When a Modern Director Makes a Fake Old Movie: A Video Essay on David Fincher’s Mank

in Film | October 6th, 2022

As of this writ­ing, Mank is David Fincher’s newest movie — but also, in a sense, his old­est. With Net­flix mon­ey behind him, he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors spared seem­ing­ly no expense in re-cre­at­ing the look and feel of a nine­teen-for­ties film using the advanced dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies of the twen­ty-twen­ties. The idea was not just to tell the sto­ry of Cit­i­zen Kane scriptwriter Her­man J. Mankiewicz, but to make the two pic­tures seem like con­tem­po­raries. As Fincher’s pro­duc­tion design­er Don­ald Gra­ham Burt once put it, the direc­tor “want­ed the movie to be like you were in a vault and came across Cit­i­zen Kane and next to it was Mank.”

Cin­e­maS­tix cre­ator Dan­ny Boyd quotes Burt’s remarks in the video essay above, “When a Mod­ern Direc­tor Makes a Fake Old Movie.” After estab­lish­ing Fincher’s sig­na­ture use of com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery to cre­ate not large-scale spec­ta­cles but rel­a­tive­ly sub­tle and often peri­od-accu­rate details, Boyd explains the exten­sive dig­i­tal manip­u­la­tion involved in “aging” Mank.

Fincher’s artists added clouds, dust, “the gleam of vin­tage lamps,” grain and scratch­es, “lat­er­al wob­bling,” and much else besides. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy itself pays con­stant homage to Cit­i­zen Kane’s then-ground­break­ing angles and cam­era moves, even employ­ing “old-school tech­niques that dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy and a decent film bud­get have made increas­ing­ly obso­lete” such as shoot­ing day-for-night.

And yet, as most of the com­ments below Boy­d’s video point out, the result of these con­sid­er­able efforts falls short of con­vinc­ing. Maybe it’s all the shades of gray between its blacks and whites; maybe it’s the smooth­ness of every­thing, includ­ing the cam­era moves; maybe it’s all the mod­ern act­ing. (As the New York­er’s Richard Brody puts it, “Our actors are of their time, and can hard­ly rep­re­sent the past with­out invest­ing it with the atti­tudes of our own day, which is why most new peri­od pieces seem either thin or unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic.”) If any film­mak­er could over­come all these chal­lenges, it would sure­ly be one with Fincher’s back­ground in visu­al effects, fas­ci­na­tion with Old Hol­ly­wood, and noto­ri­ous per­fec­tion­ism. For all its suc­cess in oth­er respects, Mank proves that one can no more make old movies than old friends.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Makes Cit­i­zen Kane a Great Film: 4 Video Essays Revis­it Orson Welles’ Mas­ter­piece on the 80th Anniver­sary of Its Pre­miere

How Did David Finch­er Become the Kubrick of Our Time? A New, 3.5 Hour Series of Video Essays Explains

Fight Club Came Out 20 Years Ago Today: Watch Five Video Essays on the Film’s Phi­los­o­phy and Last­ing Influ­ence

David Fincher’s Five Finest Music Videos: From Madon­na to Aero­smith

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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Artist Makes Astonishing Armor for Cats & Mice

in Art, Design, History, Uncategorized, Video - Arts & Culture | October 5th, 2022

As a child, Jeff De Boer, the son of a sheet met­al fab­ri­ca­tor, was fas­ci­nat­ed by the Euro­pean plate armor col­lec­tion in Calgary’s Glen­bow Muse­um:

There was some­thing mag­i­cal or mys­ti­cal about that emp­ty form, that con­tained some­thing. So what would it con­tain? A hero? Do we all con­tain that in our­selves?

After grad­u­at­ing from high school wear­ing a par­tial suit of armor he con­struct­ed for the occa­sion, De Boer com­plet­ed sev­en full suits, while major­ing in jew­el­ry design at the Alber­ta Col­lege of Art and Design.

A sculp­ture class assign­ment pro­vid­ed him with an excuse to make a suit of armor for a cat. The artist had found his niche.

Using steel, sil­ver, brass, bronze, nick­el, cop­per, leather, fiber, wood, and his del­i­cate jew­el­ry mak­ing tools, DeBoer became the cats’ armor­er, spend­ing any­where from 50 to 200 hours pro­duc­ing each increas­ing­ly intri­cate suit of feline armor.  A noble pur­suit, but one that inad­ver­tent­ly cre­at­ed an “imbal­ance in the uni­verse”:

The only way to fix it was to do the same for the mouse.

