Weekend Reads (Jan 6): Disney Horror, Aging Rock Stars, Christ and Pop Culture, CIA Design
Recommended weekend reading for January 6, 2024.
Welcome to the first “Weekend Reads” of 2024. I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year, and that this year is filled with joy and blessings. And of course, great things to read. Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
On January 1, 2024, Disney’s Steamboat Willie — considered the popular debut of Mickey Mouse — entered the public domain. And not surprisingly, someone’s already announced a Steamboat Willie-themed horror movie.
Steven LaMorte is set to direct an untitled horror-comedy based on Mickey’s cartoon debut. In it, a sadistic mouse will torment a group of unsuspecting ferry passengers. Production is set to begin in the spring.
“Steamboat Willie has brought joy to generations, but beneath that cheerful exterior lies a potential for pure, unhinged terror,” LaMorte said in a press release. “It’s a project I’ve been dreaming of, and I can’t wait to unleash this twisted take on this beloved character to the world.”
If you’re keen on making your own Mickey Mouse slasher flick, just remember: you can only use the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey from 1928; more recent versions are still protected by copyright and therefore, off limits. Also, you can’t make it look like your movie is connected to or sponsored by Disney in any way. Otherwise, you can expect a visit from an army of high-priced lawyers.
Related: Jennifer Jenkins explains why Steamboat Willie entrace into the public domain is such a big deal. “Disney is both an emblem of term extension and its erosion of the public domain, and one of the strongest use-cases in favor of the maintenance of a rich public domain. Mickey is the symbol of both tendencies.”
Also related: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey — a slasher film featuring Pooh and Piglet — was released in 2023 after A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain in 2022.
Rock ‘n’ roll may be music for the young, but after seeing The Tubes in concert, Tom Nichols waxes rhapsodic about the secret joys of geriatric rock.
The Tubes have the one quality that so many older bands lack: self-awareness. When the lead singer, Fee Waybill, took the stage at the Greenwich Odeum that night, he chuckled and noted that this was a return engagement, and that everyone was a year older now. “Which means,” he added, “I’m, like, fuckin’ 100 now.” (He’s actually 73; the original band members Roger Steen and Prairie Prince are 74 and 73, respectively.)
The rest of the evening was not a reenactment of the old days, but a kind of happy postcard from the early ’80s. This knowing but joyful wink makes all the difference when walking the fine line, as the rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap put it, “between clever and stupid.” The band gets it, and so does the audience: We’re all older now, and we’re not kidding anyone, but we can still sing along with songs that would likely shock our children.
Treble’s Jeff Terich launches his new live music column in the best way possible: by talking about seeing The Cure in concert.
Seeing a successful band make the calculation that nobody has to lose — especially not the actual ticket buyers — was wonderful to see. But that’s not specifically what made The Cure my live highlight of 2023. Perhaps it was an inevitability — the promise of seeing a legendary band and an all-time favorite, a group with a huge personal significance to both me and my wife (she saw them twice before I ever had the opportunity, and she dubbed a tape of early Cure highlights for me way back in the early days of our relationship). But it’s more than that; like I said a minute or so after they wrapped up playing “Boys Don’t Cry” for the one-thousand-umpteenth time, they still got it.
Seeing The Cure in concert was a definite highlight of 2023 for me. As I wrote in my review, “It was, in a word, perfection. It might have taken me more than three decades to finally see my favorite band of all time, but it was well worth the wait.”
As we get older, especially, it’s easy to just stick with your favorite albums or to keep spinning the “classics,” but there are mental health benefits to seeking out new music.
I’ve recently been keen to increase the intentionality of my listening and seek out brand-new tunes. (Not necessarily just-released music, but music that’s new to me.) Why? Well, there are serious health benefits to listening to unfamiliar music. Introducing new artists and new songs increases the plasticity of our brains.
Neuroplasticity, as a reminder, refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Why would we want this sort of restructuring to begin with? Because an ever-rewiring brain is also a more resilient, or “youthful,” one. The more you seek out neuroplasticity, the likelier you are to remember things, learn new skills, adapt to environments and protect yourself from cognitive decline. (Some call this dementia prevention.)
Via 1440.
A new year recently started, so of course, it’s the perfect time to look forward. And specifically, to look forward to all of the movies, TV shows, video games, sci-fi/fantasy books, and anime that are coming out this year.
Related: Back in December, I posted my own picks for 2024’s most anticipated movies and TV shows.
In addition to running Opus, I’m the owner of Christ and Pop Culture, where also I serve as an editor and occasional writer. These were our most popular articles of 2023.
[I]n keeping with the finest CAPC tradition, we covered an wide array of subject matter, including horror and sci-fi movies, interviews with acclaimed authors, ’70s classics, discussions of gender and marriage, and even some contributions to the Barbenheimer phenomenon.
Compiled by Taylor Troesh, the “cheap” web is a list of resources for a simpler — and yes, cheaper — approach to being online, from website creation tools to open source software resources to patronage services. It’s a good reminder that you don’t need to rely on social media to get your voice out there.
