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Monday, March 20th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 7:11a | An Animated Introduction to McCarthyism: What Is It? And How Did It Happen?
During the 1970s, a young Donald Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, a brash, take-no-prisoners lawyer, who first came to prominence during the 1950s, when he served as the consigliere to Joseph McCarthy and his campaign to expose suspected communists in the United States. In what’s known as the Second Red Scare, McCarthy led increasingly broad and paranoid investigations, trying to find Communists, sympathizers and spies, both inside and outside the federal government. Mostly on the basis of rumor, not fact, “thousands of individuals were aggressively investigated and questioned before government panels.” Blacklists were created. Some were jailed. Careers and livelihoods were destroyed. Year later, playwright Arthur Miller recalled, “Suffice it to say, it was a time of great–no doubt unprecedented–fear.” “The air of terror was heavy.” “I was sure the whole thing would soon go away.” Eventually a sense of futility gave way to anger, and Miller responded by writing The Crucible, a commentary on McCarthyism wrapped in a drama about the Salem witch trials of 1692/93. Above, you can watch above a six minute primer on McCarthyism, prepared by Ellen Schrecker, professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University. An expert on the history of McCarthyism, she has been called “the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians.” Her books on the subject include: Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America and Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. Follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Flipboard and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. To make sure that our posts definitely appear in your Facebook newsfeed, just follow these simple steps. If you’d like to help support Open Culture, please sign up for a 30-day free trial from Audible.com or The Great Courses Plus. You will get free audio books and free courses in return. No strings attached. Related Content: Bertolt Brecht Testifies Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947) Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Identify It’s A Wonderful Life as Communist Propaganda Watch “Don’t Be a Sucker!,” the 1947 US Government Anti-Hatred Film That’s Relevant Again in 2017 How to Spot a Communist Using Literary Criticism: A 1955 Manual from the U.S. Military
An Animated Introduction to McCarthyism: What Is It? And How Did It Happen? is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 7:30a | Hayao Miyazaki Tells Video Game Makers What He Thinks of Their Characters Made with Artificial Intelligence: “I’m Utterly Disgusted. This Is an Insult to Life Itself” 
For a young person in an animation-based field, the opportunity to share new work with director Hayao Miyazaki must feel like a golden opportunity. This may still hold true for Nobuo Kawakami, the chairman of Dwango, a Japanese telecommunications and media company, but not for the reasons he likely anticipated at the start of the above video. The subject of their discussion is a computer generated animated model whose artificial intelligence causes it to move by squirming on its head. Its creators haven’t invested it with any particular personality traits or storyline, but its flayed appearance and tortuous movements suggest it’s unlikely to be boarding Miyazaki’s magical cat bus any time soon. Even without an explicit narrative, the model’s potential should be evident to anyone who’s ever sat through the final-reel resurrection of a horribly maimed, presumed-dead terrorizer of scantily clad young ladies. The model’s grotesque squirmings could also be an asset to zombie video games, as Kawakami excitedly points out. Let us remember that Miyazaki’s films are rooted not in gross-out effects, but redemption, a reverence for nature, and respect for children and all living things. The master watches the demonstration without comment, then dispenses with traditional Japanese etiquette in favor of some strongly worded medicine that leaves no doubt as to what he really thought of Dwango’s artificially intelligent wretch: “I am utterly disgusted… I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” (At this point, you really should watch the video, to hear Miyazaki’s opening statement, about a disabled friend for whom even a simple high-five is a painful physical exertion.) Poor Kawakami-san! Unceremoniously shamed in front of his colleagues by a national treasure, he doesn’t push back. All he can offer is something along the lines of “We didn’t mean anything by it”—a statement that seems credible. The American president may be into dehumanizing those with disabilities, but the Dwango crew’s heads were likely occupied with boyish visions of a thrillingly gruesome zombie apocalypse. It’s a harsh, but important message for Miyazaki to have gotten across. Dwango is responsible for creating a lot of online games. In other words, they hold considerable sway over impressionable youth. Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki grants Kawakami and his colleagues an opportunity to save face, asking what the team’s goals are. “We’d like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do,” one shellshocked-looking young man responds. What, like, Henri Maillardet’s automaton from 1810? While I can imagine such a contraption showing up in one of Miyazaki’s steam-punk-flavored adventures, the hush that greets this statement all but screams “wrong answer!” What will this encounter lead to? The release of an online game in which one scores points by hideously dismembering the animated form of director Hayao Miyazaki? Or a newfound sensitivity, in which cool technological advances are viewed through a lens of actual human experience? Only time will tell. Related Content: Software Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Animation Studio Becomes Open Source & Free to Download Hayao Miyazaki Meets Akira Kurosawa: Watch the Titans of Japanese Film in Conversation (1993) Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday. Hayao Miyazaki Tells Video Game Makers What He Thinks of Their Characters Made with Artificial Intelligence: “I’m Utterly Disgusted. This Is an Insult to Life Itself” is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 11:30a | Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russian Studio Mosfilm: Classic Films, Beloved Comedies, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa & More   To most international cinephiles, the word Mosfilm immediately brings to mind two towering names in Russian motion pictures: Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky. Both directors made not just important movies but took major steps to develop the visual language of film itself, and both worked for Mosfilm, one of Russia’s largest and oldest film studios. First established in 1923, it went on to produce more than 3,000 films during the Soviet era, some of which now define the cinema of that period. Now viewers around the world can enjoy their aesthetic lushness, historical interest, and pure entertainment value more easily than ever on Mosfilm’s Youtube channel, which offers among its many freely viewable pictures a selection of 70 films in high definition. You’ll want to start, of course, with Eisenstein and Tarkovsky. Mosfilm has made available in HD the former’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) and much of the latter’s filmography: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), and Stalker (1979). For all their high artistic achievement, however, they may admittedly reinforce the West’s Cold War-era image of Russians as terribly serious people who seldom even crack a smile, let alone laugh. So why not follow those up with a dive into Mosfilm’s considerable HD selection of beloved, light-hearted Soviet comedies?
Of all Soviet comedy directors, Leonid Gaidai stands as by far the most successful. You can watch a fair few of his works, long and short, on Mosfilm’s HD playlist, including Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures (1965); the intriguingly titled Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1967); The Diamond Arm (1969), the most popular society comedy ever; The Twelve Chairs (1971); Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession (1973), based on a play by Mikhail Bulgakov; and It Can’t Be! (1975). It also offers several films from Gaidai’s contemporary Eldar Ryazanov, who worked in a more satirical vein (and showed a surprising willingness to poke fun at the absurdities of Soviet life): Carnival Night (1956), the beloved musical Hussar Ballad (1962), Beware of the Car (1966), Office Romance (1977), Station for Two (1982), and A Cruel Romance (1984).
You may also notice the conspicuous presence of a certain highly notable non-Russian filmmaker: Akira Kurosawa, who in 1975 worked with Mosfilm to make Dersu Uzala, an adaptation of the memoirs of a trapper in Russia’s far eastern wilderness. It came as just one of Mosfilm’s many literary adaptations, the most famous perhaps being Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1969 vision of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. On Mosfilm’s HD playlist you’ll also find two features drawing on the work of Anton Chekhov: Andrei Konchalovsky’s Uncle Vanya (1971), and Emil Loteanu’s My Tender and Affectionate Beast, or a Hunting Accident (1978), a feature-length adaptation of A Hunting Party. Mosfilm’s Youtube channel features not just Soviet-era movies, but those from more recent years as well: the mighty film studio survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, continuing to contribute to cinema as a quasi-private federation of independent studios. Its current Director General, Karen Shakhnazarov, boasts an impressive filmography of his own. You can get an HD taste of his work by watching Jazzmen (1983), Winter Evening in Gagra (1985), Courier (1986), Zerograd (1989), The Assassin of the Tsar (1991), Dreams (1993), Poisons, or the World History of Poisoning (2001), and The Vanished Empire (2008), all of which weave together the threads — the visionary, the historical, the everyday, the absurd — running through Mosfilm’s long history. NOTE: Though many of the titles on Mosfilm’s HD playlist appear only in Russian, most of the films themselves come with English subtitles. Make sure to click the “CC” icon on the lower right of the Youtube player to turn them on. Some of the films mentioned above will be added to our meta collection, 1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.. Related Content: Watch War and Peace: The Splendid, Epic Film Adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Grand Novel (1969) Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisenstein & Other Russian Greats Watch Battleship Potemkin and Other Free Sergei Eisenstein Films A Visual Introduction to Soviet Montage Theory: A Revolution in Filmmaking Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russian Studio Mosfilm: Classic Films, Beloved Comedies, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa & More is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 2:30p | Chuck Berry Jams Out “Johnny B. Goode” with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, John Lennon & Bruce Springsteen 