“The suit of armor is a trans­for­ma­tion vehi­cle. It’s some­thing that only the hero would wear,” De Boer notes.

Fans of David Petersen’s Mouse Guard series will need no con­vinc­ing, though no real mouse has had the mis­for­tune to find its way inside one of his aston­ish­ing, cus­tom-made cre­ations.

Not even a taxi­dermy spec­i­men, he revealed on the Mak­ing, Our Way pod­cast:

It’s not an alto­geth­er bad idea. The only rea­son I don’t do it is that hol­low suit of armor like you might see in a muse­um, your imag­i­na­tion will make it do a mil­lion things more than if you stick a mouse in it will ever do. I have put armor on cats. I can tell you, it’s noth­ing like what you think it’s going to be. It’s not a very good expe­ri­ence for the cat. It does not ful­fill any fan­tasies about a cat wear­ing a suit of armor.


Though cats were his entry point, De Boer’s sym­pa­thies seem aligned with the under­dog — er, mice. Equip­ping hum­ble, hypo­thet­i­cal crea­tures with exquis­ite­ly wrought, his­tor­i­cal pro­tec­tive gear is a way of push­ing back against being per­ceived dif­fer­ent­ly than one wish­es to be.

Accept­ing an Hon­orary MFA from his alma mater ear­li­er this year, he described an armored mouse as a metaphor for his “ongo­ing cat and mouse rela­tion­ship with the world of fine art…a mis­chie­vous, rebel­lious being who dares to com­pete on his own terms in a world ruled by the cool cats.”

Each tiny piece is pre­ced­ed by painstak­ing research and many ref­er­ence draw­ings, and may incor­po­rate spe­cial mate­ri­als like the Japan­ese silk haori-himo cord lac­ing the shoul­der plates to the body armor of a Samu­rai mouse fam­i­ly.

Addi­tion­al cre­ations have ref­er­enced Mon­go­lian, glad­i­a­tor, cru­sad­er, and Sara­cen styles — this last per­fect for a Per­sian cat.

“I mean, “Why not?” he asks in his TED‑x Talk,Village Idiots & Inno­va­tion, below.

His lat­est work com­bines ele­ments of Maratha and Hus­sar armor in a ver­i­ta­ble puz­zle of minus­cule pieces.

See more of Jeff De Boer’s cat and mouse armor on his Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What’s It Like to Fight in 15th Cen­tu­ry Armor?: A Sur­pris­ing Demon­stra­tion

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

A Record Store Designed for Mice in Swe­den, Fea­tur­ing Albums by Mouse Davis, Destiny’s Cheese, Dol­ly Pars­ley & More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Goya Made His Haunting “Black Paintings” at the End of His Life

in Art, History | October 5th, 2022

Though most of us see Fran­cis­co Goy­a’s Sat­urno devo­ran­do a su hijo, or Sat­urn Devour­ing His Son, at least every few months, we were nev­er meant to see it all. The same is true of all four­teen of the so-called “Black Paint­ings,” which Goya exe­cut­ed late in his life on the walls of his vil­la out­side Madrid. They now hang at the Pra­do where, as one tour guide put it to the Guardian’s Stephen Phe­lan, “some peo­ple can hard­ly even look at them.” When vis­i­tors enter the room that con­tains these often grim and bizarre visions, “they are always sur­prised. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vis­i­tor whose expres­sion hasn’t changed.”

What could have moved Goya to cre­ate such paint­ings? In the new Great Art Explained video essay above, gal­lerist and Youtu­ber James Payne lays out the rel­e­vant fac­tors in Goy­a’s life and the tur­bu­lent soci­ety in which he lived. His Enlight­en­ment views and pen­chant for brazen satire drew sus­pi­cion, as did his will­ing­ness to paint for French and pro-French clients dur­ing that coun­try’s occu­pa­tion of Spain.

At the age of 72 he end­ed up putting him­self into a kind of coun­try­side exile, tak­ing up res­i­dence in an estate called the Quin­ta del Sor­do (the “Vil­la of the Deaf,” and suit­ably enough, since Goya him­self hap­pened to have lost his hear­ing by that point).

