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energyevolutionexpo · 4 months ago

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Perovskite Solar Cells: A New Dawn in Solar Technology

As the world increasingly shifts towards renewable energy, solar power continues to be a key player in the energy landscape. Traditional solar technologies have paved the way for widespread adoption, but new innovations are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Among these, perovskite solar cells have emerged as a revolutionary technology with the potential to transform the solar industry due to their high efficiency, low production costs, and versatility.

What are Solar Cells?

Solar cells, also known as photovoltaic (PV) cells, are devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity. These cells are the fundamental building blocks of solar panels, which are widely used in residential, commercial, and industrial applications. The main types of solar cells include:

1. Monocrystalline Silicon Solar Cells: These cells are made from a single crystal structure, offering the highest efficiency rates (up to 24%) and a long lifespan. However, they are also the most expensive to produce due to the complexities involved in creating a single crystal.

2. Polycrystalline Silicon Solar Cells: These are composed of multiple silicon crystals and are generally less efficient (around 15-20%) than monocrystalline cells. They are cheaper to manufacture, making them a popular choice for large-scale solar farms.

3. Thin-Film Solar Cells: This type of solar cell is made by depositing one or more layers of photovoltaic material onto a substrate. They are lightweight, flexible, and easier to produce in large quantities. However, their efficiency is lower, typically around 10-12%.

What are Perovskite Solar Cells?

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are an emerging class of thin-film solar cells that use a perovskite-structured compound as the light-absorbing layer. The most commonly used perovskite materials are hybrid organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based compounds. The unique properties of perovskites, such as their ability to absorb light efficiently and their flexibility in composition, make them a promising alternative to traditional silicon-based solar cells.

Types of Perovskite Solar Cells

Perovskite solar cells can be categorized based on their composition and structural configuration:

1. 3D Lead Halide Perovskites: These are the most studied and developed type of perovskite solar cells. They offer high efficiency but suffer from stability issues due to their sensitivity to environmental factors like moisture and heat.

2. 2D Perovskites: These are layered structures where the perovskite material is interleaved with organic molecules. While they offer improved stability compared to 3D perovskites, their efficiency is generally lower.

3. Lead-Free Perovskites: Due to concerns about the environmental and health impacts of lead, researchers are actively exploring lead-free alternatives. While promising, these materials have yet to match the efficiency of lead-based perovskites.

How Perovskite Solar Cells Work

The operation of perovskite solar cells is based on the photovoltaic effect, similar to other types of solar cells. When sunlight hits the perovskite layer, it excites electrons, creating electron-hole pairs. These pairs are then separated by the built-in electric field within the cell, generating a flow of electric current. The ability of perovskites to absorb light across a broad spectrum, combined with their high charge-carrier mobility, allows for efficient conversion of sunlight into electricity.

Benefits of Perovskite Solar Cells

1. High Efficiency: Perovskite solar cells have achieved power conversion efficiencies exceeding 29% in laboratory settings, making them one of the most efficient solar technologies available today. This rapid improvement in efficiency has outpaced many other photovoltaic technologies.

2. Low Production Costs: The materials used in perovskite solar cells are abundant and inexpensive. Moreover, these cells can be manufactured using low-temperature processes, such as solution processing and printing techniques, which significantly reduce production costs compared to silicon-based cells.

3. Versatility: Perovskite materials can be fabricated into flexible, lightweight, and even semi-transparent solar cells. This versatility opens up new applications, such as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), portable solar chargers, and other innovative uses where traditional rigid solar panels are impractical.

Challenges Facing Perovskite Solar Cells

1. Stability: One of the major challenges of perovskite solar cells is their susceptibility to degradation when exposed to environmental factors like moisture, oxygen, and UV light. This results in a shorter lifespan compared to silicon-based cells, which can last over 25 years with minimal degradation.

2. Toxicity: The most efficient perovskite solar cells use lead-based materials, which pose significant environmental and health risks. While lead-free alternatives are being researched, they have yet to achieve the same levels of efficiency and stability.

3. Scalability: While perovskite solar cells have demonstrated high efficiency in laboratory settings, scaling up production to a commercial level while maintaining performance is a complex challenge. Issues such as uniformity of the perovskite layer and the development of large-scale, stable manufacturing processes need to be addressed.

Recent Developments

Recent developments in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been focused on overcoming the key challenges of stability, scalability, and environmental impact, while pushing the efficiency boundaries even further. Here’s a detailed look at some of the most notable advancements:

1. Printable Perovskite Solar Cells

- Roll-to-Roll Printing Technology: One of the most exciting recent advancements is the development of printable perovskite solar cells. Using roll-to-roll printing techniques, researchers have managed to create flexible, lightweight solar panels that can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of traditional silicon-based panels. This method allows for large-scale production, making it easier to integrate solar cells into various applications, such as wearable technology and building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV)

2. Enhanced Stability through Encapsulation

- New Encapsulation Techniques: A major challenge with perovskite solar cells has been their susceptibility to degradation when exposed to environmental factors such as moisture, oxygen, and UV light. Recent research has focused on developing advanced encapsulation materials and techniques that significantly improve the stability and lifespan of these cells. For instance, incorporating hydrophobic materials and barrier layers has shown to protect the perovskite layer from moisture, thereby enhancing the longevity of the solar cells

- Incorporation of 2D Materials: Another approach to enhancing stability involves the use of 2D materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, which can serve as protective layers or charge transport layers. These materials not only protect the perovskite from environmental degradation but also improve the efficiency of charge transport, leading to higher overall performance

3. Development of Lead-Free Perovskites

- Bismuth and Tin-based Perovskites: To address environmental concerns associated with the use of lead in perovskite solar cells, researchers have been exploring alternative materials. Bismuth and tin-based perovskites are among the most promising candidates. Although these lead-free materials have yet to reach the efficiency levels of lead-based perovskites, ongoing

- Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskites: Another promising direction is the development of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites that combine the stability of organic materials with the high efficiency of inorganic perovskites. These hybrid materials are showing potential in creating more environmentally friendly and durable solar cells

4. Tandem Solar Cells

- Perovskite-Silicon Tandem Cells: Combining perovskite solar cells with traditional silicon cells has led to the development of tandem solar cells that achieve higher efficiencies than either technology alone. These tandem cells can reach efficiencies of over 30%, making them one of the most efficient solar technologies available. This approach leverages the high absorption efficiency of perovskites with the stability and established manufacturing processes of silicon cells

- All-Perovskite Tandem Cells: Researchers are also developing all-perovskite tandem cells, which stack two or more perovskite layers with different bandgaps. This configuration allows for more efficient use of the solar spectrum and has the potential to surpass the efficiency of single-junction perovskite solar cells

5. Quantum Dot Perovskite Solar Cells

- Perovskite Quantum Dots: Quantum dots, which are nanoscale semiconductor particles, are being integrated into perovskite solar cells to improve their light absorption and charge transport properties. Perovskite quantum dots have shown promise in enhancing the overall efficiency and stability of solar cells. These quantum dots can be tuned to absorb different wavelengths of light, making them highly versatile for various photovoltaic applications

6. Scalable Manufacturing Techniques

- Slot-Die Coating and Blade Coating: To move from laboratory-scale to industrial-scale production, scalable manufacturing techniques such as slot-die coating and blade coating have been developed. These methods allow for the continuous deposition of perovskite layers over large areas, which is essential for producing commercial-grade solar panels. These techniques are compatible with roll-to-roll manufacturing, which further reduces production costs and increases scalability.

7. Integration into Building Materials

- Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV): The flexibility and lightweight nature of perovskite solar cells make them ideal for integration into building materials, such as windows and facades. Recent developments have focused on creating semi-transparent perovskite solar cells that can be incorporated into windows, allowing buildings to generate electricity while maintaining natural light and aesthetics

Perovskite solar cells represent one of the most promising innovations in the field of renewable energy. With their high efficiency, low production costs, and versatile applications, they have the potential to revolutionize the solar industry. However, challenges related to stability, toxicity, and scalability need to be overcome before they can be widely adopted. Continued research and development are essential to unlocking the full potential of this technology, which could play a crucial role in meeting global energy demands in a sustainable and cost-effective manner. We need to keep up with all recent innovations to reap maximum benefits and to facilitate a better understanding of the latest developments and trends in the Renewable energy Industry, various Conferences and Expos, which bring Industry leaders together, serve as an all-inclusive platform. The Energy Evolution Awards, Conference, and Expo organized by Next Business Media is making its debut in Spain in 2025. It will be a leading forum dedicated to honoring excellence in Energy Technology, showcasing innovations, and fostering collaborations. The events unite industry leaders, and visionaries to explore the latest advancements, tackle key challenges, and shape the future of Energy. The Energy Evolution Awards, Conference, and Expo will celebrate outstanding achievements, promote sustainable practices, and drive the Energy Industry forward into a technologically advanced sustainable era. Energy Evolution Awards, Conference, and Expo will be a platform for cultivating innovation and shaping a brighter, more efficient energy landscape.

#Perovskite Solar Cells #Solar Energy Confrence

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major-project-abishek-selvaraj · 5 months ago

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Real-Time Ray Tracing: The Future of Game Graphics

Real-time ray tracing is a technology that makes light, shadows, and reflections in games look very realistic by simulating how light behaves in real life. Unlike older methods, it models light more accurately to create lifelike visuals.

Here’s a simplified overview of how it works:

Ray Casting: Rays of light are sent from the camera into the scene. They interact with different surfaces and objects as they move through the scene.

Interaction with Surfaces: When a ray hits something, it calculates how the light bounces, bends, or gets absorbed, affecting how the surface looks in terms of color and brightness. This includes reflections, refractions, and shadows.

Accurate Lighting: Ray tracing simulates how light bounces around the scene, creating a more natural and realistic lighting effect.

Shadows and Reflections: It produces soft-edged shadows and clear reflections by tracing rays to light sources and objects, mirroring the environment accurately.

This technique results in visuals that closely match real-world lighting, making game environments look more immersive and stunning.

Current Leaders in Real-Time Ray Tracing:

NVIDIA RTX Graphics Cards: NVIDIA’s RTX series, including the 20, 30, and 40 series, has special hardware called RT cores for real time ray tracing. These cores speed up the complex calculations needed for ray tracing, making it possible to render scenes in real time.

