Every Filmed and Televised Performance by Joy Division (1978–79)

in Music, Television | October 10th, 2025

Bri­an Eno once said of the Vel­vet Under­ground that their first album sold only 30,000 copies, but every­one who bought one start­ed a band. Joy Divi­sion’s debut Unknown Plea­sures sold only 20,000 copies in its ini­tial peri­od of release, but the T‑shirt embla­zoned with its cov­er art — an image of radio waves ema­nat­ing from a pul­sar tak­en from an astron­o­my ency­clo­pe­dia — has long since con­sti­tut­ed a com­mer­cial-semi­otic empire unto itself. That speaks to the vast sub­cul­tur­al influ­ence of the band, despite their only hav­ing been active from 1976 to 1980. When we speak of the genre of post-punk, we speak, in large part, of Joy Divi­sion and the artists they influ­enced.

Less than a year after the 1979 release of Unknown Plea­sures, Joy Divi­sion’s lead singer Ian Cur­tis com­mit­ted sui­cide. The band had already record­ed Clos­er, their sec­ond and last album (at least before the sub­se­quent, more suc­cess­ful ref­or­ma­tion as New Order). Scant though it may be, their stu­dio discog­ra­phy has only drawn more and more crit­i­cal acclaim over the decades.

Still, fans who weren’t around to wit­ness the rise of Joy Divi­sion first-hand will sus­pect they’ve missed out on some­thing essen­tial. “Live, Joy Divi­sion were heavy,” remem­bers band his­to­ri­an Jon Sav­age. “Per­form­ers — and David Bowie is a good exam­ple – know exact­ly what to give and what to with­hold, but Ian Cur­tis didn’t have that stage­craft. He just came on and gave every­thing.”

That sort of inten­si­ty, Sav­age adds, is “not infi­nite­ly repro­ducible”; even at the time, it seems that those who wit­nessed Joy Divi­sion in con­cert under­stood that their pecu­liar­ly com­pelling ener­gy was dri­ving toward some kind of final com­bus­tion. You can get a taste of it in the col­lec­tion of the group’s every tele­vised per­for­mance, orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC2 and Grana­da TV in 1978 and 1979, at the top of the post; just above, we have a 70-minute com­pi­la­tion of all their filmed live shows. Much of it con­sists of footage shot over two nights at the Apol­lo The­atre in 1979, which the uploader describes as of poor qual­i­ty — but “accord­ing to peo­ple who were there, the gig’s qual­i­ty was poor in per­son too.” As much as gen­er­a­tions of fans have done to mythol­o­gize the band’s brief exis­tence over the past 45 years, here is evi­dence that even Joy Divi­sion had an off night once in a while.

Relat­ed con­tent:

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

The His­to­ry of Rock n Roll in 10 Songs: A List Cre­at­ed by Leg­endary Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus

Radio­head Cov­ers The Smiths & New Order (2007)

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Fascinating Story of How the Electric Music Pioneer Delia Derbyshire Created the Original Doctor Who Theme (1963)

in Music, Television | October 6th, 2025

We’ve focused a fair bit here on the work of Delia Der­byshire, pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry—fea­tur­ing two doc­u­men­taries on her and dis­cussing her role in almost cre­at­ing an elec­tron­ic back­ing track for Paul McCartney’s “Yes­ter­day.” There’s good rea­son to devote so much atten­tion to her: Derbyshire’s work with the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Work­shop laid the bedrock for a good deal of the sound design we hear on TV and radio today.

And, as we point­ed out pre­vi­ous­ly, her elec­tron­ic music, record­ed under her own name and with the band White Noise, influ­enced “most every cur­rent leg­end in the business—from Aphex Twin and the Chem­i­cal Broth­ers to Paul Hart­noll of Orbital.”