It was in the Quin­ta del Sor­do, and indeed on it, that Goya (or, accord­ing to cer­tain the­o­ries, Goy­a’s son) set his artis­tic world­view free to real­ize its most grotesque and jaun­diced forms. Even apart from Sat­urn’s act of can­ni­bal­is­tic fil­i­cide, Phe­lan writes, “a humanoid bil­ly goat in a monk­ish cas­sock bleats a satan­ic ser­mon to a gasp­ing con­gre­ga­tion of witch­es. A des­per­ate­ly expres­sive lit­tle dog appears to plead for res­cue, sub­merged up to its neck in a mud-col­ored mire beneath a gloomy, void-like fir­ma­ment of neg­a­tive space.” Known as El Per­ro, or The Dog, that last art­work is one of the most beloved in Spain — and, in its ascetic way, the most haunt­ing Black Paint­ing of all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Most Dis­turb­ing Paint­ing: A Close Look at Fran­cis­co Goya’s Sat­urn Devour­ing His Son

Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya — A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­dad Car­los III de Madrid (UC3M)

Art Lovers Rejoice! New Goya and Rem­brandt Data­bas­es Now Online

The Pra­do Muse­um Dig­i­tal­ly Alters Four Mas­ter­pieces to Strik­ing­ly Illus­trate the Impact of Cli­mate Change

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

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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Carl Sagan Issues a Chilling Warning to America in His Last Interview (1996)

in Current Affairs | October 4th, 2022

Until the end of his life, Carl Sagan (1934–1996) con­tin­ued doing what he did all along — pop­u­lar­iz­ing sci­ence and “enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly con­vey­ing the won­ders of the uni­verse to mil­lions of peo­ple on tele­vi­sion and in books.” When­ev­er Sagan appeared on ”The Tonight Show” with John­ny Car­son dur­ing the 70s and 80s, his goal was to con­nect with every­day Amer­i­cans — peo­ple who did­n’t sub­scribe to Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can — and increase the pub­lic’s under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of sci­ence.

At the end of his life, Sagan still cared deeply about where sci­ence stood in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. But while los­ing a bat­tle with myelodys­pla­sia, Sagan also sensed that sci­en­tif­ic think­ing was los­ing ground in Amer­i­ca, and even more omi­nous­ly with­in the cham­bers of the Newt Gringrich-led Con­gress.

Dur­ing his final inter­view, aired on May 27, 1996, Sagan issued a strong warn­ing, telling Char­lie Rose:

We’ve arranged a soci­ety on sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in which nobody under­stands any­thing about sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and this com­bustible mix­ture of igno­rance and pow­er soon­er or lat­er is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is run­ning the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in a democ­ra­cy if the peo­ple don’t know any­thing about it.

20 years lat­er, fig­ures like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye are out there, try­ing to pop­u­lar­ize sci­ence with new forms of media. But the same struc­tur­al prob­lem, so well artic­u­lat­ed by Sagan, remains large­ly in place. And yet there’s rea­son to hope. Because even as estab­lish­ment politi­cians still play the same games with sci­ence, there are ear­ly signs that, as with oth­er impor­tant issues, pub­lic opin­ion is shift­ing beneath their feet.

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Carl Sagan Tells John­ny Car­son What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chau­vin­ism in It” (1978)

Carl Sagan’s Ambi­tious Col­lege Read­ing List: Pla­to, Shake­speare, Gide, and Plen­ty of Phi­los­o­phy, Math & Physics (1954)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan Writes a Let­ter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

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Cats in Medieval Manuscripts & Paintings

in Art, History, Religion, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | October 3rd, 2022

Renais­sance artist Albrecht Dür­er  (1471–1528) nev­er saw a rhi­no him­self, but by rely­ing on eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the one King Manuel I of Por­tu­gal intend­ed as a gift to the Pope, he man­aged to ren­der a fair­ly real­is­tic one, all things con­sid­ered.

Medieval artists’ ren­der­ings of cats so often fell short of the mark, Youtu­ber Art Deco won­ders if any of them had seen a cat before.

Point tak­en, but cats were well inte­grat­ed into medieval soci­ety.

Roy­al 12 C xix f. 36v/37r (13th cen­tu­ry)

Cats pro­vid­ed medieval cit­i­zens with the same pest con­trol ser­vices they’d been per­form­ing since the ancient Egyp­tians first domes­ti­cat­ed them.

Ancient Egyp­tians con­veyed their grat­i­tude and respect by regard­ing cats as sym­bols of divin­i­ty, pro­tec­tion, and strength.

Cer­tain Egypt­ian god­dess­es, like Bastet, were imbued with unmis­tak­ably feline char­ac­ter­is­tics.

