Arts and Culture

When the Bolsheviks seized control of Russia in the October Revolution of 1917, Bertrand Russell saw it as "one of the great heroic events of the world's history." A renowned philosopher and mathematician, Russell was also a committed socialist. As he would write in his 1920 book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism : By far the most important aspect of the Russian Revolution is as an attempt to realize Communism. I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind. But despite his early admiration for the "splendid attempt," Russell found much in Soviet Russia to be concerned about. Specifically, he was appalled by the rigidly...

Maybe it’s always too soon to make predictions, but historians of the future will likely view the time of COVID-19 as one of unprecedented cultural, social, and economic change on a vast scale. One of those changes, the opening of historic museum collections—photographed and uploaded in high resolution images, and viewable in the kind of fine detail one could never get close enough to see in person—has put an advancing trend into hyperdrive. The British Museum, for example, has just announced a “major revamp” of its digital collection , Vice reports , “making nearly 1.9 million images free to use for anyone under a  Creative Commons 4.0  license.” This addition expands the museum’s online collection to nearly 4.5 million objects—or digital representations of objects. “[Y]ou can zoom in and pan over the Game of Ur, a  5,000-year-old board game  played in Mesopotamia, or  the sculpture Hoa Hakananai’a from Easter Island.” The museum is transparent about some...

Even if you don't know the Beatles, you know "Love Me Do." Even if you don't know the Rolling Stones, you know "Satisfaction." Even if you don't know Monty Python, you know "The Ministry of Silly Walks." Like an AM radio hit, the sketch works on several different aesthetic and intellectual levels while captivating audiences of disparate ages and cultures, all within the span of a few minutes. As a satire of British government bureaucracy it compares, in its way, to Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's series Yes Minister , which would debut on the BBC a decade later. As sheer physical comedy, it draws its power, as all those old songs do, from the innate characteristics of its performers. Or rather, from John Cleese, who not only looks the part of a born establishment figure, but stands nearly six and a half feet tall. Though few of us can sing like Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger, it doesn't stop us from joining in when their s...

http://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/partiallyexaminedlife/PMP_041_4-16-20.mp3 Craig was the front-man of the brainy punk band Shudder to Think from the mid-'80s through the '90s and has created music for many TV shows and films . He joins your hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt due to his involvement with the current NBC musical dramedy Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist , which along with Glee , Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , Nashville , Rise , etc. represents a new era of musicals as mainstream TV. Why are shows like this being created at this point in our cultural history? These shows all use some narrative explanation for why there's singing (i.e. the songs are diagetic ) instead of just having the characters sing as in a classic musical or a film like The Greatest Showman or La La Land . Most of these also make heavy use of cover tunes and/or parodies in a way that stage musicals usually don't. And of course there's often a heavy...

When we consider the many identities of David Bowie — Ziggy Stardust , Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke — we often neglect to include his transformation into an internet entrepreneur. In line with Bowie's reputation for being ahead of his time in all endeavors, it happened several tech booms ago, in the late 1990s. Foreseeing the internet's potential as a cultural and commercial force , he got ahead of it by launching not just his own web site (which some major artists lacked through the end of the century), but his own internet service provider. For $19.95 a month (£10.00 in the UK), BowieNet offered fans access not just to "high-speed" internet but to "David Bowie, his world, his friends, his fans, including live chats, live video feeds, chat rooms and bulletin boards." So announced  the initial BowieNet press release published in August 1998 , which also promised "live in-studio video feeds," "text, audio and video messages from Bo...

Ezra Pound is a problem for Modernist literary studies in the same way Martin Heidegger is for Continental philosophy: it’s impossible to deny the overwhelming influence of either figure—and impossible to deny that both were devoted anti-Semitic fascists from at least the 1930s to the end of their days. Heidegger kept his views mostly hidden in his “Black Notebooks.” Pound, on the other hand, became an enthusiastic mouthpiece . He publicly idolized Benito Mussolini, signed letters with “Heil Hitler,” and broadcast paranoid anti-Semitic hate speech on Italian radio in over a hundred propaganda pieces for the Axis powers during the war. Pound was to be sentenced for treason in 1945 but was saved by an insanity defense  promoted by Ernest Hemingway (who convinced himself Pound must have been insane to say such things.) After a stay in St. Elizabeth’s, Pound recanted, but privately he never changed. If he were a lesser poet, critics and readers might assure themselves they’d...

Would-be tourists taking time out of their suddenly very less busy lives to pore over New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art map online may convince themselves it’s possible to see every collection in one day. Say, if they got there first thing in the morning, skipped lunch, and moved fast. Sure, Modern and Egyptian art are on opposite sides of opposite wings and there are two floors and a mezzanine, but if you make a plan…. Any New Yorker who runs across such a person should immediately send them John Kerschbaum’s dense, colorful, information- and people-rich, Where’s Waldo-eye view map above. (View it in a larger format here . Once you access the page, click on the graphic to expand it.) Say, “this is what’s it’s really like on any given day.” A bewildering experience that renders the most careful plan useless in under thirty minutes. Unless you only plan to spend time in a couple galleries, at most, and know how to get there, it’s best not to get your hopes up for a one-day visi...