al­i­ty which fur­ther con­dens­es the infor­ma­tion: Flags, shields, and insignia can serve as short­hand for nations and dynas­ties, while loom­ing storm clouds, bright sun­bursts, and invo­ca­tions of clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture add lay­ers of asso­ci­at­ed mean­ing.” The view of his­to­ry rep­re­sent­ed by such sys­tems is quaint, at best; their over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions erase more than they could ever com­mu­ni­cate. But their visu­al appeal is unde­ni­able as objects from a pre-Google past, when mem­o­riza­tion was the only way to reli­ably store and access knowl­edge out­side of books.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Emma Willard, the First Woman Map­mak­er in Amer­i­ca, Cre­ates Pio­neer­ing Maps of Time to Teach Stu­dents about Democ­ra­cy (Cir­ca 1851)

How the Inca Used Intri­cate­ly-Knot­ted Cords, Called Khipu, to Write Their His­to­ries, Send Mes­sages & Keep Records

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Great His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Most Influ­en­tial Info­graph­ics Ever (1769)

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

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Moralities of Everyday Life: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Online Courses, Psychology | July 5th, 2021

How can we explain kind­ness and cru­el­ty? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do peo­ple so often dis­agree about moral issues? This course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Moral­i­ties of Every­day Life, explores the psy­cho­log­i­cal foun­da­tions of our moral lives. Taught by psy­chol­o­gy & cog­ni­tive sci­ence pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom, the course focus­es on the ori­gins of moral­i­ty, com­pas­sion, how culture/religion influ­ence moral thought and moral action, and beyond. If you select the “Audit” option, you can take the course for free.

Moral­i­ties of Every­day Life will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

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:

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Online Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

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The Conspiracy Behind the Iconic Statue, the Venus de Milo

in Art, History, Travel | July 2nd, 2021

The Venus de Milo is one of art’s most wide­ly rec­og­nized female forms.

The Mona Lisa may be the first stop on many Lou­vre vis­i­tors’ agen­das, but Venus, by virtue of being unclothed, sculp­tur­al, and promi­nent­ly dis­played, lends her­self beau­ti­ful­ly to all man­ner of sou­venirs, both respect­ful and pro­fane.

Delacroix, Magritte, Dali, and The Simp­sons have all paid trib­ute, ensur­ing her con­tin­ued renown.

Renoir is that rare bird who was imper­vi­ous to her 6’7” charms, describ­ing her as the “big gen­darme.” His own Venus, sculpt­ed with the help of an assis­tant near­ly 100 years after the Venus de Milo joined the Louvre’s col­lec­tion, appears much meati­er through­out the hip and thigh region. Her celebri­ty can­not hold a can­dle to that of her arm­less sis­ter.

In the Vox Almanac episode above, host Phil Edwards delves into the Venus de Milo’s appeal, tak­ing a less deliri­ous approach than sculp­tor Auguste Rodin, who rhap­sodized:

…thou, thou art alive, and thy thoughts are the thoughts of a woman, not of some strange, supe­ri­or being, arti­fi­cial and imag­i­nary. Thou art made of truth alone, out­side of which there is nei­ther strength nor beau­ty. It is thy sin­cer­i­ty to nature which makes thee all pow­er­ful, because nature appeals to all men. Thou art the famil­iar com­pan­ion, the woman that each believes he knows, but that no man has ever under­stood, the wis­est not more than the sim­ple. Who under­stands the trees? Who can com­pre­hend the light?

Edwards opts instead for a Sharpie and a tiny 3‑D print­ed mod­el, which he marks up like a plas­tic sur­geon, draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the miss­ing bits.

The arms, we know.

Also her ear­lobes, most like­ly removed by loot­ers eager to make off with her jew­el­ry.

One of her mas­sive mar­ble feet (a man’s size 15) is miss­ing.

And so is a por­tion of the plinth on which she once stood.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the plinth was among the items dis­cov­ered by acci­dent on the Greek island of Milos in 1820, along with two pil­lars topped with busts of Her­cules and Her­mes, the bisect­ed Venus, and assort­ed mar­ble frag­ments, includ­ing — maybe — an upper arm and hand hold­ing a round object (a gold­en apple, may­haps?)