Control: This game by Remedy Entertainment shows how ray tracing can improve a game's visuals. It uses ray traced reflections, shadows, and lighting to make the game world look more immersive and lifelike.

Cyberpunk 2077: CD Projekt Red’s “Cyberpunk 2077” uses ray tracing to enhance reflections, shadows, and lighting in its vast open world. Although it can affect performance, the visual improvements make the game’s environment more detailed and realistic.

How Real-Time Ray Tracing Is Shaping the Future of Gaming Graphics:

Real-time ray tracing is a big step forward in graphics for several reasons:

Better Visuals: It makes lighting, shadows, and reflections look more realistic and detailed.

Greater Immersion: Realistic light and reflections make game worlds feel more natural and engaging.

Interactive Environments: Light interacts dynamically with moving objects, making the game world feel more lively.

Future-Ready: It’s a glimpse into future graphics technology, promising even more realistic visuals ahead.

Broad Impact: It’s also affecting fields like VR, AR, and film, improving how visuals are created across various industries.

youtube

Conclusion:

Real-time ray tracing is revolutionizing graphics by making game worlds look incredibly realistic. With tools like NVIDIA’s RTX graphics cards and games like “Control” and “Cyberpunk 2077” leading the way, it’s setting new standards for visual quality. As this technology advances, we can expect even more stunning and lifelike visuals in games.

Reference list

NVIDIA (2023). Cyberpunk 2077 | Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode - 4K Technology Preview Reveal. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk7Zbzd-6fs.

NVIDIA GeForce (2018). Battlefield V Showcases the Power of Ray Tracing. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnkyI3Zc2kQ.

#Youtube

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ropstamgames · 5 months ago

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Exploring the Possibilities of Unreal Development

Unreal Engine, developed by Epic Games, has revolutionized the game development industry with its powerful features and flexibility. As one of the most advanced and widely used game engines, Unreal Engine offers a myriad of possibilities for developers, from creating stunning visuals to implementing complex gameplay mechanics. This article delves into the various aspects of Unreal development, highlighting its capabilities and the opportunities it presents for game developers.

1. Stunning Visuals and Realistic Graphics

One of the standout features of Unreal Engine is its ability to produce high-fidelity visuals. The engine's advanced rendering capabilities allow developers to create photorealistic environments and characters. With tools like Lumen for dynamic global illumination and Nanite for virtualized geometry, Unreal Engine pushes the boundaries of visual fidelity, making it a preferred choice for AAA game development.

2. Blueprint Visual Scripting

Unreal Engine's Blueprint visual scripting system democratizes game development by enabling non-programmers to create gameplay mechanics and interactions without writing a single line of code. This visual scripting system allows developers to rapidly prototype and iterate on their ideas, fostering creativity and innovation. Blueprint also seamlessly integrates with C++, providing flexibility for both designers and programmers.

3. Cross-Platform Development

Unreal Engine supports cross-platform development, allowing games to be deployed on multiple platforms, including PC, consoles, mobile devices, and VR/AR systems. This versatility ensures that developers can reach a broad audience and maximize their game's potential. With Unreal Engine, creating games that run smoothly on different hardware configurations becomes more manageable, reducing development time and effort.

4. Advanced Physics and Animation Systems

The engine's advanced physics and animation systems enable developers to create realistic and immersive experiences. With Chaos Physics for destruction and simulation, and Control Rig for procedural animation, Unreal Engine provides robust tools for creating dynamic and believable game worlds. These systems allow for intricate character animations, realistic environmental interactions, and complex simulations, enhancing the overall gameplay experience.

5. Networking and Multiplayer Capabilities

Unreal Engine offers comprehensive support for networking and multiplayer game development. Its built-in networking framework facilitates the creation of both small-scale and large-scale multiplayer experiences. With features like replication and server-client architecture, developers can build robust online games that support various multiplayer modes, ensuring a seamless and engaging experience for players.

6. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)

Unreal Engine is at the forefront of VR and AR development. Its high-performance rendering capabilities and support for VR/AR platforms make it an ideal choice for creating immersive virtual experiences. The engine's tools for spatial audio, hand tracking, and motion controllers enable developers to build interactive and captivating VR and AR applications, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in these emerging fields.

7. Asset Marketplace and Community Support

The Unreal Engine Marketplace offers a vast library of assets, plugins, and tools that developers can use to accelerate their projects. From 3D models and animations to sound effects and code plugins, the marketplace provides valuable resources that save time and effort. Additionally, the active Unreal Engine community offers extensive support through forums, tutorials, and documentation, helping developers overcome challenges and enhance their skills.

8. Real-Time Rendering for Film and Animation

Beyond game development, Unreal Engine is increasingly being used in the film and animation industries for real-time rendering. Its ability to produce high-quality visuals in real-time allows filmmakers and animators to visualize scenes and make adjustments on the fly. This real-time capability streamlines production workflows, reducing costs and enabling more creative freedom.

9. Integration with External Tools

Unreal Engine seamlessly integrates with various external tools and software, enhancing its versatility and functionality. Tools like Substance for texturing, Houdini for procedural generation, and Quixel Megascans for photorealistic assets can be easily incorporated into the Unreal Engine pipeline. This interoperability allows developers to leverage the strengths of different tools, resulting in more efficient and high-quality production.

10. Continuous Updates and Improvements

Epic Games consistently updates Unreal Engine with new features, improvements, and optimizations. These updates ensure that developers have access to the latest technology and tools, enabling them to stay competitive in the ever-evolving game development landscape. The commitment to continuous improvement underscores Unreal Engine's position as a leading game development platform.

#gaming #unreal engine #animation #video games #coding

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arisawati · 1 year ago

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Seeing the professionalism in the chosen work of Denny Ja's 31st: "Choosing a Lonely World"

In the world of art, professionalism is a very important aspect. Professionalism describes the ability of a person to work efficiently, quality, and uphold ethics in their fields. One of the art figures who has shown extraordinary professionalism is Denny Ja, a well -known writer and director in Indonesia. One of his prominent works is "Choosing a Lonely World", a film that has received an award in the 31st Denny JA. In this elected work, Denny JA has shown an extraordinary side of professionalism in various aspects. First, in terms of writing scenarios, Denny JA is able to describe a strong and deep story. He is able to present complex and interesting characteristics so that the audience can be connected to the story delivered. Denny JA is also able to manage the storyline well, making the audience continue to be interested and involved throughout the film. In addition, in terms of directing, Denny JA also shows high professionalism. She is able to direct the actors and actresses well, gain strong performance from them. Denny JA is also able to choose the right location for shooting, creating an atmosphere that supports the story. He also uses brilliant cinematographic techniques, providing visual beauty that spoil the eyes of the audience. Not only that, in the production of this film, Denny JA also shows high professionalism in terms of project management. He is able to manage the budget wisely, ensuring that every aspect of production runs smoothly and efficiently. Denny JA also chose a competent and experienced production team, so that the production process can run well and on time. In terms of promotion, Denny JA also shows extraordinary professionalism. He was able to market the film well, creating a buzz among potential viewers. Denny JA also uses an intelligent marketing strategy, utilizing social media and digital platforms to expand the range of film promotion. This makes "Choosing a Lonely World" received broad attention and succeeded in becoming successful in the Indonesian film market. In his conclusion, seeing the professionalism in Denny JA's selected work "choosing a quiet world" we can conclude that Denny JA is a very professional artist in his field. He was able to present high -quality work through strong screenplay writing, brilliant directing, efficient project management, and intelligent promotional strategies. Denny JA's work not only shows his expertise in art, but also shows his commitment and dedication to high professionalism. Through the work like "Choosing a Lonely World", Denny JA has made a valuable contribution to the art world in Indonesia and is a role model for the younger generation who want to pursue the arts with high professionalism.

Check more: Seeing the professionalism in the 31st Denny JA selected work: "Choosing a Lonely World"

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crunkybrewstr · 2 years ago

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1980s Feminist Jock take on Misogyny Youtube Essays

Title: Balancing Perspectives: A Jock's Take on Feminism and YouTube Video Essays

Entry Date: May 21, 1985

Hey there, LiveJournal fam! It's been a while since I last poured my thoughts onto these virtual pages, but today I feel compelled to address a recent encounter that left me scratching my head. You see, I consider myself a proud jock from the 1980s who wholeheartedly supports feminism. But let me tell you, I stumbled upon a YouTube video essay on misogyny that rubbed me the wrong way.

First and foremost, let's talk about feminism. Growing up in this decade, I've had the opportunity to see societal norms evolve, slowly but surely. I believe in equal rights and opportunities for everyone, regardless of their gender. The feminist movement has played a crucial role in challenging archaic stereotypes and empowering women to stand tall and pursue their dreams. As a jock, I've witnessed the amazing talents and strength of my female peers, and I cheer them on every step of the way.

Now, onto the YouTube video essay that recently caught my attention. I must admit, I was initially excited to dive into an analysis that explored the issue of misogyny in films. As someone passionate about movies and their impact on society, I genuinely thought this video could provide valuable insights. However, as I started watching, my optimism quickly turned into disappointment.

The video essay in question seemed to portray all jocks as stereotypical misogynists, painting us with broad strokes. It was disheartening to see such a narrow-minded perspective that completely disregarded the complexity of individuals and the diverse experiences we go through. As someone who proudly identifies as a jock and a feminist, I couldn't help but feel misunderstood and misrepresented.

While I understand the intention of the video essay was to shed light on important issues, it missed an opportunity to bridge the gap between different groups. Stereotyping and generalizing only serve to create further divisions, when what we truly need is open dialogue and understanding.

Instead of focusing solely on the negative aspects, I believe it is crucial to recognize the progress we've made and the individuals who are breaking down barriers. By shining a light on positive examples, we can inspire others to challenge societal norms and embrace a more inclusive world.

To me, being a feminist jock means supporting my female peers and advocating for their rights and aspirations. It means being a teammate who respects their abilities and actively works to dismantle sexist attitudes and behaviors. It means celebrating the achievements of women in all fields, whether it's on the sports field or in the realm of academia.

In conclusion, dear LiveJournal friends, I believe it's important to approach topics like misogyny and feminism with an open mind and a willingness to engage in constructive conversations. Let's remember that every individual has a unique perspective to share, and by seeking common ground, we can build bridges and foster a more harmonious society. Keep fighting the good fight, and let's make the 1980s a decade of progress for all.

