popular culture

Who lives in a pineapple and announces football games?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 15:30:05 +0000

Who lives in a pineapple and announces football games? Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/10/2025 - 08:30

Jared Bahir Browsh

The success of simulcasts means that fans can expect to see more creative takes on traditional sports, including SpongeBob SquarePants calling Saturday’s NFL Wild Card game

As the final seconds of Super Bowl LVIII ticked off, according to social media, the biggest star was not MVP Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce or even Taylor Swift; it was a sea sponge and his starfish best friend. The Nickelodeon alternate broadcast of the Super Bowl starring SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star as commentators was a huge hit, with on-field graphics and animations featuring Nickelodeon stars and, of course, slime.

This was not the first time a media conglomerate aired or streamed a simulcast as a companion to its main broadcast to attract more fans. ESPN’s first basic simulcast was in 1987 after the network gained partial rights to the NFL—the first cable network to air the NFL—agreeing to simulcast the game on local networks of the competing teams. When ESPN2 launched in October 1993, it offered a second ESPN network to sports fans and within a year ran its first alternative broadcast, bringing in-car views to IndyCar fans as a companion to the main broadcast on ESPN.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

In 2006, the network created “ESPN Full Circle,” later renamed the Megacast, leveraging the popular basketball rivalry between Duke University and the University of North Carolina to offer local broadcasts and alternative camera views for the game. The previous year, ESPN had launched its college-focused ESPNU and ESPN360, its broadband broadcast service, and used these newer platforms along with its existing networks to offer eight different ways to watch the game.

ESPN offered statistics and other data on its high-definition networks, which were still separate from the standard-definition networks, and even offered polling through ESPN mobile before social media exploded.

These simulcasts and “Megacasts” aimed to give dedicated fans a more in-depth look at the game or event that was being broadcast. At the same time, leagues and sports broadcasters were looking for different ways to attract young and casual fans who enjoyed sports but were not the obsessive fans at which these Megacasts were targeted.

Courting younger fans

For a long time, leagues took young fans for granted, relying on parental, peer and geographic influence to produce new fans. In today's expanding media environment, young and casual fans have infinite options for entertainment, so leagues and their broadcasting partners have had to strategize new ways to attract new audiences.

One of these efforts debuted in 1973: Peter Puck, an anthropomorphic hockey puck created by NBC executive Donald Carswell and animated by Hanna Barbera. NBC had just obtained the rights to the NHL, which was struggling to grow its audience in the United States. Carswell thought Peter would be a great way to teach U.S. audiences the rules of professional hockey through three-minute shorts between periods. Although NBC stopped airing the NHL in 1975, Peter’s legacy lives on more than 50 years later.

The 1980s brought a sea change for sports as cable and improved marketing began to create the enormous sports media environment we experience today. As networks competed for viewers, sports became a reliable form of entertainment to attract audiences who had more choices than ever. As football continued to dominate the sports landscape, buffered by the 1984 Supreme Court decision to allow college football broadcasting to expand beyond the control of the NCAA, other leagues strategized to draw fans to television, stadiums and arenas.

Throughout the 1970s, teams had built larger stadiums and debuted mascots like the Phillie Phanatic to entertain fans. The following decade, as the NBA struggled to find a broadcaster to air its championship games live, David Stern—who took over the league as commissioner in 1984—“Disneyfied” the NBA experience, making attending games more family friendly with more timeout and halftime entertainment.

It just so happened that same year that the most marketable athlete of all time came into the league. Michael Jordan was not only a boon for adult basketball fans, but also kids who wanted to “Be like Mike.” In 1992, Jordan co-starred with Bugs Bunny in the Nike advertising campaign “Hare Jordan.” He retired the next year to play baseball before returning to the NBA in March 1995. The following summer, Bugs and Jordan reunited to film Space Jam, which grossed more than a quarter of a billion dollars after it premiered early into the NBA season in November 1996.

Announcers Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson with SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star announcing Super Bowl LVIII. (Screenshot: Nickelodeon/YouTube)

As a part of this effort to draw new fans, leagues also produced shows aimed at younger fans like “The Baseball Bunch,” which debuted in 1980 and featured MLB players and managers teaching baseball fundamentals. Ten years later, “NBA Inside Stuff” premiered on NBC’s Saturday morning schedule, joining a growing sports media industry aimed at kids that included publications like Sports Illustrated for Kids and video games like the Madden, FIFA and NBA 2k series, among the most popular video game series of all time.

Primetime slimetime

The consolidation of the U.S. media system throughout the 1980s and 1990s led to massive media conglomerates. Unsurprisingly, NBC held the network broadcast rights for the NBA when “NBA Inside Stuff” aired. As broadcast and cable networks came under the same corporate umbrella as film and animation studios, new opportunities for cross promotion emerged. Disney bought ESPN and opened the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, named after the anthology series that aired under one of their other subsidiaries, ABC, from 1961 until 1997 . Disney also founded an NHL team, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, in 1993—named after the popular 1992 kids hockey movie—and in 1996 debuted “Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series” on ABC, which featured anthropomorphic hockey playing superhero ducks.

The success of Space Jam and the continued media conglomeration strengthened the relationship between animation and sports. NASCAR rights holder FOX debuted “NASCAR Racers,” an animated action series featuring NASCAR branding, a day before the 1999 race season finale. Cartoon Network aired the marathon “NBA All-Star Slam” in 2003, featuring interstitial interviews with NBA players in the lead-up to the All-Star Game, which aired the evening of the game on TNT (both networks were owned by Warner subsidiary Turner).

In 2016, LeBron James appeared on the Cartoon Network series “Teen Titans Go!” the same night as a TNT basketball doubleheader and a few days before the All-Star Game. Later, the Teen Titans offered commentary of the 2023 NBA Slam Dunk Contest in the lead-up to the NBA All-Star Game airing on TNT.

Although these series and specials expanded the visibility of league branding and special events, the engagement with actual games was limited. When Viacom and CBS merged again in 2019, after splitting 14 years earlier, they began strengthening the relationship between former Viacom network Nickelodeon and broadcast network CBS. They began featuring Nickelodeon content on CBS All-Access, now Paramount+, and in 2021 Nickelodeon aired an NFL simulcast of the Wild Card playoff game between the Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints featuring Nickelodeon live-action and animated stars joining the real-time NFL broadcast with alternate announcers Nate Burleson and Noah Eagle. Current Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton, then the coach of the Saints, volunteered to be slimed, similar to the traditional Gatorade shower.

Current Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton, then the coach of the New Orleans Saints, gets "slimed" after a 2020 Wild Card win against the Chicago Bears. (Screenshot: Nickelodeon/YouTube)

The following season, “NFL Slimetime” premiered on Nickelodeon, a highlight show hosted by Burleson that strengthened the relationship between the NFL and Nickelodeon. This relationship exploded during last years’ Super Bowl as the Nickelodeon simulcast on the cable network and Paramount+ was credited for a growth in game viewership, especially among younger and casual fans who appreciated the irreverent approach to the game.

A pineapple under the arena

As media conglomerates continue to leverage sports rights to attract audiences and increase subscriptions to their streaming services, they have also leaned into the popularity—and meme-making possibilities—of these simulcasts. Several months after the Nickelodeon simulcast of the Wild Card Playoff, Disney leveraged its Marvel Cinematic Universe to produce a simulcast, “Marvel Arena of Heroes,” on ESPN2 and its streaming service, which was similar to the Wild Card game on Nickelodeon and featured special graphics and superhero-themed content related to the real-time NBA games between the Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans. ESPN and Genius Sports, the company behind augmented games like the Arena of Heroes simulcast, extended their contract in the summer of 2024.

In 2023, Disney aired its own fully animated simulcasts with the “Big City Greens Classic” NHL broadcast in March and the “Sunday Funday” Toy Story-themed NFL game in September. Both regular-season games included a rendering of the real-time broadcasts featuring stars from its animated franchises. Disney followed this up in December 2024 with another “Sunday Funday” featuring “The Simpsons” and the Christmas Day “Dunk the Halls” animated simulcast featuring classic characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. In between these two games, NBC’s Peacock service offered an alternate stream of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans featuring graphics from the popular video game series Madden.

As SpongeBob and Patrick prepare to announce the Nickelodeon simulcast of the 2025 NFL Wild Card game between the Houston Texans and Los Angeles Chargers Saturday, fans should be prepared for more of these simulcasts as networks and streaming services try to market these games to young and casual fans, boosted by social media memes like Patrick roasting the starting quarterback and Lisa Simpsons scoring a touchdown against Homer.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The success of simulcasts means that fans can expect to see more creative takes on traditional sports, including SpongeBob SquarePants calling Saturday’s NFL Wild Card game.