Edwards doesn’t delve into the con­flict­ing accounts sur­round­ing the wheres and whys of this dis­cov­ery. Nor does he go into the com­pli­ca­tions of the sculp­ture’s acqui­si­tion, and how it very near­ly wound up on a ship bound for Con­stan­tino­ple.

What he’s most inter­est­ed in is that plinth, which would have giv­en the lie to the long-stand­ing asser­tion that the Venus de Milo was cre­at­ed in the Clas­si­cal era.

This incor­rect des­ig­na­tion made the Lou­vre’s newest res­i­dent a most wel­come replace­ment for the loot France had been com­pelled to return to the Vat­i­can in the wake of Napoleon’s first abdi­ca­tion.

The plinth may have been “lost” under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, but its inscrip­tion was pre­served in a sketch by A. Debay, whose father had been a stu­dent of Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon’s now-ban­ished First Painter, a Neo-Clas­si­cist.

(David’s final paint­ing, Mars Dis­armed by Venus and the Three Graces, com­plet­ed a cou­ple of years after Venus de Milo was installed in the Lou­vre, was con­sid­ered a bust.)

Debay’s faith­ful recre­ation of the plinth’s inscrip­tion as part of his study of the Venus de Milo offers clues as to her cre­ator — “ …andros son of …enides cit­i­zen of …ioch at Mean­der made.”

It also dates her cre­ation to 150–50 BCE, cor­rob­o­rat­ing notes French naval offi­cer Jules d’Urville had made in Greece weeks after the dis­cov­ery.

The birth of this Venus should have been attrib­uted to the Hel­lenis­tic, not Clas­si­cal peri­od.

This would have been prob­lem­at­ic for both France and the Lou­vre, as art his­to­ri­an Jane Ursu­la Har­ris writes in The Believ­er:

Had her true author been known, she like­ly would’ve been locked away in the museum’s archive, if not sold off. Hel­lenis­tic art had by then been den­i­grat­ed by Renais­sance schol­ars who re-con­ceived it in anti-clas­si­cal terms, find­ing in its expres­sive, exper­i­men­tal form and emo­tion­al con­tent a provoca­tive real­ism that defied every­thing their era stood for: mod­esty, intel­lect, and equanimity…It helped that the Venus de Milo pos­sessed sev­er­al clas­si­cal attrib­ut­es. Her strong pro­file, short upper lip, and smooth fea­tures, for exam­ple, were in keep­ing with Clas­si­cal  fig­ur­al con­ven­tions, as was the con­tin­u­ous line con­nect­ing her nose and fore­head. The par­tial­ly-draped fig­ure with its atten­u­at­ed sil­hou­ette – which the Regency fash­ion of the day imi­tat­ed with its empire bust-line – also recalled clas­si­cal sculp­tures of Aphrodite, and her Roman coun­ter­part, Venus. Yet despite all these clas­si­cal iden­ti­fiers, the Venus de Milo flaunt­ed a defin­i­tive Hel­lenis­tic influ­ence in her provoca­tive­ly low-slung drap­ery, high waist line, and curve-enhanc­ing contrapposto—far more sen­su­al and exag­ger­at­ed than clas­si­cal ideals allowed.

It took the Lou­vre over a hun­dred years to come clean as to its star sculpture’s true prove­nance.

What hap­pened to the plinth remains any­one’s guess.

The only mys­tery the museum’s web­site seems con­cerned with is one of iden­ti­ty — is she Aphrodite, god­dess of beau­ty, or Poseidon’s wife, Amphitrite, the sea god­dess wor­shipped on the island on which she was dis­cov­ered?

For a deep­er dive into the Venus de Milo’s com­pli­cat­ed jour­ney to the Lou­vre, we rec­om­mend Rachel Kousser’s arti­cle, “Cre­at­ing the Past: The Venus de Milo and the Hel­lenis­tic Recep­tion of Clas­si­cal Greece,” which can be down­loaded free here. Or do as Vox’s Edwards sug­gests and 3‑D print a tiny Venus de Milo in a decid­ed­ly non-Clas­si­cal col­or using MyMiniFactory’s free pat­tern.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hun­dreds of Clas­si­cal Sculp­tures from the Uffizi Gallery Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Explore a Col­lec­tion of 3D Inter­ac­tive Scans