The Vin­tage News reports that harm­ing a cat in those days was pun­ish­able by death, export­ing them was ille­gal, and, much like today, the death of a cat was an occa­sion for pub­lic sor­row:

When a cat died, it was buried with hon­ors, mum­mi­fied and mourned by the humans. The body of the cat would be wrapped in the finest mate­ri­als and then embalmed in order to pre­serve the body for a longer time. Ancient Egyp­tians went so far that they shaved their eye­brows as a sign of their deep sor­row for the deceased pet.

Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty Library, MS 24  f. 23v (Eng­land, c 1200)

The medieval church took a much dark­er view of our feline friends.

Their close ties to pagan­ism and ear­ly reli­gions were enough for cats to be judged guilty of witch­craft, sin­ful sex­u­al­i­ty, and frat­er­niz­ing with Satan.

In the late 12th-cen­tu­ry, writer Wal­ter Map, a soon-to-be archdea­con of Oxford, declared that the dev­il appeared before his devo­tees in feline form:

… hang­ing by a rope, a black cat of great size. As soon as they see this cat, the lights are turned out. They do not sing or recite hymns in a dis­tinct way, but they mut­ter them with their teeth closed and they feel in the dark towards where they saw their lord], and when they find it, they kiss it, the more humbly depend­ing on their fol­ly, some on the paws, some under the tail, some on the gen­i­tals. And as if they have, in this way, received a license for pas­sion, each one takes the near­est man or woman and they join them­selves with the oth­er for as long as they choose to draw out their game.

Pope Inno­cent VIII issued a papal bull in 1484 con­demn­ing the “devil’s favorite ani­mal and idol of all witch­es” to death, along with their human com­pan­ions to death.

13th-cen­tu­ry Fran­cis­can monk Bartholo­maeus Angli­cus refrained from demon­ic tat­tle, but nei­ther did he paint cats as angels:

He is a full lech­er­ous beast in youth, swift, pli­ant, and mer­ry, and leapeth and reseth on every­thing that is to fore him: and is led by a straw, and playeth there­with: and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth sly­ly in wait for mice: and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places: and when he taketh a mouse, he playeth there­with, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fight­ing for wives, and one scratch­eth and ren­deth the oth­er griev­ous­ly with bit­ing and with claws. And he maketh a ruth­ful noise and ghast­ful, when one prof­fer­eth to fight with anoth­er: and unneth is hurt when he is thrown down off an high place. And when he hath a fair skin, he is as it were proud there­of, and goeth fast about: and when his skin is burnt, then he bideth at home; and is oft for his fair skin tak­en of the skin­ner, and slain and flayed.

Pigs and rats also had a bad rep, and like cats, were tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in great num­bers by pious humans.

The Work­sop Bes­tiary Mor­gan Library, MS M.81 f. 47r (Eng­land, c 1185)

Not every medieval city was anti-cat. As the Aca­d­e­m­ic Cat Lady Johan­na Feen­stra writes of the above illus­tra­tion from The Work­sop Bes­tiary, one of the ear­li­est Eng­lish bes­tiaries:

Some would have inter­pret­ed the image of a cat pounc­ing on a rodent as a sym­bol for the dev­il going after the human soul. Oth­ers might have seen the cat in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent light. For instance, as Eucharis­tic guardians, mak­ing sure rodents could not steal and eat the Eucharis­tic wafers.

Bodleian Library Bod­ley 764 f. 51r (Eng­land, c 1225–50)

St John’s Col­lege Library, MS. 61 (Eng­land (York), 13th cen­tu­ry)

It took cat lover Leonar­do DaVin­ci to turn the sit­u­a­tion around, with eleven sketch­es from life por­tray­ing cats in char­ac­ter­is­tic pos­es, much as we see them today. We’ll delve more into that in a future post.

