Adam Curtis

you

you

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There's always been an element of heavy simplification in Curtis' work. Definite articles 'the managers', 'the bankers', etc... But, having watched the first episode last night, the move to remove commentary has only emphasised this aspect. I think the reductionism is more forgivable when parsed out by one man's voice (as we all do in pubs), without this, it does 'feel' more simplified.

The other aspect I felt was missing, and I missed it and felt it would've worked well, were the more poetic sections... like the Soldier's befriending a robin amongst the opium fields, or the long passages of music, ambient, before a Pye Corner Audio pulse jars one back into the next step of narrative. In terms of audio and visual affect TraumaZone isn't half as dynamic or ambitious as Hypernomalisation or Bitter Lake.
 
version

version

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... a brand new five-part series Shifty.

This series shows in a new and imaginative way how over the past 40 years in Britain extreme money and hyper-individualism came together in an unspoken alliance. Together they undermined one of the fundamental structures of mass democracy - that it could create a shared idea of what was real. And as that fell apart, with it went the language and the ideas that people had turned to for the last 150 years to make sense of the world they lived in.

As a result, life in Britain today has become strange - a hazy dream-like flux in which no one can predict what is coming next. While distrust in politicians keeps growing. And the political class seem to have lost control.

SHIFTY shows how that happened. But it also shows how that distrust is a symptom of something much deeper. That there is a now a mismatch between the world we experience day to day and the world that the politicians, journalists and experts describe to us.

The map no longer describes the territory.

The films tell the story of the rise of that unstable and confusing world from the 1980s to now. They use a vast range of footage to evoke what if felt like to live through an epic transformation. A shift in consciousness among people in how they saw and felt about the world. Hundreds of moments captured on film and video that give a true sense of the crazy complexity and variety of peoples actual lives. Moments of intimacy and strangeness and absurdity. From nuns playing Cluedo and fat-shaming ventriloquists to dark moments - racist attacks, suspicion of others and modern paranoia about conspiracies in Britain’s past.

The politicians from Mrs Thatcher onwards unleashed the power of finance to try and manage and deal with this new complexity. But then they lost control and the money broke free. While at the same time the growing chaotic force of hyper-individualism created an ever more fragmented and atomised society that ate away at the idea that was at the heart of democracy. That people could come together in groups.

Leaving everyone unmoored and isolated in a society which is waiting for something new to come. Something that will make sense of today's unstable and shifty world.
Click to expand...
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

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i really hope he shifts towards arty montage, which he's killer and unique at doing, and away from political analysis. on the latter he's out of ideas and he really stretches credulity. he doesn't know what he's talking about a lot of the time especially when he strays outside the UK - hard to do cultural analysis in places that you've never lived but he's always claiming to be able to detect and describe cultural shifts in china, in russia, in the US and so on
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
shakahislop said:
i really hope he shifts towards arty montage, which he's killer and unique at doing, and away from political analysis. on the latter he's out of ideas and he really stretches credulity. he doesn't know what he's talking about a lot of the time especially when he strays outside the UK - hard to do cultural analysis in places that you've never lived but he's always claiming to be able to detect and describe cultural shifts in china, in russia, in the US and so on
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I also went off him a bit when I found out he's quite tight with Frank Furedi and that whole clique of ex-Revolutionary Communist Party weirdos who all became born-again right-wing contrarians.
 
pattycakes

pattycakes

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Said this before, I'd love for him to do something about the arc of the artworld, how it's ended up as a form of private equity and how that reaches out and reflects the real world. Who were the main names behind all that. I would do the soundtrack for it. He should do something totally unlike anything he's done thus far
 
version

version

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
i really hope he shifts towards arty montage, which he's killer and unique at doing, and away from political analysis. on the latter he's out of ideas and he really stretches credulity. he doesn't know what he's talking about a lot of the time especially when he strays outside the UK - hard to do cultural analysis in places that you've never lived but he's always claiming to be able to detect and describe cultural shifts in china, in russia, in the US and so on
Click to expand...

