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On Our Way to the Dance (Pizzamas Day 6)

2015-11-16 · letter vlog · John · 2:05 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, heavy topic

John reads his favourite photograph, August Sander's 1914 'Young Farmers', as a picture of mass production lifting rural class and of young men walking toward World War I, and argues that history is not inevitable but made of collective choices.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Central Park weekend; August Sander, People of the 20th Century and the 'Young Farmers' photograph; what it shows about class and mass production in 1914

  • ★ John spent much of the weekend in New York's Central Park and kept thinking of his favourite photograph. — 00:00:01 · New York City
  • ★★ John says the German photographer August Sander is famous for his massive, never-finished series People of the 20th Century, picturing everyone from bricklayers to circus performers to composers. — 00:00:06
  • ★★ John's favourite picture is Sander's photograph sometimes known as Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, 1914; he likes the farmers' faces in the sky and feet in the mud. — 00:00:18
  • ★★★ John says the photograph shows that by 1914 mass production let young farmers afford suits, hats and canes: for the first time European rural peasants could dress almost like urban professionals. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John notes the farmers still walk rather than drive; he sees them on the cusp of the contemporary world, glancing back as if pausing briefly before heading to their futures. (hedged) — 00:00:48

00:01:02 — The farmers walking toward World War I; the same industry made the guns; history is choices, and we are in the middle of it

  • ★★★ John says that in mid-1914 the three farmers were on their way to two dances: the one they knew about and World War I. — 00:01:02

    “on their way to two dances, the one they knew about and World War I”

  • ★★ John says the men very likely ended up fighting in the war and may well have died in it. (hedged) — 00:01:10

  • ★★ John says 17 million people died in World War I. — 00:01:10
  • ★★★ John argues the same industrial manufacturing innovations that made the farmers' clothes affordable created the bullets and machine guns that made World War I so lethal. — 00:01:16

  • ★★★ John says the war seems inevitable to us, but the farmers' faces show it wasn't: history is choices we collectively make about how to see and respond to the world. — 00:01:27

    “history is choices we collectively make about how to look at the world”

  • ★★★ The farmers walking in the German Westerwald 101 years ago remind John that he too is in the middle of history and that how he imagines the world and its people really matters. — 00:01:40

  • ★★ Recalling that photographs are 'just light and time', John says Sander captured a hell of a light and a hell of a time, and prays we never see its like again. — 00:01:52

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says the photograph inspired Richard Powers' first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which it highly recommends. — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: August Sander · World War I · Young Farmers

Also: Central Park · historical determinism · mass production · New York City · People of the 20th Century · social class · Westerwald

Only in the description or credits: Pizzamas · Richard Powers · Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

Also centred on World War I: Did TB Cause World War I?

Also centred on Young Farmers: Way, Way Down the Rabbit Hole

Later videos replying to this one