13 ms·

New six-film series from Adam Curtis

256 points by DonaldFisk 6y ago

DonaldFisk 6y ago
Can't Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World premieres on BBC iPlayer in February
MarcScott 6y ago
I love Adam Curtis documentaries. The century of self, Power of nightmares, The trap and Hypernormalisation were all amazing. I might not agree with everything he says, but there is no denying that they are thought provoking, beautifully narrated and spectacularly well edited films. If you haven't watched them yet, I would encourage you to do so.
- opnitro 6y ago
  Just watching Bitter Lake, fascinating one!
  - clircle 6y ago
    Bitter Lake's got to be my favorite!
- lovemenot 6y ago
  >> I love Adam Curtis documentaries. Me too. But I think you have to enjoy them as a performance. People looking for historical detail and justification can be frustrated by his very broad sweeps.
  - mrslave 6y ago
    When we're trying to make sense of things in the big picture, forest from the trees sort of thing, we have to take broad sweeps. We should be able to address counter-points when making high level arguments. Their existence doesn't mean broad sweeps are useless or incorrect. Arguments in the weeds are disingenuous when they're not challenging the actual pattern. They believe to invalidate an argument as if by demonstrating an axiom in a mathematics proof false, when they may actually demonstrate ignorance of variance.
  - Fricken 6y ago
    Adam Curtis films are horror movies to me. Existential horror, the worst kind. I haven't found conventional horror films to be scary since my mid-teens, but Adam Curtis knows how to keep me awake at night.
  - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
    They're like Michel Foucault books, fascinating history with a clear slant that serves a central thesis.
- lukifer 6y ago
  Especially relevant to the HN crowd is AC's "Machines of Loving Grace" [0], critiquing a sort of techno-utopianism endemic to Western culture generally, and Silicon Valley specifically. While I'm still bullish on technology (sometimes!) making the world a better place, AC's perspective provides an insightful counterpoint. [0] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60xjdl https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60xjdl
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    >AC's perspective provides an insightful counterpoint. As the saying goes, nothing cools you down like AC.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    I don't know if I'd call it pessimistic. I felt like he wanted to highlight how we've failed thus far at realizing the (techno-utopian) dreams of the early pioneers of computing. He wanted to show how technology was supposed to be a force to set us free, but somehow we lost our way, and by reminding us of that earlier vision we might be able to get back to work at realizing it.
    - varvar 6y ago
      Democracy + Capitalism was supposed to bring freedom to the world.. instead it bought domination, and realization, that it all comes down to who holds the power. The typical classical reality fundamentals. Techno-utopianism was supposed to bring freedom to the world... instead it bought domination by the Big Tech, and realization that it all comes down to who holds the power. The classical reality fundamentals. There are a few more cases.. it's Faust all over again, that turns into kind of a half-scam along the way to attract VC money or your money, then culminates into a power grab. "The next revolution in X"!, blah, blah.. blahblah.. blah. "We're no better than believing in or living in a Harry Potter novel sometimes" is more like his message - but it's a fact that societies like to look at the least of all facts. After all, that might prevent the next high-yield psychotic mass scam from occurring. I don't know - I'm not a westerner, so perhaps it's "normal" for high IQ individuals to create or mis-use abstract mini-ideologies, mini-religions really, dress them as a New world, a Revolution really, to exploit individuals like workhorses over the span of many decades, until they realize that this was an illusion. Btw we can't spin it like "Ooh, but if it wasn't for this silliness, we wouldn't have computers or the internet now". I disagree. You can't know that. Perhaps the ideology wasn't needed at all for technological development. Maybe it made for inspiration here and there, but that's it. So.. I don't think that "try again" is his message at all. Watch more of his documentaries and it will become clear.
- patrickk 6y ago
  His piece on conspiracies[1], mistrust of the ruling class and the early days of Rupert Murdock bugging conversations of powerful people is fascinating too. He also did an interview after he snuck into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones (yes that one). He maintained that Jones made up a bunch of stuff about what was going on there afterwards. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/8b69a786-56d5-317b-b8f4-461f6ebc1b70 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/8b69a786-56d5...
  - drcongo 6y ago
    Are you not thinking of Jon Ronson sneaking into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones?
