# Adam Curtis is back!



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

*The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom?

9pm Tonight, BBC 2.*

This time he is attempting to tell the story of the rise of today’s narrow idea of freedom and it should make interesting viewing. According to the BBC it will show how_ “a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by nuclear strategists during the Cold War. It was then taken up by genetic biologists, anthropologists, radical psychiatrists and free market economists, until it became a new system of invisible control.”_

Many of you have seen the other series of films he has made. My favourite being 'The Century of the Self'. They explored how, whilst psychoanalytic therapy is a dying out, Freudian influence is still very much alive in many areas from business to politics to social attitudes, due to the involvement of the man who invented PR, Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. The Power of Nightmares was good but it was pretty much what we knew already.


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

Article in the Gruniad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday/story/0,,2025578,00.html


----------



## Red O (Mar 11, 2007)

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=198713


----------



## Nemo (Mar 11, 2007)

Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten about this.


----------



## tastebud (Mar 11, 2007)

Nemo said:
			
		

> Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten about this.


Ditto. CotS & PoN were great.


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

I missed most of it because my dad kept rabbiting on about when he met Ronald Laing and how Curtis has totally ignored ontological security


----------



## tastebud (Mar 11, 2007)

well that was very good. i'd not thought about some of that stuff for a long while. look forward to next week's episode.
i do find that curtis has a bit of a suspiciously intense slant to his assertions though - i found that in the other two documentaries that he did too.
alarm bells start to ring. though definitely worth seeing & perhaps worth reading about via other sources as well.
the laing/rosenheim stuff was really cool though.


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

He does seem to jump from A to C with ease... what happened to B?


----------



## marty21 (Mar 11, 2007)

interesting stuff

very interesting the experiement where they sent 7 people to mental institutions, with an instruction just to say they could hear the word "thud" in their head, they were all declared mentally ill....cue big controversy when it was revealed that the hospitals had been conned...

do it again said the hopsitals , who then confidently said they had found 41 people who had been sent

the bloke running the experiement hadn't actually sent any


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

I Think that was a bit wrong myself. It is all risk assessment (which is oddly enough what the crux of the episode is about), the doctors believed there may be a risk, no matter how small, that these people may be of danger to themselves or others. Better safe than sorry kind of thing.


----------



## tastebud (Mar 11, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> I Think that was a bit wrong myself. It is all risk assessment (which is oddly enough what the crux of the episode is about), the doctors believed there may be a risk, no matter how small, that these people may be of danger to themselves or others. Better safe than sorry kind of thing.


yeah, but the fact is, it radically changed psychiatry, for the better.


----------



## marty21 (Mar 11, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> I Think that was a bit wrong myself. It is all risk assessment (which is oddly enough what the crux of the episode is about), the doctors believed there may be a risk, no matter how small, that these people may be of danger to themselves or others. Better safe than sorry kind of thing.



i think it asked bigger questions about the nature of mental illness and who was qualified to treat it


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

But those people who are qualified to treat it have a great onus on their shoulders. To protect the lives of the client and to some extent society, the risk of letting someone whom may be a danger to themselves and or others is too great. It is a 'safer' risk to bang them up. If they are a danger then they're not going to do much in care, and if they're not a danger, well they're not going to do anything anyway. You get to keep the diamond you stole.


----------



## gnoriac (Mar 11, 2007)

Was Laing really that influential? I'd always thought he only really hit it off amongst a few hippy types, whereas the programme seemed to suggest that he shook psychiatry to it's very core.

Still fascinating, tracing that flow of ideas from Nash through Buchanan to Thatcher, with Laing, McNamara, Hayek and others getting in there. And even 'Yes Minister'.


----------



## tastebud (Mar 11, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> But those people who are qualified to treat it have a great onus on their shoulders. To protect the lives of the client and to some extent society, the risk of letting someone whom may be a danger to themselves and or others is too great. It is a 'safer' risk to bang them up. If they are a danger then they're not going to do much in care, and if they're not a danger, well they're not going to do anything anyway. You get to keep the diamond you stole.


whaaaa!? glad you don't work in mental health dude.
diagnosing someone who doesn't actually have, for example, schizophrenia, with schizophrenia, is a big concern imo. if the study is to be taken at face value - and i first learnt about it on my degree, so let's say for the sake of argument it can be - then it was exactly what mental health needed to tighten up the diagnostic system & stop "sane" people being misdiagnosed, locked away & stuffed full of drugs & methods that turned them into vegetables.


----------



## treelover (Mar 11, 2007)

I found it quite convincing,even the central conceit that game thoery is now central to how our lives/the state, etc are ordered and I always come away from his programme's with a slightly changed perspective on things. This was particulalry so with the COTS and the power and influence of Edward Bernays. What i found interesting amongst many other things is how he identified how many of the radicals of the 60's with their demands to 'destroy the instititutions' actually helped the neo-liberal/privateer cause. in fact, people like Jerry Rubin, the Yippee, went on to be a wall st banker. In terms of where he is coming from politically, I think Curtis is a convinced democratic socialist who would see Atlees 1945 Govt as the best we ever had. Anyway it is great television, almost unique on british tv and one wonders how he gets it made on the BBC, especially post Hutton. I also found intriguing how John Nash was central to this paradigm shift in ordering society and was not the benign man portrayed in the film.

btw, merge the threads? this will run and run...


----------



## treelover (Mar 11, 2007)

Oh. and 'Yes Minister' admitted to be basically neo-liberal propaganda, breathtaking!


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

tastebud said:
			
		

> whaaaa!? glad you don't work in mental health dude.
> diagnosing someone who doesn't actually have, for example, schizophrenia, with schizophrenia, is a big concern imo. if the study is to be taken at face value - and i first learnt about it on my degree, so let's say for the sake of argument it can be - then it was exactly what mental health needed to tighten up the diagnostic system & stop "sane" people being misdiagnosed, locked away & stuffed full of drugs & methods that turned them into vegetables.



Well first of all you don't expect someone to lie to you do you? Secondly their arses would be on the line if one real 'nutter' for want of a better word slipped through the net. I don't agree with it but that is how the system works.


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

gnoriac said:
			
		

> Was Laing really that influential? I'd always thought he only really hit it off amongst a few hippy types, whereas the programme seemed to suggest that he shook psychiatry to it's very core.



Haven't you heard of the Laing Society? I think it is still going pretty strong in the US and UK.


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

Here we see Laing off his tits on MDMA 

http://www.laingsociety.org/biblio/ecstasy.htm



> by Peter Nasmyth
> 
> The interview from which this article sprang, took place in 1986. I'd visited Dr. Laing at his north London home while researching an article on MDMA for 'The Face' magazine ('Ecstasy' published October 1986). However, the man and the interview seemed to merit story in themselves, so I wrote this additional Ecstasy piece, uncommissioned, along with the original. Unfortunately, at that time, nobody was interested in Laing. Editors in 1986 tended to regard him as something of a lapsed 60's guru; unfairly in my opinion. The article here is the same, save for a few minor updates.
> 
> ...


----------



## marty21 (Mar 11, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> Well first of all you don't expect someone to lie to you do you? Secondly their arses would be on the line if one real 'nutter' for want of a better word slipped through the net. I don't agree with it but that is how the system works.



plenty of "nutters" did slip through the net though, the experiment exposed the flaws in the mental health assessment of that time


----------



## Firky (Mar 11, 2007)

Some did yes, but out of the hundreds of thousands that go through our over stretched health care only a very small % did. Do we ever hear about the success? of course not.


----------



## Mr Smin (Mar 12, 2007)

*qualified*




			
				firky said:
			
		

> But those people who are qualified to treat it have a great onus on their shoulders.