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That red nose still guides us to Christmas

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 17:43:58 +0000

That red nose still guides us to Christmas Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/05/2024 - 10:43

Jared Bahir Browsh

Sixty years after the debut of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop-motion animated classic, the yearly flood of holiday films can thank the small reindeer for their success

As we spend the Christmas season binging on Hallmark movies and holiday specials, one diminutive reindeer has been part of Christmas media longer than any other figure.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created as a coloring book in 1939 by Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward when the retailer decided to produce its own coloring books after distributing books from other publishers for years. May faced pushback on the story, since red noses were associated with drinking at the time, but ultimately Montgomery Ward distributed more than 2 million copies of the story that celebrates individuality and courage.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

The first Rudolph cartoon debuted in 1948, directed by Max Fleischer and sponsored by Montgomery Ward. The next year, the famous song written by May’s brother-in-law Johnny Marks debuted behind the vocals of Gene Autry, hitting number one—the first top song of 1950 that was added to Fleischer’s cartoon when it was reissued in 1951.

Autry’s beloved version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” sold more 1.75 million copies in 1949 alone, and altogether Autrey’s and every other version of the song have sold more than 150 million copies, behind only Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” in total Christmas song sales. It is also the only No. 1 song to fall completely off the charts the week after it peaks.

In 1958, Chuck Berry recorded "Run Rudolph Run,” with Marks receiving a writing credit after suing for trademark infringement. Autry also wrote and sang "Here Comes Santa Claus."

The growth of the recording industry after World War II was part of a larger post-war economic boom in the United States that supported the increased commercialization of Christmas, which had started a century earlier with depictions of Santa in the 1840s and his first in-store appearance at the New York City Macy’s in 1862. His appearance in the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924 was thought to kick off the holiday shopping season, with his modern image confirmed by Coca-Cola advertisements in 1931. A decade later, Rudolph joined Santa on his sleigh as a Christmas icon.

Stop-motion animation

In the first 25 years after May created Rudolph, the reindeer with the light-up nose became a multimedia legend, inspiring comic and children’s books in addition to the original coloring book and 1948 cartoon. But the small animation studio Rankin/Bass—founded as Videocraft and going by that name until 1974, when it rebranded as Rankin/Bass—helped Rudolph reach generations of kids and produced the longest continuously running Christmas special in United States television history.

The unique stop-motion animation style Rankin/Bass used was called “Animagic,” crafted by Japanese artist Tadahito Mochinaga and his MOM Production Studio. The process debuted in the United States in 1961 in a syndicated series called The New Adventures of Pinocchio, but the Rankin/Bass 18 Christmas specials helped the stop-motion animation approach become legendary. Rankin/Bass was one of the earliest studios to outsource its animation to Japan, which became common practice in later animated productions.

Since its debut in 1964, the Rudolph special has gone through a number of edits. In 1965, the song “Fame and Fortune” was added, to the chagrin of fans of the original; the song and the scene were removed and Santa’s visit to the Island of Misfit Toys was added in 1966.

Since its debut Dec. 6, 1964, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has gone through a number of edits. (Image: Rankin/Bass)

Yukon Cornelius’ visit to the peppermint mine was also edited out of the original and would not return until 2019, when the network Freeform obtained the rights to this and several other Rankin/Bass specials as a part of its 25 Days of Christmas.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer aired on NBC, its original network, until 1971, when CBS purchased the broadcasting rights, which it held until 2023. For the film’s 60th anniversary this year, NBC will air the full film in a 75-minute broadcast on Dec. 6, the same date the original debuted in 1964. Unlike other Christmas specials, the film is not available as a part of any streaming service and must be purchased to view it outside the NBC or Freeform telecasts.

The stop-motion Rudolph film not only became an instant classic, but also led to a wave of classic Christmas visual media in television and film. A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in 1965, followed in 1966 by the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, which was adapted from the 1957 Dr. Seuss book. Rankin/Bass would continue to produce holiday specials, including traditionally animated specials based on the Charles Dickens Christmas novella The Cricket on the Hearth (1967) and The Mouse on the Mayflower (1968), a Thanksgiving special.

The studio’s greatest successes, however, were its specials based on popular holiday songs and traditional stories. Later in 1968, The Little Drummer Boy debuted, a stop-motion special based on the song written in 1941 by Katherine Kennicott Davis and first recorded by the Trapp family in 1951. The song became a holiday standard in the United States through the later version by The Harry Simeone Chorale, who also recorded the popular version of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “The Little Drummer Boy” was also covered by Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby with David Bowie.

The film The Little Drummer Boy is fairly dark for an animated special of the time, featuring the drummer boy Aaron’s family being murdered before he is kidnapped, forced to perform and escaped to join the Magi and ultimately performing in Bethlehem.

A holiday deluge

Rankin/Bass studio produced Frosty the Snowman in 1969, which was drawn to look like a Christmas card. (Image: Rankin/Bass)

In subsequent years, Rankin/Bass continued to produce specials that became staples of various holidays, including the traditionally animated Frosty the Snowman (1969), which studio artists wanted to look like a Christmas card. The studio also produced a number of other stop-motion specials, including Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970) and Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971). The partnership between Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass resulted in more than two dozen holiday specials and numerous other films and series, including the original ThunderCats series.

What used to be special, sprinkled throughout late November and December, has become a massive media industry leading to most regularly scheduled series taking a midseason break as a torrent of holiday specials and sporting events dominate television from Thanksgiving through the college football bowl season in January. The holiday season is now overrun by a collection of animated specials, holiday episodes and cheesy rom-coms. The latter of these were popularized by Hallmark, which has been sponsoring specials for broadcast since 1951, making what is now known as the Hallmark Hall of Fame the longest-running anthology series on television.

Hallmark’s low-budget holiday specials have been a staple of the holidays since 2000 and dramatically increased when Odyssey Network was rebranded the Hallmark Channel in 2001. Since then, the channel, which has grown in popularity over the last two decades, has produced more than 300 holiday specials created around formulaic narratives largely focused on family-appropriate romance. Other media outlets, including Lifetime Network and Netflix, have also joined this trend, leading to a deluge of specials of varying quality dominating the holiday season.

However, many of these specials rooted in nostalgia and familiar formulas can thank Santa’s ninth reindeer for using his shining nose to lead the way in establishing our holiday watching habits.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Sixty years after the debut of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop-motion animated classic, the yearly flood of holiday films can thank the small reindeer for their success.

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Defying gravity… and the box office

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:08:25 +0000

Defying gravity… and the box office Rachel Sauer Tue, 11/26/2024 - 11:08

Adamari Ruelas

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� lecturer Marla Schulz examines the Broadway-musical-turned-film Wicked and how the movie musical endures

Since the Broadway musical Wicked opened in fall 2003, it has been beloved by both critics and audiences. Based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, it has dominated Broadway, becoming the fourth-longest-running musical of all time and amassing more than $5 billion in sales worldwide via the Broadway show and a touring production that has been to more than 100 cities in 16 countries.

So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Universal Studios announced plans to bring the musical to the big screen in 2014. After a slew of delays, many due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was finally released on Friday, following a months-long, pink-and-green global marketing blitz.

Marla Schulz, a lecturer in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Theatre and Dance, says part of Wicked's appeal is the story of a misunderstood girl turning into a misunderstood villain.

During its opening weekend, the film grossed $165 million worldwide—the biggest-ever opening weekend for a film based on a Broadway musical, demolishing the previous record set by Into the Woods—and currently has a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes. What makes this Broadway-to-film musical so successful when several of its recent predecessors—including Dear Evan Hansen and Cats—flopped?

According to Marla Schulz, a lecturer in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Theatre and Dance who earned her MFA in dance with an emphasis on musical theater, there are many things that make Wicked special.

“A lot of people resonate with the story of a misunderstood girl turning into a misunderstood villain. It feels clever and also poignant,” Schulz explains.

Stage to film

As with anything that fans deeply love, however, there are those who argue that adapting a Broadway musical to a film is unnecessary, especially if it is considered “perfect” as is, like Wicked.

“(But) going to see a musical can be quite difficult, especially for people who might have fewer resources or live in rural areas,” Schulz says. “Tickets to go to the theater can be expensive, especially if you want to see a union production. To see the original production, you frequently have to travel to a large city to either see a touring production, or you can spend a lot of money to go to New York. Adapting live musicals to film makes the artform significantly more accessible.”

The cheapest ticket to see Wicked on Broadway is almost $200, which doesn’t include travel or accommodation costs for those who don’t live in New York City. For many, this can be an insurmountable expense, even for the biggest fans of the original book and Broadway musical. Once the production is made into a film, however, it becomes accessible to millions.