Signing off,

Proud Jock and Feminist

#chatgpt #scripts #america #futurism #football

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novierichfix · 2 years ago

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The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence: From Expert Systems to Deep Learning

Despite its many evocative depictions in science fiction films, the question of AI isn’t just one to be entertained by. It is a real and important issue that has the potential to change our world forever if we don’t manage it properly.

The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence: From Expert Systems to Deep Learning Over the past few decades, computers have been developing increasingly intelligent abilities. They can now learn, process information, and interact with people and other machines like never before. But that progress has come with a lot of pitfalls.

First of all, there is the problem of how to define "intelligence" in an ethical way that is appropriate for modern society and our environment. There are various definitions, including a broad one that includes the ability to reason. Others are more specific, defining "intelligence" as a set of skills and abilities that enable an individual to solve problems and make decisions.

Second, there is the problem of how to implement such capabilities in real-world applications. This What is metaverse and is it the future? requires the development of AI systems that are robust and flexible enough to respond to changing circumstances.

Third, there is the problem of how to measure an AI system’s performance. This is often complicated and difficult, requiring the use of data, and sometimes a combination of multiple data sets.

Fourth, there is the problem of how to interpret such results. This is especially true in the case of decision making, where a machine’s conclusions can be very complex.

Fifth, there is the problem of how to explain such decisions. This can be a major concern in industries where the resulting AI decisions are subject to strict regulatory compliance requirements.

Sixth, there is the problem of how to manage inconsistencies or contradictions in a system’s knowledge base. This is particularly challenging in specialised fields such as medicine and law.

Seventh, there is the problem of how to convert all this data into meaningful information for a machine. This is a complex and time-consuming task that requires a lot of human expertise.

Eighth, there is the problem of how to ensure that a system can evolve and improve its intelligence over time. This is a complicated and time-consuming task that requires a very high level of technical expertise, often involving artificial neural networks and other specialized algorithms.

Nineth, there is the problem of how to determine when an AI should be deemed "fully autonomous." This website technology can be complicated and requires a highly skilled and experienced team that can interpret how such systems operate.

Historically, research on AI has been divided between the academic and industrial camps, with the former focusing on the theoretical analysis of intelligence and the latter concentrating on the systems point of view. The former has emphasized the idea that some formalized combination of deductive reasoning mechanisms will pave the road to progress, while the latter has favored an evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach.

Today, however, we are at a crossroads. We have the opportunity to move forward and create powerful technologies that will change our world for the better. The key is to stay focused on what works and not what doesn’t.

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briannas-casebook · 2 years ago

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ANIMATION CONTEXT: Statement of Intent

For my latest Animation Context brief, I was tasked with choosing a subject to research and ultimately write an essay about. I came up with three topics to write about: the history of horror and dark themes in animation, the history of adult oriented anime and the history of stop motion animation in Europe (1900 - 1960). Ultimately, I choose to pursue The History of Stop Motion in Europe as my subject.

I considered covering the history of horror animation and dark themes in the medium of animation. Still, this subject might not only be too broad for this short essay, but also could become subjective with my modern sensibilities creating a bias for what I think may be dark and disturbing and what might’ve been seen as standard in the time the earlier animations were made etc.

The topic of adult oriented anime, like the horror/dark themes idea, was also too broad of a category to condense into a short 1500 word essay. Even though I am familiar with anime through films such as the work of studio ghibili and classic anime films like Akira (1988) and Ghost in the Shell (1995), as well as through research for an earlier essay done during my A levels on animation, I felt the world of adult anime would be too complex and deep a topic to study and write a short essay on concisely.

The subject of the history of stop motion in Europe from roughly early 1900s to the 1960s would be a good fit for an achedemic essay. Not only would the subject of objective facts regarding the medium's history not easily lend itself to unintentional bias, but the more limited time frame and location would make research much more manageable and fit the short format.

Once I'd figured out my subject, I was then tasked with writing a Statement of Intent, a written document that would detail my chosen topic, why I decided to cover it for an essay, the research I'd need to do for the piece, the sources/resources I would use, possible limitations and what questions I hope to answer with the conclusion of my essay, etc.

Below is the third and final draft of my Statement of Intent:

Module: Animation Context

Date: 8th February 2023

Proposed Essay Title:

Paper, Metal, Cloth and Clay; The history and early development of stop motion in Europe (1900s – 1960s)

Topic/Area of research: The history and early development of stop motion in Europe (1900 – 1960s)

Rationale

I want to investigate the early development of stop motion animation in the early/mid 20th century, as I have a passion for stop motion animation and have done extensive research into the topic in my own time and in previous projects. I also want to narrow down my subject to animation films created in Europe by European artists, as it would not only narrow down my research, but also allow me to cover some of the most pioneering and influential names in the field, such as Georges Milies and Lotte Reiniger to name a few. I will explain why the techniques used by these practitioners were important and how they influence makers today.

Background material

These are some of my starting points in terms of research references – I will add more as my research progresses.

BFI dvd Lotte Reiniger The Fairy Films 2008

Stop-Motion Animation: Frame by Frame Film-making with puppets and models second edition by Barry J. C. Purves 2014

The World History of Animation by Stephen Cavalier published by Aurum Entertainment 2015

Stop Motion Filmmaking – The Complete Guide to Fabrication and Animation by Christopher Walsh published by Bloomsbury Academic 2019

Film - The Adventures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger viewable on https://archive.org/details/the.-adventures.-of.-prince.-achmed.-1926.720p.-blu-ray.x-264-public-hd

Film: Le Roman De Renard (The Tale of the Fox) by Ladislas Starevich 1930 viewable on https://archive.org/details/LeRomanDeRenard_1930

Academic article published in the International Journal of Literature and Arts (January 2018) by Vincenzo Maselli, Sapienza University of Rome https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330318221_The_Evolution_of_Stop-motion_Animation_Technique_Through_120_Years_of_Technological_Innovations - which explores the link between the invention and innovation of new materials and how they were used by practitioners and pioneers of Stop Motion.

Stop Motion Magazine article – The History of Stop Motion – In A Nutshell 2016 https://stopmotionmagazine.com/history-stop-motion-nutshell/

The Wrap – A Timeline of Stop-Motion Animation History, From ‘A Trip To The Moon’ to ‘Missing Link’. https://www.thewrap.com/a-timeline-of-stop-motion-animation-history-from-a-trip-to-the-moon-to-isle-of-dogs-photos/

A History of British Stop-Motion Animation by Dan Richards Aug 2020. https://www.aplusc.tv/blog/a-history-of-british-stop-motion-animation

Limitations section

· Due to the age of some of the films, I might not be able to find the stop motion films I want to research to watch freely or easily. Some very early examples of stop motion footage have been lost, and there are only stills available to view, and, in some cases, even these are not available. It can also be challenging to find much, if any, information on how they were produced or the people who made them.

Due to limiting my scope to Europe in the 1900s through to the 1960s, I will have to be mindful and weary of mentioning or extensively researching artists and works outside of this region and time period. It may however be necessary to mention work being done in other areas that played a significant role in the development of work by practitioners’ in Europe.

Time restraints due to other modules and hand in dated etc.

Resources

In addition to the resources listed in the ‘Background Materials’ Section above I will be using the following resources and equipment:

University of Salford Library (both online and physical).

Sale Library

Laptop go access to the internet

Microsoft word doc

I would also like to visit The Science and Media Museum in Bradford. https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/whats-on/animation-gallery

Hands on experimentation of software such as DragonFrame, use of Canon cameras for filming and practice using armatures.

Schedule

Week 1 (30th Jan)

Pick one of the three essay ideas I generated and refine concept and title

Week 2 (6th Feb)

Fill in and finalise the Statement of Intent – consider, research and list some of the initial research materials I will use and make a schedule of work to be done.

Week 3 (13th Feb)

Reading and note taking. Read the materials I have chosen to use and research the subject on the internet. Make notes and list sources referencing.

Week 4 (20th Feb)

Begin to write draft essay. Begin with subject area headings to help with formatting.

Week 5 (27th Feb)

Flesh out the full body of essay in rough form.

Week 6 (6th March)

Do draft 2.

Week 7 (13th March)

Draft 3.

Week 8 (20th March)

Proof-read essay and make any last adjustments/corrections

Hand in 24th at 4pm

I will use Tumbrl to blog my progress throughout in order to to covert into a pdf at the end of the process.

Academic References.

State links to the work of other specialists using the Harvard system. Who has written about this kind of work in academia? Which artists, authors and/or inspired or helped you to develop the concept

Komposition in Blau 1938 by Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) German – Abstract stop motion artist who mostly worked in clay, paint and wax. https://youtu.be/Bpb8nDnnXJs

The works of Hermina Tyrlova (1900-1993) born Czechoslovakia. Produced over 60 stop motion animations during her lifetime which include: Vzpoura hraček 1947 https://youtu.be/AcF8ULzZdYY. Fernando the Ant 1944 https://youtu.be/AkORm4ySeIs Revolt of the Toys (or Revolution in Toyland) 1945 (anti Nazi film) https://youtu.be/HLYM4jTvULg

George Pal born in hungary. Documentary of his work – The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal 1985 Produced, written and directed by Arnoldd Leibovit https://youtu.be/k5W9XwV5EYI

#animation context #stop motion #statement of intent #essay #essay writing

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prettycottonmouthlamia · 2 years ago

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People often do not really realize how subtle racism can be, and probably one of the largest ways is in just how much we centralize and generalize a specific Western thing as the standard and then other everything else.

For example, when people say "the film industry" they almost always mean just Hollywood. People don't tend to level criticisms of Hollywood using the actual term. It's implied default. This ignores not only a generally vast field of foreign films but also like, the entirety of Bollywood. It's subtle, but inherently kind of racist. It's what you are choosing the centralize in the discussion.

When people say "the animation industry", it also has this connotation, this specific connotation of "The US and Canadian animation industries", and nobody else. Not only are we, again, excluding a vast array of smaller foreign animation industries that produce valuable works, it also excludes the entire anime industry.

Yes! I'm including it! Anime is an industry, it's not a fucking genre! Stop minimizing it! People have tried to make it a genre but it always comes off as incredibly shallow because anime is a very diverse industry that produces a lot. It even gets excluded from the concept of "adult animation" (which is its own can of worms) which is shocking considering how much of it is created and intended for the consumption of adults. It's a shocking example of anti-intellectualism often paired with infantalizing rhetoric.