Firky, I think marty21's point was bigger than you realise - I think his point was that *arguably* people who were qualified had worthless qualifications. I do take your point that doctor's rely on people to tell the truth but i remind you that the voice in their head with one word was the only thing they did which was abnormal.


----------



## tastebud (Mar 12, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> Some did yes, but out of the hundreds of thousands that go through our over stretched health care only a very small % did. Do we ever hear about the success? of course not.


Yeah but Firky, the point (in my mind) is that clearly methods weren't rigorous enough at the time. To put it bluntly, the whole system was totally f*cked up, back then. Nowadays, whilst misdiagnosis does still happen - comorbidity of a lot of disorders probably being the main reason - it's a hell of a lot more rigorous procedure & you don't just immediately get labelled as *schizophrenic*, when presenting your symptoms to your GP, health professional, etc.
The way things were portrayed in the Adam Curtis doc., mental health professionals barely knew what they were doing/what they were looking for.


----------



## tastebud (Mar 18, 2007)

Bump.
It's the second part tonight.


----------



## treelover (Mar 18, 2007)

Even better than last week, nailed new labour as well:, I think Curtis's ideas/analysis are going to become very influential in the future. In fact I think Cameron has been watching it! in his speech today he claimed that N/labour has ripped the heart out of the NHS and replaced it with a computer, very Curtisian


----------



## 8ball (Mar 18, 2007)

And Yo La tengo in the soundtwack.

One day all telly will be this good.

fecking bwoken keyboad . . .


----------



## gnoriac (Mar 18, 2007)

More good stuff, but a lot of points repeated. I reckon he could probably have made one longish programme better than a 3-parter.

One thought that stuck me tonight was that these ideas came about in the 60s but were implemented in the 80s-90s, ideas that I would categorise as fundy reductionism, yet in the late 80s a whole new intellectual paradigm came about in the sciences - "chaos". Actually a bad name IMHO for complex, emergent systems. But these to my mind more acurately describe how social interactions on a big scale work far more accurately. Perhaps it takes a couples of decades for thought to gestate?


----------



## 8ball (Mar 18, 2007)

gnoriac said:
			
		

> Perhaps it takes a couples of decades for thought to gestate?



Maybe it takes a couple of decades for those who are in late education reading the cutting-edge ideas to get into positions of power and influence.


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (Mar 18, 2007)

interesting.. but it felt a bit .. hollow...  not really a full argument 


worth watching though


----------



## Sunspots (Mar 18, 2007)

Big business pressurizing once-trusted accounting firms into fiddling the performance figures...

Patients' operations scheduled and delayed in order to fiddle performance targets.  Trolleys in NHS hospital corridors reclassified as 'beds in wards'...

The creeping medicalization of sadness: the over-prescription of anti-depressants while ignoring (-the causes of) what are essentially just natural human emotions/reactions.  The resultant narrowing of our concept of what is considered to be 'normal' behaviour...

Under New Labour: increasingly rigid social divisions, and declining social mobility...

Enslaved by statistics.  None of these things are exactly news, but I thought this episode managed to tie them all together really well.


----------



## Firky (Mar 19, 2007)

Missed this weeks (powercut) does anyone know if it is repeated?


----------



## Divisive Cotton (Mar 19, 2007)

Economist and pyschopaths are the most self-interested section of society

 

I'm sure you'll be able to bittorrent it somewhere Firky


----------



## nino_savatte (Mar 19, 2007)

I started a thread on this last week.
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=199605&highlight=trap

And I started mine first


----------



## tastebud (Mar 19, 2007)

8ball said:
			
		

> And Yo La tengo in the soundtwack.


oh i didn't notice that 

firky: i guess it might be put on google videos at some point?
his other two documentaries are on there.

i couldn't really take much in this week due to killing my brain with stuff, the night before.

maybe the last one will pull things together in a more in depth/ conclusive way? we'll see i guess.


----------



## Divisive Cotton (Mar 19, 2007)

I'm going to have to watch it again. The problem with was that although there was a great deal of repitition in the first two programmes, at the same it was also a patchwork of ideas... not sure how this is going to end: Will it be a happy conclusion?


----------



## Sunspots (Mar 19, 2007)

nino_savatte said:
			
		

> I started a thread on this last week.
> http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=199605&highlight=trap
> 
> And I started mine first



*cough*  

Three threads: getting a bit confusing isn't it...


----------



## nino_savatte (Mar 19, 2007)

Sunspots said:
			
		

> *cough*
> 
> Three threads: getting a bit confusing isn't it...



Bloody Nora!


----------



## tastebud (Mar 19, 2007)

Divisive Cotton said:
			
		

> not sure how this is going to end: Will it be a happy conclusion?


 I doubt it somehow.


----------



## Divisive Cotton (Mar 19, 2007)

tastebud said:
			
		

> I doubt it somehow.



No, they never are - but he seemed to hinting at the end of last nights programme that the theories that was examing had been superceded by others....

I think, I was a bit pissed when I watched. I need to watch it again - but then again isn't that always the case with Curtis' documentaries?


----------



## tastebud (Mar 19, 2007)

Yeah they do seem to get a bit confused in a kind of: and then, and then, and then, way. 
I need to watch it again too.

Pretty sure that the theories will have been superseded/bettered though, yeah.


----------



## dweller (Mar 19, 2007)

Divisive Cotton said:
			
		

> I think, I was a bit pissed when I watched. I need to watch it again - but then again isn't that always the case with Curtis' documentaries?




Me too I was a bit too pissed to soak it all in.


----------



## Firky (Mar 19, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> *Missed this weeks (powercut) does anyone know if it is repeated?*


----------



## dweller (Mar 19, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

>



why so angry?
it seems like no one here knows if its being repeated, 
why not go and look at the bbc website.


----------



## bigbry (Mar 19, 2007)

firky said:
			
		

> Missed this weeks (powercut) does anyone know if it is repeated?


What ? They're going to repeat the powercut. Why ?


----------



## Firky (Mar 20, 2007)

ragh!


----------



## rollinder (Mar 20, 2007)

Part one's on google video 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1680636949893864148&q=adam+curtis+trap


----------



## Firky (Mar 20, 2007)

Thanks

I couldn't find it on youtube, I'll see if they have part two on google video. Some lass on another forum has offered to send me a copy on VHS


----------



## not-bono-ever (Feb 11, 2021)

New six-film series from Adam Curtis 

“But they were wrong..”

Films of people dancing in slow motion

A snippet of nosferatu to chilling music

A light dancing over an empty forest filmed with a night sight

Wilhelm Reich. 

General Motors clip




I am looking forward to it immensely !


----------



## Knotted (Feb 11, 2021)

Curtis's tenuous links are the conspiracy theories for the respectable liberal left.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Feb 11, 2021)

Lots of dancing in ep 1


----------



## Supine (Feb 11, 2021)

Knotted said:


> Curtis's tenuous links are the conspiracy theories for the respectable liberal left.



But so good


----------



## butchersapron (Feb 11, 2021)

Saves thinking.


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 11, 2021)

I'm sure this must've been posted on here before, but it really is an all-time great:


----------



## Mordi (Feb 12, 2021)

Knotted said:


> Curtis's tenuous links are the conspiracy theories for the respectable liberal left.



I've been giving this some thought, is it just the patrician BBC tone? I'm sadly very susceptible to this, Curtis' films can seem like a nice bath to sink into. There's usually enough stimulation to give your brain something to tick along to, but as you can't really predict the narrative (or rather what particular incident will be presented as the unifying factor) so can be just be gently lead along.


----------



## Doctor Carrot (Feb 12, 2021)

I think if you view his films as entertainment as opposed to some deep dive analysis then they serve their purpose well. I do learn some interesting historical information when I watch his films but then there's an awful lot of stuff that's really pretty basic. This current series is proving no different. 

