The Power Of Nightmares/Adam Curtis

There was enough material for about twenty hours of television in the last episode alone. As an exercise in explaining the course of events, it would be laughable - there's no way you can summarise the causes for the wars in Rwanda and Congo in four minutes apiece - but as an exercise in providing a set of interesting things for viewers to go and find out more about, it had a purpose. I think the overarching polemical point was fairly weakly structured but, again, it gives us something to think about when the show's over. There's not much on television that can make the same claim. Also, Pizzicato 5!

What annoyed me the most, aside for the use of 'we believed' and 'scientists thought' throughout, were the sections that seemed to bend fact to fit the theory. The idea that the colour-coded revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan demonstrate that organic displays of people power without hierarchy are doomed to failure, for example, ignores the fact that they were never organic and always had a hierarchy. There were too many occasions like that for it not to come across as a little dishonest, rather than misguided or constrained by format.

His name was Adam Curtis, and his programmes followed a radical new path. He would show that history, far from being something supported by facts, was something quite different. This was a radical new form of documentary, in which the very idea of not pulling a fast one was simply not a problem.

At its heart was some cool slo-mo footage of people dancing intercut with Alan Greenspan and the Pizzicato 5.

j/k - love him really

I thought this one was great and pretty entertaining. I couldn't get through a couple of his past shows. I feel like the haters don't really "get" adam curtis. Approaching his work like it's some kind of cogent political essay seems kind of silly to me.

oh, and alba lol and otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

but this was a fantasy

I never got around to saying why wk's thing about not "getting" Adam Curtis was an undeserved get-out-of-jail-free card but this parody does it for me.

some lols in this, though i'm surprised that the most obvious Curtis phrase/meme didn't pop up; just before a sudden shift in the narrative you get "and then (name of person) ..*made a discovery* ...".
there's always some random fellow somewhere who's making a discovery in Curtis stuff.

might do a version of the Lewinsky "Suzanne" bit but with "Suzanne" slowed down to the same rate as the actual footage

A lot of his appeal seems to overlap with Malcolm Gladwell's - cool little stories about incredibly important people and things you probably haven't come across before, eg "In a laboratory in southern California in 1963 an eccentric young scientist named xxx made a remarkable discovery." I'm sure if you didn't know who Ayn Rand was, for example, then the first part of Loving Grace was a blast if only for telling her story vividly. But Gladwell, though prone to false connections and oversimplifications himself, has way more narrative focus. And the downside of this technique is that the more the viewer knows about a particular subject, the shabbier and more misleading this skimreading of it seems. It was the Rwanda section of Loving Grace which made me lose my patience with Curtis because it's something I know about and he was mauling it.

what did he get wrong abt rwanda?

(i think it's obvi that he's giving very partial versions of events in every case)

n e ways thought the third ep was the best thing he's done in a minute

But this was a fantasy!

hahaha

"but in reality!"

came here to post this

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3272903211813223143

classic material

I haven't seen that series. Should I start from the beginning?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a strange and brilliant phd student in cambridge made a fascinating discovery.

Going the Full-Carmody: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/09/the_curse_of_tina.html

psyched. read the first bit while listening to floyd cramer's 'on the rebound', to get ready.

Why we have become so possessed by the ideology of our age that we cannot think outside it.

except i, adam curtis

Ha. Obviously undeterred by The Loving Trap-style mockery, he's going the "full Curtis" here:

It is a rollicking saga that involves all sorts of things not normally associated with think tanks - chickens, pirate radio, retired colonels, Jean Paul Sartre, Screaming Lord Sutch, and at its heart is a dramatic and brutal killing committed by one of the very men who helped bring about the resurgence of the free market in Britain.

No wonder he gets so many commissions if his pitches are that good. It's a well-told story. I knew the Shivering Sands story already but didn't know much about Smedley.

"I want to suggest that the Hug has become a part of the modern problem of not being able to imagine any alternative to the world of today. The Hug is no longer liberating, it is restraining"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/10/the_curse_of_tina_part_two.html

aha, the killer final conclusion:

"If we can be taught to hug we can just as easily learn to march and chant."

well I'm seeing Loving Grace tom'w

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace

anyone else want to weigh in?

IIRC the consensus around here was that it was even less convincing than usual but still very entertaining.

I rewatched it last week and enjoyed it more. But yes...stretching.

This is good:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/01/the_years_of_stagnation_and_th.html

^^ also, the following the post about cruise ships, and the history of the owners of the Costa Concordia. Includes a v. funny 60s ALan Whicker clip
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/01/were_all_in_the_same_boat_-_ar.html

At first sight the search for peace and stability in Iraq, and the search for physical and mental fitness in the extreme contortions of modern Yoga seem to have absolutely nothing in common.


But curiously they do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/11/while_the_band_played_on.html

a fair point well expressed here

but this was a fantasy

what a great use of the bbc archivists' time

hang on, music changes the way we feel about the images we're seeing?

it's true tho, the final scene of andrei rublev is subtly different when set to bbbbbounce by the blackout crew

oh you guys..

But in amongst all this new-found self-confidence among the pets of Britain there were still the ghosts of the old rigid owner-pet power structure

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogadamcurtis/posts/HEAVY-PETTING

i can't even

the kind of self-parody i could get behind tbh

also looking forward to seeing all these videos of dogs

but this was a fantasy

― woof

in reality, pets had been learning to post on forums

tbf i think the bit I posted was curtis-does-curtis for lols.

a radical new form of lol

where should i start with this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x1bX3F7uTrg

I would say The Mayfair Set: it's a bit more tightly focused than the later work, & the narrative's a bit cleaner, though it keeps going to odd interesting places. Full of fascinating slightly monstrous sorts - Goldsmith, Aspinall etc.

good grief charlie brooker has a lot to answer for xp

thanks woof

Did you guys know about this: http://www.mif.co.uk/event/massive-attack-v-adam-curtis

It Felt Like A Kiss a few years ago was hands down the most mind-blowing few hours of my life. Can't wait for this one.

the financial journalist in the second episode (Christopher Fildes) is amazing. 'I and other people in the financial press were willing dupes'. Can't be said enough. Very good documentaries - nothing more plainly connects the switch from paternalistic (the paternalism of a grotesque controlling father) to unmediated unapologetic-yet-duplicitous socially destructive greed, which is also the recent history of the Tory party.