The Mak­ing of a Mar­ble Sculp­ture: See Every Stage of the Process, from the Quar­ry to the Stu­dio

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Haruki Murakami’s Daily Routine: Up at 4:00 a.m., 5–6 Hours of Writing, Then a 10K Run

in Literature, Sports, Writing | July 2nd, 2021

Pho­to via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Haru­ki Muraka­mi has been famous as a nov­el­ist since the 1980s. But for a decade or two now, he’s become increas­ing­ly well known around the world as a nov­el­ist who runs. The Eng­lish-speak­ing world’s aware­ness of Murakami’s road­work habit goes back at least as far as 2004, when the Paris Review pub­lished an Art of Fic­tion inter­view with him. Asked by inter­view­er John Ray to describe the struc­ture of his typ­i­cal work­day, Muraka­mi replied as fol­lows:

When I’m in writ­ing mode for a nov­el, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the after­noon, I run for ten kilo­me­ters or swim for fif­teen hun­dred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and lis­ten to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this rou­tine every day with­out vari­a­tion. The rep­e­ti­tion itself becomes the impor­tant thing; it’s a form of mes­merism. I mes­mer­ize myself to reach a deep­er state of mind. But to hold to such rep­e­ti­tion for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength. In that sense, writ­ing a long nov­el is like sur­vival train­ing. Phys­i­cal strength is as nec­es­sary as artis­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

This stark phys­i­cal depar­ture from the pop­u­lar notion of lit­er­ary work drew atten­tion. Truer to writer­ly stereo­type was the Muraka­mi of the ear­ly 1980s, when he turned pro as a nov­el­ist after clos­ing the jazz bar he’d owned in Tokyo. “Once I was sit­ting at a desk writ­ing all day I start­ed putting on the pounds,” he remem­bers in The New York­er. “I was also smok­ing too much — six­ty cig­a­rettes a day. My fin­gers were yel­low, and my body reeked of smoke.” Aware that some­thing had to change, Muraka­mi per­formed an exper­i­ment on him­self: “I decid­ed to start run­ning every day because I want­ed to see what would hap­pen. I think life is a kind of lab­o­ra­to­ry where you can try any­thing. And in the end I think it was good for me, because I became tough.”

Adher­ence to such a lifestyle, as Muraka­mi tells it, has enabled him to write all his nov­els since, includ­ing hits like Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, and Kaf­ka on the Shore. (On some lev­el, it also reflects his pro­tag­o­nists’ ten­den­cy to make trans­for­ma­tive leaps from one ver­sion of real­i­ty into anoth­er.) Its rig­or has sure­ly con­tributed to the dis­ci­pline nec­es­sary for the rest of his out­put as well: trans­la­tion into his native Japan­ese of works includ­ing The Great Gats­by, but also large quan­ti­ties of first-per­son writ­ing on his own inter­ests and every­day life. Pro­tec­tive of his rep­u­ta­tion in Eng­lish, Muraka­mi has allowed almost none of the lat­ter to be pub­lished in this lan­guage.

But in light of the vora­cious con­sump­tion of self-improve­ment lit­er­a­ture in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, and espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca, trans­la­tion of his mem­oir What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning must have been an irre­sistible propo­si­tion. “I’ve nev­er rec­om­mend­ed run­ning to oth­ers,” Muraka­mi writes in The New York­er piece, which is drawn from the book. “If some­one has an inter­est in long-dis­tance run­ning, he’ll start run­ning on his own. If he’s not inter­est­ed in it, no amount of per­sua­sion will make any dif­fer­ence.” For some, Murakami’s exam­ple has been enough: take the writer-vlog­ger Mel Tor­refran­ca, who doc­u­ment­ed her attempt to fol­low his exam­ple for a week. For her, a week was enough; for Muraka­mi, who’s been run­ning-while-writ­ing for near­ly forty years now, there could be no oth­er way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Why Should You Read Haru­ki Muraka­mi? An Ani­mat­ed Video on His “Epic Lit­er­ary Puz­zle” Kaf­ka on the Shore Makes the Case

