Popular Culture Review Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 2009 | Page 35

Einstein On The Strip 31 educational films that feature (actors playing the role of) Albert Einstein, including Einstein Revealed (1996, dir. Peter Jones, in a careful rendition by Andrew Sachs) and Einstein’s Big Idea (2005, dir. Gary Johnstone, narrated John Lithgow, with Aidan McArdle as AE, based on David Bodanis’s book E = mc2; a Biography o f the World’s Most Famous Equation [New York: Walker, 2005]; both prod, by NOVA for PBS). Einstein isn’t mentioned in What the Bleep Do We Know? (dir. William Amtz, Betty Chasse, Mark Vicente), a 2004 documentary about quantum mechanics, which the film calls “the physics of possibilities.” But since Einstein did more than anyone to call attention to quanta, even while opposing the implications of his own work, this is a major and inexcusable omission: not the least of the film’s own failure to exploit the very possibilities it raises. Yet in his absence, Einstein is like a God who isn’t dead, just waiting to be resurrected, if not by causality (locality, separability) then by what he called “spooky action at a distance,” which looms over the quantum world, courtesy of J.S. Bell’s theorem. Thanks to John Cage, quantum weirdness (as it’s called) begot aleatoric music; thanks to Iannis Xenakis, chance begot choice, overthrowing Beethoven’s “es muss sein” to create imperatives leading directly to Philip Glass’s messianic minimalism, so eerily reminiscent of J.S. Bach. [The two best recordings of Einstein on the Beach are those made by CBS, 1979 and Elektra, 1993; both feature Glass’s ensemble, conducted by Michael Riesman. Robert Wilson wrote the libretto and choreographed the opera.] From the foregoing list, it’s obvious that Einstein(iana) has an unlimited future—or an uncountably infinite set of possibilities!