Con­rad of Megen­berg, ‘Das Buch der Natur’, Ger­many ca. 1434. Stras­bourg, Bib­lio­thèque nationale et uni­ver­si­taire, Ms.2.264, fol. 85r

Relat­ed Con­tent

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Lizzo Plays James Madison’s Priceless, 200-Year-Old Crystal Flute

in History, Music | October 3rd, 2022

In the annals of mod­ern pop­u­lar music, one does not find a sur­feit of flautists. Tim Weis­berg, in part­ner­ship with singer-song­writer Dan Fogel­berg, did score a mod­est his or two in the sev­en­ties. More incon­gru­ous­ly, Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son set his band apart with his deci­sion to take up the flute not long before their ear­li­est per­for­mances. But today, out­side the realm of orches­tral music, there is sure­ly no high­er-pro­file flautist than Liz­zo. Though best known as a pop singer, she con­tin­ues to put to use the flute skills she honed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, with­out which she would­n’t have been able to han­dle a pre­cious piece of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

Last month, writes the Library of Con­gress’ April Slay­ton, one of that insti­tu­tion’s librar­i­ans Car­la Hay­den “saw that the one and only Liz­zo was com­ing to D.C. for a con­cert.” Giv­en that “the Library has the world’s largest flute col­lec­tion,” Hay­den took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to point out that fact to the pop star on Twit­ter. “One of about 1,700 flutes in the col­lec­tion, she teased, is the crys­tal flute made for Pres­i­dent James Madi­son by Claude Lau­rent — a price­less instru­ment that Dol­ley Madi­son res­cued from the White House in April 1814 as the British entered Wash­ing­ton, DC dur­ing the War of 1812.. Might she want to drop by and play a few bars?”

Indeed she did, with results you can see in the video above: at the Library itself, Liz­zo tries out one of the col­lec­tion’s many flutes; then she plays the crys­tal flute itself on onstage at Capi­tol One Are­na, hav­ing been hand­ed it by the instru­men­t’s own secu­ri­ty detail. “It’s like play­ing out of a wine glass,” she tells her thrilled audi­ence. One won­ders if the com­par­i­son would ever have occurred to its first own­er: “It’s not clear if Madi­son did much with the flute oth­er than admire it,” Slay­ton writes, “but it became a fam­i­ly heir­loom and an arti­fact of the era.” Now it has become a unit­ing sym­bol of Amer­i­can cul­ture past and present: how­ev­er for­ward-look­ing the Found­ing Fathers were, we can safe­ly say they nev­er imag­ine twerk­ing.

The Library of Con­gress has post­ed pic­tures of Liz­zo’s vis­it on Flickr. See them here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

But­ter­fly Lands on Flutist’s Face Dur­ing Flute Com­pe­ti­tion: The Show Must Go On

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute — the World’s Old­est Playable Instru­ment — Get Played Again

The Flute of Shame: Dis­cov­er the Instrument/Device Used to Pub­licly Humil­i­ate Bad Musi­cians Dur­ing the Medieval Peri­od

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

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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How Writing Has Spread Across the World, from 3000 BC to This Year: An Animated Map

in Maps | September 30th, 2022

The old­est known writ­ing sys­tems first emerged in Mesopotamia, between 3400 and 3100 BC, and Egypt, around 3250 BC. The Latin alpha­bet, which I’m using to write this post and you’re using to read it, grad­u­al­ly took the shape we know between the sev­enth cen­tu­ry BC and the Mid­dle Ages. Over the eras since, it has spread out­ward from Europe to become the most wide­ly used script in the world. These are impor­tant devel­op­ments in the his­to­ry of writ­ing, but hard­ly the only ones. It is with all known writ­ing sys­tems that his­tor­i­cal map ani­ma­tor Ollie Bye deals in the video above: not just those used today, but over the whole of the past five mil­len­nia.

The con­quests of Alexan­der the Great; the Gal­lic Wars; the col­o­niza­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca; the “scram­ble for Africa”: these and oth­er major his­tor­i­cal events are vivid­ly reflect­ed in the spread of cer­tain writ­ing sys­tems.

Up until 1492 — after the expi­ra­tion of eight and a half of the video’s eleven min­utes — the map con­cerns itself only with Europe, Asia, and the north­ern three-quar­ters of Africa (as well as an inlaid sec­tion depict­ing the civ­i­liza­tions of what is now Cen­tral Amer­i­ca). There­after it zooms out to include the New World, and indeed the whole world, though cen­turies pass before most of its blank spaces fill up with the col­ors that indi­cate the adop­tion of a dom­i­nant script.

