The Composer Richard Wagner and the Birth of the Movies

The Composer Richard Wagner and the Birth of the Movies

The German composer Richard Wagner had an enormous influence not only on modern music but on artists of all stripes, and on political culture as well. His use of folkloric material to create modern epics won him the admiration of thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois, and made him popular in Hollywood since the birth of film. Alex Ross, whose new book is called “Wagnerism,” tells David Remnick that Du Bois “might have seen ‘Black Panther’ as a kind of Wagnerian project.” And yet Wagner’s music was used to heroically represent the Ku Klux Klan in “The Birth of a Nation.” In fact, the composer’s strident anti-Semitism fed into the rise of Nazism in Germany. The many aspects of Wagner’s influence were often contradictory. “So much baggage arrives with him,” Ross says, but “we aren’t necessarily imprisoned by what the man himself thought.” The composer himself “starts to disappear” as his influence diffuses through society. “He becomes a mirror for what other people are thinking and feeling. And we have that right, we have that power with art. If there’s something about it we reject, we can—without forgetting or overlooking that darker aspect—remake it in our own image.”


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(1052)

Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed Is “Not a Burn-It-Down Kind” of Candidate

Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed Is “Not a Burn-It-Down Kind” of Candidate

Michigan’s Senate seat is a must-win for Democrats hoping to take control of the Senate in 2026. The midterms are reflecting a surge of energy behind left-leaning Democratic candidates—sometimes known...

31 Juli 35min

A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

Though President Donald Trump came back to the White House with broad support for his border policies, his Administration’s immigration crackdown has been broadly unpopular. The staff writer Jonathan ...

28 Juli 16min

One Refugee’s Journey Through ICE Detention

One Refugee’s Journey Through ICE Detention

In 2025, as ICE was struggling to meet an impossible goal of three thousand immigration arrests per day, the agency took an unprecedented step: picking people up when they arrived at immigration court...

24 Juli 34min

Pick Three: Richard Brody on “The Odyssey” and Other Summer Films

Pick Three: Richard Brody on “The Odyssey” and Other Summer Films

The film critic Richard Brody talks with David Remnick about three notable films this summer: Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” an epic adaptation of Homer’s poem, arriving amid buzz and huge advance...

21 Juli 13min

Rahm Emanuel Says Israel’s Path Is “Not Sustainable Politically”

Rahm Emanuel Says Israel’s Path Is “Not Sustainable Politically”

Rahm Emanuel is a Democratic Party elder, having served in the Clinton and Obama Administrations and as mayor of his native Chicago for two terms. He’s a centrist known for valuing political wins over...

17 Juli 36min

How an Estimated Seven Hundred Thousand People Have Died from DOGE’s U.S.A.I.D. Cuts

How an Estimated Seven Hundred Thousand People Have Died from DOGE’s U.S.A.I.D. Cuts

The Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, has officially been terminated. Its July 4th sunset date was part of Donald Trump’s original executive order that created the agency, whi...

12 Juli 31min

The World Cup, the Knicks, and LeBron James’s Fate: An All-Time Summer in Sports

The World Cup, the Knicks, and LeBron James’s Fate: An All-Time Summer in Sports

With all the sports news at play this summer, from the New York Knicks winning the N.B.A. Finals to Donald Trump having a direct impact on FIFA’s decisions during the World Cup, it’s time for a deep d...

10 Juli 18min

The Sounds of Summer, with Fred Armisen

The Sounds of Summer, with Fred Armisen

The comedian Fred Armisen has a thing for sound: he’s a former punk-rocker who gets a lot of comic mileage from doing accents, and he released an album of sound effects—a modern update of a novelty ge...

7 Juli 17min

Populärt inom Politik & nyheter

svenska-fall
p3-krim
rss-krimstad
aftonbladet-daily
aftonbladet-krim
rss-sanning-konsekvens
flashback-forever
mannen-utan-spar
rss-krimreportrarna
motiv
tv4-nyheterna-story
rss-frandfors-horna
spar
rss-vad-fan-hande
rss-flodet
rss-aftonbladet-krim
de-fyras-gang
politiken
olyckan-inifran
dagens-eko