Yet for all her influ­ence among dance music com­posers and sound effects wiz­ards, Der­byshire and her music remain pret­ty obscure—that is except for one com­po­si­tion, instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as the orig­i­nal theme to the BBC’s sci-fi hit Doc­tor Who (hear it at the top), “the best-known work of a rag­tag group of tech­ni­cians,” writes The Atlantic, “who unwit­ting­ly helped shape the course of 20th-cen­tu­ry music.” Writ­ten by com­pos­er Ron Grain­er, the song was actu­al­ly brought into being by the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, and by Der­byshire espe­cial­ly. The sto­ry of the Doc­tor Who theme’s cre­ation is almost as inter­est­ing as the tune itself, with its “swoop­ing, hiss­ing and puls­ing” that “man­ages to be at once haunt­ing, goofy and ethe­re­al.” Just above, you can see Der­byshire and her assis­tant Dick Mills tell it in brief.

What we learn from them is fas­ci­nat­ing, con­sid­er­ing that com­po­si­tions like this are now cre­at­ed in pow­er­ful com­put­er sys­tems with dozens of sep­a­rate tracks and dig­i­tal effects. The Doc­tor Who theme, on the oth­er hand, record­ed in 1963, was made even before basic ana­log syn­the­siz­ers came into use. “There are no musi­cians,” says Mills, “there are no syn­the­siz­ers, and in those days, we didn’t even have a 2‑track or a stereo machine, it was always mono.” (Despite pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions, the theme does not fea­ture a Theremin.) Der­byshire con­firms; each and every part of the song “was con­struct­ed on quar­ter-inch mono tape,” she says, “inch by inch by inch,” using such record­ing tech­niques as “fil­tered white noise” and some­thing called a “wob­bu­la­tor.” How were all of these painstak­ing­ly con­struct­ed indi­vid­ual parts com­bined with­out mul­ti­track tech­nol­o­gy? “We cre­at­ed three sep­a­rate tapes,” Der­byshire explains, “put them onto three machines and stood next to them and said “Ready, steady, go!” and pushed all the ‘start’ but­tons at once. It seemed to work.”

The theme came about when Grain­er received a com­mis­sion from the BBC after his well-received work on oth­er series. He “com­posed the theme on a sin­gle sheet of A4 man­u­script,” writes Mark Ayres in an exten­sive online his­to­ry, “and sent it over from his home in Por­tu­gal, leav­ing the Work­shop to get on with it.” Aware that the musique con­crète tech­niques Der­byshire and her team used “were very time-con­sum­ing, Grain­er pro­vid­ed a very sim­ple com­po­si­tion, in essence just the famous bass line and a swoop­ing melody,” as well as vague­ly evoca­tive instruc­tions for orches­tra­tion like “wind bub­ble” and “cloud.” Ayres writes, “To an inven­tive radio­phon­ic com­pos­er such as Delia Der­byshire, this was a gift.” Indeed “upon hear­ing it,” The Atlantic notes, “a very impressed Grain­er bare­ly rec­og­nized it as his com­po­si­tion. Due to BBC poli­cies at the time, Grainer—against his objections—is still offi­cial­ly cred­it­ed as the sole writer.” But the cred­it for this futur­is­tic work—which sounds absolute­ly like noth­ing else of the time and “which brought to a wide audi­ence meth­ods once exclu­sive to the high mod­ernism of exper­i­men­tal composition”—should equal­ly go to Der­byshire and her team. You can con­trast that ahead-of-its-time orig­i­nal theme with all of the iter­a­tions to fol­low in the video just above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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When CBS Canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for Criticizing the American Establishment and the Vietnam War (1969)

in Comedy, History, Television | September 22nd, 2025

Rig­or­ous­ly clean-cut, com­pe­tent on the acoustic gui­tar and dou­ble bass, and sel­dom dressed in any­thing more dar­ing than cher­ry-red blaz­ers, Tom and Dick Smoth­ers looked like the antithe­sis of nine­teen-six­ties rebel­lion. When they first gained nation­al recog­ni­tion with their vari­ety show The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour, they must have come off to many young view­ers as the kind of act of which their moth­er — or even grand­moth­er — would approve. But the broth­ers’ cul­ti­vat­ed­ly square, neo-vaude­vil­lian appear­ance was deceiv­ing, as CBS would soon find out when the two took every chance to turn their pro­gram into a satir­i­cal, relent­less­ly author­i­ty-chal­leng­ing, yet some­how whole­some show­case of the coun­ter­cul­ture.