Of course, like most things that have huge, passionate fanbases, stage-to-film adaptations inevitably draw backlash, even before the film is released. In everything from casting choices to set design, Broadway musicals often draw intense scrutiny when they are adapted into film.

“It’s not an easy thing to do,” Schulz says. “You have audience members who are comparing the movie version to the staged version. In most cases, the writers have a specific reason they wanted this story told as a musical, on stage, with the opportunities and limitations that it provides.

Cynthia Erivo (left) plays Elphaba and Ariana Grande (right) plays Glinda in the film Wicked. (Photo: Universal)

“When it moves to a film, the big question that comes up is what does this new medium have to add to the story? And if it doesn’t have anything to add, then why are we doing it?”

This can be part of what makes the musicals-turned-film flops so notorious: They failed to do the original production justice, Schulz says. Perhaps inevitably, both critics and fans ask, “How?”

Everything from bad costumes and editing to inconsistent world-building can add up to a bad adaptation of a beloved musical. The 2019 film adaptation of Cats—a beloved musical that ran for 18 years and almost 7,500 shows on Broadway—is a recent example.

Schulz says that it can be quite easy to mess up an adaptation. “The Dreamgirls movie musical is an example of what can go wrong when you don’t properly set up the world of a musical. For a large majority of the movie Dreamgirls, all the songs are diegetic (heard by both the film’s characters and audience), emanating from a performance or a recording session. When 30 minutes in we finally get a song that is non-diegetic, it’s quite jarring. If you’re going to do a musical film, do that from the beginning in all aspects; embrace it.”

Defying gravity

Gauging by its opening weekend box office totals, the Wicked film adaptation has so far avoided the pitfalls of the so-called flops that preceded it. The second half of the story—Friday’s release covers Act I of the stage musical—is scheduled for release in 2025.

The film also has recouped its $150 million production cost.

At a time when the box office success of Broadway-to-film adaptations can most accurately be called inconsistent, Wicked is so far defying expectations (and gravity).

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� lecturer Marla Schulz examines the Broadway-musical-turned-film Wicked and how the movie musical endures.

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Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda in Wicked (Photo: Universal)

These princesses aren’t just waiting around for their prince

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 15:57:28 +0000

These princesses aren’t just waiting around for their prince Rachel Sauer Fri, 11/22/2024 - 08:57

Adamari Ruelas

Looking at two of Disney’s most famous female characters, Anna and Elsa, with a critical eye with CU lecturer Shannon Leone

Nov. 22 marks the five-year anniversary of the release of Disney’s global phenomenon Frozen 2. This film, and the first Frozen, are widely considered some of Disney’s most progressive works, changing how the studio depicts their female characters.

Many applaud the films for giving young women and girls new and better role models than those previous generations had in Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. However, are Anna and Elsa really that different from the princesses who came before them?

Shannon Leone, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� lecturer, teaches a popular course in the Department of Women and Gender Studies called Disney’s Women and Girls.

Shannon Leone, a lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder who teaches a popular course in the Department of Women and Gender Studies called Disney’s Women and Girls, notes, “If you look at more traditional Disney films, they have encouraged an idea of both girlhood and womanhood that celebrates traditional feminine passivity, the quintessential example being the damsel in distress. With more recent female protagonists, they have become arguably more empowered and express desires outside of romance.”

Yet there still is debate about how the women and girls of Disney are influencing their youngest viewers and fans.

“Younger children have more choices in who they can align their identities with—characters they can celebrate and characters that they can look at with a more critical eye. They have more choices than previous generations,” Leone says.

Some scholars have noted that Disney previously taught young girls that the only pleasure and purpose in life was finding a man to love them—a message that many women have questioned and rebelled against.

Now, Disney creates “progressive” princesses like Tiana from The Princess and the Frog and Moana from Moana, who will appear on screen again Nov. 27 when Moana 2 opens

Something different

One thing that makes the Frozen films—and their heroes Anna and Elsa—different from their Disney predecessors is its focus on love, but not necessarily romantic love.

“Frozen is an example of a film that portrays sisterly love, which unfortunately continues to be rare in Disney films,” Leone says. Most Disney films with a female protagonist are centered around an idea of love—specifically romantic love. By focusing on the love shared between sisters, instead of a man and a woman, Frozen and Frozen 2 present a broader picture of love and the things to which girls can aspire, Leone says.

Moana, who has been praised for having a more realistic figure, will return to theaters Nov. 27 in Moana 2. (Image: Disney Enterprises Inc.)

And the film Moana didn’t have a romantic subplot at all, instead focusing on Moana’s dreams of exploration. Moana also has been widely praised for having a more realistic figure compared with the impossible dimensions of previous Disney heroines.

It’s not just the romantic plotlines of Disney films that have changed, but also how the female characters are portrayed in the first place, Leone says. She cites Elsa from Frozen as an important example: a woman who is depicted more like a traditional Disney female villain than a princess.

“Elsa was supposed to be a villain, and having some traces of what would have made her an antagonist in the film actually produces more of a multifaceted human being, which I think young viewers responded to,” Leone explains.

Another notable example is Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, who made history by being Disney’s first African American princess. Despite breaking down barriers, many critiqued the movie for Tiana’s Eurocentric features.

“The film is self-aware of traditional expectations of beauty in association with the princess type. With that being said, I don’t want to undermine the significance of that film in its representation of Black American identity,” Leone says, emphasizing that despite its flaws, the movie still made important progress in representation.

While younger generations of little girls may have better role models in the Disney princesses of today, it’s still important to consider what these movies are teaching young viewers. “Contemporary films seem to still have to contend with these racialized and gendered expectations of the damsel in distress and the masculine hero,” Leone says, adding that it's easy to overlook the deeper meanings in Disney movies that children may latch onto.

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Looking at two of Disney’s most famous female characters, Anna and Elsa, with a critical eye with CU lecturer Shannon Leone.

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Top image: Disney Enterprises Inc.

Jim Halpert is looking at all of us

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 20:21:18 +0000

Jim Halpert is looking at all of us Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/05/2024 - 14:21

Rachel Sauer

In a recently published paper, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� PhD student Cooper Casale interrogates Jim Halpert’s direct-to-camera gaze in The Office and its similarities to what he calls the ‘fascist look'

A couple of years ago, Cooper Casale was dating a woman who loved the American version of “The Office.” Despite having watched seasons two and three on repeat in middle school so he’d have something to talk about with a girl he liked, a decade had passed and he wasn’t really a fan anymore.

“But I end up being sucked into it,” recalls Casale, a PhD student in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of English. “I watched all the way through multiple times—it becomes a kind of hypnosis. It was just always on.”

Through nine seasons and repeated watching, Casale began to wonder: Is Jim Halpert looking at me?

In a newly published paper, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� PhD student Cooper Casale argues that the Jim Halpert gaze represents the punitive aspects of mainstream culture that are foundational to enforcing and maintaining capitalism.

In the 650 times that Jim Halpert (played by actor John Krasinski) looks at the camera through those nine seasons—there’s even a 10-minute compilation video of them on YouTube—Casale began considering what or who he was seeing in the Jim Halpert gaze: the pitiless scientist, the capitalist boss or the fascist father? Or perhaps all three?

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Popular Culture, Casale considers how the Jim Halpert gaze is also the fascist look.

“The Fascist Look enlists its subjects into their make-believe hero's service, a role audiences want to occupy,” Casale writes. “They want to please Halpert, as the worker wants to please the foreman. Their peculiar loyalty partly explains ‘The Office's’ remarkably enduring popularity…

“Halpert's Gaze arms people against their feckless bosses, slovenly neighbors and annoying coworkers. At the same time, his frozen glare, his pranks and his sarcasm represent the punitive aspects of mainstream culture that are foundational to enforcing and maintaining capitalism. Halpert does not critique his corporate arrangement but merely masters it. He becomes its boss, and viewers enamored by his cruel fiction but powerless to act it out, choose, in Halpert, a more nightmarish boss than they had before. Furthermore, viewers are thankful because he reminds them that the great can still overcome the small.”

Microdosing work

First, though, a sorry-not-sorry: While Casale appreciates a lot of the humor in “The Office,” he increasingly resents its popularity now that remote work is so common. He wanted to understand how the “almost liturgical pattern in which some people watch it” has become a sort of surrogate to having an in-person, so-called work family, he explains. “There are some who never turn it off. When I was in publication for this paper, my editor was like, ‘You can’t prove that,’ and I can’t, not yet, but there’s an observably strange practice in people watching this show on rotation all the time.