I once heard him described as a drunk man on a late night Wikipedia binge. I think that's a pretty good description.


----------



## Doctor Carrot (Feb 12, 2021)

Knotted said:


> Curtis's tenuous links are the conspiracy theories for the respectable liberal left.



True and even funnier considering he talks about conspiracy theories and the respectable liberal left being the roadblocks to change in this series.


----------



## butchersapron (Feb 12, 2021)

Any change he would want looks like 2010 cameron.


----------



## Part 2 (Feb 13, 2021)

Doctor Carrot said:


> I think if you view his films as entertainment as opposed to some deep dive analysis then they serve their purpose well.



My thoughts entirely. Interesting information not to be taken too seriously in isolation. Maybe with some things you find interesting enough to read a bit further.

Somone's put together a spotify playlist ofthe soundtrack here. It's good.


----------



## tim (Feb 14, 2021)

Doctor Carrot said:


> .
> 
> I once heard him described as a drunk man on a late night Wikipedia binge. I think that's a pretty good description.



"Once" in this case meaning, in half-way through the three-minute video two posts before yours. Curtis has certainly managed to fuck up your short term memory.

Anyway, isn't Adam Curtis just ripping off the format of James Burke's _Connections_ series from the 1970s?


----------



## LDC (Feb 14, 2021)

Watched the first one last night. I enjoy the format and footage, but the actual content beyond that is largely nonsense I think. The quip that it's like it's been made by a stoned teenager on a late night Wikipedia binge is about right, it's the type of thing that could be a spoof tbh.


----------



## bimble (Feb 14, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> I'm sure this must've been posted on here before, but it really is an all-time great:



This is excellent. 
His 4 parter called century of the self I really loved, maybe it did help that I was stoned all the time then but still, was full of great stuff about the history of advertising etc.


----------



## killer b (Feb 14, 2021)

Part 2 said:


> Somone's put together a spotify playlist ofthe soundtrack here. It's good.



My mate Tom had a load of his music on this (also in the last few) - worth checking out the rest of his stuff too. I had this tape of his on yesterday.


----------



## chilango (Feb 14, 2021)

Alumnus of Sevenoaks (private school), Oxford University and the  SWP apparently.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Feb 14, 2021)

It’s an entertainment as greene said of our man in Havana. It’s either this of the masked singer


----------



## brogdale (Feb 14, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Watched the first one last night. I enjoy the format and footage, but the actual content beyond that is largely nonsense I think. The quip that it's like it's been made by a stoned teenager on a late night Wikipedia binge is about right, it's the type of thing that could be a spoof tbh.


I'm afraid that when I tried to watch the first episode last night the content lost out to the strong cider I'd had.
Outcome = dribble & a cricked neck and about 3 minutes watched!


----------



## beesonthewhatnow (Feb 14, 2021)

“Cassette Boy for people with LRB subscriptions”, as posted by an ex urbanite on FB this week


----------



## Doctor Carrot (Feb 14, 2021)

tim said:


> "Once" in this case meaning, in half-way through the three-minute video two posts before yours. Curtis has certainly managed to fuck up your short term memory.
> 
> Anyway, isn't Adam Curtis just ripping off the format of James Burke's _Connections_ series from the 1970s?




I saw that video once about 4 years ago which is why I said I heard it once. Anyway it wasn't Curtis that fucked up my short term memory, too many disco biscuits in my youth put paid to that particular aspect of my cranial faculties. 

As for it being a rip off who cares? Everything's a rip off of everything else in some way. Burke doesn't have the exclusive rights to use archive footage in this way and neither does Curtis.


----------



## stethoscope (Feb 14, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Watched the first one last night. I enjoy the format and footage, but the actual content beyond that is largely nonsense I think. The quip that it's like it's been made by a stoned teenager on a late night Wikipedia binge is about right, it's the type of thing that could be a spoof tbh.



Not watched these nor I think any Curtis other than Hypernormalisation. And in that case I was interested in the archive footage but entirely switched off from what was being said.


----------



## SovietArmy (Feb 14, 2021)

i watched all episondes, sadly I felt trap in conspirasy theories and plenty of fasist ideology not my cup of tea.  Manipulating information.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 15, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> Watched the first one last night. I enjoy the format and footage, but the actual content beyond that is largely nonsense I think. The quip that it's like it's been made by a stoned teenager on a late night Wikipedia binge is about right, it's the type of thing that could be a spoof tbh.



Go on then . Point to one deliberate deception or debunked conspiracy theory from the documentary 'can't get you out of my head'.


----------



## kabbes (Feb 15, 2021)

I enjoyed the first one, particularly the story about “Project Mindfuck”.

However, I think the story Curtis is trying to tell is actually told more effectively by him in a conversation-interview he has with Charlie Brooker (below).  Having the freedom to stretch it out over six hours makes him lose focus and thus the core narrative gets lost in the sea of songs and archive.









						Charlie Brooker in Conversation with Adam Curtis
					

The friends and collaborators discuss Curtis' new six-part BBC series, 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World'.




					www.vice.com


----------



## Part 2 (Feb 15, 2021)

killer b said:


> My mate Tom had a load of his music on this (also in the last few) - worth checking out the rest of his stuff too. I had this tape of his on yesterday.




Yes.... this is excellent.


----------



## killer b (Feb 15, 2021)

Part 2 said:


> Yes.... this is excellent.


he's got a new LP out on Third Kind in the next month or so too, I'll update the appropriate thread when it turns up


----------



## elbows (Feb 15, 2021)

The Robin Douglas-Home divorce stuff was a really stupid aside, probably only made it in because he stumbled on archive footage of Alan Whickers insensitive documentary about the divorce.


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Feb 15, 2021)

kabbes said:


> I enjoyed the first one, particularly the story about “Project Mindfuck”.
> 
> However, I think the story Curtis is trying to tell is actually told more effectively by him in a conversation-interview he has with Charlie Brooker (below).  Having the freedom to stretch it out over six hours makes him lose focus and thus the core narrative gets lost in the sea of songs and archive.
> 
> ...



I agree and would also add that the problem with much of Curtis' analysis is that, like Hegel, he inverts reality, seeing ideas as the primary drivers of domination and power rather than primarily being the product of domination and power.


----------



## LDC (Feb 15, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> Go on then . Point to one deliberate deception or debunked conspiracy theory from the documentary 'can't get you out of my head'.



That's not what I said though, and we're talking about the current series aren't we?

One of my criticisms is he mentions something or someone and then draws a direct line (or hints at an important connection) from a person or event to something happening on a much wider cultural and political level. That and he elevates individuals to some historic level of importance and slots footage of them into a grand narrative about how it reflects another event. It's hard not to feel like he largely decides what to show based on what nice footage he finds in the archives rather than facts and a decent analysis.

I enjoyed the second episode better though, thought it held together more and had less random shit in it, that while I enjoy watching, feels like it all needs to be taken with a bucket of salt.


----------



## editor (Feb 15, 2021)

Part 2 said:


> My thoughts entirely. Interesting information not to be taken too seriously in isolation. Maybe with some things you find interesting enough to read a bit further.
> 
> Somone's put together a spotify playlist ofthe soundtrack here. It's good.



It's great, is that.


----------



## oryx (Feb 15, 2021)

elbows said:


> The Robin Douglas-Home divorce stuff was a really stupid aside, probably only made it in because he stumbled on archive footage of Alan Whickers insensitive documentary about the divorce.





LynnDoyleCooper said:


> One of my criticisms is he mentions something or someone and then draws a direct line (or hints at an important connection) from a person or event to something happening on a much wider cultural and political level. That and he elevates individuals to some historic level of importance and slots footage of them into a grand narrative about how it reflects another event. It's hard not to feel like he largely decides what to show based on what nice footage he finds in the archives rather than facts and a decent analysis.