Ara­bic and Per­sian appear in lime green, sim­pli­fied Chi­nese in red, and Cyril­lic in light blue. Before Bye’s ani­ma­tion reach­es the mid­dle twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, most of the world has turned medi­um blue, which rep­re­sents the now-mighty Latin alpha­bet. The use of these very let­ters for all writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion by such a wide vari­ety of cul­tures mer­its a vol­umes-long his­to­ry by itself. But per­haps most intrigu­ing here is the per­sis­tence of rel­a­tive­ly minor scripts: Cree, used among the natives of north­ern Cana­da; hira­gana, katakana, and kan­ji in Japan; and also hangul in Korea — which I read and write myself every day of my life in Seoul, and to whose con­tin­ued dom­i­nance here I can con­fi­dent­ly attest.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Atlas of Endan­gered Alpha­bets: A Free Online Atlas That Helps Pre­serve Writ­ing Sys­tems That May Soon Dis­ap­pear

The Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­bet: A Col­or­ful Flow­chart, Cov­er­ing 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to Today

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

The Improb­a­ble Inven­tion of Chi­nese Type­writ­ers & Com­put­er Key­boards: Three Videos Tell the Tech­no-Cul­tur­al Sto­ry

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

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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What It’s Like to Work in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Office Building

in Architecture, History | September 30th, 2022

Frank Lloyd Wright, who drew so much inspi­ra­tion from the wide open spaces of mid­dle Amer­i­ca, designed just two high-rise build­ings. The sec­ond, com­plet­ed late in his long career, was 1956’s Price Tow­er in Bartlesville, Okla­homa. The first opened six years before that, as an addi­tion to one of his already-famous projects. That was the head­quar­ters of S. C. John­son & Son, bet­ter known as John­son Wax, in Racine, Wis­con­sin. Seen at a dis­tance, the Research Tow­er stands out as the sig­nal fea­ture of the com­plex, but it’s the ear­li­er Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing that offered the world a glimpse of the future of work.

The Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing’s con­struc­tion fin­ished in 1939. Back then, says Vox’s Phil Edwards (him­self an estab­lished Wright fan) in the video above, “offices were small and cramped, or pri­vate. This build­ing had a spa­cious cen­tral room instead, meant to encour­age the spread of ideas.” Such a con­cept may sound famil­iar — per­haps all too famil­iar — to any­one who’s ever worked in what we now call an “open-plan office.” But it was dar­ing at the time, and it seems that no archi­tect has ever imple­ment­ed it quite as strik­ing­ly again. What oth­er office makes you “feel like you’re under­wa­ter, that you’re in, maybe, a lily pond”?

That descrip­tion comes from archi­tect and Wright schol­ar Jonathan Lip­man, one of the experts Edwards con­sults on his own pil­grim­age to John­son Wax Head­quar­ters. He want­ed to spend some time work­ing there him­self, some­thing eas­i­ly arranged since S. C. John­son has by now moved most of its oper­a­tions into oth­er facil­i­ties. But how­ev­er sat­is­fy­ing it feels to sit in the shade of Wright’s “den­dri­form columns” sprout­ing through­out the Great Work­room, the expe­ri­ence proves unsat­is­fy­ing. “It was­n’t a real thing with­out any peo­ple around,” Edwards says, “with­out the ener­gy of being in that office.”

Wright spoke of his inten­tions to cre­ate “as inspir­ing a place to work in as any cathe­dral ever was to wor­ship in.” Today, amid the silent absence of typ­ists on the ground floor and man­agers on the mez­za­nine, the Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing must feel holi­er than ever. The space exudes a mag­nif­i­cent lone­li­ness, and open­ing a Mac­Book to log into Slack sure­ly inten­si­fies the lone­li­ness rather than the mag­nif­i­cence. “In 1939, this was the future of work,” Edwards says. “These big cor­po­rate cam­pus­es, the Googles and Metas and Ama­zons: they owe a debt to this cam­pus here.” But for the increas­ing­ly many liv­ing the remote-work life, even those twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry big-tech head­quar­ters have begun to seem like tem­ples from a pass­ing era.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Build Wood­en Mod­els of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Build­ing: The Guggen­heim, Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters & More

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

When the Indi­ana Bell Build­ing Was Rotat­ed 90° While Every­one Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Archi­tect Dad)

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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Behold the Medieval Wound Man: The Poor Soul Who Illustrated the Injuries a Person Might Receive Through War, Accident or Disease

in Art, Biology, Health, History | September 29th, 2022

Do you swoon at the sight of blood?

Suf­fer paper cuts as major trau­ma?

Cov­er your eyes when the knife comes out in the hor­ror movie?

If so, and also if not, fall to your knees and give thanks that you’re not the Wound Man, above.