Read 12 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

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

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Alfred Hitchcock Explains the Difference Between Suspense & Surprise: Give the Audience Some Information & Leave the Rest to Their Imagination

in Film | July 1st, 2021

The Hitch­cock­ian mode of film­mak­ing involves the max­i­mum use of sus­pense to keep view­ers in a height­ened state of anx­i­ety. “There is no ter­ror in the bang, only in the antic­i­pa­tion of it,” Hitch­cock him­self once said. How did he cre­ate sus­pense? In the inter­view clip above from 1973, Hitch­cock explains how his films “con­vey visu­al­ly cer­tain ele­ments in sto­ry­telling that trans­fers itself to the mind of the audi­ence, where­as oth­er films make visu­al state­ments, so that the audi­ence becomes a spec­ta­tor.” Turn­ing audi­ences into spec­ta­tors, he says, accounts for the excess­es of blood and gore onscreen in hor­ror films: “there’s no sub­tle­ty.” The cri­tique goes beyond squea­mish­ness. In Hitch­cock, spec­ta­cles are sec­ondary, at best, to infor­ma­tion.

Visu­al infor­ma­tion also takes prece­dence over expo­si­tion or nar­ra­tive coher­ence in Hitchcock’s cre­ation of sus­pense. “The open-palmed hand reach­ing for the door, the sim­u­lat­ed fall down the stair­case, the whor­ling retreat of the cam­era from a dead woman’s face,” Samuel Med­i­na writes at Metrop­o­lis. “These stark snip­pets imbue the films with their uncan­ny allure and imprint them­selves in the mind of the spec­ta­tor much more effec­tive­ly than any of the master’s con­vo­lut­ed plots.”

Hitch­cock does not deploy images to shock, he says, but to make the audi­ence com­plic­it in the con­struc­tion of the film. “I pre­fer to sug­gest some­thing and let the audi­ence fig­ure it out,” he says. “The big dif­fer­ence between sus­pense and shock or sur­prise is that in order to get sus­pense, you pro­vide the audi­ence with a cer­tain amount of infor­ma­tion and leave the rest of it to their own imag­i­na­tion.”

Hitchcock’s pre­ferred tech­niques of con­vey­ing infor­ma­tion often rely on what fem­i­nist schol­ar and film­mak­er Lau­ra Mul­vey famous­ly called “the male gaze” in her 1975 essay “Visu­al Plea­sure and Nar­ra­tive Cin­e­ma.” She revised and soft­ened her cri­tique in a recent col­lec­tion, writ­ing, for exam­ple, that Ver­ti­go arrived at a time of “melan­cholic lib­er­a­tion” for the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio sys­tem, “as the pro­fes­sion­al world of the mas­ters faced its own end.” Hitch­cock might have striv­en for rel­e­vance by try­ing to revive his hey­day. Instead, he returned to the cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage with which he’d begun his career in the 1920s as a set design­er for silent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films.

Like Rear Win­dow, anoth­er of the director’s vehi­cles built around a male character’s obses­sive sur­veil­lance of women, Ver­ti­go both enacts and sub­verts its sub­ject. “On one lev­el,” Koralj­ka Suton writes at Cinephil­ia and Beyond, the film is “about the fac­tu­al­i­ty of the unre­lent­ing male gaze that dom­i­nates and dic­tates both our shared col­lec­tive real­i­ty…. But it should also be viewed as a clever decon­struc­tion of it.” What does Hitchcock’s use, and sub­ver­sion, of the voyeuris­tic male gaze have to do with sus­pense? The two are per­haps insep­a­ra­ble in Hitch­cock­ian cin­e­ma.

In an ear­li­er, 1970, inter­view, the direc­tor offered anoth­er dis­tinc­tion: “Mys­tery is when the spec­ta­tor knows less than the char­ac­ters in the movie. Sus­pense is when the spec­ta­tor knows more than the char­ac­ters” — usu­al­ly because they have been spy­ing on the char­ac­ters. Such illic­it knowl­edge revers­es the gaze. Nei­ther able to remain aloof nor stop the hor­rors they see com­ing, “the audi­ence is made aware of itself as audi­ence,” writes Pop­mat­ters, “and they are forced to won­der at their own exis­tence as spec­ta­cle.” Or as Hitch­cock put it in his inim­itable way, “Give them plea­sure. The same plea­sure they have when they wake up from a night­mare.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Edward Hopper’s Paint­ings Inspired the Creepy Sus­pense of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow

Alfred Hitch­cock Meets Jorge Luis Borges Borges in Cold War Amer­i­ca: Watch Dou­ble Take (2009) Free Online

Andy Warhol Inter­views Alfred Hitch­cock (1974)

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

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Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”: Why It’s a Great Painting in 15 Minutes

in Art | July 1st, 2021

I had always want­ed to see Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night” in per­son and many years ago I got a chance when I vis­it­ed the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York. How­ev­er, two dozen oth­er peo­ple, who also want­ed that chance, were there too, and my vision of Van Gogh’s mas­ter­piece was one behind a pha­lanx of cell phones all try­ing to grab a “been there, done that” pic. For­tu­nate­ly, the video above from the Great Art Explained YouTube chan­nel takes you clos­er to the paint­ing that an in-per­son view­ing could with­out set­ting off an alarm. In 15 min­utes, narrator/creator James Payne lays out the his­to­ry, the cre­ation, and the tech­nique of “Star­ry Night” in great detail.

Some of the key take­aways from the video include:

1. A re-eval­u­a­tion of asy­lums in the 19th cen­tu­ry. While cer­tain­ly many asy­lums for those with men­tal ill­ness were despair­ing places, not so the small one in Saint-Rémy, in Provence. Though there were bars on the win­dows, Van Gogh’s views were of lush coun­try­side and the small town near­by; views that would soon become the sub­ject of his paint­ings. And the doc­tors real­ized that paint­ing, and the free­dom to work on his art, was the best thing for Van Gogh’s men­tal health. Dur­ing his one-year stay at the asy­lum, he fin­ished at least 150 paint­ings. “The Star­ry Night,” paint­ed on June 18, 1889, was one of them.

But there were many mas­ter­pieces before that, includ­ing “Iris­es,” paint­ed in the asylum’s walled gar­den before lunch one day; and many of the sur­round­ing coun­try­side once doc­tors decid­ed he was safe to be let out alone.

2. The for­ma­tive effect of Impres­sion­ism and Japan­ese ukiyo‑e on his work. From Mon­et and oth­ers, Van Gogh took the atten­tion to nat­ur­al light, the vis­i­ble brush­strokes, and the pointil­list col­or­ing that would form new col­ors in the viewer’s eye. From the Japan­ese he took bold, bright col­ors and rad­i­cal com­po­si­tion.

We can pin­point the exact time and date of “Star­ry Night” and see what Van Gogh saw from his win­dow (thanks to Grif­fith Park Obser­va­to­ry). And what we learn is…the man was an artist. He col­laged the best bits of what he want­ed us to see, from con­stel­la­tion and plan­ets, to the vil­lage below (tak­en from a dif­fer­ent view­point), to the cypress tree, which he brought for­ward in the com­po­si­tion. Van Gogh was tak­ing a cue from Paul Gau­guin, who encour­aged him to use his imag­i­na­tion more, and find­ing the asy­lum led to a more active and more crit­i­cal way of think­ing about paint­ing.

3. The “unap­pre­ci­at­ed-in-his-life­time” myth. Yes, Van Gogh died too young. But no, he wasn’t an obscure artist. As Payne sends us off, he points out that Van Gogh was very much a part of the impres­sion­ist art scene, showed his paint­ings *and* sold them, and even had crit­ics write about him. So, it might be bet­ter to call him a ris­ing star, snuffed out too ear­ly. We can only won­der where he would have gone in his art, and what he would have cre­at­ed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Rare Vin­cent van Gogh Paint­ing Goes on Pub­lic Dis­play for the First Time: Explore the 1887 Paint­ing Online

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

In a Bril­liant Light: Van Gogh in Arles–A Free Doc­u­men­tary

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Klaus Kinski Has a Tantrum on the Set of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo

in Film | July 1st, 2021

Ford and Wayne, Hitch­cock and Stew­art, Truf­faut and Léaud, Scors­ese and De Niro: these are just a few of film his­to­ry’s most beloved col­lab­o­ra­tions between a direc­tor and an actor who nev­er threat­ened to mur­der one anoth­er. If we remove that qual­i­fi­er, how­ev­er, the list length­ens to include the work of Wern­er Her­zog and Klaus Kin­s­ki. Between the ear­ly 1970s and the late 1980s, Her­zog direct­ed Kin­s­ki in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nos­fer­atu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, Fitz­car­ral­do, and Cobra Verde — to the extent, in any case, that the volatile Kin­s­ki was directable at all. The clip above cap­tures just one of his explo­sions, this one on the set of Fitz­car­ral­do.