Sci-fi author Charles Stross laments how Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and other tech billionaires are trying to bringing their favorite sci-fi concepts to life while ignoring or not realizing the dystopic and political ideals that underpin them.
Billionaires who grew up reading science-fiction classics published 30 to 50 years ago are affecting our life today in almost too many ways to list: Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. Jeff Bezos prefers 1970s plans for giant orbital habitats. Peter Thiel is funding research into artificial intelligence, life extension and “seasteading.” Mark Zuckerberg has blown $10 billion trying to create the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. And Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has published a “techno-optimist manifesto” promoting a bizarre accelerationist philosophy that calls for an unregulated, solely capitalist future of pure technological chaos.
These men collectively have more than half a trillion dollars to spend on their quest to realize inventions culled from the science fiction and fantasy stories that they read in their teens. But this is tremendously bad news because the past century’s science fiction and fantasy works widely come loaded with dangerous assumptions.
Via Kottke.
I’ve often said that people need to read more sci-fi if only because of how the genre explores the negative repercussions of thoughtlessly embracing technology and progress. (Jurassic Park is perhaps the most famous example of this.) But if Stross is right, than the problem isn’t that Musk et al. aren’t reading sci-fi; it’s that they aren’t reading it critically or thoughtfully. They’re just entranced by the whizbang-ness of it all.
Related: Numerous scientists, engineers, and others have been inspired by Star Trek’s optimistic and science-driven vision of the future. “One of the things that was most formative for me as a child was that... with Star Trek, science isn’t something we fear… Science doesn’t create monsters. Science is what we use to face problems and solve problems.”
Also related: Star Trek’s fictional gadgets and technology have led to some real life devices, like the ubiquitous smartphone.
Compared to “Western” graphic design, Japanese graphic design often seems overly dense and even cluttered, but that’s due in part to the influence of philosophy, geography, and history.
Philosophical beliefs and natural threats made Japan a country that heavily relies on rituals, protocols, and everything that can be used to increase predictability.
Before any project can start in corporate Japan, much effort is put into feasibility studies. All the risk factors are considered beforehand.
Those who’ve read my older cultural articles know where this is going: Japan scores really high on uncertainty avoidance.
Countries high on uncertainty avoidance have less tolerance for ambiguity.
Via TLDR Design.
When we visited Japan many years ago, one thing we weren’t prepared for was the constant barrage of information from just the signage we’d see while walking down the street. It often left us mentally exhausted by the time we got back to our room.
When you think of the CIA, you don’t think of design or art or culture, but the intelligence organization has a history of surprising cultural savviness.
Visual art was also sometimes touched by covert CIA involvement. MoMA in particular had links to the agency. Thomas Braden was its executive secretary from 1948–9 before joining the CIA where he directed cultural activities in Europe. MoMA and the CIA seemingly shared many goals; as early as 1941 the museums’ president John Hay Whitney, who during the war had briefly worked for the CIA’s forerunner the OSS, declared that the museum had a place in national defense and could be used to help counteract elements “who are doing their best to minimize the achievements and the potentialities of the United States.” It is now accepted that CIA funds, funneled through the Congress for Cultural Freedom and various real or made-up foundations, were used to promote the work of American abstract expressionist painters, like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, whose work was seen as free of political baggage and a celebration of individual freedom. It helped that Russia, once a bastion of avant-garde abstraction thanks to Constructivism, had abandoned non-representational art in favor of state-mandated “socialist realism.”
Via Dribbble.
Finally, the town of Steubenville, Ohio was on the brink of economic collapse until it was saved by something unlikely: an army of nutcrackers.
The Steubenville Nutcracker Village, now in its ninth year, is a free event that this year runs from Thanksgiving week to Jan. 6. It draws thousands of tourists to the former steel town every holiday season, said Barilla, now the mayor of Steubenville.
“It’s been a tremendous asset for the city. People come from miles around to see this unique display,” he said. “Parents and grandparents bring their kids to take memorable photos with the nutcrackers. It’s just a delight.”
The nutcrackers have also enticed people to open businesses in Steubenville, Nelson said, noting that several new shops and restaurants are now thriving on Fourth Street.
From the Blog
In keeping with years past, I shared my favorite songs of 2023 on January 1.
Reflecting on my favorite songs of 2023, I’m struck by how many of them are reflections on mortality, be it in the actual lyrics or because they contain a sense of maturity that often comes with growing old. Pop and rock music have always been a young person’s game. That said, there’s something sublime when old folks — or even just middle-aged folks — don’t try to be young or hip or recapture their youth, but rather, bring age, maturity, and the regrets that come with such things to bear on their music. The juxtaposition of music that’s so often associated with youth, with the wisdom and regrets of age, has become increasingly appealing and resonant to me.
Listen to most of the songs on Apple Music and Spotify. (Some of the songs are only available on Bandcamp.)
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