“So, the initiating question was ‘Why do people come home from a 9 to 5 and immediately watch a show about 9 to 5?’ Theodor Adorno wrote about this in his essay ‘Free Time,’ about how free time is itself a kind of work. We have to spend those hours after work preparing to return to work, so people watching ‘The Office’ is almost like microdosing having to go back to work.”

In the character of Jim Halpert, Casale says, “The Office” established an everyman protagonist—a frustrated dreamer and creative type who somehow ends up in a meaningless job at the world’s most boring business. When he looks directly at the camera, he conveys that he recognizes the absurdity and ridiculousness around him and that he is somehow above it.

Citing another Adorno work, “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” which observes that enlightenment and barbarism are often linked, Casale notes that “Jim Halpert represents this enlightened corporate subject. He’s presented as smarter than everyone else, but we see how fast that enlightenment has to express itself through barbarism or violence in the pranks he’s constantly pulling on Dwight.

Actor John Krasinski played the character Jim Halpert in "The Office" and looked directly at the camera 650 times over nine seasons. (Photo: NBC Universal)

“Dwight’s biggest crime in the whole show is that he likes his job. He’s presented as naïve, sentimental, he likes beets and ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ and because of his sentiment he must be punished. We’re meant to believe that Jim really deserves to be somewhere else, and he’s only there because he’s unlucky, but it’s everyone else’s fate to be there. Kevin will never do better, Stanley will never do better, but it’s Jim’s fate to overcome the circumstances of his life. We’re meant to find his cruelty affable.”

“The Office” reaffirms the strange hierarchies of corporate America but sells them as quirky, Casale says. Its documentary style becomes a two-way mirror between Jim Halpert and viewers—in Jim’s disgust, annoyance, resentment or bemusement, viewers have a proxy in lieu of their own documentary camera recording their reactions to the clowns and fools around them.

Interrogating power

The Jim Halpert gaze becomes the fascist look when considered through the lens of power, Casale says: “We have this TV show teaching me that the best way to express my power is to lend it to somebody else who can punish people in my stead. It’s similar to how a vote for an autocrat is a vote to not have to vote anymore. We see it in the working class voting for Donald Trump, who’s only going to give tax breaks to the rich. But because they want to be rich, there’s an aspect of living out their dreams through him.

“I think people always struggle with how members of the working class can vote against their self-interest. Part of it, I think, is that people’s resources to express themselves or express some kind of autonomy are so impoverished that their last opportunity to be free is to live in surrogate through someone else. If Jim Halpert can prank these people and humiliate all his coworkers, then I can live vicariously through Jim Halpert.”

Casale adds that rather than interrogating the structures of power and capitalism that Jim Halpert ostensibly gazes against, “The Office” emphasizes a message that mimicking the behaviors of power will lead to having power. In “The Office,” Jim Halpert is in control—not Michael, not Dwight, nor any of the other characters to essentially serve as his minstrels.

“I think that’s the fascist myth,” Casale says. “It’s a desire to be dominated so I can learn the procedures of how to dominate others. In my own domination, I learn what it feels like and how I can do it. We see this with any kind of autocrat, including Jim Halpert. When Donald Trump says he wants retribution, there are thousands upon thousands of regular, pretty nice people who say, ‘I want retribution, too.’ And because they won’t direct their anger to capitalism, the real culprit, they have to have proxy wars about DEI, gender, immigration, whatever else, so they won’t have to focus on the real cause of their powerlessness.”

Top images: NBC Universal

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In a recently published paper, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� PhD student Cooper Casale interrogates Jim Halpert’s direct-to-camera gaze in The Office and its similarities to what he calls the ‘fascist look.'

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Loving the losing baseball team

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 21:48:38 +0000

Loving the losing baseball team Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/15/2024 - 15:48

Bradley Worrell

In advance of Tuesday’s Major League Baseball All-Star game, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� history professor Martin Babicz offers thoughts on why some fans remain loyal to baseball’s perennial losers

Every season, one Major League Baseball team earns champion success in the World Series while the rest place behind. And within that second group are a few teams that are the absolute stinkers of the league.

Think the Colorado Rockies in 2023, with just 59 wins versus 109 losses—and with a record of not scoring better than fourth place in their division for five years in a row.

Why do some fans stay loyal to such losers?

Martin Babicz, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate teaching professor of history, co-wrote the 2017 book National Pastime: U.S. History Through Baseball.

Martin Babicz, a University of Colorado Boulder associate teaching professor of history, has some ideas. An instructor in the Department of History, the Stories and Societies RAP (Residential Academic Program), the Creative Minds RAP and the CMCI RAP, Babicz teaches a course called America Through Baseball, which examines American history since the Civil War, exploring how the social, cultural, economic and political forces shaping America were reflected in the national pastime. He’s also the co-author of the 2017 book National Pastime: U.S. History Through Baseball.

Growing up in New England in the 1960s and 1970s, Babicz had plenty of chances to see Boston Red Sox and New York Mets fans lament their losing baseball teams on an almost-yearly basis. It’s given him insights on why fans stay loyal to losing teams, what factors can cause fans to lose faith in their teams and what he sees as the value of having a team to root for—no matter how bad they are, which he discussed with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Question: In sports, Americans generally love winning teams. Why do you think some people stay loyal to perennial losers?

Babicz: That’s a good question, and I’ve thought about this on and off for years.

Baseball teams—in fact all sports teams—are local institutions. The Broncos, for instance, are a part of the fabric of Denver, just like the Rocky Mountains or Casa Bonita. But it is more than that. Sports teams are also family institutions. They are a part of our DNA, as support for the team is often passed along in a family from one generation to another. And just like a family won’t reject a child who is not as smart or as good looking as his siblings, it also won’t reject a sports team that is not as good as its competitors.

I think the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox might provide an illustration, as they both have very loyal fans. In 1998, both the Cubs and the Red Sox qualified for a wild-card playoff team. The wild card, which at the time was a relatively new thing in baseball, is a playoff berth awarded to a team that did not finish in first place.

Both the Red Sox and the Cubs had reputations for going on a very long losing streak of not winning the World Series, and there was some concern in baseball about what would happen if either of those teams ended up winning the World Series. Would the sport lose some of its luster among those fans? Would the teams lose some of their following?

Well, neither team won it in 1998, but the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, and the Cubs won it in 2016—and it didn’t damage the teams at all. Winning hasn’t hurt their popularity, so it’s not like you have to be a loser to be loved.

But if you look at the history of baseball, there have been baseball teams who did not do so well.

Think about the Washington Senators, the St. Louis Browns, or the Philadelphia Athletics. They went decades and decades with lousy teams and yet baseball remained popular in those cities. …

Disappointed Chicago Cubs fans watch their team lose to the Colorado Rockies during a May 2019 game. (Photo: Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)

Question: It sounds like if a team has deep roots in a city, that can be a strong factor on whether fans will generally remain faithful?

Babicz: Yes, fans tend to remain faithful to teams that have deep roots in the community. Support for the team—even a losing team—becomes routine, almost ritualistic.

Take opening day, for instance. Some fans develop habits of skipping work or school and attending opening day every year, no matter how good or bad the local team is. And for many fans, tuning in the game on the radio is something they do whenever they are doing yardwork or work around the house, and they’ll continue to tune in, even if the team is lousy. And, of course, when an opportunity presents itself to attend a game, they’ll take it, even if they think their team won’t win.

And as I said, support for a sports team is often passed from parent to child. But if there wasn’t a team when your father and mother grew up, then there’s nothing to pass to you. …

If you look at football, Denver got a football team in 1960, and Miami got a football team in 1966. In those two markets, football had several decades to get established and to build a fan base before they were competing (for fans’ attention) against baseball teams. So, I wonder, had Denver gotten a baseball team in the early 1960s, would that team be as popular in the media as the Broncos are?

It really surprises me that almost every night it’s the Broncos who lead the sports news—even when it’s not football season. And it’s not like that in some other markets; it’s certainly not like that back east. Football is popular there, but the other sports get their day as well.

Question: Which professional baseball team has the worst record? Were they able to eventually turn things around?

Babicz: The worst team ever was the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. They won 20 games all year, but that was in the 1890s. The National League had a monopoly on teams and there were 12 teams in total. After that season was over, the National League decided to cut back to eight teams—and one of the four teams they eliminated was the Cleveland Spiders. So, they never had the opportunity to recover.

Baseball teams—in fact all sports teams—are local institutions. The Broncos, for instance, are a part of the fabric of Denver, just like the Rocky Mountains or Casa Bonita. But it is more than that. Sports teams are also family institutions. They are a part of our DNA, as support for the team is often passed along in a family from one generation to another.”

Question Are there any corollaries between winning and losing teams and the impact upon game attendance?