I think the point of the Robin Douglas-Home stuff was to emphasise the position of women as little more than chattels at that time. 

However, it was an odd case to choose to illustrate this and I'd agree about the use of footage.


----------



## kabbes (Feb 15, 2021)

oryx said:


> I think the point of the Robin Douglas-Home stuff was to emphasise the position of women as little more than chattels at that time.


I’m glad you explained that to me because I was honestly lost as to why it was in there.


----------



## elbows (Feb 15, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> One of my criticisms is he mentions something or someone and then draws a direct line (or hints at an important connection) from a person or event to something happening on a much wider cultural and political level.



At just that very moment, on the other side of the world Gerald was having his bollocks boiled by Bobby Despot.



> I enjoyed the second episode better though, thought it held together more and had less random shit in it, that while I enjoy watching, feels like it all needs t be taken with a bucket of salt.



Of the three episodes I've seen so far, episode 2 was the most interesting and at moments very warm and inspiring. But I still feel like I'll need to fact-check everything, and I know he will let me down in the end by being dull and pulling the wrong punches. He is clearly a product of some of the themes he obsesses over. He is a good guide to a certain version of boomer thinking but is trapped by some of its limitations. And for all the time he spends on powerful elites, he is deliberately naive about so much in that realm.

Aspects of the style, the archive footage and the narrative are appealing to me. I'm in a generation that came after, and what happened to those previous couple of generations, the suburbs etc is of significant interest to me. And I have been starved in my lifetime (born 1975) of much in the way of 'grand narrative', 'what is this era all about?' joined up thinking. When I was first watching his stuff 15-20 years ago I was able to overlook his limitations far too much because I'd been so starved of that sort of food for thought, so anything on that front seemed great. As time has gone on I have been able to understand better all that he does not have to offer. This series gives me the opportunity to review my feelings about his work again, now that I am older and this century is moving on further from the 20th century themes. So far it seems like a bit of a reboot/revisiting of much of his earlier work, but I'm going to reserve proper judgement of it until I've watched the rest. I'm hoping events of recent years including the pandemic will offer an obvious opportunity for him to further his big stories and weave a new sense of purpose and what is possibile and where things are going into the tale, but I have my doubts. I dont need him to cover every angle, and I could live more happily with his limitations if there was more from others out there which could cover everything else, as part of a balanced diet I dont have a huge problem with him. 

Even though I'm reserving judgement about his overriding narrative until I've watched it all, I do think he is probably well past the peak of making his very best use of archive footage, music etc. One of the episodes was crying out for Rowche Rumble as part of the soundtrack.


----------



## oryx (Feb 15, 2021)

Only seen the first one. (We're trying to finish off 'Marcella' which is equally confusing...).

I find Curtis's offbeat style seductive and watchable, but he jumps all over the place , making random connections, so his actual point is often unclear.


----------



## elbows (Feb 15, 2021)

oryx said:


> I think the point of the Robin Douglas-Home stuff was to emphasise the position of women as little more than chattels at that time.
> 
> However, it was an odd case to choose to illustrate this and I'd agree about the use of footage.



I'd support more exposure of that sort of historical horror, but I think he was only touching on that aspect to tell a larger, sloppier story about the upper classes ending up isolated and out of touch. Isolation certainly one of the major theses as usual, not without good reason. Looks like he chose a slightly different bunch of psychologists to pick on this time. The scary computers are still whirring away too, joining the psychologists with their simplified ideas about human behaviour, to match his simplified narratives, wont be long till AI can master and imitate the Curtis method


----------



## elbows (Feb 15, 2021)

The critics view seems to be even more predictable than the soundtrack:









						Adam Curtis: Critics praise series as 'dazzling' although some found it 'incoherent'
					

Can't Get You Out of My Head aims to provide an "emotional history of the modern world".



					www.bbc.co.uk


----------



## elbows (Feb 15, 2021)

They may as well have said 'If you went into this with an impossibly stale and narrow worldview, you'll be blown away like a Church of England vicar who finds themself on acid in the middle of a revolutionary riot'.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 15, 2021)

LynnDoyleCooper said:


> That's not what I said though, and we're talking about the current series aren't we?
> 
> One of my criticisms is he mentions something or someone and then draws a direct line (or hints at an important connection) from a person or event to something happening on a much wider cultural and political level. That and he elevates individuals to some historic level of importance and slots footage of them into a grand narrative about how it reflects another event. It's hard not to feel like he largely decides what to show based on what nice footage he finds in the archives rather than facts and a decent analysis.
> 
> I enjoyed the second episode better though, thought it held together more and had less random shit in it, that while I enjoy watching, feels like it all needs to be taken with a bucket of salt.



Fair play.
I thought it was great . A little too much dancing footage though.
I think your right about the exageration of individual impact....  He uses a little of what Chomsky calls 'oversimplified and emotionally potent'  narrative.

Overall a fascinating holistic dive into the roots of the dark side of human nature and the struggle to deal with it.


----------



## 8ball (Feb 15, 2021)

Wouldn’t be Curtis without the dancing footage.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Feb 15, 2021)

His wiki entry read like he wrote it himself - say these in his voice :

" He began a PhD and taught in politics, but ultimately became disillusioned with academia and decided to leave the profession.[7] "

" He believes the Western world is haunted by the past, with no vision for the future, and that it has become pessimistic and backward-looking. "

still entertaining tho


----------



## LDC (Feb 17, 2021)

Watched the third episode last night, enjoyed the first half and then less so the second when I thought it rambled again. I think he's really interesting on big picture stuff, but he then zooms in on individuals for a bit and then back out again, and it's not always clear to me what the connection is or whether it's just to show some footage he likes. Not denying he's clever, in fact some of the problem might be it's all too clever for me to comprehend.

Anyway, think the next episode is the '90s which will be interesting as it'll more my time period to understand better.


----------



## toblerone3 (Feb 17, 2021)

......meanwhile.....at the very same time.... at the other end of the TV research office some interesting footage was discovered.....this was something which no-one had seen before.....increasingly they came to believe that they would be able to use this footage and people would just not realise the tenuousness of the link...but they were wrong....


----------



## toblerone3 (Feb 18, 2021)

....


----------



## bimble (Feb 18, 2021)

just pressed play on the first episode and before you get to one minute in he has already said "but at the same time", in the exact same intonation he used for that same phrase a hundred times in previous works. Excellent stuff.


----------



## Smokeandsteam (Feb 19, 2021)

I'm finding this a pain in the arse to watch. I haven't begun to think about the narrative because there are constant distractions from the barrage of images and music. The jumpy style and constant cutting to 'other things' just felt annoying after a bit. Maybe I need to 'go with it' but it just seems insubstantial.


----------



## Flavour (Feb 19, 2021)

as usual the archive footage is great and some cool stories in there but feel he needs to expand his soundtrack a bit (it's always the same handful of tracks) and this whole defining relative clause thing he does is grating, so many sentences like this: "but what they were really doing was...", "but what this meant was...", "but in reality what was happening was"


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Feb 19, 2021)

I'm just a sucker for the footage and individual stories, which I find fascinating. I don't think there's much big narrative stuff of much meaning in this series. I thought Century of the Self, Power of Nightmares and the Trap did present coherent narratives, but the last three of his series have all been too baggy on that front.


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Feb 19, 2021)

Flavour said:


> as usual the archive footage is great and some cool stories in there but feel he needs to expand his soundtrack a bit (it's always the same handful of tracks) and this whole defining relative clause thing he does is grating, so many sentences like this: "but what they were really doing was...", "but what this meant was...", "but in reality what was happening was"



I was pleased he used 2Pac's 'Violent', a track I love and had completely forgotten about. Also didn't know much about 2Pac's mum and her Black Panther activism, so that was cool to learn about.