“By some rare chance, I was not the brunt of it this time,” Her­zog says over the footage, which comes from his doc­u­men­tary on Kin­s­ki, My Best Fiend. “I did­n’t both­er to inter­fere because Kin­s­ki, com­pared with his oth­er out­breaks, seemed rather mild.” But the star’s rav­ings proved “a real prob­lem for the Indi­ans, who solved their con­flicts in a total­ly dif­fer­ent man­ner.”

For the pro­duc­tion had recruit­ed a num­ber of native locals, oper­at­ing as it was in the Peru­vian jun­gle for max­i­mum real­ism. (Its sto­ry of an aspir­ing rub­ber baron drag­ging a steamship over a hill also neces­si­tat­ed, at Her­zog’s insis­tence, drag­ging a real steamship over a real hill.) At one point a chief offered to kill Kin­s­ki, but Her­zog had to turn him down. There was a movie to fin­ish, and he’d already shot almost half of it once, with Jason Robards in the title role, but when Robards came down with dysen­tery he was forced to re-cast and re-shoot.

A nor­mal film­mak­er would per­haps hes­i­tate to intro­duce a noto­ri­ous­ly errat­ic actor into an already dif­fi­cult pro­duc­tion — but then, Her­zog is hard­ly a nor­mal film­mak­er. He was also one of the few direc­tors who could work with Kin­s­ki, the two hav­ing known each oth­er since they lived in the same board­ing house as teenagers. (In My Best Fiend, Her­zog remem­bers the young Kin­s­ki lock­ing him­self in the bath­room for two days and tear­ing it apart.) While shoot­ing Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Her­zog had employed an unortho­dox tech­nique to put an end to Kin­ski’s melt­downs: pulling out a gun. “You will have eight bul­lets through your head, and the last one is going to be for me,” he lat­er recalled telling Kin­s­ki in an inter­view with Ter­ry Gross. “So the bas­tard some­how real­ized that this was not a joke any­more.” All such direc­tor-actor col­lab­o­ra­tions hinge on the for­mer know­ing how to get the best per­for­mance out of the lat­ter — by any mean nec­es­sary.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

Wern­er Her­zog Gets Shot Dur­ing Inter­view, Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Start Your Day with Wern­er Her­zog Inspi­ra­tional Posters

Nor­man Mail­er: Strong Writer, Weak Actor, Bru­tal­ly Wres­tles Actor Rip Torn

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

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Flash Sale: Get 75% Off Udacity’s Online Courses and Nanodegree Programs (Through July 13)

in Deals | July 1st, 2021

FYI: Back by pop­u­lar demand, Udac­i­ty is run­ning a 75% off flash sale through July 13. Found­ed by com­put­er sci­en­tist and entre­pre­neur Sebas­t­ian Thrun, Udac­i­ty part­ners with lead­ing tech com­pa­nies and offers an array of cours­es (and Nan­ode­gree pro­grams) in data sci­ence,  cyber secu­ri­ty, machine learn­ing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, cloud com­put­ing, and autonomous sys­tems. To get the 75% off dis­count, click here and select a course/program. The dis­count should be applied auto­mat­i­cal­ly. But in case you have any prob­lems, you could always use the code JULY75 at check­out.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Udac­i­ty. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Udac­i­ty cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Considering Mare of Easttown — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #97

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 1st, 2021

Inso­far as some­thing is a TV hit at all these days, the small-town Penn­syl­va­nia mur­der mys­tery star­ring Kate Winslet seems to qual­i­fy, but what dis­tin­guish­es it from the many many oth­er crime dra­mas on TV? Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt dis­cuss the plot struc­ture, cast­ing, and oth­er cre­ative choic­es and try to fig­ure out how the show relates to Broad­church, The Undo­ing, etc. Should there be a sea­son two?

Here are a few of the arti­cles that fed the dis­cus­sion:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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