When you take an art history class, how long is spent analyzing the various different European based art movements. How long is spent analyzing the art of other cultures? Do you go into the same amount of depth discussing Islamic art (with all its complexities)? Japanese art? African art, for as broad a category that is? Is it just that white European and American art is considered the default for cultural expression?

Part of why it takes so long for people to realize this, and many never do, is because it is taught to us in high school. Our literature courses only have "classics" from dead, white authors. Our history courses spend longer on Athens and the Roman Republic then the entirety of Chinese history. We are taught as teenagers to view the world from a Western as default perspective.

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Patton and Monty at War: Unbelieving the unbearable rivalry.

Monty is trying to steal the show and with the assistance of Divine Destiny [Eisenhower] he may do so.

- General George S. Patton, on the Sicily Campaign, private diaries 16 July 1943

So every week I play my usual game of chess over a glass of wine with one of my neighbours in my Parisian apartment building. He’s a retired army general but remains active as a military historian and speaker. He’s curmudgeonly but one warms to him quickly as he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He’s not a fan of women in the military but reluctantly concedes he would make an exception for me (besides who else could he play chess with?). We get on really well now because of the Covid lockdown this past year. We often have long discussions about military history and current politics until the bottle of wine is completely drained.

On one occasion he invited me to watch the 1969 classic war film, Patton, about the life of one of America’s greatest iconic World War Two generals, George S. Patton. It’s been years since I’ve seen it and I almost had forgotten how great the movie is with George C. Scott as Patton and Karl Malden as General Omar Bradley. We watched it in English and then discussed many things that came out of the film.

Hollywood and history usually do not mix. It is quite common for filmmakers to take a historical subject and to distort it for their purposes and to dumb it down for entertainment purposes. In the case of the movie, Patton, there was no real attempt to distort the story of Patton. It was a fantastic and stirring Hollywood movie. Moreover it was an excellent study in character given Oscar worthy heft by the great George C. Scott as the crusty General George S. Patton. Francis Ford Coppola’s script was severely under-rated.

However there remain glaring inaccuracies such as Patton’s opening speech in the movie - admittedly a an iconic bit of cinema - but even this was based on his statements and captured the character of the man, something even acknowledged by the Generals’ family.

Much of the details of his role in the defeat of Germany are true. The only real omission was the lack of focus on Patton’s Lorraine Campaign, where he distinguished himself. There are some exaggerations in the movie and some minor distortions such as in the weather-prayer scene. In general, the movie managed to produce a great overview portrayal of the character and career of an extraordinary American leader.

The film does accurately relate the leading role played by Patton in the liberation of Sicily. His daring use of armour was crucial in the defeat of the German army on the island.

However long after the film had ended I did think about one thing that irked me. And this was how the movie seemed to linger on the belief Patton was motivated by the desire to do better than General Montgomery, the victor at El Alamein. Indeed the film probably reinforced the accepted conventional wisdom that these two driven and ambitious men hated each other.

There was a great personal rivalry between the two men. They were both driven and wildly ambitious. The movie suggests that the rivalry between Montgomery and Patton was the main feature of the Sicilian Allied campaign and was perhaps a factor in why it ended so quickly with a decisive Allied victory.

The rivalry was not as intense as the motion picture suggests and the two men worked together when needed for the good of the Allied cause.

Born two years apart, both were commissioned within a year of each other and both were wounded in France in the First World War. Both men encompassed very different but very valuable characteristics in combat: Monty-careful and meticulous, Patton-dashing and diplomatic. Despite the differences, both generals demonstrated striking similarities: commitment to their careers, a ruthless egotism, interesting when you consider neither held superior command. This did not impede their desire for the limelight and fame in warfare, arrogance and the manipulation of colleagues in high places to advance their careers. Both were machiavellian in their own affairs and self-interested in their own personal progression.

The great rivalries amongst the Allies that made a real imact were Marshall and Brooke over war policy, Nimitz and MacArthur over resources, Eisenhower and Montgomery over strategy; and then between Percival and MacArthur for incompetence, Patton and O'Connor for aggressiveness, MacArthur and Clarke for vainglory, (and possibly Clarke and Wavell for the stupidity of letting defeated enemies escape), were the issues that defined the war for the Western allies.

The idea that a competition between Patton and Montgomery was more important is cute, but naive. I am not even sure where the idea comes from.

Much is made of the bet between Patton and Montgomery over reaching Palermo in Sicily first, but in practical terms that was the only time in the war that Patton ever appeared on Montgomery's radar.

For the rest of the war Monty was so much higher up the food chain than Patton that he was unaware, or disinterested in Patton's opinions. Montgomery was, by 1944, an experienced general who very successfully fought extensively in both combat and staff roles for 4 years throughout World War One. (Patton got a combat command for a few weeks when the Germans were already collapsing.) Montgomery led a division very successfully through the Battle of France, and a corps through the crucial Battle of Britain training and rebuilding years. He led an army in combat for two years, through many successful battles both on defense and in attack.

By 1944 Patton had led a corps for a few months, and an army for a few weeks. For the very brief period of the Sicily compaign they were theoretically equals in command, but probably only in Patton's mind. Montgomery saw Patton as an enthusiastic if amateurish old man but respected his aggressive boldness. Montgomery saw his HQ 'betting book' as a bit of fun (and was delighted when bet a B17 by someone who should have known better).

When he and Patton met and co-ordinated the Sicilian campaign Alexander seemed not interested in co-ordinating, Monty saw Palermo as a similar bit of fun to pursue, no bigger or smaller than the hundreds of other bets in the book.

Patton saw it, as he saw anything relating to his persona, as the most vitally important challenge of his whole life...up until the next one. Montgomery lost a bet and moved on to the next challenge. Patton won but didn't. (Or at least that is what bad writers have tried to suggest. I think he moved straight on to the next challenge anyway.)

That was the last time Monty and Patton were in direct competition, no matter what revisionists or romantics would say.

The next time Patton was allowed in the field he was one of half a dozen army commanders in Monty's Normandy army group, and, familiarly, he did not arrive until the Germans in Normandy were already collapsing. Very soon afterwards Eisenhower split off Bradley's army group, and Monty had no control, nor much interest, in what Patton was up to thereafter.

The romantics like to suggest that thereafter Monty railed against Patton's supplies, and that Patton railed against Montgomery's caution. The truth is less foolish for both of them. In fact Montgomery railed against Eisenhower's broad front strategy regardless of which of the other sub-commanders was benifitting (to the point of Montgomery making an offer to serve under Bradley as long as someone got single control to pursue a single strategy). He railed against the diversion of resources anywhere not at the main point where a thrust might have achieved early victory.

Leaving aside whether that victory could have happened, Montgomery's beef was with Eisenhower first, his appalling chief of supply Lee second, fellow Army Group Commanders who couldn't control the excesses of their subordinates like Bradley (and to a lesser extent) Devers third, and only then with the several army commanders who each tried to do their own thing.

In practical terms Montgomery seemed more appalled by the negative effects of the incompetence of Hodges (1st US Army,) and the obnoxiousness of General De Gaulle's orders to 'his' army (French First Army), and perhaps even the ineffectiveness of his own subordinate Crerar (Canadian 1st army) , than he did by Patton's enthusiasms. There is hardly a mention of Patton in his diaries through this period, compared to several comments on Bradley and De Gualle, and endless ones on Eisenhower.

Patton too is being maligned by the pretense that his war was taken up with a vain competition with Montgomery. Patton, like Montgomery, was totally concerned with the main issue of defeating Germany. But unlike Montgomery, he did not have Brooke - the Chief of Imperial General Staff - to rely on for support against Eisenhower's broad front strategy.

Patton too was convinced that this was the wrong way to go, but to get his version of a thrust (with him at the front) happening, he had to be a bit more manipulative than Montgomery.

Every word Patton used to wheedle and manipulate support, or at least a blind eye to what he was doing, was designed to get more resources from his superiors. Indeed, if he couldn't get them from Eisenhower, he was willing to steal them wherever he could, and then get Bradley to pretend to not know what he was doing. In this he was quite willing to encourage Bradley's inferiority complex in relation to Montgomery, and to happily manipulate Bradley into tantrums to get what they both wanted, but it seems likely that Patton was more interested in getting his way by making his superiors compete with Montgomery, than in competing with Montgomery himself.

Patton is actually a more complex and clever character than the romantics give him credit for. His 'kill them even if they try to surrender' speeches in Sicily were part of his stage management of troops, not part of his innate personality. HIs 'us against the world' propaganda was more manipulative, not so much like Bradley's inferiority complex. He wanted to win, and he would use anything to get what he needed to win, even ramping up his superiors to distrust their allies. But his genuine competitiveness with Montgomery at this stage was less about him and Montgomery, and more about him and how he could maneouvre others to support him. He would have shown the same level of competitiveness, and the same willingness to undermine, any competitor at this point, British, French, Russian or even American.

Montgomery on the other hand only saw Patton as one more junior general syphoning supplies from an inadequate source. Montgomery was in competition with Eisenhower for control, and possibly with Bradley for resources. Minor army commanders in other people's army groups only registered on his horizon if he could get their armies assigned to his army group.

Just for amusement, it might be fun to consider how Montgomery and Patton might have worked together?

Montgomery was notoriously superb to serve under, no matter what your nationality. British, Australian, New Zealander, South African, Indian, Canadian, French, Polish, and American troops who served under him were all very happy to do so. So were their generals. Bradley certainly learned more about being a field commander from a few months of Montgomery's distant mentoring than from anything Eisenhower ever did for him in their much closer relationship.

There is no doubt that Montgomery preferred effective subordinates to ineffective ones, and it seems possible that Patton would have made a preferable subordinate to Crerar or Bradley in his mind.

As for Patton, he would have served anyone who got him what he wanted. Had Montgomery offered him the chance to spearhead the attack into Germany, there is virtually no doubt that Patton would have jumped at the chance.

Patton was not the racist that Bradley or Eisenhower were, and was happy to have black troops. He was not the American supremacist that Roosevelt or MacArthur were, and worked well with others (as long as they let him have enough lime light).

Had Montgomery been left as land forces commander, there is little doubt that he would have used Patton's aggression in a way that would have made Patton much happier than Eisenhower's broad front strategy ever allowed.

