COVID culture pt. II: What to read, watch and jerk off to

Week two of social distancing features a peculiar unease, as if by doing sit-ups at home you could be forestalling the kind of muscular deterioration that plagues astronauts. Outside, everyone seems vaguely haunted. Here’s some more weird culture — a book, an art film, free courses, streaming art and opera, vintage porn — to keep you enraptured and entertained in your own company during the ongoing COVID shut-down.

Read!

The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig (also called Chess Story). Zweig’s last novela before his death bounces back and forth between a cruise from New York to Buenos Aires and a deserted hotel in which our protagonist is held prisoner by Nazis. There he steals a book of masters’ chess games and plays them over and over in his head until the game has permanently altered his sense of self – simultaneously saving him from loneliness and driving him to a breakdown. It’s an incredible metaphoric account of the internal life of a writer who spent the last years of his life in exile, an excellent introduction to Zweig and a timely story of loneliness and perseverance alike. 

Here’s a radio production and also the text itself. You have to make an account with the Internet Archive, but it’s free and then you can browse their extensive collection at your leisure! The Internet Archive also happens to have a wonderful selection of old feature films, some of which are curated together here, including the wonderful fast-talking comedy His Girl Friday and some more lurid titles I’ll be checking out this week, such as Dr. Sex and Teaserama.

Long art film!

Das Boot, the 1981 West German film by Wolfgang Petersen set almost entirely in a German U-boat during WWII, is made to fit many sizes of patience. There are versions running 149 minutes, 208 minutes, also 209 minutes (what changed?!), 293 minutes, and finally, 300 minutes. Now, for years I’ve heard rumours that Das Boot was boring. These rumours are incorrect! Take it from me, who this week selected and imbibed the most ample, the highest proof version of the Boot, it is riveting stuff. A metaphorically apt thriller for our times. You’ll feel trapped, sweaty and exhausted, as if another life or world is just impossibly far away and always will be. Forget Contagion and its campy cousin Outbreak — Das Boot is the terrifying epic you need this very moment.

While the sheer length of a film is obviously appealing right now, what about the size of its cast? Here’s a helpful list of films with the greatest number of extras to populate your inner world. Let underpaid, largely TechniColor multitudes sweep over your consciousness, and watch as thousands assemble in Holywood approximations of biblical and Roman garb, from Spartacus to Ben Hur.

Free courses from Ivy League schools!

From the obviously pertinent Lessons From Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic to Harvard’s primer on Justice, to courses on coding and melancholically, on Italian opera, there is a true abundance out there for my fellow nerds. 

New York City culture!

The New York Public Library is letting you virtually “borrow” one of 300,000 books free of charge. The MET is also streaming a different opera nightly at 7:30 p.m. for free, each of which remains available for 20 hours afterwards on their website. 

Global culture!

While I certainly suggest everyone also take breaks from their screens, you can browse the collections of over 2,500 museums and cultural institutions through Google Arts & Culture. Closer to home, the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts also has a mobile app through which to virtually visit the collections. 

More porn!

COVID shut-ins may appreciate this vintage porn with a plot and, better yet, set in the post-apocalypse. Café Flesh takes place in a world where virtually no one can have sex with one another without becoming horribly ill. These so-called Sex Negatives gather looking forlorn and sallow in sex cafés, of which Café Flesh is one, to watch the rare remaining Sex Positives have wild cabaret-style sex on stage. Sometimes the door opens and we see the wasteland outside. It’s entertaining, and it’s HOT. 

Why is it that the later at night it gets, the more I want to read the news on my phone’s screen to keep my brain whirring uselessly into the night? God knows, but this arts editor finds eating cheese directly before bedtime makes my end-of-days-themed dreams that more vivid. Try it at home! ■

See last week’s recommendations for Coronavirus home-viewing/reading by Nora Rosenthal here.

For more coverage of the Montreal art scene, see our Arts section.

To read the latest issue of Cult MTL, click here.

To vote for your favourite Montreal people and things in the Best of MTL readers poll, please also click here.