The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour pre­miered in Feb­ru­ary of 1967, and its first sea­son “fea­tured min­i­mal con­tro­ver­sial con­tent,” writes Sarah King at U.S. His­to­ry Scene. There­after, “the show became increas­ing­ly polit­i­cal. The broth­ers invit­ed activist celebri­ties onto their show, includ­ing folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and singer-actor Har­ry Bela­fonte.

The show also pro­duced its own polit­i­cal mate­r­i­al crit­i­ciz­ing the Viet­nam War and the politi­cians who sup­port­ed it,” not least Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son. Bring­ing on Seeger was a dar­ing move, giv­en that he’d been black­list­ed from net­work tele­vi­sion for the bet­ter part of two decades, though CBS’s cen­sors made sure to cut out the most polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive parts of his act.

Even more so was the broth­ers’ own per­for­mance, with George Segal, of Phil Ochs’s “Draft Dodger Rag,” which they end­ed by urg­ing their audi­ence to “make love, not war.” All this can look fair­ly tame by today’s stan­dards, but it locked the show — which had become top-rat­ed, hold­ing its own in a time slot against the cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that was Bonan­za — into a grudge match with its own net­work. Before the third sea­son, CBS’ high­er-ups demand­ed that each show be turned in ten days in advance, osten­si­bly in order to under­go review for sen­si­tive mate­r­i­al. In one instance, they claimed that the dead­line had­n’t been met and aired a re-run instead, though it may not have been entire­ly irrel­e­vant that the intend­ed pro­gram con­tained a trib­ute by Baez to her then-hus­band, who was being sent to prison for refus­ing to serve in the mil­i­tary.

CBS did broad­cast Baez’s per­for­mance on a lat­er date, after clip­ping out the ref­er­ence to the spe­cif­ic nature of her hus­band’s offense. A sim­i­lar strug­gle took place around the “ser­mon­ettes” deliv­ered by David Stein­berg, one of which you can see in the video above. The irrev­er­ence toward U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, reli­gion, and much else besides in these and oth­er seg­ments even­tu­al­ly proved too much for the net­work, which fired the broth­ers after it had already giv­en the green light to a fourth sea­son of the Com­e­dy Hour. Though they suc­cess­ful­ly sued CBS for breach of con­tract there­after, they nev­er did regain the same lev­el of tele­vi­su­al promi­nence they’d once enjoyed, if enjoy be the word. At any rate, the fall­out of all this con­tro­ver­sy firm­ly installed the Smoth­ers Broth­ers in the pan­theon of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry free-speech war­riors, and their expe­ri­ence reminds us still today that, with­out the free­dom to give offense, there can be no com­e­dy wor­thy of the name.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

When The Who (Lit­er­al­ly) Blew Up The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour in 1967

Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Exper­i­men­tal Film That Takes You on a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Pink Lady and Jeff: Japan’s Biggest Pop Musi­cians Star in One of America’s Worst-Reviewed TV Shows (1980)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A 107-Year-Old Irish Farmer Reflects on the Changes He’s Seen During His Life (1965)

in History, Television | September 18th, 2025

Talk to a clear-head­ed 107-year-old today, and you could expect to hear sto­ries of ado­les­cence in the Great Depres­sion, or — if you’re lucky — the Jazz Age seen through a child’s eyes. It’s no com­mon expe­ri­ence to have been formed by the age of radio and live deep into the age of the smart­phone, but arguably, Michael Fitz­patrick lived through even greater civ­i­liza­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion. Born in Ire­land in 1858, he sat for the inter­view above 107 years lat­er in 1965, which was broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. That device was well on its way to sat­u­rat­ing West­ern soci­ety at the time, as the auto­mo­bile already had, while mankind was tak­ing to the skies in jet­lin­ers and even to the stars in rock­et ships.