It is fun to imagine Montgomery as land forces commander using Patton's 3rd Army in conjunction with British 2nd to leapfrog ahead at top speed into Germany. The best British tactics were never the broad front strategy that the worst American's like Marshall and Eisenhower fancied. They were always the 'hold the enemy, crumble the enemy, breakthrough the enemy, and pursue with as much force as fast and far as possible' skills that had worked since the development of mechanised warfare in 1918. (As demonstrated by the Germans in Poland and France and Russia, the British and Germans in North Africa, the Japanese and British in Asia, and the Russians in Eastern Europe.)

Montgomery would have used his traditional two corps up, one back, one resting deployment, adapted to armies, to keep up the momentum. Patton's preferred tactics were almost exactly the same, and he and his 3rd Army would have fit it like a glove into Montgomery's thrust strategy.

Personally I think that the limited reality behind their competitiveness paid trumps in Sicily, and I wish that it had been repeated in France. Patton could not have been a worse Army group commander than Bradley was, and would almost certainly have been better.

It is amusing to think of Patton and Montgomery effectively conspiring to destroy the broad front strategy while they got on with winning the war in the best spirit of competition. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that one of Patton's biographers was right to suggest that by 1945 he had suffered a few too many hits on the head, there is little doubt that he would have been almost as valuable to the Allied cause in Bradley's place against Eisenhower's policies directly, as he would have under Montgomery's army group. That might have been a useful version of rivalry.

#field marshal bernard montgomery #montgomery #monty #general george patton #patton #us army #british army #second world war #war #warefare #leadership #history #generalship #tank #eisenhower #military history #general bradley #general eisenhower #personal

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sussex-nature-lover · 4 years ago

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Thursday 7th January 2021

Forests and Woodland

Photo credit: Forestry England

When I hear the word Forest I immediately think of the famous Sherwood Forest near Nottingham. Stuff of Hollywood films, mystical myths and legends, I decided to look up a bit more about the true meaning of a forest because to me, it’s a large area of dense woodland, either broad-leafed or coniferous. However, from local experience this really isn’t necessarily so

The modern day understanding of the term ‘forest’ refers to an area of wooded land, but this has not always been the case. The original medieval meaning was similar to a ‘preserve’, for example land that is legally kept for specific purposes such as royal hunting. So ‘forests’ were areas large enough to support species such as wolves and deer for game hunting and they encompassed other habitats such as heaths, open grassland and farmland.

I suppose that’s how Cannock Chase gained its name

In 1290 part of Cannock Forest became the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield's 'Chase', a term that referred to a forest controlled by an individual rather than a monarch. Here in the 13th century. It was called Beaudesert, meaning 'beautiful wild place'.

I’d always just made the assumption that ‘chase’ arose from hunting grounds and certainly large areas are fairly flat and open these days.

The wooded countryside landscape where I live

The Ashdown Forest is in East Sussex. It’s within easy reach of us and when we used to go to Gatwick Airport our route took us that way, often in the very early morning and late evening. We still go that way when we visit Standen, National Trust, East Grinstead.

Originally a deer hunting forest in Norman times, Ashdown Forest is now one of the largest free public access spaces in the South East. It is a great place for walking and enjoying spectacular views over the Sussex countryside and is known the world over as the 'home' of Winnie-the-Pooh.

The Forest is at the heart of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and has national and international protection because of its wildlife. Nearly two thirds of its 6500 acres (2500 hectares) are heathland, amounting to 2.5% of the UK's extent of this rare habitat

Just think, 6,500 acres of common land in the South East. How lucky we are. The land split in the forest is 60/40 heathland/woodland.

Heathland is what is known as a ‘semi-natural’ habitat – the species that live there are native, but the habitat itself is artificial, created and maintained by human activity. Historically, that activity would have been cutting, burning and grazing, and today we continue those practices to maintain the open heathland landscape and prevent it reverting to woodland.

Gorse, a member of the pea family

Anyway, I’ve chosen this topic as Ms NW tY who lives in Tunbridge Wells, had been getting around on some walks. On her first walk with her partner last year, she wore unsuitable footwear and clothing and took her handbag along. A walk, to her, at that time, meant a quick stroll around the park and a stop at the coffee shop. Since then she’s acquired proper walking boots, waterproofs that mean business and a collection of photos, some of which I’d been sitting on for when nature content was a bit thin on the ground.

Enjoy the views

Not a soul in sight, which is how we like it these days

There are spectacular views for miles around

All photos above: credit Ms NY tY

The UK’s woodlands are rich and diverse, supporting more invertebrates than any other habitat. From lush temperate forests, to orchards and old hunting grounds. Each is varied and complex, shaped by geology, soils, climate and people over generations.

Broadleaf Woodland

That link to the Woodland Trust will tell you more than I could begin to cover in a blog post and I’m going to have to study it. We have an area of woodland at the rear of our garden and lots of small woods dotted around the fields in the wider area. I’m so pleased it’s mixed broadleaf. For some reason I always find coniferous woodland rather sinister and foreboding.

Lichen on tree branches

I was agog to read about the variety of birdlife that lives in and around a Forest, the list goes on and on Birds of the Forest and the Ashdown Forest has its own bird group, although its activities have obviously been curtailed for the time being.

There’s also a wealth of information from a history perspective, the People of the Forest through the ages.

It starts off at the early Medieval period and talks about the forest as “a place of retreat for large herds of deer and swine". At this time, bear, wolf and wildcat were also present, which is hard to imagine today. The catalogue goes right up to modern times and documents how the ownership of the Forest was transferred and secured.

What I Learned Today:

About the Common Gorse pictured up top

Facts

The soft, hairy buds form into new flowers.

Gorse is amazing at adapting to its environment: its sharp spikes protect it from hungry animals; its flowers attract pollinators with their bright yellow petals and coconut-like fragrance; and its seeds pop out when they are ripe.

‘When gorse is in bloom, kissing is in season.’ There are many variations of this country saying but the truth is that gorse is never really out of flower, so there will always be time for kissing!

The common name comes from the Old English ‘gorst’, meaning a wasteland or uncultivated area.

Gorse provides shelter and food for many insects and birds, such as Dartford Warblers, Stonechats and Yellowhammers

I like the fact it has a coconut-like fragrance, although I’ve never come across that before and the Kissing lore, sweet. There’s a patch up the lane from us, I’ll have to give it a sniff when we’re passing, although I expect it’s better to try that in the warmer weather.

Birds mentioned

Dartford Warbler strangely I didn’t spot down here as a place to see them, when Dartford is only in the next county

Stonechat strangely I recently learned that Robin is classified as a Chat and not as I thought in the broader category of Thrush (allegedly)

Yellowhammer strangely, widespread - I didn’t know that - but of conservation concern

Suggested topics for home schooling:

the people of the forest through the ages (history - link above)

woodland through all four seasons

good for simple sciences, biology and nature, art, crafts and quizzes

#England countryside nature photography forest heathland birds gorse WinniethePooh #homeschool #lessons

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dearjohnnyflynn · 4 years ago

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https://flaunt.com/content/people/johnny-flynn

AUGUST 9, 2017

ACTOR AND MUSICIAN JOHNNY FLYNN'S VARIED STORYTELLING GIFTS ARE PERFECT FOR NOW

BY CHANTELLE JOHNSON

As I dial the mobile number to speak to folksinger and actor Johnny Flynn, I’m struck by the fact that almost a decade has passed since his debut album, A Larum which established Flynn as a part of the new folk movement alongside Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons. Yet times change, and in the intervening decade, Flynn has returned to his first love: acting.

Before becoming a well-known musician, Flynn attended drama school with intentions of becoming an actor. “I went to acting school after I was recording and making music and I was doing it alongside music. So, I was doing theatre and plays at the Royal Court,” he says, “I made quite an effort to keep the two things separate. It was important to me to make sure that I was taken kind of seriously in both fields, so I didn’t go onstage as a musician and talk about acting projects or vice versa. They’re two quite different universes, even though they’re both performative.”

Having worked on various lo-fi indie films, plays and smaller acting projects, Flynn is now taking on his most challenging role to date, starring as the young Albert Einstein in the ten-part National Geographic series Genius, produced by Ron Howard. The show focuses on Einstein’s progression from an idealistic and rebellious young man just developing his most famous theories through to his later years – played by Geoffrey Rush – as the world-renowned, hyper-famous scientist.

Best known for his mop of shaggy blonde hair and blue eyes, how did Flynn end up in the role of the celebrated physicist with whom he shares no obvious physical similarities? “I just thought it was kind of ridiculous that I would be seen as Einstein and I actually kind of passed up on it,” Flynn admits to me over the phone.

“But I was telling my friend and she was saying, ‘You’re a complete idiot. That sounds amazing.’ She sat down and helped me send off the tape, even though I’d missed the deadline. The next thing I knew, I was speaking with Ron Howard on Skype. He was talking about Einstein in a way that made me feel really excited about being in the project, even though I didn’t think I had the right to portray him. It kind of went from there.”

The physical transformation amounted to an hour in the make-up chair every day: contact lenses, prosthetics, and having his hair dyed black. The show features an all-star cast including Emily Watson and Geoffrey Rush as the older Einstein, facing the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Flynn had the freedom to construct his own version of Einstein – which he describes as quite liberating – since details on the young scientist’s character are sparse, aside from a few anecdotes.

Although they didn’t share the screen, Flynn says that creating the character was a collaborative effort with Rush to allow the two versions of the physicist to blend seamlessly. “We’d send each other references, clips, and people on YouTube and say, ‘this person is quite Einstein,’” he explains. “A broad range of people – like Harpo Marx, Bob Dylan in a press conference in 1964, or some funny clips of owls walking across branches. Or we’d collect adjectives that would sort of pertain to a collective idea of Einstein. It could be quite abstract.”

The program seeks to debunk myths about Einstein. Far from being a poor student, he was a solid scholar as a young man. He also had many complex affairs with various women, explored in the show as it traverses significant personal and historical events during his lifetime.

Aside from Genius, Flynn is filming the third season of the sleeper-hit show Lovesick. The series follows his hapless, romantic character Dylan who must inform his ex-girlfriends that he has an STD, while trying to navigate a quarter-life crisis as he explores his feelings for his best friend Evie, played by actress Antonia Thomas. Flynn has become incredibly close to the other cast members on the intimate shoot. “I’m in my bedroom at the moment and Antonia and Josh who plays Angus are in the living room watching The Night Of,” he says casually, “We’re all living together for these couple of months while we’re filming.”

