A Sunday dozen
John Wyver writes: a second selection, after too long a break, of articles, video and audio that have especially engaged me over the past week and more.
• Advent Sunday in old money – day 7: professional designer Martin Cater is one of many creating an online Advent calendar, and in his case he is writing delightfully and in a very personal way about different aspects of the popular culture of Christmas. Over the first week, he has cast his eye over tins of biscuits, artificial Christmas trees, fairy lights, sweets, decorations, baubles, and yesterday’s link is about visits to Santa’s grotto – for those of us of a certain age there’s so much here to enjoy (with thanks to Billy Smart for the tip).
• Is Virginia Tracy the first great American film critic?: writing as usual for The New Yorker, the exceptional critic Richard Brody pays tribute to an illustrious forebear.
• Celluloid dreams: revolution and its enemies in Cold War global cinema: Jason Christian for LA Review of Books considers Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960–1990, edited by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan, and along the way touches on numerous important ideas about politics and film form.
• History is made at night: the great Rick Prelinger reflects on his latest Lost Landscapes screening, which is a feature-length compilation of archival footage from home movies, industrial films, documentary footage, and outtakes:
All without sound except for three short sequences, Lost Landscapes is made for audience members who speak with one another and talk back to the screen as the movie plays. Above all, this project is about combatting historical amnesia — challenging received ideas about the history of San Francisco and California and presenting images and people from all of San Francisco’s communities. But I also harbor more covert objectives: to push people to stop seeing movies and start looking at images; to encourage people to construct their own narrative, if they need one, rather than forcing on them a particular mode of “storytelling”; to create a collective, dialogical experience that continues reverberating after people leave the theater; and to present an alternative to the spectacle that distracts the many and enriches the few.
• Exploring The Wednesday Play‘s legacy at 60 – unofficial 01 – Catch as Catch Can: my colleague in media studies Dr Tom May has started a series of invaluable blog posts about each edition of The Wednesday Play; this first, about a production that might or might not be counted as an edition of the series, was a Jean Anouilh drama shown on BBC1, 30 September 1964; Tom has contributed five more posts to date, and each one is well worth your attention.
• ‘The vibe may be British but the money is’: how the US quietly conquered UK TV: for the most part, I avoid links to the Guardian and other familiar British sources, but this by Rachel Aroesti is highlights a key issue in the production of drama and comedy today.
• In defense of criticism – theater critic asks what good does it do in an upside-down world: Charles McNulty for the troubled LA Times on his principles as a cultural critic; this is so on the money.
• Original cast recording: Evita – the Original Motion Picture Cast Recording: the latest entry from Marcello Carlin’s Then Play Long series, an essay about every UK number one album in sequence; this is the second recommendation this week from Billy Smart (other contributions are always welcome), who writes:
now back after a few dormant years (he started in 2008), Marcello always attempts a redemptive reading. He’s up to 1996 now, and the last two of these have been incredible. First an account of the first Spice Girls album, a cultural landmark that contains multitudes. And then last week the Original Soundtrack of the Alan Parker/ Madonna Evita film. You’d think that this would be less promising material, but he goes through every iteration of this project (and what a singularly weird subject for a West End blockbuster the Evita Peron story was) and all of the many filmed versions that nearly came to be. I found it fascinating, and fully justifying the 8,000+ word count.
• The mouth of calamities: an exemplary essay by Musab Younis for LRB about ‘poet, politician, anticolonialist and co-founder of the négritude movement’ Aimé Césaire.
• How did lesbian pulp fiction thrive in the 1950s and ’60s: a great read from Mark Harris contributing to The New York Times Style Magazine about a truly fascinating aspect of queer pop culture.
• Where is post-Brexit Britain?: I have recommended Chris Grey’s Brexit & Beyond posts many times before, but here’s another reminder about its acute, detailed, deeply informed weekly coverage of the most catastrophic political process for Britain of the post-war years; from this week’s conclusion:
the ragbag of this fortnight’s Brexit events reflects more than my failure to find any shape to them. Rather, it captures the shapelessness of Labour’s post-Brexit policies and, more fundamentally, the shapelessness of the UK’s post-Brexit condition. It is a grim irony that on one edge of Europe there is war and civil unrest in countries which dearly wish to anchor their place in the world by joining the EU whilst here, on the other edge, we have given that prize away in order to drift into confusion.
• The American Vandal: a podcast presented by Matt Seybold from the Center for Mark Twain Studies, with very strong production values, great music and wry humour; this is my current audio obsession with its high-level, occasionally demanding, always enriching discussions of the humanities in academia, cultural criticism within and beyond the university, capitalism and so much more.
• And finally… for no reason except that the performance is exquisite, here from a CBC broadcast in 1964 is Glenn Gould playing extracts from Bach’s Aria with 30 Variations BWV 988, also known as ‘The Goldberg Variations’
Header image: Carl Newman, ‘Spirit of Christmas’, c. 1915-1920, open access, courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Anna McCleery Newton
Leave a Reply