The con­trast between the world into which Fitz­patrick was born and the one in which he even­tu­al­ly found him­self is made stark­er by his being a son of the land. A life­long farmer, he can hon­est­ly reply, when asked to name the biggest change he’s seen, “Machin­ery.”

Not all of his answers come across quite so clear­ly, owing to his thick dialect that must sure­ly have gone extinct by now, even in rur­al Ire­land. Luck­i­ly, the video comes with sub­ti­tles, mak­ing it eas­i­er to under­stand what he has to say about the advent of the “mow­ing machine” and his mem­o­ries of the Bodyke evic­tions of the eigh­teen-eight­ies, when mêlées broke out over a local land­lord’s attempt to oust his des­ti­tute ten­ants.

One can come up with vague­ly anal­o­gous events to the Bodyke evic­tions in the mod­ern world, but in essence, they belong to the long stretch of his­to­ry when to be human meant to engage in agri­cul­ture, or to over­see it. The Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion did­n’t hap­pen at the same pace every­where at once, and indeed, Fitz­patrick lived the first part of his life in an effec­tive­ly pre-indus­tri­al real­i­ty, before wit­ness­ing the scarce­ly believ­able process of mech­a­niza­tion take place all around him. He expe­ri­enced, in oth­er words, the arrival of the civ­i­liza­tion into which we were all born, and to which we know no alter­na­tive. As for those of us of a cer­tain age today, we can expect to be asked six or sev­en decades hence — assum­ing we can go the dis­tance — what life was like with only dial-up inter­net.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

Philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell Talks About the Time When His Grand­fa­ther Met Napoleon

1400 Engrav­ings from the 19th Cen­tu­ry Flow Togeth­er in the Short Ani­ma­tion “Still Life”

A Rare Smile Cap­tured in a 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­to­graph

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Empire Without Limit: Watch Mary Beard’s TV Series on Ancient Rome

in History, Television | September 1st, 2025

As the found­ing myth has it, the city of Rome was estab­lished by a man named Romu­lus, one of two orphaned twin broth­ers raised by a she-wolf on the banks of the Tiber riv­er. The leg­end of Romu­lus and Remus, which involves the for­mer’s frat­ri­ci­dal slay­ing of the lat­ter, lends itself to strik­ing imagery, though it also gives forth more ques­tions than answers. “The Latin for wolf, lupa, also means pros­ti­tute,” for exam­ple, “so was it actu­al­ly a pros­ti­tute who came to the res­cue?” So asks his­to­ri­an Mary Beard in Rome: Empire With­out Lim­it, a four-part series you can watch in its entire­ty above.

In a sense, the sto­ry works either way: the mor­tal clash of broth­er against broth­er makes for a recur­ring metaphor­i­cal theme in the long his­to­ry of Rome, but so does the irre­press­ible pow­er of com­merce. Criss­cross­ing the Euro­pean con­ti­nent, Great Britain, the Mediter­ranean, and Africa by car, boat, bicy­cle, sub­way train, and above all on foot, Beard uses the traces of the might­i­est ancient empire to explain how the whole oper­a­tion actu­al­ly worked, and what its day-to-day expe­ri­ence was like for its sub­jects. When it orig­i­nal­ly aired in 2016, Empire With­out Lim­it fol­lowed up her acclaimed book SPQR: A His­to­ry of Ancient Rome, which cov­ers some of the same themes.