Babicz: Some interesting numbers can be seen with the New York Mets. New York City lost two teams in 1958, when the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers moved to California. And so the Yankees were left to dominate New York baseball until the Mets were created in 1962.

The first thing that just amazes me, and it doesn’t make any sense, is that if you look at the attendance of the Yankees in 1957, they drew 1.5 million people. The following year, they drew 1.4 million. Why would the Yankee attendance go down in 1958, if they no longer have competition? And the Yankees won the World Series in 1958, so it’s not like they were no longer a good team.

So, that’s the first thing that surprises me. But the second thing that surprises me is what happened when the Mets came to New York in 1962. That first year, they were absolutely terrible, but they drew 922,000 fans. But in 1963, the Mets, who were still a bad team, drew over a million people—and the attendance at Yankee stadium fell to 1.3 million, even though the Yankees were still pennant winners.

And in 1964, when the Mets were still a last-place team, they drew 1.7 million fans while the Yankees—who won the American League pennant that year—only drew 1.3 million fans. So, this last-place team is drawing 400,000 more fans than the American League pennant winners. And by 1969, when the Mets finally won the World Series, the Yankees drew just over a million fans, and the Mets drew 2 million fans.

I find those numbers interesting in that there’s something else going on in addition to not having competition or just being a winning team. … My thought is that baseball fans in New York, at least some of them, felt betrayed when they lost the Giants and Dodgers, and then they rallied to the Mets, even though they were bad for so many years.

Colorado Rockies fans watch the team lose to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a August 2023 game. (Photo: Hugh Carey/The Colorado Sun)

Question: Is there any evidence to suggest fans will stop being loyal to their losing team at some point?

Babicz: Well, the example of that is in the San Francisco Bay area right now, where the Oakland Athletics are leaving Oakland after the end of the season. Last year, the Athletics were the only major league team to draw fewer than a million fans; I believe there were about 800,000 people who went to an A’s game last year.

Now, in the Bay area, they already have the Giants, so there is another team there. But there is also frustration by many Oakland fans, who blame the team owner for not trying in good faith to stay in Oakland. So, you have to consider how much that has to do with the decline of attendance.

The other city that we saw lose a lot of fans was in Montreal, and that can almost completely be traced to the 1994-95 baseball strike that canceled the World Series. The Expos had the best record in baseball at the time and a strong fan base.

Many fans really expected Montreal to make it to the World Series, and perhaps even win it, but it was all scratched when the strike took place and the World Series was canceled. A lot of Expos fans felt betrayed, and they did not return to the game the following season. After a few seasons, Expo fans were still no longer supporting their team.

Major League Baseball later transferred the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., where they became the Washington Nationals.

So, it wasn’t so much having a losing team as it was this sense of betrayal. And I think there’s some of that in Oakland as well. That may be a bigger factor on (fan loyalty) than having a winning or losing team.

Question: Some teams were losers for years—even decades—and then eventually turned things around. Does that mean Rockies fans should keep the faith, or is that asking too much?

Babicz: I’ve thought about that since I moved here from the East Coast. So, the Rockies aren’t in the playoffs. I’d say, ‘Be excited that you have a baseball team and go to the games.’

Colorado Rockies pitcher Kyle Freeland lies on the field after an RBI single during a game against the Houston Astros in July 2023. (Photo: Kevin M. Cox/AP)

In the first 68 years of the 20th century, only one team in each league qualified for post-season play, and from 1969 to 1993, only two teams in each league qualified for post-season play. Baseball is about a lot more than just making the playoffs.

I think back to being a kid, remembering those Red Sox fans who would keep going to Fenway Park year after year even though the team hadn’t won the World Series since 1918. The other thing I think about is, although I grew up in southern New England, I was born in upstate New York, and one of the cities that competed with Denver to get a Major League Baseball team was Buffalo.

When MLB announced the Rockies and the Marlins as the expansion teams, Buffalo didn’t get a team. In fact, other than during the pandemic, when the Toronto Blue Jays played in Buffalo—because Canada wasn’t admitting people from the U.S. into Canada—Buffalo hasn’t had a Major League Baseball team in over a hundred years. I’m sure fans in upstate New York would love to have a baseball team—even if it was a losing team.

Now, you may think, ‘The Rockies are a terrible team.’ True. But at least there’s a team. Those fans in Buffalo don’t even have a major league team to root for.

Just because your team doesn’t make the playoffs is no reason to give up turning out to support your team. With playoff berths, there’s always a chance … next year.

Top image: Rockies fans react to a play during a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Coors Field on Aug. 16, 2023.(Photo: Grace Smith/The Denver Post)

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In advance of Tuesday’s Major League Baseball All-Star game, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� history professor Martin Babicz offers thoughts on why some fans remain loyal to baseball’s perennial losers.

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Anything but a bomb, 'Dr. Strangelove' turns 60

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Anything but a bomb, 'Dr. Strangelove' turns 60 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/27/2024 - 00:00

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts shares insights on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘doomsday sex comedy’ and why the film is more relevant than ever

In early 1964, U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack D. Ripper ordered his bomber group to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from communist subversion.

Fortunately for the state of U.S.-Soviet relations at the time—and for the planet—the surprise attack was entirely fictional, serving as the plot for the movie Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, director Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy that satirized Cold War tensions while also offering up a heaping dose of sexual innuendo.

In the years since its debut, Dr. Strangelove has joined the pantheon of Kubrick’s great films, which also includes classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz, chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, who has been teaching a course on Stanley Kubrick as a filmmaker for more than 20 years.

With this year marking the 60th anniversary of Dr. Strangelove’s debut, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine recently asked Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz, chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at University of Colorado Boulder, who has been teaching a course on Stanley Kubrick as a filmmaker for more than 20 years, for insights into the making of the film and why it has retained its cultural relevance. His responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Kubrick made a number of memorable films. How much time during your course do you devote to Dr. Strangelove?

Acevedo-Muñoz: There’s an advantage in that Stanley Kubrick only finished 13 movies and a normal semester is 14 weeks—and since this isn’t a comparative course, it’s more like the history of a filmmaker’s aesthetics and history of a filmmaker’s concerns—then we’re able to talk about all the movies he did.

And, unlike my Alfred Hitchcock course—Hitchcock completed 52 films, so to curate 14 out of 52, you have to start cutting here, cutting there, and being very jealous about the period that you’re going to cover—with Kubrick, we don’t have that problem. We start the first week of classes by watching his two shorts that we have access to and his first feature film, which is only 67 minutes.

And we talk about all the Kubrick movies all the time. I make reference to some visual moment in his early movies where I say, ‘Look at this here, we’re going to see this again in Dr. Strangelove, and we’re going to see this again in 2001: A Space Odyssey.’

Question: How you would describe Dr. Strangelove, if you had to describe it succinctly for people?

Acevedo-Muñoz: Well, I would make a very simple amendment to how Kubrick described this movie. We refer to it as a doomsday comedy, with the irony implied in that label. But I would add the word ‘sex’ to that label. So, it’s a doomsday sex comedy.

As the observant or the dirty minded will quickly realize, the movie is full of sexual innuendo and most of the punch lines in the movie are some kind of sexual innuendo.

It’s a doomsday comedy, but it’s really a doomsday sex comedy all the way up to and including the very explosive, orgasmic series of nuclear events at the end, with the irony of the lyrics, ‘We’ll meet again. Don’t know where. Don’t know when.’

When we saw the movie as kids, we were laughing at Peter Sellers doing Peter Sellers things—the body comedy, the farcical situations and such. But then seeing the movie again as an adult, there comes a moment where you realize, ‘Oh, wait a minute. I see now all these airplanes penetrating each other. That’s sexual innuendo. And the way Dr. Strangelove’s right arm keeps raising up in salute, that’s sexual innuendo.’

A working title of this movie was, I sh-t you not, The Rise of Dr. Strangelove. I’m not making this up.

Question: Besides the political and satire, what are other aspects of the film that you share with your class?

Acevedo-Muñoz: We spend a lot of time talking about two things in particular: the production design—what the sets look like and what the function of the of the movie sets are—and special effects.

A scene from the war room in Dr. Strangelove (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

In the case of Dr. Strangelove, when we talk about the production design, we’re talking particularly about the war room. There are stories, which may or may not be apocryphal, of the CIA and intelligence agencies being concerned about how Kubrick and his production designer, a man named Ken Adam, had come up with the set design, because it looked like the real thing.

The same goes for the interior of the bomber, which again, Ken Adam, the production designer, he’d been a Royal Air Force pilot during the war, so he knew what a bomber looked like. But then he had to sort of bring that up to speed 20 years, to the mid-1960s.

It’s really fantastic that Kubrick would put so much emphasis in production design of spaces that nobody has ever seen. Or nobody who isn’t part of a very special, small elite.