Although it’s easy to imagine a student experience complete with bad takeaways and wild nights out, Flynn is a family man, married with two small children and he takes fatherhood very seriously. “I’m trying to be a whole person in front of my kids and not just this infallible deity, which was what my dad was to me, and I think that’s what makes for a big let-down when you get to 13 or 14,” he says. “My son is six and he’s super smart. He’s constantly wrenching my heart out of my chest with his observations and how he’s able to see the world. I don’t even want to be any kind of overseer or overlord to his existence. I just want him to flourish and be himself because he’s got such a unique perspective.”

Parenthood aside, Flynn has recently released his fourth studio album, Sillion (via Transgressive Records), a reflective record that explores his relationship with his father, who died when he was 18. It also touches on the current global political situation. “With everything that’s been going on in the world and the complex ideologies that have built up around the human mind and certain individuals and groups of people who are in conflict with one another, it just seems quite resonant to go back to something very simple,” he says, seemingly conscious of not sounding too earnest. “Rather than getting suspicious or insecure, for us all to look to the Earth and – this sounds incredibly hippy or something – but actually it’s just an image. It was for me, kind of a resonant poetic image.”

While he maintains a healthy dose of cynicism when it comes to mainstream politics, he intends to vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in the upcoming UK election. “I’m behind that train but I do think the whole system’s a bit fucked,” he begins, “the answer doesn’t lie in politics and I think it will take a few generations for all this stuff to work its way out.”

When asked where the answer does lie, he suggests reading an article by Robert MacFarlane on the Anthropocene – the term given to the current geological era, which scientists think will be determined primarily by human impact.

“He was saying that there’s a call to arms for writers and artists to come forward with the language to process and understand the new epoch that we’re in. I think that’s why I’m happy to be a storyteller at this point. It reaches into people’s hearts and minds in a way that politics can’t.” Considering his current trajectory – music for the heart, stories for the mind – Flynn seems ready to help us find new dialogues for conversation, and maybe to divine some answers therein.

Written by Chantelle Johnson

Photographer: David Needleman at Jones Management

Stylist: Joshua Liebman at Honey Artists

Groomer: Eloise Cheung at Kate Ryan using Dior Homme

#johnny flynn #johnnyflynn

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Warrior Nuns Through TV History

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

TV nunning is a broad church. Sometimes, it’s all gunfire, demon-dissolving punches and running through walls, as in Netflix’s latest comic book adaptation Warrior Nun. In that show, a mystical artifact gives a non-believing teen superpowers passed down the generations from holy sister to holy sister. Defeat the demons, protect the world, praise the Lord, and so on.

Other fictional TV nuns lead quieter, more cake-focused lives, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t also fighters. You might say that like superheroes, not all warrior nuns wear capes. You’d be wrong – nuns definitely wear capes. They’re called mantles and though roomy and practical, likely represent a significant time commitment with regard to ironing.

Warrior Nun‘s superpowered teen follows in the echoey footsteps of a whole conventful of fictional TV nuns remembered here – some good, some bad, some inordinately fond of biscuits, but all, in their own way, warriors.

Sister Mary Loquacious in Good Omens (2019)

Played by: Nina Sosanya

Allegiance: Satanic nuns of the Chattering Order of St Beryl

Warrior level: Novice

Weapon of choice: Infantilising baby talk of hoofikins and widdle demonic tails

Specialism: Biscuits with pink icing

Most likely to say: ‘Fancy me holding the Antichrist! Counting his little toesy-woesies!’

Getting into heaven? Absolutely not

Demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale may have been Good Omens’ major players, but Sister Mary Loquacious kicked off the whole mess by accidentally confusing the infant Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of this World and Lord of Darkness with the human child of a couple from the Oxfordshire village of Tadfield. Easily done.

Sister Agatha in Dracula (2020)

Played by: Dolly Wells

Allegiance: The Army of the Faithful, St Mary’s Convent of Budapest

Warrior level: Intellectually? Top Tier. She’s Dracula’s ‘every nightmare at once: an educated woman in a crucifix’

Weapon of choice: Wooden stakes and double-barrel wit

Specialism: Scientific rigour and one-liners

Most likely to say: ‘A house of God is it? Well that’s good, we could do with a man about the place, eh sister?’

Getting into heaven? Ja, if she cared to grace it with her presence.

Unfazed, brave, funny and intellectually curious, Dutch-born Agatha put both her faith and folklore to the test when she took on Count Dracula, meticulously gathering research on his powers and learning the rules of the beast to try to use them against him. A true scientist and quite a woman.

Sister Michael in Derry Girls (2018)

Played by: Siobhan McSweeney

Allegiance: Our Lady Immaculate College/Rawhide

Warrior level: Untested in battle but doubtless lethal

Weapon of choice: Apathy, withering sarcasm and eye-rolls

Specialism: Judo (on Fridays)

Most likely to say: ‘Sweet suffering Jehovah’

Getting into heaven? I wouldn’t be the one to stop her.

You won’t find an ounce of sentiment beneath this wimple, Sister Michael’s dry disdain for the pupils at Our Lady Immaculate is expressed only through cutting remarks and declarations of boredom. Not a fan of priests, the French, love songs or… most things, she’s an authority figure for the Derry Girls. Every so often though, like when she turned a blind eye to Erin and co. distributing their banned lesbianism-focused edition of the school magazine, she’ll surprise you.

Sister Jane Ingalls in Orange is the New Black (2013)

Played by: Beth Fowler

Allegiance: Catholicism

Warrior level: Basically nil as she’s a committed pacifist, though she does punch Gloria in the mouth at one point for PR

Weapon of choice: Civil disobedience and the Good Book

Specialism: Activism

Most likely to say: ‘I was afraid nunning was going to be boring!’

Getting into heaven? Sure

As a young novice in the 1960s, Ingalls fell in with the bad nuns and got a taste for non-violent activism. A bunch of protests and a memoir later (full points for the title: Nun Shall Pass), and the church didn’t want anything to do with her, neglecting to cover her legal fees after she handcuffed herself to a nuclear facility, landing her in Litchfield.

Sister Harriet in Hunters (2019)

Played by: Kate Mulvany

Allegiance: Anti-Nazi, Pro-Quip

Warrior level: Top level. A highly capable operative.

Weapon of choice: Gun, blowtorch, you name it

Specialism: Threats of extreme violence delivered in the voice of a Downton Abbey marchioness.

Most likely to say: ‘I will set you aflame, child’

Getting into heaven? There’s some intrigue as to her real deal but she certainly seems to be on the right side of history.

This MI6 agent/Nazi-hunting nun from Amazon Prime’s Hunters is something of a Scary Poppins. She does an excellent line in death threats and action-movie quips. She’s deadly, has a shady backstory, speaks in a cut-glass English accent and is fond of biscuits. In other words: our kind of nun.

Matron Casp in Doctor Who ‘New Earth’ (2006)

Played by: Doña Croll

Allegiance: Sisters of Plenitude

Warrior level: Merciless eugenicist

Weapon of choice: Cat claws and science

Specialism: Incinerating conscious and begging-for-help human cloning experiments without a spark of fellow-feeling.

Most likely to say: ‘Who needs arms when we have claws’

Getting into heaven? Nah. Space prison more like.

The Sisters of Plenitude, healers on New Earth, may have called their work ‘the tender application of science’ but ‘the incredibly painful application of bastard cruelty’ better sums up their human cloning farm. This order takes a lifelong vow to help and mend, but clearly not to do no harm. And their hospital doesn’t even have a shop.

Abbess Hild in The Last Kingdom (2015-)

Played by: Eva Birthistle

Allegiance: Uhtred of Bebbanburg/the Lord

Warrior level: Advanced (but retired)

Weapon of choice: Dagger

Specialism: Throwing buckets of cold water on a sleeping Uhtred and sawing through the necks of dead Danes

Most likely to say: ‘I have killed, and I will kill again I’m sure, but hopefully not today’

Getting into heaven? Big yes.

Hild’s journey in The Last Kingdom took her from nun to warrior and back again. Rescued from attack by Uhtred, Leofric and Yseult, she swore to become a fighter and more-than earned the title. Eventually, her vocation called her back to the church, where she now remains as the Abbess with whom you don’t mess.

Sister Jude in American Horror Story: Asylum

Played by: Jessica Lange

Allegiance: Catholicism and the teachings of Monseigneur Timothy Howard

Warrior level: Complicated

Weapon of choice: Forced commitment to an insane asylum,

Specialism: Guilt

Most likely to say: ‘All monsters are human’

Getting into heaven? Bad things happened under her watch but she does try to atone

The head of Briarcliff, an institution for the criminally insane, Sister Jude is a complex character with a complicated trajectory. She mistreats, but is also also gravely mistreated.

Sister Monica Joan in Call the Midwife (2012-)

Played by: Judy Parfitt

Allegiance: Raymond Nonnatus, patron saint of childbirth

Warrior level: Yoda

Weapon of choice: Forceps and fey literary quotation

Specialism: Sniffing out and emptying hidden cake tins

Most likely to say: ‘My first responsibility is to ensure the consumption of this cake’

Getting into heaven? Hundo P

AKA the best Call The Midwife nun, and an OG resident of Nonnatus House ever since the BBC One series began. Owing to her advanced years and developing dementia, Sister Monica Joan is now retired from midwifery, but in her prime there wasn’t a birth canal in Poplar that hadn’t welcomed her up to the elbow. She’s highly educated and extremely well-read with an instinctive love of beauty, poetry, cake and Doctor Who, which makes her the patron saint of all our hearts.

Sister Sybil in Camelot (2011)

Played by: Sinéad Cusack

Allegiance: Shady but ultimately loyal to Morgan

Warrior level: Witch

Weapon of choice: Dark magicks

Specialism: Child sacrifice?

Getting into heaven? Nah.

When Uther Pendragon banished his daughter Morgan in Chris Chibnall’s 2011 Camelot, she was raised in a nunnery by a sister who was no stranger to the dark arts. When Morgan (played by Eva Green) returned to claim her birthright, Sister Sybil was the one whispering poison in her ear and teaching her how to channel her powers.

Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun (1967)

Played by: Sally Field

Allegiance: El Convento San Tanco in San Juan

Warrior level: Negligible

Weapon of choice: Not so much a weapon, but her flight-enabling cornette was the big thing.

Specialism: As the title suggests, flight

Most likely to say: ‘When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly.’

