On reflection and in light of
Curtis' recent output, there is a little more I'd like to add...
It has to do with the thread title, Curtis, Brooker, RI, all of it.
To put it bluntly: I came to dislike Adam Curtis' work because it tends toward seeking to single out individuals (villains) as the root cause of much of the worlds problems, whilst downplaying systemic drivers such as institutional or societal factors.
(I found his segment in 'Machines...' objectionable as it went so far as to belittle and dismiss the work of some of the very people who sought to develop tools that could be useful in understanding such systemic drivers).
I see a media - mainstream, independent and alternative - generally beset by the same conceptual blindfolding in it's blaming of the Trumps, Putins, Boris Johnsons etc. for the worlds innumerable woes, without ever pausing to examine the underlying systems within which these actors operate.
This has everything to do with 'narrative' - or rather, the hegemony exerted by a certain prevailing 'narrative
style' - and how it distorts the way 'facts' are reported, the stories we are told and that we tell ourselves (and of ourselves) and hence the way most of us view the world. In these stories there are 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Bad things happen because the bad guys make them happen. Get rid of the bad guys: no more bad things.
But they are only stories. It's not the way the world really works.
Brooker
gets it.
A guy called Zeynep Tufekci
certainly gets it:
Hollywood mostly knows how to tell psychological, individualized stories. They do not have the right tools for sociological stories, nor do they even seem to understand the job...
...shows that travel in the psychological lane [...] depend on viewers identifying with the characters and becoming invested in them to carry the story, rather than looking at the bigger picture of the society, institutions and norms that we interact with and which shape us.
Craig Murray
gets it:
The fascinating thing is the binary, good versus evil, narrative which is being pursued in the liberal media. Trump and Johnson are bad. Therefore Hunter Biden and Brendan Cox must be good. The truth, of course, is much more complex than that. I am afraid to say that if you want an excessive simplification, a more accurate one would be that the entire political elite on all sides are self-serving and venal.
Even Snowden
gets it:
The political system, the legal system, the social system. And we have the proclivity to think that if we get rid of the people we don't like, the problem is solved. We go: "Oh, it's Donald Trump. Oh, it's Boris Johnson. Oh, it's the Russians" But Donald Trump is not the problem. Donald Trump is the product of the problem.
...many more get it. Too many don't.
So who can we trust? Certainly not those who seek to convince us that the world is full of 'Heroes' and 'Villains', that's for sure.
