Interesting. There are some great articles on his blog too such as this one.

Still haven't finished reading that one... What a scoop!

It's on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtsrjlsclQ&feature=share

Better to just get the torrent actually:

https://piratebay.bid/torrent/16055882/BBC_Adam_Curtis_HyperNormalisation_WebRip_x264-MCTV

YouTube video has awful quality.

I watched it. Pretty bleak.

One of the things I like about Curtis's documentaries is the way he reveals the recklessness and incompetence of power, but with the thrilling style of a conspiracy theory. As far as actual conspiracies make an appearance in his narratives, it is to show that they fail or have unforeseen consequences. Nobody is running the show, though many have tried to, and the world's complexity exceeds everyone's grasp.

Seems pretty good. Glad I took acid when it was still legal.


Dang. Where's that delete button?

All very interesting but really nothing that wasn't said in Augustine's City Of God.

I watched it. Pretty bleak.

Pretty bleak and enlightening at the same time.

Yes it's enlightening but also disturbing (in a way).

One of the things I like about Curtis's documentaries is the way he reveals the recklessness and incompetence of power, but with the thrilling style of a conspiracy theory. As far as actual conspiracies make an appearance in his narratives, it is to show that they fail or have unforeseen consequences. Nobody is running the show, though many have tried to, and the world's complexity exceeds everyone's grasp.

I agree and I definitely think he's a cut above many others --buuut, he's still, ironically, guilty of drastic oversimplification - he gets rid of the shady eminence grise you find in standard conspiracy fare, but he's replaced them with all-knowing supercomputers and infallible algorithms. And somehow Syria's role in the middle east conflict has become the role - all roads lead back to Syria, every time, every event - Kissinger slighted Assad once and that's why the middle east is the way it is today. (Even if you didn't know that Saudi Arabia existed, this movie about state-sponsored islamic terrorism would still be entirely intelligible!) What's lacking is an admission that he's only looking at certain pieces of the puzzle, and through a certain lens. Curtis seems constitutionally unable to present any historical fact as something less than infinitely significant. Everything is always presented within this grand narrative where each element fits perfectly into place. In other words: the world's complexity exceeds everyone's grasp except Adam Curtis.

I enjoy his movies, and I enjoyed this one too, but I think they're best understood as a kind of entertainment. (superior to some other forms of entertainment in that they can prompt you to undertake your own investigations. Vladislav Surkov is fascinating and I didn't know anything about him before this movie. I've been reading up on him and learning a lot about contemporary russian culture.)

Anyway, here's this:

All very interesting but really nothing that wasn't said in Augustine's City Of God.

lol

I mostly agree, although if you've seen several of his films you'll see that he can tell different stories about the same period or the same events, as if he's showing how multifarious the threads of ideology are. None are privileged, but when he's focusing on one of them he takes it as far as he can, for dramatic purposes. I'm not so sure the grand narratives can be entirely dismissed, although some of the links may be tenuous. Certainly the over-arching theme of a few of his films, that of the failure of politics, is a good one.

I particularly appreciated the way he told the story of Gaddafi. I knew most of it, but the sheer absurdity had never really hit me before.

I read about Surkov a while ago, and couldn't quite believe it.

I can't watch it, unfortunately, but the little bit I'm gleaning from comments and the short Facebook video come across to me like pandering to folks who feel they're too hip for the room, so to speak.

I don't get the impression that Curtis' views are any less shallow and "fake" than the straw men he's criticizing.

I've seen a few of his other films, I was into him a lot as an undergrad. The problem is I don't get the sense that the narrator of any Curtis film has seen any of the other movies. Every movie is presented as the master key to understanding what's going on. But you're right, it works for dramatic purposes, and I guess that's a pill worth swallowing in order to get a lot of these ideas to a more general audience.

I particularly appreciated the way he told the story of Gaddafi. I knew most of it, but the sheer absurdity had never really hit me before.

Same here, besides the Surkov bit, it was probably my favorite part of the whole movie.

(Even if you didn't know that Saudia Arabia existed, this movie about state-sponsored islamic terrorism would still be entirely intelligible!) What's lacking is an admission that he's only looking at certain pieces of the puzzle, and through a certain lens. — csalisbury

But as I recall, he says something to the effect that suicide bombing slipped out of Assad's control and into the hands of the Sunni extremists (then on to the Iraqi insurgency and Isis). This implies there's another story to be told, another coherent thread leading to our situation, namely, I guess, from Salafism in Egypt, through Saudi Arabian conservatism, then Afghanistan and al Qaeda (the last of which he did in another film, though from a different angle). I don't know that it's fair to say he's pretending these other stories are not important, though of course he doesn't say much about them. The story here was of man with a vision giving up on it and losing control, which is a nice tale to illustrate an underlying explanation of how we got here.

That's fair and I do agree that a strong narrative is a good way of organizing scattered facts and events in order to gain some real insight (provided one maintains a healthy skepticism)I think I went a little too hard in my criticism because I was so 100% uncritically on board with him when I was younger. I stand by my criticisms but there's definitely much of value in his movies. I really did learn a lot from hyper-normalization. Again, the Gaddafi thing was exemplary (while the suggestion that Trump's empire fell apart due to a single high roller and the yakuza was a little silly. I followed up on that one too and the details are mostly right, but the idea that this was his downfall is bogus).