Do you know what the interior of the war room looks like? No, nobody does. So, how did Kubrick and Adam come up with this part? It’s one of the truly amazing things.

An important part of the movie is that all the action is contained within these confined spaces that are treated with this deadpan realism. And they have to be functional spaces. In fact, the lights that you see in the war room are actually doing the lighting of the set. That’s extremely rare.

The other thing I mentioned is special effects. Those might look primitive to contemporary audiences, but they are decidedly state of the art. Consider what we see with the B-52 in flight and the explosions.

With Dr. Strangelove, a significant part of the budget went to production design and special effects.

Question: Beyond the production elements, are there other notable or distinguishable elements about this film?

Acevedo-Muñoz: Few people realize that Dr. Strangelove takes places in real time. We have a phone call at the opening of the movie and the doomsday machine goes off at the end of the movie, and in between that we have about 89 minutes of action in which at no point is there a discernible time ellipsis.

Real time is a very hard thing to pull off in cinema. Kubrick was not the first one to do it, but this was his only real-time movie. It is admirable how compact this movie is kept in terms of its narrative structure.

In terms of story structure, that’s a very difficult thing to do, and this is a function of both the writing and editing to maintain a movie in real time. You have to write it that way, and then you have to edit it in a way that these transitions are seamless. It’s a major reason why Dr. Strangelove got an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.

I should mention the movie is based on a book, Red Alert, which is dead serious. Kubrick determined that the scenario was so demented that the only way to do the film was to make it a comedy.

Director Stanely Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove in 1963 (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

To do that, he hired American humorist Terry Southern, who is really the person who shares most of the screenwriting credit with Kubrick. Southern was a humorist and a playwright and a screenwriter, and when Kubrick needed a funny person to come up with this script and make it absurd and yet believable, he came to Terry Southern, so I always emphasize that connection with my students. Coincidentally, Terry Southern’s son, Nile, is a long-time Boulder resident.

Question: How was Dr. Strangelove was received by the film critics and by the greater audiences when it debuted in 1964? Have perceptions of the movie changed over time?

Acevedo-Muñoz: The movie was a huge hit, commercially. Some critics may have been baffled by it, but the reviews were largely positive. The movie got four Oscar nominations, which was quite a feat at that time. It was Kubrick’s first nomination for best director, along with best screenplay. The movie was nominated for best picture, and it was nominated for best actor for Peter Sellers, of course.

In the end, Kubrick made some decisions where things could have gone differently. The movie originally was going to end with a big pie fight. They tried the ending and it kind of fell flat. So, he dropped that and gave us that ending that was sort of improvised with the orgasmic series of nuclear explosions. …

Today, Dr. Strangelove is regarded as a classic.

Question: How do you view Dr. Strangelove in relation to Fail Safe, which was released after Dr. Strangelove and which offered a serious take on the possibility of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union?

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz:Fail Safe was perfectly well-received when it came out. It was made by Sidney Lumet, a respected director, and starred Henry Fonda playing the president of the United States. …

The original movie poster for Dr. Strangelove (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

It’s just that not every movie—even every good movie—is destined to be a classic. We don’t know if a movie is destined to be a classic until some time has gone by. But today, you didn’t call me to talk about Fail Safe, did you? We’re talking about Dr. Strangelove.

And Dr. Strangelove still gets shown on Turner Classic Movies and sometimes in movie theaters, and people still get up off of their asses and go to see it. That staying power is attributable to a lot of different elements, which is why it’s never possible to predict if a movie will become a classic.

Kubrick also made Barry Lyndon, which is the most gorgeous movie ever made. Period. And this was the movie that Kubrick wanted to be remembered for. And do you know what happened? Nobody remembers it. So, you never know.

Question: Do you think Dr. Strangelove was Kubrick’s most political movie?

Acevedo-Muñoz: Kubrick always said he wasn’t a political filmmaker, but you only have to look at his movies to realize that they are, in fact, political movies. … And I should add any movie made in the 1960s with a Cold War setting and the nuclear race as part of its environment is, by definition, political.

The fact that Kubrick and Terry Southern have both the president of the United States and the premier of the Soviet Union come out looking like complete morons is a political statement. And having the military establishment filled with this toxic masculinity is a political statement, which Kubrick went on to do even more transparently in Full Metal Jacket. …

Or look at the Slim Pickens character, Major King Kong, who rides the bomb between his legs like a bull, waving his 10-gallon Stetson hat as his cowboy persona takes over. That’s a political statement.

Question: The Cold War officially ended in the 1990s. Do you think Dr. Strangelove has the same relevance today that it did back in the day?

Acevedo-Muñoz: The cold war is over? We are having more tensions with Russia today than we have had in 30 or 40 years, since the 1980s.

Frankly, as long as there are lunatics with their finger on the nuclear button—and I’m thinking here of Kim Jong Un, I’m thinking of Vladimir Putin and I’m thinking of Donald Trump—this movie will be as relevant as ever, if not more. I have no qualms making a comment like that.

Precisely because it’s comedy, it also has that kind of lasting power. As the great American philosopher Homer Simpson says, ‘It’s funny because it’s true.’

It’s why we take movies seriously—and it’s why we’re celebrating 60 years of Dr. Strangelove. Hopefully at 70 years we’ll be celebrating it as a cautionary tale rather than as a prophecy.

Top image: Peter Sellers playing the titular Dr. Strangelove (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts shares insights on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘doomsday sex comedy’ and why the film is more relevant than ever.

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After 75 years, ‘Death of a Salesman’ still packs a gut punch

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:22:45 +0000

After 75 years, ‘Death of a Salesman’ still packs a gut punch Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/20/2024 - 11:22

Chris Quirk

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� theatre professor Bud Coleman reflects on Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-winning play and why it’s a story that still has meaning

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”

It’s a simple yet resonant thought, first expressed 75 years ago this month when Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” debuted at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway. Since that time, the play has occupied an iconic place in the American consciousness.

For Bud Coleman, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of theatre and Roe Green Endowed Chair in Theatre, one of the reasons for its resilience is Miller’s subtle complexity.

Bud Coleman, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of theatre, notes that a reason "Death of a Salesman" remains relevant 75 years after its first performance is characters that seem immediately recognizable to audiences.

“Every time I revisit the play, I'm just amazed at how many different layers are in it. It continues to play the boards because it is very rich,” he says. “You get a hundred people and, quite often, they'll have a hundred different takes on what they think either the message of the play is, or what part of the play grabbed them the most.”

“Death of a Salesman,” which tells the story of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman from Brooklyn coming to grips with his failure after years of hopeful—some would say delusional—thinking, won virtually every accolade a play can win, including five Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Miller.

Mike Nichols, who directed a revival of the play starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, saw it as a young man during its first run, and likened its effect to an explosion.

"When ‘Salesman’ first opened in 1949, there were fathers for who the doctor had to be called because they couldn't stop crying,” he told USA Today in 2012. “The show's effect was people seemed to see themselves.”

For Coleman, the play may or may not be the quintessential tale of the end of the American dream, but it can be devastating. “We see the crushing of a human being in real time on the stage in front of us.”

Translating theater to film

On that front, the first film version of “Death of a Salesman” in 1951 was the occasion of a brief but revealing dispute. Prior to releasing the film, Columbia Pictures created a 10-minute short meant to run newsreel-style before the full feature in theaters, as a preemptive salve for the rawness of Miller’s portrayal of Willy Loman.

“Career of a Salesman” was a stiff and laughable bit of propaganda, which replayed and critiqued segments of the feature film, deriding Willy’s talents as a salesman, while reassuring the audience of the importance of the profession and the guarantee that hard work leads to success. “Nothing, nothing happens in this great country of ours until something is sold,” a lecturer gravely intones.

The short film enraged Miller. "Why the hell did you make the picture if you're so ashamed of it?” he reportedly asked Columbia studio executives. “Why should anybody not get up and walk out of the theatre if ‘Death of a Salesman’ is so outmoded and pointless?" Columbia relented and pulled the short from theaters.

What has made the play so resilient over the decades, says Coleman, is the depth that Miller imbued into characters that will be immediately recognizable to the audience—including Willy’s sons, Biff and Hap, and his wife, Linda. “The young high school senior who's got dreams and aspirations, and the parent who also has those dreams and aspirations. That’s pretty much the American story right there,” he says.

Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke played Willy and Linda Loman in "Death of a Salesman" at London's Young Vic theater in 2019. (Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg)

‘Despite all his flaws’

The fifth and most recent Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman” was a highly regarded run starring Wendell Pierce as Willy and Sharon D. Clarke as Linda. It was the first run of the play on Broadway with Black actors portraying the Loman family, which created a new dimension for the drama.

