Adam Curtis

[MacCruiskeen]

Note to Luther: When you said "typography" I thought it was a typo for "typing"... So I was baffled.

"Big white text in Helvetica"

Duh. Got it now, finally.

[Harvey]

On a similar note, this:



Required viewing, I would have thought. Herzog places his unreliable narrators, dreamers and ideologues next to each other with precision and timing. The context he creates is a little easier to see than Curtis because he comments less, but there's a similar expansion of that context through what he chooses to show, as much because of inaccuracies and misconceptions and what isn't included. Quite brilliant.

I paraphrase, but as Philip K Dick mused (with particular regard to Curtis) "how does one make a work of resistance from inside an empire of falsehood"?

Edit: If you're going to critique, at least know what you're criticising by having watched it.

[MacCruiskeen]

Harvey, thanks for the tip-off about Herzog's latest. I'll definitely watch that asap. Now there's a filmmaker. He's been amazingly productive in recent years, and his work just seems to get more and more interesting as he ages. All of his films are very recognisably his, and yet each film is surprisingly different from anything he has done before. Long may he live and work.

I paraphrase, but as Philip K Dick mused (with particular regard to Curtis) "how does one make a work of resistance from inside an empire of falsehood"?

Did Dick say that? It's a good question and he was a very interesting guy. I must read more of him.

But as regards Curtis: The question is moot, because Curtis's works are not works of resistance. They are the extended musings of a concerned but scatterbrained upper-middle-class English liberal. Or -- the same thing -- a person with "no politics" at all. Or perhaps a libertarian. Or maybe in fact a neoconservative. I documented all that (with quotes from the man himself) on the previous page of this thread. He just can't seem to make his mind up about anything, really. The thing is: He belongs to a very common type.* Look at the quotes from him, throughout this thread. I have rarely heard him say anything that wasn't either fairly obvious, entirely vacuous, factually inaccurate, actually obnoxiously wrong, or (often) just damn silly. (And NB: Adam Curtis is now 61.)

Do I fail to give him his due? Well, OK then: 1) He's a skilled manipulator of images, like many admen. 2) He (or his research team) do often find fascinating and unfamiliar footage in those archives. 3.) Curtis does at least notice and acknowledge that some things have gone very badly wrong with the world in the last couple of centuries, and that there are strange transformations afoot, not all of them easily explicable. 4) If Jonathan Cook is right, then the section of his latest that examines the West's treatment of Ghadaffi and his changing image in the media is illuminating and therefore worth watching. (So I do want to watch at least that bit of HyperNormalised as soon as I can.) - That's all I can think of.

Again, re: "how does one make a work of resistance from inside an empire of falsehood"? - I regard Curtis's oeuvre as part of that empire of falsehood, and it is now a mini-empire of falsehood all on its own (still firmly within the walls of The Black Iron Prison, though, and not struggling very hard to get out. Because it's a very comfy prison, for men of his means.) Therefore, I'm struggling to resist it, for example by posting my objections to his work on a moribund message board in an obscure corner of the internet. It may not be much of a "work of resistance", but at least I'm not bowing down in reverence to the emperor (or The Master).

Edit: If you're going to critique, at least know what you're criticising by having watched it

I knew that was coming, Harvey. And the damn thing has only just been broadcast. And I have other responsibilities and other priorities. And I assure you I've watched plenty of his stuff by now. But I will buy a ticket for The Amazing Admo's latest extravaganza eventually (it's three hours long?) ... after I've extracted my own wisdom teeth with pliers.



(By the way, and very seriously: Mesmerism is a fascinating phenomenon with very real -- and still badly under-studied -- effects. It can be used for good or evil, of course, like practically everything else.)

----------------

*Wilde (a real artist) identified that type 121 years ago:

LADY BRACKNELL What are your politics?
JACK Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.
LADY BRACKNELL Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate.

-from The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

[semper occultus]

(it's three hours long?)

that's really upset you hasn't it Mac...its actually 2hr 46m so you have an extra 14 mins of living to do even if you do watch it....

....iirc Power of Nightmares was 3 x 1 hour long tv episodes and this would probably get broadcast on tv the same way but on iplayer you can slice & dice how you want really - I've done half yesterday & will finish it off tonight & don't consider my time has been ill-used...I dare to hope you won't either....