Those who’ve fol­lowed Beard’s work in print, on tele­vi­sion, or in oth­er media know that her ver­sion of Roman his­to­ry is hard­ly anoth­er suc­ces­sion of emper­ors and mil­i­tary cam­paigns. While she does devote time to dis­cussing such sig­nal fig­ures as Julius Cae­sar (who def­i­nite­ly did­n’t say “Et tu, Brute?”), Augus­tus, Hadri­an, and Con­stan­tine, she dis­plays equal or greater inter­est in a four-year-old sil­ver min­er in what’s now Spain, say, or an anony­mous young woman the shape of whose skull sug­gests the extent of migra­tion with­in the empire. And just as wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion as any par­tic­u­lar Roman cit­i­zen­ship is the con­cept of Roman cit­i­zen­ship itself, which ulti­mate­ly extend­ed across the vastest empire the world had ever known.

All roads lead to Rome, as the say­ing goes, and in the hey­day of the Roman empire, as Beard points out, it was actu­al­ly true. The ancient Romans were the first to build what she calls “a joined-up world,” where get­ting on a path in Rome and fol­low­ing it could get you all the way to places like Spain or Greece. (And also unprece­dent­ed­ly, you could take a glance at mile mark­ers along that road and imme­di­ate­ly “place your­self in the world.”) Roman dom­i­nance may have end­ed long ago, but the parts of the world have con­tin­ued to join up in much the same way since, and indeed, the broad Roman world­view sur­vives. As Beard puts it, “there’s a lit­tle bit of the Romans in the head of every one of us” — espe­cial­ly those of us who think about their empire every day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

Do You Think About Ancient Rome Every Day? Then Browse a Wealth of Videos, Maps & Pho­tos That Explore the Roman Empire

Rick Steves’ Europe: Binge Watch 11 Sea­sons of America’s Favorite Trav­el­er Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A New 20-Minute Supercut of David Letterman Slamming CBS: “You Can’t Spell CBS Without BS”

in Current Affairs, Television | July 22nd, 2025

The can­cel­la­tion of The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert—CBS insists it was pure­ly a “finan­cial deci­sion,” the result of declin­ing ad rev­enue in late night tele­vi­sion. While some buy this argu­ment, oth­ers see it as a dif­fer­ent kind of “finan­cial deci­sion,” a deci­sion by Para­mount (the par­ent com­pa­ny of CBS) to sac­ri­fice Col­bert so that the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent won’t can­cel a lucra­tive $28-bil­lion merg­er. Yes­ter­day, David Let­ter­man, the pre­vi­ous host of CBS’ The Late Show, released a 20-minute super­cut fea­tur­ing the many times he took CBS to task over the years. The sub­text? He does­n’t seem to buy CBS’s talk­ing points. Nor does Jon Stew­art. More direct than Let­ter­man, Stew­art gives his own take on why CBS can­celed Col­bert: “I think the answer is in the fear and pre-com­pli­ance that is grip­ping all of Amer­i­ca’s insti­tu­tions at this very moment, insti­tu­tions that have cho­sen not to fight the venge­ful and vin­dic­tive actions of our pubic-hair-doo­dling com­man­der-in-chief. This is not the moment to give in. I’m not giv­ing in. I’m not going any­where.” Note to read­er: Jon Stew­art’s The Dai­ly Show airs on Com­e­dy Cen­tral, which is owned by Para­mount.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stephen Col­bert Reads Flan­nery O’Connor’s Dark­ly Comedic Sto­ry, “The Endur­ing Chill”

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future on The David Let­ter­man Show (1980)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Many Strange, Unpre­dictable Appear­ances on The David Let­ter­man Show