In an interview, Pierce noted that in New York City during the 1940s, “great danger, violence, oppressive attitudes [and] subtle humiliations were part of daily life for an African American family.”

“It could be just a depressing story of somebody with a pipe dream who's completely unrealistic, but Willy loves his family so much,” says Coleman. The strained but evident familial bonds run against the riptide of Willy’s demise.

“Linda loves him, and the boys in their own way love him, and the next-door neighbor who drives Willy crazy also cares for him.” In addition to listening to Willy’s woes, the neighbor loans him money.

“Despite all his flaws,” Coleman says, “the actor playing Willy has to show us his charm and heart. In the end, four different people, with very different relationships with him, are there for him.”

Top image: Many notable actors have played the role of Willy Loman on Broadway, including (left to right) Brian Dennehy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Wendell Pierce and Dustin Hoffman

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� theatre professor Bud Coleman reflects on Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-winning play and why it’s a story that still has meaning.

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And the Motown beat goes on

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 23:17:23 +0000

And the Motown beat goes on Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/12/2024 - 16:17

Bradley Worrell

Upon the 65^th anniversary of the record label, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� prof says that from Taylor Swift to K-pop, ‘It’s all Motown; they are not creating anything new’

Shawn O’Neal, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies, can’t remember a time growing up in the 1970s and 1980s when Motown music wasn’t playing in his Chicago home.

“My mother was very deep into the traditions of Motown music—and not just the music, but what it represented aesthetically as well, when talking about (Motown founder) Berry Gordy’s vision of Black respectability,” he says. “Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas—those records were always being played in our house or coming out of the radio. So, that was always there.”

It’s hard to quantify the effect Motown—and later musical developments inspired by Motown such as disco and house music—have had on his life, says O’Neal, who teaches classes on hip hop and ethnomusicology (the intersection of music and ethnicity), as well as classes on Africana and African American studies. He is an executive committee member for the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Center for African and African American Studies.

Shawn O'Neal, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� assistant teaching professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and ethnomusicologist, grew up with Motown music always playing.

“Motown did for me what a lot of other music did for me at the time, which was just opening up that intellectual curiosity in me, if you will,” he says. “Motown had this very unique sound to it than no one else was doing, just that tambourine coinciding with the backbeat and the four-on-the floor sound. Four on the floor represents a 4/4 time signature in music theory.

“And then when I was in middle school and high school, I was reading about Motown, about Detroit and about Black history. All of that led to my dissertation work on Audio Intersectionality, an interdisciplinary social science theory communicated through sound, music and performance,” says O’Neal, who is a renowned DJ and audio producer.

Motown’s impact upon on American culture is hard to understate. Started by Berry Gordy in January 1959 with $800 he borrowed from family members, Motown Records became a powerhouse in music production as well as a cultural touchstone.

The record label would go on to produce a who’s who of influential African American musicians—including Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and Diana Ross and the Supremes—who would dominate the Billboard charts in the late 1960s. At one time, it was also the biggest Black-owned business in America prior to Gordy selling the record label for $61 million to MCA in 1988.

With Motown recently celebrating its 65th anniversary, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine asked O’Neal for his thoughts on how Motown produced so much great music, how some of its artists managed to create socially conscious but still grooving music, what constitutes the “Motown Sound” and Motown’s legacy on modern music across genres. His responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Motown was based in Detroit, which was not the musical center universe, yet it produced hit after hit in the 1960s and 1970s. To what do you attribute the record label’s success?

O’Neal: Music is always just timing and circumstance, and a little bit of luck. Like, really hitting that pulse at the right moment, and they (Motown) were able to do that. I think Berry Gordy was obviously brilliant with developing this whole package.

The package had a look. For the women (performers) it’s the hairstyles, the makeup, the dresses, the heels, the movements during those songs. All of that was very rehearsed and very packaged in a way that America hadn’t seen before.

The Temptations perform in 1968. (Photo: Motown Records)

Then you have a very dialed-in production team. You got the Funk Brothers. You’ve got Holland-Dozier-Holland turning out those hits. Everything was in-house and so controlled that once you had one hit song you could (repeat) something again that hit that pulse of America.

That crossover appeal was something that hadn’t really happened previously—not on that magnitude. Then you can just keep churning out those songs in that formula.

You got the production team in place. You got the players, you got the bands, the musicians. You’ve got the look. It becomes a movement. To have a prominent movement, any type of social movement, you’ve got the soundtrack, you’ve got the aesthetics, the visual representation and the messaging. It’s just such a complete package. We hadn’t seen that before in music.

Honestly, I feel like Detroit was just where a lot of those people (musicians) were. Sometimes I wonder: Could that (Motown) have happened almost anywhere in this country where you had Black people that were talented and who needed someone who was able to manage things in a particular way bring it all together? Of course, you needed a Berry Gordy, which I don’t know how many of those there are laying around. I mean, the brother knew what he was doing.

He knew what Black people wanted, but he also knew what white people wanted from Black people, which brings up a whole other conversation, because that stuff gets very tricky. There’s definitely a critical analysis on all of that.

Question: Was part of the success of Motown also due to the fact that the people running major record labels at the time were not thinking about producing music that had mass appeal?

O’Neal: Motown absolutely ended up being the model for music that had crossover appeal—for creating music that everyone is going to enjoy regardless of race and ethnicity. That was the original model.

Mary Wilson (left), Diana Ross and Florence Ballard perform as The Supremes. (Photo: Universal/Motown)

And, not to take anything away from Berry Gordy, but part of his success is because a lot of the major record labels at the time in the 1950s and ’60s were not thinking about producing music that appealed to the whole of the country—to Blacks and whites.

This country is built on segregation. So, you have to ask yourself: Why would the white owners of European descent that own these record labels and these radio stations want to appeal to Black people? They weren’t thinking that far ahead.

I think some white Americans were perfectly happy with the (idea of), 'Y’all stay over there and we’re going to stay here. You’ll have your bathroom and your water fountain and your music and we’ve got ours.’

But wait a minute, all of your music—I mean music of white European descent—is founded upon the traditions of African diasporic Black music coming out of slave plantations, coming of spirituals and gospel music, and even more predominantly from the tradition of blues music and jazz.

Question: At some point, some Motown artists wanted to infuse their music with social messages commenting on issues of the day, like Edwin Star’s “War” or “Ball of Confusion” by The Temptations. What was happening at the time to inspire that?

O’Neal: I think music shifts, just like in production and recording techniques, it shifts with people’s desire and ability to experiment. That’s how you get a Motown in the first place.

But then Motown is going through these metamorphoses as society goes through changes as well. In the mid-1960s going into the ’70s, you have all of these social issues the country has been going through. You have the 1967 Detroit Riots. …

The Supremes (in front on stairs), Berry Gordy (center, in overcoat), the songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland (right) and others outside the Hitsville Studio in 1965. (Photo: Library of Congress)

After the riots, a lot of those artists had a little wakeup call, if you will. Some of those artists, like Marvin Gaye, were saying, ‘We need to be singing about something else besides doo-wop.’ A lot of those artists began to realize they had a responsibility beyond making music for crossover appeal. I think some of them started thinking about: Is it more important to have hits, or is it more important to communicate something that needs to be communicated, regardless of how people receive it, because everybody’s emotions are their own.

Question: A lot of people talk about the “Motown Sound.” How would you describe it?

O’Neal: There is something about the backbeat, about the four on the floor beats—just a four/four, boom, boom, boom, boom that ends up transpiring in a song, because to this day a four-four (beat) is something that everybody can dance to, regardless of whether it’s at 90 BPMs or 140 BPMs. And there is the tambourine sound, which wasn’t on every song, but it was there.

The other thing is there was a simplicity of the sound with the bass and with the arrangements. There was a simplicity of the arrangements, but the melodies were very, very intricate. If you have this simple beat, it gets everybody feeling good and grooving.

What that does, it allows the melody and the harmonics—particularly the vocal melodies—to be very extravagant and to be very experimental.

Question: Motown had a golden period in the 1960s and 1970s and then went into a decline in the 1980s. What do you think were some of the factors that contributed to its decline?

O’Neal: Motown is closely associated with Detroit. And things really shifted in Detroit after the Detroit Riots. How could they not? Things just weren’t the same after that. …

The Temptations (in yellow), Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (in red), Stevie Wonder (in gray), Martha and the Vandellas (in pink), the Supremes (in black) and others at the 1965 London, England, launch of the Tamla-Motown label. (Photo: Paul Nixon Collection)

With Gordy’s decision to relocate Motown to Los Angeles, it lost something. It lost that hometown feel. … While I can understand why he did it, with LA becoming the center of entertainment, I think Motown lost something.