----------



## Kaka Tim (Feb 20, 2021)

up to part 3. Have to say - im enjoying this more than anything he's done in years. Not convinced all the threads interconnect - but they are illuminating in their own
 right and overall its as interesting a take on the triumph of international finance capital over our lives as any.


----------



## oryx (Feb 20, 2021)

Just watched the third episode. 

Interesting that Curtis identifies the idea of suburban/'housewife' ennui as the late 60s - I thought Betty Friedan identified it a few years earlier (_The Feminine Mystique_ was published 1963).

For all its flaws, I'm really enjoying this, though.


----------



## Winot (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> just pressed play on the first episode and before you get to one minute in he has already said "but at the same time", in the exact same intonation he used for that same phrase a hundred times in previous works. Excellent stuff.



He uses the word ‘but’ far too often.


----------



## bimble (Feb 20, 2021)

Winot said:


> He uses the word ‘but’ far too often.


Powerful Forces compel him .


----------



## Flavour (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> Powerful Forces compel him .


Powerful forces _from the past _


----------



## bimble (Feb 20, 2021)

Only made it halfway through episode one so far but I think it’s far less coherent than century of the self, the loose ends are just there hanging in front of your face when he moves on to ‘meanwhile, in China..’ 
But still, anyone who gets all riled up and angry about adam curtis is just looking in the wrong place for whatever it is they think his films should be.


----------



## Edie (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> Only made it halfway through episode one so far but I think it’s far less coherent than century of the self, the loose ends are just there hanging in front of your face when he moves on to ‘meanwhile, in China..’
> But still, anyone who gets all riled up and angry about adam curtis is just looking in the wrong place for whatever it is they think his films should be.


I watched the first episode but don’t think I can be arsed to watch more. Seems pretty insubstantial and doesn’t back up anything, so it’s just a story. Plus his style is annoying.


----------



## bimble (Feb 20, 2021)

It’s ten thousand little stories, tenuously linked or not really linked at all, but great stories, imo. I’d watch a whole film about that old Irish woman who ran off to join the Russian revolution for instance, the one with the manuscript in a language nobody has ever managed to identify. Wtf was that?


----------



## Edie (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> It’s ten thousand little stories, tenuously linked or not really linked at all, but great stories, imo. I’d watch a whole film about that old Irish woman who ran off to join the Russian revolution for instance, the one with the manuscript in a language nobody has ever managed to identify. Wtf was that?


Should I watch more? I like stories about interesting people, I’m just a bit unconvinced by the central premise that people in late 20thC were all paranoid.


----------



## bimble (Feb 20, 2021)

Edie said:


> Should I watch more? I like stories about interesting people, I’m just a bit unconvinced by the central premise that people in late 20thC were all paranoid.


I think it’s fine, better even, to just enjoy it for the little stories and pretty much ignore his attempt to justify their inclusion in an overarching narrative.


----------



## Edie (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> I think it’s fine, better even, to just enjoy it for the little stories and pretty much ignore his attempt to justify their inclusion in an overarching narrative.


Understood 👍🏻


----------



## kabbes (Feb 20, 2021)

The footage and small stories are interesting in their own right for illustrating how people are shaped by their context.  Probably more so if it happens to dovetail with something specific you are studying along the same lines — I admit to a fortuitous synchronicity in that regard.


----------



## 8ball (Feb 20, 2021)

Edie said:


> Should I watch more? I like stories about interesting people, I’m just a bit unconvinced by the central premise that people in late 20thC were all paranoid.



As someone who was there I can confirm they most definitely were.  
And possessive.  
And territorial.

Almost every day all I'd hear was "Who are you?", "Get out of my car", "What are you doing in my garden?" etc. etc.


----------



## IC3D (Feb 20, 2021)

It's enjoyable stoned wiki scrolling with pictures


----------



## Smokeandsteam (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> I think it’s fine, better even, to just enjoy it for the little stories and pretty much ignore his attempt to justify their inclusion in an overarching narrative.



This is obviously where I’m going wrong, because I look at these stories and start to think: what is this telling us and where does it fit into the wider narrative and how? But then something else appears and you need to start thinking the same things about that and then that’s gone and off we go again with a Burial track.

It’s not a style I’m very familiar with or that I can say I’m enjoying. Must be my age


----------



## Smokeandsteam (Feb 20, 2021)

Jeff Robinson said:


> I'm just a sucker for the footage and individual stories, which I find fascinating. I don't think there's much big narrative stuff of much meaning in this series. I thought Century of the Self, Power of Nightmares and the Trap did present coherent narratives, but the last three of his series have all been too baggy on that front.




He’s completely passed me by to date. I was recommended this series  but the more I think about it the more it’s irritating me. Would you recommend binning it off and starting with one of these instead?


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Feb 20, 2021)

Smokeandsteam said:


> He’s completely passed me by to date. I was recommended this series  but the more I think about it the more it’s irritating me. Would you recommend binning it off and starting with one of these instead?



Not sure any of them would be your cup of tea tbh, they’re all in this style. I think Century of the Self is an interesting look at how psycho-analysis fused with politics in the 20th century.


----------



## oryx (Feb 20, 2021)

bimble said:


> It’s ten thousand little stories, tenuously linked or not really linked at all, but great stories, imo. I’d watch a whole film about that old Irish woman who ran off to join the Russian revolution for instance, the one with the manuscript in a language nobody has ever managed to identify. Wtf was that?


That was a really interesting story. I tried to Google her (I heard her name as Ethel Bell) but couldn't find anything.


----------



## elbows (Feb 20, 2021)

Flavour said:


> Powerful forces _from the past _



In the form of the ghosts of Elmer Fudd and Ayn Rand fucking underneath a psychoanalysts porch in the leafy suburbs. Suburbs that masked something far more sinister and empty in the hearts of humankind. But the traders had noticed, guided by dodgy Bobby the Supercomputer. Bobby also noticed that the cold war seemed to have started because someone left the fridge door open. An atmosphere that suited the computer well, as it needed to be kept cool to stop not only its giant brains from melting, but also to prevent overheating of the international currency markets. Wilhelm Reich realised that the computer could actually survive without the fridge, if only it dedicated more time to wanking itself off. As for the markets, they can go fuck themselves too, opined Trent Drippage, neon dissident and leader of the chaotic sausages, who was still bitter that his radical life partner left him for a snowblower.


----------



## Flavour (Feb 20, 2021)

But at the same time, in China, something was about to happen that would change _everything_


----------



## elbows (Feb 20, 2021)

As for anyone that may have dipped their toes in the water but arent sure whether to bother past episode 1, I would recommend episode two in its own right at least (cannot comment on 4-6 yet s I havent seen them). Theres one bit of episode two that i intend to transcribe soon because it moved me.


----------



## stdP (Feb 20, 2021)

I like the stories and I like the style, but as a whole this series wandered around too much in search of coherence; I felt it didn't really have anything like a beginning, middle and end in the same way his previous series (mostly) managed.

Perhaps a little too much time in the edit suite and not enough wagging fingers from editors.


----------



## discokermit (Feb 21, 2021)

8ball said:


> As someone who was there I can confirm they most definitely were.
> And possessive.
> And territorial.
> 
> Almost every day all I'd hear was "Who are you?", "Get out of my car", "What are you doing in my garden?" etc. etc.


a nice elaboration on the old michael redmond gag.


----------



## Orang Utan (Feb 21, 2021)

discokermit said:


> a nice elaboration on the old michael redmond gag.


