Adam Curtis

luka

Well-known member
but this demonstration or seeming demonstration that by using the arts of mass persuasion we can induce particular behaviours in the population really captured peoples imagination.
 

DLaurent

Well-known member
No documentary maker I've seen really goes into Bernays but Curtis is the closest as at least he discusses him. The world has been full of 'events' that have crystallised public opinion recently, Bernays being the guiding light.
 

catalog

Well-known member
+1
finding his assured tones sounding a lot less plausible
it washes over one pleasantly with music and imagery skipping through tweaky concepts
hard to see whether its subtly indoctrinating something vague, or is just so vague you can project whatever depth you want on there
Started watching it and turned it off, his voice sounds like a robot.
 

version

Well-known member
I’m watching this Curtis now, although distractedly. I feel kind of tired of the style at this point
Yeah, I think he's in a similar boat to Burial in that he has a formula he can't or won't escape from and resorts to tinkering with things like duration in an effort to keep it fresh.

Apparently he was looking at doing something with TikTok, but it fell through when Trump banned them.

Despite avoiding social media – unsurprisingly, he says, “I don’t like being watched” – there is one form of which Curtis is a champion. “I love TikTok, it’s got this chaotic inventiveness.” He was in talks with the company to create a documentary that used TikTok stories to tell a wider story about power in the world, but after Trump banned the network, “it all got very complicated,” he says.
 

version

Well-known member
+1
finding his assured tones sounding a lot less plausible
it washes over one pleasantly with music and imagery skipping through tweaky concepts
hard to see whether its subtly indoctrinating something vague, or is just so vague you can project whatever depth you want on there
Some people I know are miffed at a comment he makes dismissing conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination, also a line about Biden's election meaning there's now hope in the US.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
What I think he does better than anyone I've seen so far is explore so much of what we're trying to get at right here on dissensus.com. i.e. How did we get here? What does it feel like? And are there any ways out? The ideas about the loss of linear narrative still remain prominent when thinking back on all of the stuff of his I've seen. Most of which by now has coagulated into a single blob aside from the odd stand out character like Bernays and Gaddafi. But the idea that not so long ago, within our own lifetimes there were beginnings, middles and ends to the stories we were being told by the media. Wars were won, walls fell down, regimes were toppled. But now it just seems to be an endless torrent of beginnings and then nothing but dissapation. Dissapation into one giant foggy clusterfuck that looms and compounds as the years go on. From listening to the podcast I posted earlier I hear that he's trying in the new film to explore whether there are actual alternatives to our current reality. So maybe the kpunkians would get something out of looking past the voice and same old style? I dunno. Haven't seen it. Will do eventually though
 

catalog

Well-known member
The style is a problem though, cos when he started these films, like say Century of the self, his approach felt very unique and fresh, but it now feels very stale and played out. So it sort of makes you feel like it's already a few years old.
 
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catalog

Well-known member
It's like being inside a really boring dream or being hungover. Sad robotic monotone.

Something about how he uses archive as well. And how you never see his face. The BBC had his blog up for a while, dunno if its still there, but I found reading him a lot better.
 

version

Well-known member
It may be that there is a massive shift in sensibility going on as a result of those waves of stuff online. Stuff that, as you say, has no interest in story, and is completely narrative-free. I have always been drawn to the idea that possibly the thing you think is the most fixed and absolute in the way we see things might be the real problem. Because it is never examined. And our belief in the primacy of stories might be that. It is true that people 200, 300 ago would have thought and felt completely differently from us today. Which means that people 200 years from now may have given up on all narrative and just be experiencing selves.

[...]

We are both charting – in very different ways – how in the age of the individual, where people were supposed to become confident and empowered, actually more and more people became uncertain and distrustful. I think it is one of the big dynamics of our time, and it comes out of the fault-line that was built into the very heart of individualism. If you are taught that the only thing you can truly trust is your own individual experience, then you find yourself increasingly helpless at understanding and judging things that are beyond your direct experience. You have no benchmark by which to measure them, because you have given up trusting the old snobby patrician class. But that then just accelerates the distrust. Out of which come all the waves of conspiracy theories.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's like being inside a really boring dream or being hungover. Sad robotic monotone.

Something about how he uses archive as well. And how you never see his face. The BBC had his blog up for a while, dunno if its still there, but I found reading him a lot better.
you like him to begin with though? we all liked him until now. theres something about now that makes it seem suddenly unappealing.
 

version

Well-known member
His point in that interview about "experiencing selves" makes me think of the Huxley "reality valve" psychedelics supposedly blow open. Maybe that's what the internet's done too. We can't function anymore because we've thrown open the doors of perception and can't handle it. It's too much to process. We're being bombarded with the noise of an entire planet.
 
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