    - patrickk 6y ago
      Yes, indeed you're right, my apologies!
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Is BBC iPLayer still geolocked to the UK? There are bunch of BBC productions that I would love to watch, that I would gladly pay money for online access, but I have not been able to. It has been some time since, I tried, so I don't know if they have changed.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  "BritBox" is the "iPlayer for the world", but it's not the same content. https://www.britbox.com/ https://www.britbox.com/
  - mattowen_uk 6y ago
    The BBC content on BritBox should be free for all UK residents, seeing as we paid for it to be made via the TV Licence and shouldn't be asked to pay for it twice. For this reason alone I will never subscribe to BritBox, and encourage other people (in the UK) not to either.
    - techer 6y ago
      I may be mistaken but really we don’t pay for the full production cost and don’t really own them per se.
    - LeoPanthera 6y ago
      Do you think DVDs of BBC content should be free in the UK as well?
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Is BBC iPLayer still geolocked to the UK? There are bunch of BBC productions that I would love to watch, that I would gladly pay money for online access, but I have not been able to. Get a VPN (Nord is practically spamming it with 1/2 pricing on every podcast) and donate 100 quid to the BBC as a write off. Done. That's what I did. Or better yet since this is YC, buy a laptop (or a few used ones off of ebay depending on your budget) to help kids in the UK without one in their charity drive [0]. This was one of the first things I used to do with TOR before it was a simple thing and required you to build your own SOCKS proxy setting back in the day (2008?) and had to learn to bypass the iplayer Geo-restrictions. I even did it when I lived in the UK for a bit just for the hell of it to prove that I could do it. Fun times! Honestly, I wish I would have created backups of Saturday Kitchen archives from back in the day; it had so many Michelin star chefs from all over Europe/US as guests just screwing around and making dishes from their flagships in a casual setting, drinking wine the shows 'wacky' sommelier picked out and just generally BSing on screen with omelette challenges and taking guest calls that made me think it was worth going to Europe to try my hand in. And now being retired from that Industry and seeing how COVID has shaken out for the culinary Industry I wanted to go back and watch them just to cheer up about the 'good ol days' but even youtube has very limited options for those episodes. They had a 1.5 month back catalog if I recall correctly, but I'm not even sure if that show is still on the air anymore. 0: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5SqHJMTKZx5sYhlltXJvB1Q/give-a-laptop https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5SqHJMTKZx5sYhlltX...
nkurz 6y ago
How would one go about watching this in the US?
- DonaldFisk 6y ago
  If iPlayer is blocked, his documentaries usually show up later on Youtube and topdocumentaryfilms.com
  - nyolfen 6y ago
    his catalog is available here, i expect it to pop up there as well: https://thoughtmaybe.com/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/
- garmaine 6y ago
  docuwiki.net
  - oriettaxx 6y ago
    wow, this is great! is it pirated content or all legit?
    - garmaine 6y ago
      It is all copyright infringing, unfortunately.
- mrcartmenez 6y ago
  Opera with proxy turned on + pirate bay (don’t forget to delete the trackers out of your magnet links)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
nr2x 6y ago
“This is the story of men who thought they could control the world, and a virus they couldn’t.” [stock footage of McDonald’s from 1986]
- k1m 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg LOL! I had paused Hypernormilzation on the mid point when it got to AI and the picture of the screen was a one of these guys [0] and I just had it that way and kind of wondered why I prefer to just hear his work as as podcast as I do other stuff rather than hyper focus on the screen. This explains my latent feelings of the absurdity on screen rather well. His documentaries have so much exposition that you can kind of look up the topics on your own as you go along to try and compare and contrast the facts as they're narrated, his work is probably my first foray with interactive TV. 0: https://youtu.be/MRx2nskdAgY?t=12 https://youtu.be/MRx2nskdAgY?t=12
  - nr2x 6y ago
    That comes from a place of love, hilarious.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- konjin 6y ago
  It's an artsy version of the Gish Gallop. I enjoy the aesthetics of the documentaries though.