Joe Pasquale can go shit now


----------



## discokermit (Feb 21, 2021)

Orang Utan said:


> Joe Pasquale can go shit now


i heard some thing with redmond where he said he heard an interview with joe pasquales son and during the interview pasquale junior stole a different redmond joke!


----------



## Orang Utan (Feb 21, 2021)

discokermit said:


> i heard some thing with redmond where he said he heard an interview with joe pasquales son and during the interview pasquale junior stole a different redmond joke!


And then I got off the bus


----------



## PaulOK (Feb 21, 2021)

chilango said:


> Alumnus of Sevenoaks (private school), Oxford University and the  SWP apparently.



Ah ! I was wondering why he featured in a rather sniffy review by Kimber in this week's Socialist Worker.
Acton International Socialists didn't come off too well in Episode 1.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 21, 2021)

Maybe my pattern recognition is fucked from smoking too much weed, but I found the connections between individuals, the psychology/idealism, and the roll out into the larger society apparent . Maybe, not as well crafted as the century of the self or the power of nightmares but excellent all the same. 

It adds to his overall narrative, each documentary taking a slice of the same subject matter from a different angle .
This series seemed mainly to be a damning crucifixion of colonialism,idealism and bigotry. Ace.


----------



## Flavour (Feb 21, 2021)

The thinking man's conspiracy theory


----------



## Edie (Feb 21, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> Maybe my pattern recognition is fucked from smoking too much weed, but I found the connections between individuals, the psychology/idealism, and the roll out into the larger society apparent . Maybe, not as well crafted as the century of the self or the power of nightmares but excellent all the same.
> 
> It adds to his overall narrative, each documentary taking a slice of the same subject matter from a different angle .
> This series seemed mainly to be a damning crucifixion of colonialism,idealism and bigotry. Ace.


Are you (or anyone) able to summarise his main argument in a few sentences?


----------



## Orang Utan (Feb 21, 2021)

Edie said:


> Are you (or anyone) able to summarise his main argument in a few sentences?


Capitalism is bad


----------



## Fez909 (Feb 21, 2021)

oryx said:


> That was a really interesting story. I tried to Google her (I heard her name as Ethel Bell) but couldn't find anything.











						Ethel Voynich - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## oryx (Feb 21, 2021)

Fez909 said:


> Ethel Voynich - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks! A very interesting life.

(I wondered about my hearing after seeing she was called Voynich...but was relieved to see her maiden name was Boole!).


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 22, 2021)

Edie said:


> Are you (or anyone) able to summarise his main argument in a few sentences?



I just did . Oh you want me to do it again ? 

First my theory as to what possible reasons anybody would try and slate or demean Curtis for. 

As he crucified British colonialism with indisputable facts, racist British bigoted people will not like him.

As he crucified communism .. commies will not like him .

As he crucified.... well you get the idea. I propose that most of you who slate him do it because you are a bigot or you arrogantly dismiss it because you don't understand . 

Right . Now to summarise this again in different words ... It is basically a damning call out of colonialism of the planet and mind ... exposing the flawed and mislead ideology and disgusting bigotry of our age. That do ?


----------



## beesonthewhatnow (Feb 22, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> I just did . Oh you want me to do it again ?
> 
> First my theory as to what possible reasons anybody would try and slate or demean Curtis for.
> 
> ...


Yeah, we’re all thick bigots round here, that must be it.


----------



## redsquirrel (Feb 22, 2021)

Orang Utan said:


> Capitalism is bad


Not seen the latest series so I'm basis my view of previous work. But one of my problems with Curtis is that connections to capitalism are too often missing. There is too much about ideologies and too little about the main actors - labour, capital and states. More connection of developments to the contest between labour and capital would improve his work.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 22, 2021)

beesonthewhatnow said:


> Yeah, we’re all thick bigots round here, that must be it.


Or arrogantly dismissing it because you can't grasp the overall statement he is making .Yes :/ It's just that a lot of what he describes is backed up by everything else . I can not understand why somebody would dismiss it so easily.


----------



## bimble (Feb 22, 2021)

Fez909 said:


> Ethel Voynich - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you! So the mystery manuscript was this one, and all the men who have claimed to decipher it are stories in themselves.








						Voynich manuscript - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




The inclusion of this manuscript in episode one (where it serves absolutely zero purpose narratively) should serve to remind us that adam curtis is a collector of curiousities, he makes collages, if you want big strong serious analysis without frivolous but interesting bits and bobs floating about in it, read a book or something instead.


----------



## Orang Utan (Feb 22, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> Or arrogantly dismissing it because you can't grasp the overall statement he is making .Yes :/ It's just that a lot of what he describes is backed up by everything else . I can not understand why somebody would dismiss it so easily.


Ah, awesome!


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 22, 2021)

Oh stop being so sensitive ! We are all bigoted in our own way .


----------



## kabbes (Feb 22, 2021)

Three episodes in, I wouldn’t describe any of it as conspiracy theory.  If anything, it’s the lack of narrative coherence that is my biggest criticism, which is the opposite of conspiracism.  Mostly, it’s just a series of telling of real events.  Yes, the telling is subjective but all telling of events is subjective.  I prefer that subjectivism not to be hidden.

I’d say that when he talks about subjects I know about, he presents the information pretty fairly and uncontroversially.  Simplified and stripped of some nuance, sure, but what can you expect in an attempt to tell the whole history of the second half of the twentieth century?  Certainly, Curtis’s presentation of the way psychiatry and psychology has primarily been used to support and promote neoliberalism is a mainstream line of social psychological thought, with plenty of eminent professors and other academics writing in depth about it.  That part at least is no conspiracy theory.  I can’t speak for the subjects I don’t know about but the credibility deriving from the things I do gives me more trust than I have in other documentary makers.


----------



## Orang Utan (Feb 22, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> Oh stop being so sensitive ! We are all bigoted in our own way .


pardon


----------



## elbows (Feb 22, 2021)

kabbes said:


> Three episodes in, I wouldn’t describe any of it as conspiracy theory.  If anything, it’s the lack of narrative coherence that is my biggest criticism, which is the opposite of conspiracism.  Mostly, it’s just a series of telling of real events.  Yes, the telling is subjective but all telling of events is subjective.  I prefer that subjectivism not to be hidden.



Plus he spent part of one episode trying to put a bunch of conspiracy theories into their historical contexts, including the ones that were a piss take that were supposed to be too absurd to be taken seriously, but came back to haunt some minds.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 22, 2021)

Operation mindfuck! I had never heard of that before . 
Great idea gone wrong  Possibly the first case of subvertising :/


----------



## PaulOK (Feb 23, 2021)

Edie said:


> Are you (or anyone) able to summarise his main argument in a few sentences?



That we live in a nihilistic, deeply corrupt, post idealistic age where all politicians who achieve Office are non ideological and merely see themselves as managers/technocrats on behalf of interests that are solely driven by money and power (Curtis includes the Chinese Communist Party in this). The populace realize this , are fully complicit and deaden the hopelessness by believing in largely fake national myths, conspiracy theories and by consuming enormous amounts of narcotics, be they prescription or otherwise. Modern societies are basically in a death spiral of hyper individualism and they fool themselves that Social Media amount to new communities where as in reality it's used to further monitor, alienate and control.

That's what I got from it anyway. Some good tunes/images though.


----------



## Edie (Feb 23, 2021)

PaulOK said:


> That we live in a nihilistic, deeply corrupt, post idealistic age where all politicians who achieve Office are non ideological and merely see themselves as managers/technocrats on behalf of interests that are solely driven by money and power (Curtis includes the Chinese Communist Party in this). The populace realize this , are fully complicit and deaden the hopelessness by believing in largely fake national myths, conspiracy theories and by consuming enormous amounts of narcotics, be they prescription or otherwise.
> 
> That's what I got from it anyway.