Later on, Motown had competition, because the competition could base itself off of what Motown did. Also, the music was changing, moving into disco. Things changed.

Question: Is it possible to quantify Motown’s impact on modern music?

O’Neal: I think the impact is never really going to end. If people are willing to look at the music they are making, they have to pay homage to Motown.

Who is huge now? Taylor Swift? All of these K-pop bands that are just blowing up in Korea? It’s all Motown. They are not creating anything new. They’re adding their piece of the conversation into music history, but that’s Motown music. So, because it keeps being recycled and perpetuated, the quantification of Motown becomes almost impossible to (state), because it’s still going; it doesn’t stop.

Motown is intertwined in everything that goes on in this country, musically. Popular/commercial music is based upon that Motown-pop formula that was created there.

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Upon the 65th anniversary of the record label, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� prof says that from Taylor Swift to K-pop, ‘It’s all Motown; they are not creating anything new.’

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They wanted to hold your hand (and fans’ ecstatic screams still echo)

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 07:00:00 +0000

They wanted to hold your hand (and fans’ ecstatic screams still echo) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/05/2024 - 00:00

Rachel Sauer

Sixty years after The Beatles’ first appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian Martin Babicz reflects on their impact on U.S. culture and politics

There are certain indelible moments in life, certain shared experiences, that only need a prompt of “Where were you when…?” to bring forth a torrent of memory.

So, find the nearest Baby Boomer and ask them where they were at 8 p.m. EST on Feb. 9, 1964—60 years ago this week. That Sunday night, about 45% of U.S. households turned their TVs on to CBS for “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

An audience of 73 million people heard Sullivan open with, “Now, yesterday and today our theater’s been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that this city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool...”

And then there they were—the Fab Four, the Lads from Liverpool, The Beatles performing “All My Loving.” In memory, the ecstatic screams still echo.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian Martin Babicz researches The Beatles' impact on U.S. culture and politics in 1964.

Just 77 days before that evening, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Still staggering from that, the United States also was seeing increasing involvement in Vietnam, growing a civil rights movement and facing what would become an extremely contentious presidential election.

“There was a lot going on in 1964 in the United States,” says Martin Babicz, a University of Colorado Boulder teaching associate professor of history who researches The Beatles’ effect on U.S. culture and politics in 1964. “Their tour in 1964 fits right into the issues of the time.”

Booked on Ed Sullivan

In the month before The Beatles’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” their first two albums—initially released in England in 1963—had been renamed and released in the United States. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was No. 1 on the Billboard chart and a huge marketing push by Capitol Records meant that U.S. music fans were very aware of The Beatles. Compare it to a spark sizzling down a long fuse toward a pile of dynamite.

The Beatles were coming to the United States at a time when the ‘60s—not the actual decade, but the ‘60s as a culture-shifting era—had just begun, Babicz says.

“This is something I talk about with my historian friends: When did the ‘60s begin and when did the ‘60s end?” he explains. “I think the best date to assign to the ‘60s beginning was the date Kennedy was assassinated. In many ways, Kennedy and the Kennedy administration were a continuation of the Eisenhower and Truman days, with this veneer of prosperity and conformity.

“When he was assassinated and Johnson became president, it was almost like a dam broke and you see this turmoil that had been developing, this changing and shifting in the culture and in the country.”

Interestingly, Babicz notes, on the day Kennedy was assassinated—evening in England—The Beatles were playing a show at the Globe Cinema in a town called Stockton-on-Tees. Shortly before they went onstage, there was a rumor going around the theater about what had happened in Dallas, but no confirmation because there was no radio or television in the theater.

So, The Beatles went onstage and performed, and after the show the rumor about Kennedy being assassinated was confirmed, Babicz says. John Lennon questioned whether they should play the second show, “but in show-business fashion, the show went on,” he says.

“Like a lot of British musicians, The Beatles were very influenced by American culture,” Babicz explains. “Rock 'n' roll was an American invention, and The Beatles were being very much influenced by this. Rock 'n' roll in 1950s was the musical genre of rebelling, of teenagers rebelling against established society and against this American idea of affluence and stability and middle-of-the-road-ism.

“Many young people were not accepting the status quo and rebelling against it in a number of ways—how they dressed, how they spoke, the music they listened to. Rock 'n' roll was born from the music of African American artists, and before the Civil Rights Movement, playing rock 'n' roll was a rebellion against established society.”

All their loving

However, popular myths about how much parents loathed The Beatles and their “long” hair are exaggerated, Babicz says.

“It makes me laugh when I look at pictures of performers in the early 1960s wearing suits and ties,” Babicz says. “When my wife saw The Beatles at Red Rocks, it was her mom who took her. Her mom wasn’t necessarily a fan, but she wasn’t anti-Beatles, either.

“They weren’t actually seen as being totally divisive. Their music was of such a quality that it was being really accepted in the mainstream when they first came to the U.S. in 1964.”

In fact, though Ed Sullivan’s theater could hold only 700, he and his staff reportedly received 50,000 requests for seats ahead of The Beatles’ first appearance on his show. And the fact that 73 million people tuned in to see them perform bespeaks just how huge the moment was, Babicz says.

“There weren’t a lot of options then, just ABC, NBC and CBS,” Babicz says. “But still, I don’t know that you could get 73 million people to watch the same thing today. There’s a rumor—which is probably false, but it was written in Time magazine— that during the show, not a single hubcap was stolen in New York City.”

The Beatles opened with “All My Loving” then played “Till There Was You” and closed the first set with “She Loves You.” The screams from teenage audience members were deafening. They closed the hour-long show with “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The Beatles appeared on the show the next two weeks as well, but that Feb. 9 appearance was the breakthrough moment, Babicz says.

[video:https://youtu.be/jenWdylTtzs?si=rJ79IrBjWkfctmdU]

Reflecting broader movements

The Beatles subsequently toured the United States in the summer and fall of 1964—they played Red Rocks Amphitheater on Aug. 26 of that year—and through the tour there were important touch points that mirrored broader movements in U.S. culture and politics, Babicz says.

For example, The Beatles were scheduled to play the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, but when they learned that the venue was still segregated by race, even though the Civil Rights Act had recently been signed into law, they refused to play there.

“So, the city backed down and desegregated the venue,” Babicz says. “They wanted The Beatles to come more than they wanted to stay segregated.”

And though The Beatles were ostensibly apolitical early in their career, Babicz learned through his research that following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to use military force in southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war by Congress, John Lennon expressed his strong opposition to a young WFUN reporter named Larry Kane.

Paul McCartney (right) shows Ed Sullivan his guitar on Feb. 9, 1964. (Photo: Associated Press)

“Certainly (The Beatles’) manager, Brian Epstein, wouldn’t have wanted them taking a position, especially not to a reporter, because that could alienate a large number of fans,” Babicz says. “It wasn’t until about 1966 that people began publicly expressing opposition to the Vietnam War, but it’s come out that John Lennon publicly was against it even earlier.”

Though the band’s later career musically, thematically and visually reflected the changes and upheaval in culture and politics, those early, suit-and-tie-wearing days were just as revolutionary, though not as obviously so, Babicz says.

A Beatles T-shirt in 2024

And the irony is, despite many years of researching the band and even more years of being a fan, Babicz was just slightly too young to experience the full impact of Beatlemania. He was 5 in 1964, and the first time he actually heard The Beatles was during Easter of that year, when his precocious, 3-year-old cousin sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to the delight of his family.

In the summer of 1964, while The Beatles conquered America on tour, he went to his grandmother’s farm in upstate New York and with his cousins caught beetles in jars, which they named John, Paul, George and Ringo.

It wasn’t until around 1971, when a cousin four years his senior gave him six Beatles singles on vinyl, including “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “All You Need Is Love,” that his interest was seriously piqued. In 1973, when the red and blue Beatles greatest hits albums were released, Babicz bought both and was officially a dedicated, fervent fan.

“Those greatest hits albums came with inserts listing all the Beatles records, and I remember vowing to buy all of them,” he remembers. “So, I did. And I’ve owned all the Beatles’ albums in every available format: vinyl, eight-track, cassette, CD and digital.”

He even met his wife at a Beatles convention at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. So, approaching the music he loves as a historian and scholar was a natural next step.

“There are so many different ways to approach their impact and influence,” Babicz says. “They shaped culture and in a way defined the era. Even now, 60 years later, I have a few students every semester who show up to class wearing a Beatles T-shirt.”

Top image: The Beatles performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show" Feb. 9, 1964. (Photo: Getty Images)

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Sixty years after The Beatles’ first appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian Martin Babicz reflects on their impact on U.S. culture and politics.

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