A sta­ple of medieval med­ical his­to­ry, he’s a gris­ly com­pendi­um of the injuries and exter­nal afflic­tions that might befall a mor­tal of the peri­od- insect and ani­mal bites, spilled entrails, abscess­es, boils, infec­tions, plague-swollen glands, pierc­ings and cuts, both acci­den­tal and delib­er­ate­ly inflict­ed.

Any one of these trou­bles should be enough to fell him, yet he remains upright, dis­play­ing every last one of them simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, his expres­sion sto­ic.

He’s hard to look at, but as art his­to­ri­an Jack Hart­nell , author of Medieval Bod­ies: Life, Death and Art in the Mid­dle Ages writes in British Art Stud­ies:

The Wound Man was not a fig­ure designed to inspire fear or to men­ace. On the con­trary, he rep­re­sent­ed some­thing more hope­ful: an imag­i­na­tive and arrest­ing her­ald of the pow­er­ful knowl­edge that could be chan­nelled and dis­pensed through the prac­tice of medieval med­i­cine.

A valu­able edu­ca­tion­al resource for sur­geons for some three cen­turies, he began crop­ping up in south­ern Ger­many in the ear­ly 1400s. In an essay for the Pub­lic Domain Review, Hart­nell notes how these ear­ly spec­i­mens served “as a human table of con­tents”, direct­ing inter­est­ed par­ties to the spe­cif­ic pas­sages in the var­i­ous med­ical texts where infor­ma­tion on exist­ing treat­ments could be found.

The pro­to­col for injuries to the intestines or stom­ach called for stitch­ing the wound up with a fine thread and sprin­kling it with an anti­he­m­or­rhag­ic pow­der made from wine, hematite, nut­meg, white frank­in­cense, gum ara­bic, bright red sap from the Dra­cae­na cinnabari tree and a restora­tive quan­ti­ty of mum­my.

The Wound Man evolved along with med­ical knowl­edge, weapons of war­fare and art world trends.

The wood­cut Wound Man in Hans von Gersdorff’s 1517 land­mark Field­book of Surgery intro­duces can­non­balls to the ghast­ly mix.

And the engraver Robert White’s Wound Man in British sur­geon John Browne’s 1678 Com­pleat Dis­course of Wounds los­es the loin­cloth and grows his hair, mor­ph­ing into a neo­clas­si­cal beau­ty in the Saint Sebas­t­ian mold.

Sur­gi­cal knowl­edge even­tu­al­ly out­paced the Wound Man’s use­ful­ness, but pop­u­lar cul­ture is far from ready for him to lay down and die, as evi­denced by recent cameos in episodes of Han­ni­bal and the British com­e­dy quiz show, QI.


Delve into the his­to­ry of the Wound Man in Jack Hart­nel­l’s British Art Stud­ies arti­cle “Word­ing the Wound Man.”

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Dis­cov­er the Per­sian 11th Cen­tu­ry Canon of Med­i­cine, “The Most Famous Med­ical Text­book Ever Writ­ten”

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Meet the Hyperpolyglots, the People Who Can Mysteriously Speak Up to 32 Different Languages

in Language | September 29th, 2022

Poly­glot, as its Greek roots take no great pains to con­ceal, means the speak­ing of mul­ti­ple lan­guages. Some­what less obvi­ous is the mean­ing of the asso­ci­at­ed term hyper­poly­lot. “Coined two decades ago, by a British lin­guist, Richard Hud­son, who was launch­ing an Inter­net search for the world’s great­est lan­guage learn­er,” the New York­er’s Judith Thur­man writes, it refers not just to the speak­ing of mul­ti­ple lan­guages but the speak­ing of many lan­guages. How many is “many”? “The accept­ed thresh­old is eleven,” which dis­qual­i­fies even most of us avid lan­guage con­nois­seurs. But Vaughn Smith eas­i­ly makes the cut.

You can meet this for­mi­da­ble hyper­poly­glot in the Wash­ing­ton Post video above, which com­ple­ments Jes­si­ca Con­tr­era’s sto­ry in the paper. Smith grew up in D.C. speak­ing not just Eng­lish but Span­ish, his moth­er’s native lan­guage. On his father’s side of the fam­i­ly, dis­tant cousins from Bel­gium expand­ed Smith’s lin­guis­tic world­view fur­ther still.