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Ridley Scott’s Cinematic TV Commercials: An 80-Minute Compilation Spanning 1968–2023

in Film, Television | May 28th, 2025

“In the future, e‑mail will make the writ­ten word a thing of the past,” declares the nar­ra­tion of a 1999 tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial for Orange, the French tele­com giant. “In the future, we won’t have to trav­el; we’ll meet on video. In the future, we won’t need to play in the wind and rain; com­put­er games will pro­vide all the fun we need. And in the future, man won’t need woman, and woman won’t need man.” Not in our future, the voice has­tens to add, speak­ing for Orange’s cor­po­rate vision: a bit of irony to those of us watch­ing here in 2025, who could be for­giv­en for think­ing that the pre­dic­tions lead­ing up to it just about sum up the progress of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry so far. Nor will it sur­prise us to learn that the spot was direct­ed by Rid­ley Scott, that cin­e­mat­ic painter of dystopi­an sheen.

Bleak futures con­sti­tute just one part of Scot­t’s adver­tis­ing port­fo­lio. Watch above through the fea­ture-length com­pi­la­tion of his com­mer­cials (assem­bled by the YouTube chan­nel Shot, Drawn & Cut), and you’ll see dens of Croe­san wealth, deep-sea expe­di­tions, the trench­es of the Great War, the wastes of the Aus­tralian out­back, acts of Cold War espi­onage, a dance at a neon-lined nine­teen-fifties din­er, and the arrival of space aliens in small-town Amer­i­ca — who turn out just to be stop­ping by for a Pep­si.

Not that Scott is a brand loy­al­ist: that he did a good deal of work for Amer­i­ca’s sec­ond-biggest soda brand, some of them not just Mia­mi Vice-themed but star­ring Don John­son him­self, did­n’t stop him from also direct­ing a Coca-Cola spot fea­tur­ing Max Head­room. The decade was, of course, the nine­teen eight­ies, at the begin­ning of which Scott made his most endur­ing mark as a visu­al styl­ist with Blade Run­ner.

A series of spots for Bar­clays bank (whose indict­ments of com­put­er­ized ser­vice now seem pre­scient about our fast-approach­ing AI-“assisted” real­i­ty) hew so close­ly to the Blade Run­ner aes­thet­ic that they might as well have been part of the same pro­duc­tion. But of Scot­t’s dystopi­an adver­tise­ments, none are more cel­e­brat­ed than the Super Bowl spec­ta­cle for the Apple Mac­in­tosh in which a ham­mer-throw­er smash­es a Nine­teen Eighty-Four-style dic­ta­tor-on-video. The com­pi­la­tion also includes a less wide­ly remem­bered com­mer­cial for the Mac­in­tosh’s tech­ni­cal­ly inno­v­a­tive but com­mer­cial­ly failed pre­de­ces­sor, the Apple Lisa. So asso­ci­at­ed did Scott become with cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy that it’s easy to for­get that he rose up through the adver­tis­ing world of his native Britain by mak­ing big impacts, over and over, for down­right quaint brands: Hov­is bread, McDougal­l’s pas­try mix, Find­us frozen fish pies.

It may seem a con­tra­dic­tion that Scott, long prac­ti­cal­ly syn­ony­mous with the large-scale Hol­ly­wood genre block­buster, would have start­ed out by craft­ing such nos­tal­gia-suf­fused minia­tures. And it would take an inat­ten­tive view­er indeed not to note that the man who over­saw the defin­i­tive cin­e­mat­ic vision of a men­ac­ing Asia-inflect­ed urban dystopia would go on to make com­mer­cials for the Sony Mini­Disc and the Nis­san 300ZX. It all makes more sense if you take Scot­t’s artis­tic inter­ests as hav­ing less to do with cul­ture and more to do with bureau­cra­cy, archi­tec­ture, machin­ery, and oth­er such sys­tems in which human­i­ty is con­tained: so nat­ur­al a fit for the realm of adver­tis­ing that it’s almost a sur­prise he’s made fea­tures at all. And indeed, he con­tin­ues to do ad work, bring­ing movie-like grandeur to mul­ti-minute pro­mo­tions for brands like Hen­nessy and Turk­ish Air­lines — each one intro­duced as “a Rid­ley Scott film.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