Thanks. I suspect kabbes point about the role of psychology/chiatry too is a theme he returns to. I think I’ll give episode 2 a go (altho it all just sounds like stuff he’s said before).


----------



## Gromit (Feb 23, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> I just did . Oh you want me to do it again ?
> 
> First my theory as to what possible reasons anybody would try and slate or demean Curtis for.
> 
> ...


Sounds like a Nigel Farage. 

Slag everything off but don’t offer any solutions just criticism. 

It’s an easy vehicle to ride. From chairing meetings I learnt early on that everyone loves a good moan. To bemoan the world as it stands. Without acknowledging that sitting there and moaning changes nothing and wastes time and precious energy that could be spent on fixing shit.


----------



## kabbes (Feb 23, 2021)

Edie said:


> Thanks. I suspect kabbes point about the role of psychology/chiatry too is a theme he returns to. I think I’ll give episode 2 a go (altho it all just sounds like stuff he’s said before).


It’s most definitely stuff he’s said before.  However the specific little stories are new, interesting and sad.  I’ve come to the conclusion that if I concentrate on those I don’t have to worry so much about whether Curtis is trying to do something novel.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 23, 2021)

Sorry Gromit,are you talking about Curtis or my theory ? Pointing out or clarifying facts is the first stage of dealing with them :/


----------



## Gromit (Feb 23, 2021)

VfromtheG said:


> Sorry Gromit,are you talking about Curtis or my theory ? Pointing out or clarifying facts is the first stage of dealing with them :/


Curtis. 
Providing they move onto dealing with them instead of just continuing to just shout about what’s wrong over and over.


----------



## VfromtheG (Feb 23, 2021)

Gromit said:


> Curtis.
> Providing they move onto dealing with them instead of just continuing to just shout about what’s wrong over and over.



I get what your saying . I would say that there is potential for his work to stimulate action and also, due to hus focus on ideology going wrong and the hazards of acting naively - hopefully sensible and pragmatic action .
As I got into dogooding stuff i do remember Curtis's angle being quite beneficial for avouding several traps. 

Edit.

Well for a start .... in part 2 there is a fantastic .... I can use no other word ... crucifixion of middle class activism; the protagonists being the children of the racist pigs with no real intention of relinquishing power. .  Now that is a useful armament on the battlefield of organisation . I can seriously vouch for that one. Be class aware when organising!


----------



## oryx (Feb 24, 2021)

PaulOK said:


> That we live in a nihilistic, deeply corrupt, post idealistic age where all politicians who achieve Office are non ideological and merely see themselves as managers/technocrats on behalf of interests that are solely driven by money and power (Curtis includes the Chinese Communist Party in this). The populace realize this , are fully complicit and deaden the hopelessness by believing in largely fake national myths, conspiracy theories and by consuming enormous amounts of narcotics, be they prescription or otherwise. Modern societies are basically in a death spiral of hyper individualism and they fool themselves that Social Media amount to new communities where as in reality it's used to further monitor, alienate and control.
> 
> That's what I got from it anyway. Some good tunes/images though.


My OH recommended this to his best mate via WhatsApp, who promptly responded with 'What's it about?'.

If only you'd posted this a couple of days earlier he could have C & P'ed it into WhatsApp and passed it off as his own!   

Joking aside, it's a good analysis of a series that _is _hard to explain.


----------



## kabbes (Feb 24, 2021)

Not that it interferes with the above analysis, but it’s interesting to expand on the thought about ideology and whether or not current leaders are “non-ideological”.

Some (eg Billig) would hold that there is no such thing as “non-ideological”. All are following an ideology, even if they don’t explicitly name or even identify it, because these ideologies comprise everyday common sense. In fact, this approach suggests that everybody holds within them multiple ideologies, which create contradictions when a situation is encountered. The resolution of these contradictions creates internal tensions or, for want of a better phrase, “powerful forces inside them”.

Alternatively, some (eg Foucault) would hold that “ideology” is itself typically used by those not agreeing with an agenda to position those ideas as being against truth or science. The use of the word therefore means that the discourse within which the word is being employed has already been accepted as correct by default.  For this reason, employing “ideology” as a tool within social analysis is inherently unhelpful.  One should instead focus on the components that make up this “ideology” and what the effects of those components are.  Or, to put it another way, “meanwhile, in China, these forces were also being employed in a different way.”


----------



## Chilli.s (Feb 24, 2021)

Plodded through to the end, disappointed that there was no real conclusion, just a 6 hour soup of image, music and theories. Some of it interesting.

Loved the bit that I'd not realised before that mi5/mi6/gchq had no idea whatsoever that the soviet union was going to break up like it did when it did. What a laugh, all that money and spies and tech and old boys and no idea what was going on.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Feb 24, 2021)

..


----------



## Kaka Tim (Feb 25, 2021)

What was the track at the end of episode 4?


----------



## PaulOK (Feb 25, 2021)

Kaka Tim said:


> What was the track at the end of episode 4?



Haven't looked back at the episode but was it this ?


----------



## Kaka Tim (Feb 25, 2021)

PaulOK said:


> Haven't looked back at the episode but was it this ?
> 
> 
> thats the boy - cheers. added to the old Spotify playlist


----------



## hitmouse (Feb 25, 2021)

Posting this for discussion rather than as a straightforward endorsement (still not watched the new one, will probably get around to it one day, maybe): I heard someone claim that Curtis has links to the Furedi/Spiked lot, searching a little bit turned up this article: 








						Adam Curtis in the emperor's new clothes
					

Curtis has the glorious bounty of the entire BBC archives at his fingertips, he ranges across continents and across decades, and which voice dominates all of his programmes? The omnipotent narrator.




					www.opendemocracy.net
				



The link it provides to "Laurence Tennant's excellent piece on Curtis and his links to the politics of Frank Furedi and the Living Marxism network" is broken, but after a bit of digging around I managed to find it archived here:


			Pandora's Docs
		


Although there's yet another broken link there:
"As I've documented on this page, Curtis has a long history of collaboration with people associated with Furedi's group, and his documentaries at least as far back as _The Century of the Self_ have been pushing distinctly Furediite positions."
That seems like it would be an interesting thing to have archived, but it seems to be gone. Anyway, posting those links not because I'm 100% convinced of the argument, apart from anything else I'd have to go back and watch more Curtis to make my mind up on that, but because it seems like a potentially interesting line of discussion I'd not seen much of before.
And this is a great diss:



			
				Tennant said:
			
		

> What kind of person is in this audience?  Curtis himself describes it best:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## kabbes (Feb 28, 2021)

An unexpected side-effect of watching these documentaries: every reference work I currently read is now narrated in my head in the voice of Adam Curtis.  He just has a perfect cadence for it.


----------



## Brainaddict (Feb 28, 2021)

I'm only at beginning of episode 4 but what I'm finding odd is that Curtis seems to identify as fairly left wing, yet seems to have rejected the narrative that many alternative to the current system never got a chance because they were violently suppressed. Apparently the alternatives failed because of people's subconscious, or something. Or that's where it seems to be going.


----------



## kabbes (Feb 28, 2021)

Brainaddict said:


> I'm only at beginning of episode 4 but what I'm finding odd is that Curtis seems to identify as fairly left wing, yet seems to have rejected the narrative that many alternative to the current system never got a chance because they were violently suppressed. Apparently the alternatives failed because of people's subconscious, or something. Or that's where it seems to be going.