- krrrh 6y ago
  I really disliked Curtis after many people had told me that I would love him. I think it was because people talk about his films as if they he was a historian, or they were documentaries. Then I read someone refer to him as a political artist, and through that framing I now think he's pretty interesting.
lethologica 6y ago
I've recently been on an Adam Curtis binge after watching HyperNormalisation and Century of the Self. I am very keen for this. There's something about his style that just sticks with you. Bonus points for watching while stoned.
- flycaliguy 6y ago
  Absolutely one of the best mushroom/thc enabled TV shows. The fuzzy abstraction layer that all these other comments are mentioning basically glues the universe together when you are tripping.
rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
Something Adam Curtis has been going on about lately with more emphasis in each production is the assertion that we as a society are so blinded by the illusions we live in that we are incapable of imagining what a better world would look like. Often conspicuously absent is what such a world ought to be, in his view. As brilliant as his works are and have been, the longer he keeps asking the same question without providing an answer the more it becomes a well-researched “we live in a society.”
- frabbit 6y ago
  If that interests you I highly recommend Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.
- Guthur 6y ago
  It is entirely possible that there is actually no significantly better way for us to go about this. The assumption that life can be good and happy for all is just fundamentally flawed in the face of the human condition and physical reality. In the absence of infinite and exploitable energy it's hard to see how you wont have a society that is going to directly or indirectly impose limits upon the individuals life and well being. And given the differences in the human psyche it seems inheritently impossible to please all of the people all of the time.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    There's a gulf between something better and utopia.
    - Guthur 6y ago
      Better can be very subjective. What you think is better may not align with what I think is better. One of us may feel individual freedom at all costs, one might be the greater good trumps the individual.
      - pietrovismara 6y ago
dayofthedaleks 6y ago
One of the major themes of this series is the genesis of modern conspiracy theories, and I'm definitely ready to hear Curtis' take on the matter. I feel like he's had to scrap several projects over the past few years as events overtook one's ability to digest.
- frabbit 6y ago
  I'm hoping he mentions something about the liberal/russiagate conspiracy theories as the emotional counterbalance to the rightwing/qanon-kenyan theories. Also a discussion of how the current dismissal of all conspiracy theories as axiomatically untrue is foolish.
  - tjr225 6y ago
    This comment appears to be an attempt to paint these conspiracy theories as equivalent. One posits there was a Russian influence on an election(which is probably true if not likely in all of our elections for the past 50 years) and the other is an almost comical rejection of reality. For what it’s worth the parent likely knows this and I don’t think the person I’m responding to is making this comment in good faith.
    - konjin 6y ago
      This is a classic motte and bailey argument. You are holding the factual motte: that Russian intelligence agencies bought some adds on social media and pretending it's the same as the bailey of the larger conspiracy theory: that Russian agents did everything up to an including hacking into voting machines, changing tallies in swing states, having blackmail on Trump, Trump having a Russian handler, Trump being a Russian asset and all sorts of other nonsense. Russia gate is Qanon for liberals. We even have a factual Jewish pedophile with ties to Clinton, the British Crown and the CIA who died in 'mysterious' circumstances for the Qanon motte.
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        There's an interesting kind of reverse motte and bailey I've noticed happening with QAnon too. Motte: Trump was not an undercover operative working to undermine a deep state cabal with patriots who have secretly arrested almost every major politician and celebrity and replaced them with holograms. Bailey: there's no such thing as elite pedophile rings.
teh_klev 6y ago
This is excellent news. My first encounter with Adam Curtis was The Mayfair Set back in 2000 or so, and I've been an avid follower of his work since then. There's something oddly satisfying about his films, and there's always something new to go and learn more about afterwards.
olivermarks 6y ago
I'm very proud to say I flew from California to NYC to see Adam Curtis vs Massive Attack at the Armory in 2013 and it was probably the best live show I have ever seen. Huge video monitors, live Massive Attack behind them (gauzy) and Curtis voice booming out. It was superb. https://youtu.be/3e3I1mLc3RM https://youtu.be/3e3I1mLc3RM I really hope this new Curtis work is as thought provoking as his previous series! I really miss his BBC blog which is hidden now but still there, those posts were terrific too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-385e-808f-c9c7c38d1cb7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94...
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I regret missing Adam Curtis and Massive Attack to this day.