See Rid­ley Scott’s 1973 Bread Com­mer­cial — Vot­ed England’s Favorite Adver­tise­ment of All Time

Watch Rid­ley Scott’s Con­tro­ver­sial Nis­san Sports Car Ad That Aired Only Once, Dur­ing the Super Bowl (1990)

Rid­ley Scott on the Mak­ing of Apple’s Icon­ic “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

Watch The Jour­ney, the New Rid­ley Scott Short Film Teased Dur­ing the Super Bowl

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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When The Twilight Zone Imagined Fascism in America in a 1963 Episode Starring Dennis Hopper

in History, Television | March 25th, 2025

Watch through The Twi­light Zone, and you’ll find your­self spot­ting no end of famil­iar faces: Julie New­mar, Burt Reynolds, Robert Red­ford, Eliz­a­beth Mont­gomery, William Shat­ner, even Buster Keaton. The 1963 episode “He’s Alive” is at least dou­bly notable in that respect, fea­tur­ing as it does a young (but in act­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, almost ful­ly formed) Den­nis Hop­per as Peter Vollmer, a ne’er-do-well made into an aspir­ing dic­ta­tor by none oth­er than Adolf Hitler. Played by Curt Con­way, a spe­cial­ist in doc­tors, judges, and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures, the undead Führer offers his young dis­ci­ple instruc­tions like the above, from an ear­ly scene before his iden­ti­ty is revealed.

“How do you move a mob, Mr. Vollmer? How do you excite them? How do you make them feel as one with you?” Hitler asks. The answer, which he then pro­vides, is first to join them: “When you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a mem­ber of the mob. Speak to them in their lan­guage, on their lev­el. Make their hate your hate. If they are poor, talk to them of pover­ty. If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears. And if they are angry, Mr. Vollmer… if they are angry, give them objects for their anger. But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, Mr. Vollmer, is that you make this mob an exten­sion of your­self.”

If accused of scape­goat­ing minori­ties, he should address the throng thus: “Should I tell you who are the minori­ties? Should I tell you? We! We are the minori­ties.” Soon, we see Peter in full neo-Nazi gear deliv­er­ing just such a harangue, thor­ough­ly Hop­per-ized in dic­tion, to a mod­est­ly attend­ed ral­ly. How could these ordi­nary-look­ing atten­dees be a minor­i­ty? “Because patri­o­tism is a minor­i­ty. Because love of coun­try is the minor­i­ty. Because to live in a free, white Amer­i­ca seems to be of a minor­i­ty opin­ion!” Though hard­ly art­ful, this rhetoric even­tu­al­ly makes him into a pop­u­lar fig­ure, albeit one whose rise is cut short when he turns to con­spir­a­cy to accel­er­ate his rise to pow­er.

And what of the spir­it of Hitler? “Where will he go next, this phan­tom from anoth­er time, this res­ur­rect­ed ghost of a pre­vi­ous night­mare?” Twi­light Zone cre­ator Rod Ser­ling asks in his episode-clos­ing mono­logue. “Any place, every place where there’s hate, where there’s prej­u­dice, where there’s big­otry.” It was against such broad social phe­nom­e­na that Ser­ling so often used his scripts to argue, and with “He’s Alive,” he made use of an unusu­al­ly vivid ide­o­log­i­cal exam­ple. A vet­er­an of the Sec­ond World War, which had end­ed less than twen­ty years ear­li­er, Ser­ling sure­ly had even fresh­er mem­o­ries of the threat of Hitler than did the gen­er­al Amer­i­can pub­lic — and under­stood even more clear­ly what could hap­pen if those mem­o­ries were to fade away.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Rod Ser­ling Turned TV Pitch­man: See His Post-Twi­light Zone Ads for Ford, Maz­da, Gulf Oil & Smokey Bear

When 20,000 Amer­i­cans Held a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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