I think by the time you get to the end of episode 6, you might have a slightly different perspective on what he is saying.  Although, to be fair, keeping track of what he seems to be saying is not straightforward.  By far the best attempt I've seen to explain it is this one:



PaulOK said:


> That we live in a nihilistic, deeply corrupt, post idealistic age where all politicians who achieve Office are non ideological and merely see themselves as managers/technocrats on behalf of interests that are solely driven by money and power (Curtis includes the Chinese Communist Party in this). The populace realize this , are fully complicit and deaden the hopelessness by believing in largely fake national myths, conspiracy theories and by consuming enormous amounts of narcotics, be they prescription or otherwise. Modern societies are basically in a death spiral of hyper individualism and they fool themselves that Social Media amount to new communities where as in reality it's used to further monitor, alienate and control.



How we got here isn't really blamed on the subconscious, although it is in part blamed on the stories that came to be believed by politicians as a result of popular narratives about the subconscious.  I think it's pretty clear that violent surpression by opportunist robber-barons is a major part of why (explicitly) ideological politics failed.


----------



## Gramsci (Feb 28, 2021)

Ive watched the first two.

I liked Curtis previous work ( that I watched some time ago). Watching these two episodes and kept getting the nagging feeling his analysis is out of date.

Also wondered what the point of say his anecdotes about Malcolm X / Michael de Freitas was about. Ive come across "community leaders" ( small scale) who do promote themselves but really are about building up a profitable power base for themselves. Its not new thing.

I'm watching it and thinking is it really all about some kind of ideology? Ive been reading Grace Blakeleys "Stolen" - a political economic recent history. Changes that affected peoples ordinary lives were made by political decisions that could be reversed. These political decisions ( Thatcher) did not operate in some obscure realm but were concrete politics aimed to create a new kind of society/ economy.

Could be Im questioning is Adam Curtis analysis ahistorical?

The other thing Im noticing after watching Curtis now is feeling he is saying whatever one does as individual you are going to fail as you are all caught up in the system. It now feels to me that this does not help. It is also an observation that is very aloof from rest of society.


----------



## kabbes (Feb 28, 2021)

Gramsci — I actually think the first two are by far the weakest and I’m still at a bit of a loss as to what their purpose really was.  For me, number four was the best but five was also excellent.


----------



## LDC (Feb 28, 2021)

Yeah, I watched the last one the other night, and agree, think the later ones were better.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Mar 1, 2021)

horst mahler tho'. ffs


----------



## PaulOK (Mar 1, 2021)

Gramsci said:


> Ive watched the first two.
> 
> I liked Curtis previous work ( that I watched some time ago). Watching these two episodes and kept getting the nagging feeling his analysis is out of date.
> 
> ...



You're right that Curtis promotes a pretty dismal vision but honestly, if we look around us, is he all that wrong? I mean, look at a politician like Kamala Harris. Does she have any political ideals beyond the acquisition of money, power and her seemingly boundless personal ambition? She becomes across as a political weathervane, as do almost all modern politicians. The Banking and Business Elites seem to be utterly ascendant and those insurgent political movements are quite able to be tamed, coopted and used (Nike BLM sneakers anyone ?). Riot affected real estate from last year is quietly being bought for a song by corporations.

As for Grace Blakeley, my only observation of her was in a recent joint interview (with Jeremy  Gilbert) she gave to Owen Jones on his channel. Honestly , I wasn't impressed.  Her solutions were like those of Militant circa 1982 and in the interview she came across almost as a student Trot caricature at times. One of Curtis's points is that the Left have been utterly incapable of formulating any new thinking or devise any new solutions to the present situation. Maybe Blakeley is better in print.  I will check out her writings.


----------



## Clair De Lune (Mar 4, 2021)

All I can say is it was a huge error to attempt to watch this high.


----------



## not-bono-ever (Mar 5, 2021)

Clair De Lune said:


> All I can say is it was a huge error to attempt to watch this high.


 
She thought that she was able to watch it while:stoned.But she was wrong


----------



## Brainaddict (Mar 13, 2021)

I finally finished this last night. There are a few interesting stories in it and a few good points made. But if you have 8 hours or whatever of documentary to play with you should be able to talk much more coherently than this. The collage effect has taken over at this point. I also don't think his obsession with paranoia and suspicion in individualism is particularly illuminating. On the one hand he's saying individualism makes people paranoid, on the other hand he's admitting that the ruling class do conspire to prevent change from occurring. It's possible to talk about both things at once in a coherent way but you need a careful argument about it, not a hodge-podge of images and stories. 

The Graeber quote at the end is all very well, but leading up to it he hasn't made an argument about how change can happen (he hasn't even talked very well about how it gets blocked, even though that's a major theme of the series), so it feels kind of a meaningless gesture.

Lots of other weirdness too: I know he knows that neo-liberalism was planned and executed with massive resources behind it for the very particular reason of who it benefits. But he doesn't have much to say about that here, even though it's pretty key to the resistance to social change in the period he's talking about.


----------



## PaulOK (Mar 14, 2021)

Brainaddict said:


> I finally finished this last night. There are a few interesting stories in it and a few good points made. But if you have 8 hours or whatever of documentary to play with you should be able to talk much more coherently than this. The collage effect has taken over at this point. I also don't think his obsession with paranoia and suspicion in individualism is particularly illuminating.



Excellent review. It was a good watch but the 8 hours plus was way too long to make his (now well worn) points. My fear is that the BBC will throw a load of money at him every 5 years or so to make essentially the same programme. Maybe it will be 12 hours next time?


----------



## Smokeandsteam (Mar 14, 2021)

Good interview with Curtis in Jacobin:


ME
Bernie Sanders — and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain — both led populist leftist campaigns that sought to reawaken traditional notions of collectivism, but they both failed. Why do you think that was?

AC
You have to distinguish between the two. Sanders possibly could have won the 2016 election. I remember he was speaking almost exactly the same words as Trump — talking to the white working class and saying how they’ve been betrayed by Washington think tanks. Though, in the 2020 primaries, his language had changed. He’d slightly given up talking to the people that the liberals had become very frightened of.
I don’t know enough about Corbyn really, but I remember talking to Labour activists during the 2019 election and what I was shocked by was their dismissiveness of Brexit voters. I didn’t vote for Brexit, but I get why people did — not just because of anger but because it was a tactical way of declaring your alienation from a mainstream politics of technocratic management. I know there were lots of gin-drinking colonels in Surrey who also voted Brexit, but the elephant in the room was that all these ex-Labour voters suddenly became stupid in the minds of liberal metropolitans.
You can’t dismiss these people, you have to take them seriously. You don’t have to agree with them or believe that their racism is right, but you have to take them seriously and understand their feelings. It’s the same in the US, where people dismissed Trump supporters as duped by Putin, leaving them to wallow with crumbling infrastructure and a booming opioid epidemic.









						Adam Curtis Talks to Jacobin About Power, Politics, and His New Film
					

We talk to legendary filmmaker Adam Curtis about politics, power, music, and his new six-part documentary, Can’t Get You Out of My Head.




					jacobinmag.com


----------



## dtb (Apr 4, 2021)

1 1/2 episodes in and I don't think i'll bother with the rest.  It's a real mess.  Very disappointed after enjoying hyper-normalisation so much.


----------



## magneze (Apr 11, 2021)

Good interview with Adam Curtis 








						Adam Curtis - TALKING POLITICS
					

This week David talks to the celebrated film-maker Adam Curtis about his new series Can't Get You Out of My Head, which tells the history of the rise and fall of individualism. Why do so many people feel so powerless in the age of the emp...




					pca.st


----------



## DaveCinzano (Aug 17, 2021)

Nailed it


----------



## Supine (Aug 17, 2021)




----------



## CNT36 (Aug 19, 2021)

DaveCinzano said:


> Nailed it



It's like fucking January in there.


----------