Getting into heaven? Si señor.

A creation of Tere Ríos’ book The Fifteenth Pelican, Sister Bertrille was the fresh-faced nun-next-door whose cornette combined with the Puerto Rico coastal winds allowed her to fly in the 1960s TV series. According to Sally Field’s excellent memoir In Pieces, the whole experience was more drag than take-off.

Miss Clavel in Madeline (1988-2001)

Voiced by: Judith Orban & various

Allegiance: An old house in Paris/the Catholic church

Warrior level: more sentry than prize fighter

Weapon of choice: Education! (Read: day trips to the circus)

Specialism: Waking up in the middle of the night with a nagging sense that something’s off kilter with her young schoolgirl charges, then singing a song about it.

Most likely to say: ‘Vite, vite mes petits’

Getting into heaven? Mais oui

The headteacher at Madeline’s Parisian boarding school in the Ludwig Bemelmans’ books and their various TV and film adaptations, Miss Clavel is a kindly sort. She gives her young boarding school pupils warm moral instruction and generally manages to extract Madeline from the mouth of whatever tiger she’s crawled inside that week. Not ferocious, as warriors go, but kind and dependable.

Septa Unella in Game of Thrones (2015)

Played by: Hannah Waddingham

Allegiance: The Faith of the Seven

Warrior level: High Bastard

Weapon of choice: Wooden spoon and ignominy

Specialism: Torture and bell-ringing.

Most likely to say: ‘Confess!’

Getting into heaven? Not in one piece she won’t after what Cersei did to her

The Geneva Convention didn’t reach the Seven Kingdoms. If it had, then the supposedly holy Septa Unella wouldn’t have beaten Cersei Lannister with a water ladle and made her drink from the floor like a dog before parading her naked to jeering crowds around the city. Not a nun to mess with, unless you’re a Lannister.

Also-Nuns

Sister Assumpta in Father Ted (1995)

Sister Boniface in Father Brown (2013)

(Briefly) Olive in Pushing Daisies (2007)

Mother Superior in Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005)

Kassia the Byzantine nun in Vikings (2019)

Warrior Nun is available to stream now on Netflix.

The post Warrior Nuns Through TV History appeared first on Den of Geek.

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years ago

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By Barry Grey

26 September 2019

On Monday night, the New York Metropolitan Opera opened its 2019-2020 season with a new production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. This production has a particular distinction in that it is the first ever based on a critically researched and authoritative performance edition of Gershwin’s score, the product of 20 years of work led by musicologist Wayne Shirley, who is currently at the University of Michigan’s Gershwin Initiative.

There is no doubt that the poignant love story of the crippled beggar Porgy and the beautiful but abused and addicted Bess, and the suffering and struggle of the African American working class community of Charleston’s Catfish Row, is among the world’s most beloved operas and Gershwin’s masterpiece.

Yet the fact that the current production is the first in 29 years to be staged by the country’s most prestigious opera house is indicative of the trials and tribulations that have confronted the work since it premiered on Broadway in October 1935. These have come not from the broad public, which has embraced the opera (and many of its numbers) since its inception, thrilled by its glorious and complex music and moved by its deeply democratic ethos, but from within certain more privileged constituencies—the American classical music establishment, academia, sections of the black professional upper-middle class, including certain African American artists, composers, writers and actors.

Gershwin, the prolific composer—along with his lyricist brother Ira—of hit Broadway musicals and dozens of memorable songs that have become part of the Great American Songbook, rejected the artificial separation of popular music from “serious” or “classical” music. He wrote concert classics that incorporated elements of jazz such as Rhapsody in Blue, the Concerto in F and An American in Paris, which have become part of the symphonic repertoire the world over. He called his Porgy a “folk opera” and deliberately had it debut on Broadway in order to appeal to a broader audience. But what he wrote was a musically dense and dramatically powerful opera in the full sense of the word.

One example of the dismissal of Porgy by much of the American music establishment was a savage review of a production at the New York City Opera written in March of 1965 by the then-music critic of the New York Times Harold C. Schonberg. He wrote:

“Porgy and Bess”—Gershwin, you know—seems to have taken root as an American classic, and everybody accepts it as a kind of masterpiece. It turned up last night as given by the New York City Opera Company. All I can say is that it is a wonder that anybody can take it seriously.

It is not a good opera, it is not a good anything, though it has a half-dozen or so pretty tunes in it: and in light of recent developments it is embarrassing. “Porgy and Bess” contains as many stereotypes in its way as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

In more recent decades, with the domination of racial and identity politics on the campuses and within what passes for the American intelligentsia, its promotion by the Democratic Party and elevation as an ideological bulwark of bourgeois rule, the opera has been repeatedly accused of denigrating and exploiting black people. It is, according to the terminology of African American Studies departments and a well-funded industry that—with the aid of pseudo-left organizations—churns out racialist propaganda, a prime example of “cultural appropriation.”

We will deal with the retrograde concept of “cultural appropriation” further on. First let us examine how this racialist approach to Porgy and Bess is reflected in the media reception to the new Met production.

The table was set, so to speak, by the New York Times, which led its Sunday arts section with a full-page photo of the two leads, Eric Owens and Angel Blue, and the headline “The Complex History and Uneasy Present of ‘Porgy and Bess.’”

Taking pains to raise the standard racialist arguments against the opera and its composer, while simultaneously acknowledging the greatness of the work, the author, Michael Cooper, wrote:

More urgently, is “Porgy” a sensitive portrayal of the lives and struggles of a segregated African-American community in Charleston, SC? (Maya Angelou, who as a young dancer performed in a touring production that brought it to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1955, later praised it as “great art” and “a human truth.”)

Or does it perpetuate degrading stereotypes about black people, told in wince-inducing dialect? (Harry Belafonte turned down an offer to star in the film version because he found it “racially demeaning.”)

Is it a triumph of melting-pot American art, teaming up George and Ira Gershwin (the sons of Russian Jewish immigrants) with DuBose Heyward (the scion of a prominent white South Carolina family) and his Ohio-born wife, Dorothy, to tell a uniquely African-American story? Or is it cultural appropriation?...

Or is the answer to all these questions yes?

The first wave of reviews published Tuesday (the WSWS will publish its own review of the Met production at a later date) have generally been highly favorable. All of the reviewers, however, feel obliged to qualify their enthusiasm for the performance by cataloging the opera’s supposed “baggage,” viewed from the standpoint of race. It seems they allow themselves to be moved by the piece only reluctantly, and sense its humanity and truth despite themselves.

George Grella, for example, writes in New York Classical Review:

Since its debut, Porgy and Bess has been consistently hectored by two questions: is it an opera and is it some combination of condescension and racial exploitation (lately termed cultural appropriation)?

The debut of a new production of Porgy and Bess, which opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera Monday night, could leave no objective listener with any doubt as to the answer to the first question. And based on the excited responses from the audience during the performance, and the rapturous applause and shouts at the end—from the kind of patron mix one sees in everyday life in New York City but rarely in a classical music venue—the work has gone quite a ways toward settling the latter in a heartening and beneficent way.

There are charges of stereotyping and caricature of the inhabitants of Catfish Row, but the real problem of the opera, the irredeemable original sin of Porgy and Bess that every reviewer is duty-bound to raise, is the fact that its creators were white. (Even worse, three of the four—George and Ira Gershwin and Dubose Heyward—were men.)

Thus, the Washington Post ’s Anne Midgette writes: “Like so many operas, ‘Porgy’ is dated: written by white men and rife with stereotypes of its time.”

Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times writes: “But ever since its premiere in 1935, the work has divided opinion, and the debate lingers. … ‘Porgy’ was created, after all, by white people. … That ‘Porgy and Bess’ is a portrait of a black community by white artists may limit the work.”

Justin Davidson of Vulture.com notes: “True, the only depiction of African-American life that makes it to the opera stage with any regularity was written by three white guys.”

The very fact that the race, gender or nationality of the artist is today uncritically presented as a central issue in evaluating a work testifies to the degeneration of bourgeois thought in general and the terrible damage inflicted over many years by identity and racial politics. The use of such criteria in past periods was associated with the political right, which employed them to promote anti-democratic and racist agendas.

While today the attack on Porgy and Bess on grounds of the “whiteness” of its creators is cloaked in the supposedly “left” trappings of Democratic Party politics and post-modernist (that is, anti-Marxist) criticism, the earlier practitioners of such an approach were more frank in giving vent to its ugly sources and implications.

Reviewing the premiere of Porgy and Bess in 1935, the prominent American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson wrote:

The material is straight from the melting pot. At best it is a piquant but highly unsavory stirring-up together of Israel, Africa and the Gaelic Isles. … [Gershwin’s] lack of understanding of all the major problems of form, of continuity, and of serious or direct musical expression is not surprising in view of the impurity of his musical sources. … I do not like fake folklore, nor fidgety accompaniments, nor bittersweet harmony, nor six-part choruses, nor gefilte fish orchestration.

Most critics and professors who attack the opera for the “whiteness” of its authors are not anti-Semites, but, whether they like it or not, there is an objective link between their approach and that of Richard Wagner, one of the pioneers of anti-Semitism in the field of music. In 1850, he authored the infamous tract “Das Judentum in der Musik” (“Jewishness and Music”), in which he denounced Jewish composers in general and Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer in particular.

A racial approach to art has a definite logic. It leads in the end to abominations such as the Nazis' Aryan art, with its book burning and banning of Jewish- and black-infected “degenerate art.”

It is a historical fact that the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who fled tsarist persecution composed an opera that expressed in a powerful and beautiful way both the poverty and oppression of blacks in the segregated South and their nobility of spirit and burning desire for genuine freedom and equality. What is so strange or problematic about that?

George Gershwin was a genius and without doubt the greatest American composer of his time. That is an important factor to reckon with. There were and are many talented black composers—Duke Ellington and William Grant Still, to name just two—who produced great music, but none has to date produced a musical piece about the black experience in America that compares to Porgy. Unfortunately, in the attacks on the opera by some black artists—initially including Ellington, although the great jazz composer later changed his opinion—there was an element of jealousy. The same applies to composers of the academy who dismissed Gershwin’s work as technically deficient and low-brow.

How many jazz greats have performed and improvised on Gershwin tunes, including his opera? Miles Davis produced an entire album based on it. The list includes Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday and many more. It also includes country and pop artists such as Willie Nelson and Brian Wilson.