- possibleworlds 6y ago
  Loved his blog. My favourite post was this one on interventionism: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/goodies_and_baddies.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/goodies_and_b... You may need to enable flash temporarily, the archival videos are half the fun.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  I saw Massive Attack in their 2019 reunion tour, and Adam Curtis did all the visuals. Without those visuals it would've just been old timers playing their old hits, but instead the show was visually arresting, challenging, political, and indeed, superb.
  - olivermarks 6y ago
    The experience of all my vision and peripheral vision being dominated by huge screens at the 2013 Armory show was incredible. Massive Attack (who I'm pretty luke warm on apart from Karmacoma) were pretty much the backing band to a lengthy Curtis documentary. This was the trailer for the show that made me instantly buy a plane ticket to NYC https://youtu.be/yv_S8GdylEA https://youtu.be/yv_S8GdylEA
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
blazor 6y ago
Thanks for the info. The guy is not an oracle but I enjoy his docs like Power of Nightmares, etc., as much as Pilger's docs. True quality in a sea of crap.
shimonabi 6y ago
I really love his documentaries, but he is essentially a conspiracy theorist for the thinking man. He always tries to glue different disconnected stories into one overarching narrative. The world is not that coherent. Things happen for no reason at all.
- 317070 6y ago
  I disagree. There is often no conspiracy or intent by the people in the individual stories he uses, he is putting them together to show in broad strokes things in society which were not there before or which he thinks are changing. You need to read Max Weber or David Graeber, and you will recognize the sociologist or even anthropologist lens he uses to look at the modern world.
  - shimonabi 6y ago
    Thanks, I was not educated in the humanities, but I know of Max Weber. David Graeber's works sounds interesting; I will read some of it when I have time. Sorry he passed away.
- sooheon 6y ago
  Connecting ideas in a historical narrative is not equal to alleging conspiracy. Reading that into his documentaries says more about your perspective.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  > Things happen for no reason at all. Correction, some things happen for no reason at all. Some things do happen for a reason. Deductive and inductive logic helps us decide which is which. I greatly dislike this "all conspiracies are false" approach to understanding the world, as it feels like a "logical safe space" that is intellectually bankrupt, but especially given the state of public discourse and other events, there is such a stigma for being associated with any sort of belief in "conspiracy" that there seems to be a huge knee-jerk avoidance that just doesn't stand up to the test of history. Conspiracies are real, and are the breadstuffs of history. Failure to acknowledge this will leave one always a few feet off the mark when trying to understand the past, which means failure to understand the present and hence, is an obstacle in helping one to guide the future.
max_ 6y ago
I thought this was the one he was making on Dick Cheney [0]. But it isn't. This guy is really not a journalist. If your to ask me, he is an investigator of complex systems. The complex system being humans societies. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/adam-curtis-and-vice-director-adam-mckay-on-how-dick-cheney-masterminded-a-rightwing-revolution https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/adam-curtis-and...
- 317070 6y ago
  Something between a sociologist and an anthropologist, but making video art rather than books.
cm2012 6y ago
Your reminder that documentaries are the absolute worst medium for learning the truth about complicated subjects. The nature of the medium is to construct emotional appeals and narratives at the expense of truth. Articles and books are much better in this regard. Documentaries shine for slice of life type things.
- monadic3 6y ago
  Narrative is how most people communicate. This is hardly a bad thing. This idea that a medium can do anything but communicate narrative is ridiculous. Anyway, I wouldn't trust anything purporting to communicate the unadulterated Truth with a ten-foot pole. Name your bias and we're in business!
- gmtx725 6y ago
  I wouldnt class Adam Curtis's work as documentaries. More like... interesting stories and moods crafted from a collage of archive footage. They're just an interesting take, not necessarily claiming to be the capital-T 'Truth'...
- tobylane 6y ago
  BBC’s Horizon, especially before roughly 2012, was great for going to an hours worth of depth into a subject. Since then they’ve gone too emotional and narrative for me, no longer requiring gsce science.
  - dingaling 6y ago
    We joked that you could play a drinking game with the post-scienrlce era Horizon. Take a shot every time the narrator rhetorically asked "But why did it happen?"
subsubsub 6y ago
This is my favourite Adam Curtis documentary... The Loving Trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg Only 3 mins long.