At 46 years of age, he now speaks just about as many lan­guages, “with at least 24 he speaks well enough to car­ry on lengthy con­ver­sa­tions. He can read and write in eight alpha­bets and scripts. He can tell sto­ries in Ital­ian and Finnish and Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage. He’s teach­ing him­self Indige­nous lan­guages, from Mexico’s Nahu­atl. to Montana’s Sal­ish. The qual­i­ty of his accents in Dutch and Cata­lan daz­zle peo­ple from the Nether­lands and Spain.”

Unlike his fel­low hyper­poly­glot Ioan­nis Ikonomou, pro­filed in the Great Big Sto­ry video above, Smith is not a trans­la­tor. Nor does he work as a lin­guist, a diplo­mat, or any­thing else you’d expect. “Vaughn has been a painter, a bounc­er, a punk rock road­ie and a Kom­bucha deliv­ery man,” writes Con­tr­era. “He was once a dog walk­er for the Czech art col­lec­tor Meda Mlád­ková, the wid­ow of an Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund gov­er­nor,” which was “the clos­est he ever came to hav­ing a career that uti­lized his lan­guages.” Hav­ing brought him most recent­ly to the pro­fes­sion of car­pet clean­ing, Smith’s life resem­bles a beloved genre of Amer­i­can sto­ry: that of the undis­cov­ered work­ing-class genius, most pop­u­lar­ly told by movies like Good Will Hunt­ing. Con­tr­era’s inves­ti­ga­tion adds a chap­ter in line with a major 21st-cen­tu­ry trend in reportage: the brain activ­i­ty-reveal­ing func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) scan.

Under the fMRI scan­ner, “Vaughn works through a series of tests, read­ing Eng­lish words, watch­ing blue squares move around and lis­ten­ing to lan­guages, some he knows and some he doesn’t.” The results were sur­pris­ing: “the parts of Vaughn’s brain used to com­pre­hend lan­guage are far small­er and qui­eter than mine,” writes the monoglot Con­tr­era. “Even when we are read­ing the same words in Eng­lish, I am using more of my brain and work­ing hard­er than he ever has to.” Per­haps “Vaughn was born with his lan­guage areas being small­er and more effi­cient”; per­haps “his brain start­ed out like mine, but because he learned so many lan­guages while it was still devel­op­ing, his ded­i­ca­tion trans­formed his anato­my.” Smith him­self seems to have enjoyed the expe­ri­ence — not that it took his mind off a mat­ter of great impor­tance even to the less inten­sive lan­guage-learn­ers: keep­ing his Duolin­go streak intact.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

What Are the Most Effec­tive Strate­gies for Learn­ing a For­eign Lan­guage?: Six TED Talks Pro­vide the Answers

215 Hours of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons on Spo­ti­fy: French, Chi­nese, Ger­man, Russ­ian & More

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

A Map Show­ing How Much Time It Takes to Learn For­eign Lan­guages: From Eas­i­est to Hard­est

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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Why Predator — A Discussion of the Film Franchise on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #133

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | September 29th, 2022

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Thanks to the new film Prey by Dan Tra­cht­en­berg and Patrick Aison, we now have six films (start­ing with 1987’s Preda­tor) fea­tur­ing the dread­locked, cam­ou­flaged, infrared-see­ing race of alien hunters who have appar­ent­ly been fly­ing around col­lect­ing our skulls for 300 years.

Thank­ful­ly, the new film is good, and adds to the recent spate of Indige­nous-cen­tered media, with its young, female Comanche pro­tag­o­nist tak­ing on evil French bison-killers, her sex­ist peers, and a moun­tain lion, in addi­tion to a rel­a­tive­ly low-tech ver­sion of what many com­ic books have called a Yaut­ja.

We talk about what makes for a good Preda­tor film, the appeal of the mon­ster (and when in the films it gets revealed), the pac­ing of the films, the music, direc­tion, effects, humor, social com­men­tary, and more.

A few of the arti­cles we con­sult­ed includ­ed:

This marks the first episode of Pret­ty Much Pop sea­son three, where Mark Lin­sen­may­er’s recur­ring co-hosts will by default ten­ta­tive­ly be those you will hear today: Phi­los­o­phy prof/entertainment writer Lawrence Ware, novelist/writing prof Sarahlyn Bruck, and ex-musi­cian, ex-phi­los­o­phy grad stu­dent, and now ex-research man­ag­er Al Bak­er. The var­i­ous con­vo­ca­tions of musi­cians, come­di­ans, et al, will still hap­pen too, but will at least alter­nate with some per­mu­ta­tion of that core group.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. 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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