More than 80 years after its premiere, history itself has demonstrated the universality of Porgy and Bess. It is about black people, but, more fundamentally, it is about the human condition. Its basic themes are universal. It is a love story. It is a story about oppression, community, struggle, loss and the will to fight.

Do not songs such as “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty of Nothing” and the exquisite love duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” express the most profound and universal of human aspirations and emotions? Those who attack the opera for its “whiteness” generally avoid discussing the music.

Nor can there be any doubt that Gershwin’s own background, in the context of the convulsive social and political conditions of the Depression 1930s—the spread of fascism in Europe, revolutionary upheavals internationally and mass struggles of the American working class, and the approach of the Second World War—played a significant role in inspiring him to write Porgy.

During the summer of 1934, Gershwin stayed on Folly Beach, located on a barrier island near Charleston, South Carolina, collecting material and ideas for his opera and visiting revival meetings of the Gullah blacks who lived on adjacent James Island. He wrote to a friend: “We sit out at night gazing at the stars, smoking our pipes. The three of us, Harry [Botkin], Paul [Mueller] and myself discuss our two favorite subjects, Hitler’s Germany and God’s women.”

Dubose Heyward, who spent part of the summer with Gershwin on Folly Beach, published an article in 1935 in Stage magazine in which he described Gershwin’s interaction with the people who became the prototypes for the characters of his opera. “To George it was more like a homecoming than an exploration,” he wrote. “The quality in him which had produced the Rhapsody in Blue in the most sophisticated city in America, found its counterpart in the impulse behind the music and bodily rhythms of the simple Negro peasant of the South.

“The Gullah Negro prides himself on what he calls ‘shouting.’ This is a complicated rhythmic pattern beaten out by feet and hands as an accompaniment to the spirituals, and is indubitably an African survival. I shall never forget the night when at a Negro meeting on a remote sea-island, George started ‘shouting’ with them. And eventually, to their huge delight stole the show from their champion ‘shouter.’ I think that he is probably the only white man in America who could have done it.”

Gershwin himself was not overtly political, at least in his public life, but his sympathies and associations were with the liberal and socialist left. He penned Broadway shows of a broadly anti-war and socially dissident character, such as Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing and Let ’Em Eat Cake. The impact of the Russian Revolution, only 18 years prior to the debut of Porgy, contributed to the generally optimistic and democratic impulse behind his music. The sister of Ira Gershwin’s wife Leonore, Rose Strunsky, translated Leon Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution into English.

The singers who worked closely with Gershwin on Porgy, including the original Porgy and Bess, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, spoke with affection of their interactions with the composer, insisting he never evinced the slightest prejudice or condescension. They were always among the most ardent defenders of the opera.

The Gershwins insisted that the singing roles go only to black performers, in part because they wanted to break down the exclusion of African American artists from the concert hall and because they did not want the opera to be performed in blackface.

As for the element of caricature in Porgy and Bess, what opera does not have caricatures? The vengeful dwarf in Rigoletto, the seductive gypsy in Carmen, the tubercular seamstress in La Boheme, the rascally but clever servant in The Marriage of Figaro. One could go on and on. The issue is: Do the inhabitants of Catfish Row transcend their “types” and express genuine humanity? The opera’s audiences all over the world have answered in the affirmative.

And what of the charge of “cultural appropriation?” Could there be a more banal, reactionary and anti-artistic concept? What is art, if not the interaction of multiple influences of many origins, conditioned by social and historical development and distilled in the creative imagination of the artist to produce works that have universal significance?

Should we denounce Shakespeare, a male, for inventing Ophelia? Should we reject Verdi for writing operas about Egyptians? Should we ban blacks from playing white characters? What about that racist Mark Twain who had the impertinence to create the escaped slave Jim?

The balkanization of art is the end of art.

Here is how Gershwin, who aspired to create a genuine American idiom, described his own development. In an article titled “Jazz is the Voice of the American Soul,” published in 1926, he wrote:

Old music and new music, forgotten melodies and the craze of the moment, bits of opera, Russian folk songs, Spanish ballads, chansons, ragtime ditties combined in a mighty chorus in my inner ear. And through and over it all I heard, faint at first, loud at last, the soul of this great America of ours.

And what is the voice of the American soul? It is jazz developed out of ragtime, jazz that is the plantation song improved and transformed into finer, bigger harmonies. …

I do not assert that the American soul is Negroid. But it is a combination that includes the wail, the whine, and the exultant note of the old “mammy” songs of the South. It is black and white. It is all colors and all souls unified in the great melting pot of the world. …

But to be true music it must repeat the thoughts and aspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans. My time is today.

#wsws #porgy and bess #opera #american opera #gershwin #george gershwin #wagner #broadway #broadway musicals #identity politics #racism #racialism #cultural appropriation #gullah

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aroworlds · 6 years ago

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I don't think I'd be suitable or able to perform an editorial role for anyone, but I sincerely hope you find someone you can work together with to both improve! I am, however, curious about something you said, about not putting much visual description in. Why do you think you do that, and how come you link it to autism? I'm curious because I find myself doing a similar thing - most visual things are metaphorical for me - and I've noticed that I connect with some things you link to your autism.

Thanks so much for your best wishes, anon! For me, it comes down to three different factors, although not all autistics will have these in common, many autistics will have a different arrangement of primary senses, and neurodiverse folk who aren’t autistic or neurotypicals may have some or all of them! With this sort of thing, when folks connect to my experiences, I usually consider it an indication that autism may be worth exploring if you haven’t already, but because neurodiversity has so many similar expressions attached to several diagnoses, not to mention the possibility of comorbid or accompanying diagnoses, it doesn’t mean others should be excluded, either.

(I’m wary of making the yes, you’re absolutely autistic because I am pronouncements, because neurodiversity is such a broad and complex field and the only experiences I can speak for, at the end of the day, are my own. In me, they’re attached to this label; in others, they may not be.)

The first is that I have almost no ability to visualise images inside my head (aphantasia). I have more of an abstract knowledge of what things are--for example, I can tell you that Mum has wavy blond hair and crinkles around her eyes and she looks now like Oma (my grandmother) did in my early childhood, but I have no corresponding image of what she (or Oma!) looks like inside my head. I don’t have any visual sense without looking at her right in front of me. I don’t see a red apple in my head; I sort of think that it will have a brown stalk at the top and green shading around the stalk and the apple curves in at the bottom. The best I get as a mental picture is a red, circular blob, and for non-simple objects or scenes, not even that much. When I think of my room, for example, I list the things within it and their details rather than imagine them.

(I also have prosopagnosia, difficulty recognising faces, and while I can make eye-contact if I feel safe, I’d much rather not. It feels … it feels uncomfortable and rude and painful all at once in ways I struggle to describe. This makes fictional descriptions of people difficult for me, because I tend to interpret mood based on movement, word choice and tone of voice, not facial expressions or arrangement of facial features. As for distinguishing features, like size of nose or lips? I just don’t notice these at all.)

For this reason, when I attempt to write a scene, I have no picture of said scene in my head. None. I’m building it instead from an abstract knowledge of small details and how I think they might fit together, and while reference pictures can help, I’m rarely able to put it together the way allistic critique partners have asked of me. I’ll note that I know a few allistics with aphantasia, including one of the people who frustrated me most about wanting more description, so other people don’t seem to find it so much of a problem.

The second is that, like many autistics, I have more of a small detail sensibility–in other words, I see small details before I see the whole scene together, if I do at all. For me, a busy street scene is footsteps clattering on the pavement, the smell of petrol and perfume, music blaring from shop doorways, the screech of breaks as a car stops, the reflection on the wet asphalt as the lights change. It’s not the larger structure of the street and shops or the amount of people and cars occupying the street. The whole is suggested, for me, by the way the pieces of the small fit together.

Many allistics have read my work telling me to “describe more”, and I’m baffled, because I described the smell of the smoke and the rust of the metal and how the lift-cage creaked! How much more description do they want? Do I have to describe the shape of each flake of rust or something? I suspect it has to do with their passing over the smaller details I’ve provided in search of a missing big-picture description, while I’m just adding more and more smaller details to paint the scene, not realising that there’s anything missing–and to this day, I have no idea how to provide what they want. I don’t experience the world that way.

The third is that the world I experience is shaped more by touch, sound, taste, movement and smell than sight, more than is normal for most abled allistics. I’m better at non-visual small details than I am visual small-details. In a world where film and television have changed so much about what is expected from prose, especially genre/non-literary prose, this means my work isn’t as accessible as expected–it lacks that easily-visualised sensibility. I tend to describe how people move over depicting colour, for example, as this is something I’m more sensitive to as a stimmer. The feel of a cloth is something more natural to me to describe than its pattern.

All those things together means that my work describes things that aren’t expected to be described while leaving a lot that is expected to be described undescribed, and so far no writing teacher or crit partner has been able to explain precisely what they mean by describe more. It’s obvious to them; it’s a mystery to me. In the last couple of years, I’ve been slowly working on trying to build my descriptions and setting in ways that feel real and meaningful to me–to write how I think is natural as an autistic. There’s a lot of rules of prose to work through to try and find whatever my authentic autistic voice is underneath, though, and I’m nowhere near finished in this process.

So it’s important to me that someone else understands that my goal isn’t to make my work fit allistic expectations of description. It’s to try and better use tools of description to paint the world as I know it, so allistics can peer in and see how things look like to me–even if that image is focusing on the feel and smell of a soft wool blanket against a blurry, vague background. So I suppose my challenge is one of learning how to better convey that these gaps in my description are not a mistake but are instead the nature of my worldview–to give them a more easily-perceived sense of intentionality. I am absolutely not yet there, but I’ll keep trying.

I hope that gives you some idea, anon, from where I’m coming, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this is the combination of autism and writing for me. Just as there’s so many different shapes of autism, there’s so many different shapes of how autism interacts with writing, too.

It’s very likely that people who aren’t autistic will also relate to this, which I think makes it more important that we consider what we lose when we try to force all creatives into a singular approach on what is described. We celebrate differing approaches to how we describe, in terms of metaphor and simile and creative use of language, but allowing that difference for the what should be just as important, for both writer and reader. Yet, in non-fanfiction works (fanfiction places so much less importance on visual description!) I’ve always felt the pressure to reach a certain level of visual description to make my writing worth reading, and that’s a hard thing to carry for us creatives who cannot, for whatever reason, reach it.

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