The King of Rock and Roll is dead, and, no, I don’t mean Elvis, but Chuck Berry, who proclaimed himself at every opportunity the rightful sovereign. Next to Berry (according to Berry) every other hip-swiveling, duck-walking, pompadour-combing jackelope was nothing but a lowdown pretender, even those who only bore the faintest resemblance to the above. See, for example, his take on punk rock—so clearly derivative of his work that he can’t help taking credit for most of it. To people raised on The Ramones instead of the Stones his attitude seemed ridiculous. But for those who came of age at a time when rock and roll was a near synonym for Chuck Berry, he was right all along. We failed to appreciate the enormity of his talent, the uniqueness of his style, the genius of his licks. I’ve wrestled with both the dismissal of Berry and the hagiography. My generation’s “classic rock” involved a Richards or a Clapton. Berry’s music may as well have been buried in Pleistocene strata, though he lived until the irascible age of 90, performing until just a few years ago. We knew the pioneers, the Boppers, the Checkers, the Hollys. They could seem like cartoon characters from our parents’ infantilized 50s childhoods: wholesome, corny, downright creepy. Bleh to all that. But, it’s true, out of his generation of players, Berry has always been special. He was the first rock and roll guitar hero. And if he sometimes seemed salty about it, imagine how you’d feel to have your biggest hit—with the “12th greatest solo of all time”—stolen from you by the Beach Boys and Marty McFly.
Even the most pedestrian guitar players should recognize how many licks Berry built into rock and roll’s architectural vocabulary from the fretboard of his Gibson 335. Consider then the recognition from those greats who learned to play as kids by listening to him on the radio. Chuck Berry may have felt underappreciated, or undercompensated, but read an interview from almost any decade with Richards or Clapton or Harrison or Page, etc. and you’ll be surprised if his name doesn’t come up. He was such an august American patriarch at his death that the National Review called him “the founding father of rock,” his influence “almost impossible to overstate”—sentiments echoed by nearly every living guitar god to have worn the title. NRO‘s Berry eulogy also includes a roundup of covers of “Johnny B Goode,” from Jimi Hendrix to AC/DC, the Grateful Dead, Prince, Judas Priest, the Sex Pistols…. Not all respectful covers, but name a band, they’ve probably done it.
But it was the lucky few guitar gods who got to play with Berry himself, gazing at him in awe, out of their minds with fifteen-year-old glee. Keith Richards and Eric Clapton once traded solos on an extended “Johnny B. Goode” (top—the video and sound go out of sync, making for a slightly surreal viewing experience.) Berry seemed to soak it up as much as they did. Further up, see a boyishly happy John Lennon play “Johnny B. Goode” with Berry on The Mike Douglas Show in 1972. Lennon understood why Berry was so influential not only as a guitarist but as a songwriter. He wrote “good lyrics and intelligent lyrics in the 1950s when people were singing ‘Oh baby, I love you so.’ It was people like him that influenced our generation to try and make sense out of the songs rather than just sing ‘do wa diddy.’” Though Lennon did his share of that. Finally, Bruce Springsteen plays sideman to Berry during “Johnny B. Goode” at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Springsteen paid homage to Berry frequently, and also played in his band in the 70s, “an experience,” writes Ultimate Classic Rock, “that challenged the young musician’s ability to think on his feet.” You may notice Springsteen and Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” performance seems a “a little wobbly.” This is because Berry decided to shift the song “in gears and a key without talking to us,” remembers guitarist Nils Lofgren. The setlist said “Rock and Roll Music,” Berry decided he’d rather play “Johnny B. Goode.” So they played “Johnny B. Goode.” (See Springsteen replicate the experience by playing Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” live with his band, totally unrehearsed.) All of Berry’s protégés and musician-admirers quickly learned what to expect when they met their idol: when they got together to jam with him, they were “going to do some Chuck Berry songs,” as Springsteen remembers him saying during their old days together. To Berry and to much of the generation that followed, the phrase was pretty much synonymous with rock and roll. Related Content: Chuck Berry Takes Keith Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Chuck Berry Jams Out “Johnny B. Goode” with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, John Lennon & Bruce Springsteen is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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