Maybe the last truly "free" nation on Earth is North Korea and we're all being manipulated into thinking it is against freedom by those that have enslaved us?

- Go Chon, chief advisor of Professor Wumbleton the third.

Yep. The details on Trump's casino business were confusing, or confused, and didn't add much to the story, although tracing everything (on the American side) to New York's capitulation to the banks was a clever way of bringing him into the narrative later on. The thought occurs that Curtis could tell the same basic story by picking almost any place or event at all, so he's free to choose those which can be most easily connected up with what seems relevant right now, in this case Trump and Syria. So I suppose it's far more contrived than it suggests.

So the question then, if we choose to forgive him the cherrypicking, the tenuous links and the exaggeration, is: does the story add up? Is it a good description of the last forty years to say that as finance took power and the world became impossibly complex, politicians and media gave up on their visions and missions and created a fake world, which, though we are sceptical and cynical about it, we accept as the new normal? It has a lot going for it, I think. On the other hand, if his choice of facts doesn't amount to evidence in support of this thesis, the film hasn't done its job except as a kind of propaganda or polemic.

Who or what would it be propaganda or a polemic against though?

In his words, "the system".

Or maybe his story is just propaganda for itself.

It's not really much of an attack, more just highlighting this stuff is going on and I've no qualms with this kind of media propagating itself - there's a lot worse out there.

As I say, I like his films and I agree with much of what he says. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be critical.

So the question then, if we choose to forgive him the cherrypicking, the tenuous links and the exaggeration, is: does the story add up? Is it a good description of the last forty years to say that as finance took power and the world became impossibly complex, politicians and media gave up on their visions and missions and created a fake world, which, though we are sceptical and cynical about it, we accept as the new normal? It has a lot going for it, I think. On the other hand, if his choice of facts doesn't amount to evidence in support of this thesis, the film hasn't done its job except as a kind of propaganda or polemic.

It is a good vision - though I think there might actually be something to Barry Etheridge's wild claim that there's nothing here that hadn't already been said in Augustine's City of God. On the level of content, it's very silly. But the form seems ancient--- Isn't this Plato's cave? The sophists and the poets feeding us a false reality? I suspect you could find voices saying the same thing at nearly any moment of history. I wonder when the world was really real and people really lived in it? F Scott Fitzgerald had Gatsby's library of uncut books in 1925. Flaubert was convinced a bankrupt culture had tragically falsified life itself back in 1856, when he wrote Madame Bovary. Don Quixote, in 1605, had the same theme. Another way of looking at things: The world is realest to us when we're young. Curtis is 61 - 40 years ago, right as the world was beginning to wax false, he was 21.

I don't know if that's more, or less, bleak than Curtis's message itself.

People have changed the world. Don Quixote may have been deluded but he did right wrongs.

Or maybe there is no such thing as "free" nation . . . everything is rigged, manipulated. By who? The "system"

What system?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/30/magazine/adam-curtis-documentaries.html

Downloading this.

But, I should say that there doesn't seem to be anything new here. And, if Curtis want's the invisible hand of the market to be actually some sort of puppet hand (in reality) of the powerful elites, then boo hoo. Or maybe his point is that the invisible hand is outta control and either needs to be controlled (by what?) or subverted to the needs of the people rather than the elite (therefore socialism?). Same shit different way of saying it.

Well, watched the whole thing and it is quite a scary picture portrayed in it. The problem is there really is no clear cut solution to this situation, by which I mean the simplified kinds of things that "just make sense" are "simple" and "pragmatic". The invisible hand tends to work most efficiently and striking some balance with free trade and capitalism with some hints of socialism seems like the best thing one can achieve as a form of social governance.

Regarding terrorism, as at least half of the whole documentary was devoted to it, one can hope that the U.S will get the fuck out of meddling with the Middle East once and for all and leave the place be; but, that doesn't support the notion of "maintaining our power / the system" in place so given Hillary will likely be the next successor to maintain the status quo we're going to only see escalating tensions in the region as usual.

Regarding technology. It doesn't seem too far a stretch that people would prefer to live in a solipsist word of their own making. So, what? Does that make the job of the ruling elite all the much easier to rule us 'sheeple'? Probably; but, there really isn't one can do anything about that to any significant extent.

Strangely enough climate change wasn't mentioned in the documentary; but, oh does it deserve a mention. The calamities will only escalate in the future, natural, man-made, and artificial to such an extent that I fear people might start behaving in the extreme.

Anyhow, I think the term 'hyper normalization' is accurate; but, neglects to mention the amount of cynicism and revulsion present nowadays. This sweeps under the rug the disenfranchisement people feel and how that can be utilized or serve as a catalyst as a positive force for creating a better system. Most people are fed up with the situation; but, really have nothing to do; but, grumble under their noses about the festering sore that American politics has become. The EU is not much better in this regard. Austerity doesn't work, and neither does stimulus. I for one hold the belief that people are easily spoiled and simply do not appreciate the amenities we derive from commerce, finances, and such matters. Who fucking cares if someone has a billion in their bank. I feel sorry for the fuckers, as they have no time to live life, just manage fictitious numbers on a screen.

I suspect real change will come with technological advancement. Either that or a real financial breakdown will bring any significant change as future generations will never be able to pay off the current accrued debt of this and previous generations. C'est la vie.