He got the 'hypernormalisation' thesis, and possibly a good chunk of his views on Russia, from one particular book.

www.goodreads.com

Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last …

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revea…
www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com

This new one's specifically about Britain from Thatcher through to the present day, so maybe he'll have a better handle on the material and paint with less broad a brush; does look like the same old though. You'd be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu watching the trailer.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
version said:
He got the 'hypernormalisation' thesis, and possibly a good chunk of his views on Russia, from one particular book.

www.goodreads.com

Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last …

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revea…
www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com
Click to expand...
i mean it's one of the first things you learn when you're trying to get your head around another country, humility. or at least it should be. with him especially given his age there's a smell of the old way of an englishman going out to the world and surveying what he sees. my mate hates rory stewart for the same reason. rather than going oh ok i'm interested but it's going to take years to get my head around this coz i'm a foreigner and maybe i should shut up for a bit before i make pronouncements, which should basically be the default. and increasingly is i think. like can you say anything much about culture change unless you live somewhere for a few years? i don't think so really. you can make observations but you've sort of got to admit that you don't really get it. i think in social science they call it positionality isn't it

version said:
This new one's specifically about Britain from Thatcher through to the present day, so maybe he'll have a better handle on the material and paint with less broad a brush; does look like the same old though. You'd be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu watching the trailer.
Click to expand...
an arty montage about the the uk in that period ie my lifetime does sound brilliant. the trailer was great actually.
 
version

version

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
i mean it's one of the first things you learn when you're trying to get your head around another country, humility. or at least it should be. with him especially given his age there's a smell of the old way of an englishman going out to the world and surveying what he sees. my mate hates rory stewart for the same reason. rather than going oh ok i'm interested but it's going to take years to get my head around this coz i'm a foreigner and maybe i should shut up for a bit before i make pronouncements, which should basically be the default. and increasingly is i think. like can you say anything much about culture change unless you live somewhere for a few years? i don't think so really. you can make observations but you've sort of got to admit that you don't really get it. i think in social science they call it positionality isn't it
Click to expand...

Might be a topic for an other thread, maybe its own, but I was talking with a few people last night about that sort of impulse in general. The compulsion to share an opinion on things you don't know about, the disinterest in actually learning about them before doing so. We've all done it. It's exacerbated by social media. You don't even get anything from it. It's totally hollow. Why do we do it? Is the superficial interaction that much more rewarding than really engaging with the topic?
 
pattycakes

pattycakes

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
i mean it's one of the first things you learn when you're trying to get your head around another country, humility. or at least it should be. with him especially given his age there's a smell of the old way of an englishman going out to the world and surveying what he sees. my mate hates rory stewart for the same reason. rather than going oh ok i'm interested but it's going to take years to get my head around this coz i'm a foreigner and maybe i should shut up for a bit before i make pronouncements, which should basically be the default. and increasingly is i think. like can you say anything much about culture change unless you live somewhere for a few years? i don't think so really. you can make observations but you've sort of got to admit that you don't really get it. i think in social science they call it positionality isn't it


an arty montage about the the uk in that period ie my lifetime does sound brilliant. the trailer was great actually.
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Yes and no. You have to be careful, but some people have seen enough variety of the world to be able to extrapolate a blueprint in a short amount of time. It's about reading the people, their behaviors, body language, what kind of rhythms and melodies are part of daily interactions, do they seem to have separated from their roots and fully modernized or can you still get a sense of where they've come from despite modernizing/or not modernizing. You have to be very self vigilant and not try to project too much. Check how much prejudice is at play. There is such a thing as national character. That can be detected pretty quickly with enough experience. Have a few conversations with people. What kind of things are important to them. Is the family important etc. Ultimately you start to see that across the world a lot more people are very similar and working with the same inner workings, they're just in different packaging.

But, this is different to talking about historic events
 
version

version

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The people attempting to document this stuff should also have a decent network of contacts from around the world to help with research.
 
version

version

Well-known member
version said:
Might be a topic for an other thread, maybe its own, but I was talking with a few people last night about that sort of impulse in general. The compulsion to share an opinion on things you don't know about, the disinterest in actually learning about them before doing so. We've all done it. It's exacerbated by social media. You don't even get anything from it. It's totally hollow. Why do we do it? Is the superficial interaction that much more rewarding than really engaging with the topic?
Click to expand...

Having a read through some of the Reddit comments on this new Curtis being announced last night really rammed home some of what we were discussing in the forum thread re: how half arsed things can be these days. You can predict pretty much everything people are going to say. Someone's going to come out with the line about how he always uses some phrase, someone's going to say he just makes stuff up, someone's going to post the YouTube parody, etc. It's all so unfulfilling. Noise for the sake noise. You may as well set up a bot to make those comments for you whenever the next one pops up.
 
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