[MacCruiskeen]

no, semper, it hasn't "really upset" me. I'm just trying to be choosy about where i direct my attention, especially for three hours 2hr 46m. Because, as Wombaticus Rex keeps pointing out: we are all going to die.

You really must listen to my new CD, by the way. It's 2hr 45m of me yodeling while Mrs MacCruiskeen accompanies me on the spoons. I'm telling you it's grrrrreat, so don't you dare dismiss it before you have sat through it in full. (Yesyes, I know you've heard my five previous albums, but this one's different, I promise you.)

[semper occultus]

...if you can present it accompanied by stock film archive of Henry Kissinger, computer rooms and mushroom clouds then I'd definitely be interested...

[MacCruiskeen]

Can do. Contact my agent to discuss fees.

[Iamwhomiam]

I just watched HyperNormalisation. A pretty good first introduction for me, if this is typical of Adam Curtis' work. Some pretty brutal scenes await the viewer, but all in all, a good synopsis of the past 35 years of US & colonial powers manipulation of middle eastern states and their reaction to it.

And much more, dealing with domestic (US) issues. Worthwhile to watch it, imo.

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks for that, Iamwhomiam. I will watch the film, and I'll refrain from any more comment on Curtis until I've done so.

My last word on this, I promise: No one is obliged to accept anything uncritically, and criticism is not "hate speech". Fandom isn't mandatory. I posted Jonathan Cook's review of HyperNormalisation a page back. He had watched the film, and he criticised it thoughtfully, at some length, and without once ever taking the piss. Does anyone here think that what Jonathan Cook says is badly wrong, or deeply unfair, or a misrepresentation of Curtis's film? Don't feel obliged to respond, but it is at least worth thinking about.

Over and out.

[bks]

Watch the first 15 minutes of Century of the Self and then pitch the rest of the oeuvre into history's dustbin.

Makes fine watching.

[tapitsbo]

I wouldn't go that far, the voiceover grated on me before the 15 minutes were up.

[SonicG]

Never really heard of this guy until a friend who does market research but is looking for a heart posted the trailer saying it will be "his epic media event of the year" or something...So I am off the cuffing here, but I would tend to agree that it is a bunch of hand-wringing about being even more connected but really more disconnected...but he will reveal the secret answers...I dunno, I guess I am old but I tend to agree that the analysis and insights offered by Debord, McLuhan and PKD are still very relevant and have not been superseded because we have not truly left the modern era...I never believed it was Post-Modern, just Very Late Modern. It is the same knives but sharpened to evermore precision...And our weapons??

[Jerky]

Those of you who find Curtis' work "problematic" are going to have a field day with the third season of Black Mirror.

Hoo boy... I can already hear the heads a-splodin' in my teeny tiny mind.

Jerky

[Spiro C. Thiery]

"Adam is such a contrarian" -- Jon Ronson

If viewing Curtis is essential, then the following video analysis along with Mac's previously posted Jonathan Cook review is more-so, especially to the uninitiated for whom Curtis will then represent some kind of brutally unvarnished legitimate criticism of the establishment. As Corbett points out in the vid:

It's not just a disservice to the information that these types of things are inserted into these documentaries as a given, it's actually one of the most violent disservices that can be done to taint this otherwise good information ... putting a tiny bit of mainline narrative into these otherwise interesting pieces of history makes the entire thing a deadly poison for those who are really trying to get to the bedrock truth that underlies this.

Basically, just as Cook does in his review of HyperNormalisation, Corbett's talking about how Curtis' documentaries posit as a given the establishment narrative in the War on Terror(tm).

[Harvey]

The energy and levels of discomfort that Curtis sparks here would appear to suggest he's doing something right. That much of the discussion arrives from elsewhere and often second hand is even more interesting. Perhaps his most significant quality as an artist is his focus upon the transmission and transformation of ideas and how one might follow conceptions very much as a doctor might trace the aetiology of disease. Has any other film maker introduced you to the curious genesis of The Selfish Gene theory? This archetype of modern secular rationalism arrives almost literally with the force of divine revelation and immediately begins mutating with the vigour of life itself. In 'Machines of Loving Grace' Curtis wields this metaphor like a paintbrush to great effect. When he describes how Putin's regime wields Surkov, is he really talking about Russia?

If you could stand with sufficient vantage to actually watch an idea spread through a crowd, would you immediately set about to use what you've learned or to learn what you're using?