- DonaldFisk 6y ago
  It's a parody.
- grey-area 6y ago
  That was rather good and highlights in 3 minutes the significant problems with his stylish yet incoherent films. They’re convincing on an emotional level in the way that a speech from a politician or a well crafted advert is - by appealing to secret desires, fears and aspirations rather than persuading with the truth.
_cs2017_ 6y ago
Could someone please summarize Curtis' opinions and claims, aggregated across his documentaries?
- Applejinx 6y ago
  "power corrupts"
leg100 6y ago
> Get You Out Of My Head is an epic history that shows how and why that happened. How we made this particular world. And that it was not inevitable. Oh no he won't. He never explains why or how anything happened. He might attribute the present state of affairs to the bankruptcy of new york city in the seventies. Or to shady deals the west made with middle Eastern regimes. But none of it adds up to a coherent argument. It's just a long lamenting binge. I'll still watch it of course.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  I think he tends to portrait a thread of events, but they aren't always the only thread.
KaiserPro 6y ago
I was a fan, but then as I got older, and better at critical thinking, I realised that his films are basically a rant with a backing track of b-roll from the 8/16mm bin. I think the thing that tipped me over was the assertion that alan greenspan and a few others were all in league together because they read Ayn Rand. After that I realised that hes basically peddling left of centre rants in a pretty style[1]. [1] Left of british centre, and mid 2000s centre. There is nothing wrong with this. I am vaguely sympathetic of his views. But they should not be represented as either fact, or balanced.
- _cs2017_ 6y ago
  Ah you essentially answered my question about summarizing his views. It's quite scary that what seems like a conspiracy club lite is getting such a huge amount respect from the highly educated HN audience. It seems the near future is converging to a bunch of conspiracy theorists duking it out with each other in front of the captive audience -- the general electorate. Maybe it will make things easier for everyone involved if some conspirators actually do take over the world, thus making this spectacle slightly less surreal.
  - gmtx725 6y ago
    IMO it's a strange misinterpretation of his work to think he's a conspiracy theorist. I think it is undeniable that every era has an ideology that captures the zeitgeist of the times, I think Curtis just explores the origins of those ideologies and what motivated their progenitors, he is not alleging they had shadowy plans for world domination...
- polytely 6y ago
  Oh I read that not as a literal "it's a conspiracy" but more that the echos of Ayn Rand's worldview are visible in how the people in power view the world and their role within it.
- gmtx725 6y ago
  Calm down, his films are just interesting takes on the ideologies that govern our times, combined artfully with arresting archive footage and music. They're not always claiming to be capital-t 'truth'...
darawk 6y ago
Curtis documentaries are in this weird uncanny valley that I intensely enjoy, but deeply uneasily. They're very pleasurable. They string together a grand narrative that says...something. Not quite sure exactly what. But man it sure does feel like you're learning a deep truth when you watch them. As much as I like them, I suspect they are essentially poison. They're Alex Jones for smart people. Half cocked ideas strung together in a deeply aesthetic, but mostly meaningless way. I don't want to impugn him too much. He seems like a good guy and I genuinely enjoy his work. But it really does feel like there's something narcotic about it, something insidious about the way it creates the feeling of insight without actually teaching you anything.
- jowday 6y ago
  I think his work is a great jumping off point. After watching Century of the Self, I started reading pretty heavily into Walter Lippman, Edward Bernays, and the general development of neoliberal thought. Most all of what I read backed up his thesis with much more concrete details. I think it would be great if he released a reading list alongside each of his documentaries - let the films serve as a compelling aesthetic work and the reading as essentially a citation. Alternatively, maybe I should try to compile some for each of his films.
  - bergstromm466 6y ago
    > let the films serve as a compelling aesthetic work and the reading as essentially a citation. Alternatively, maybe I should try to compile some for each of his films. Yes, that would be awesome, and would add much more weight to the arguments he makes in his documentaries.
  - 317070 6y ago
    I would absolutely love that and use it. Curtis is the reason I got into Max Weber and Jacques Ellul. I cannot remember which of his series led me into that rabbit hole though.
    - DSingularity 6y ago
238473913569 6y ago
Adam Curtis is a leftwing conspiracy theorist whose films are just well-crafted propaganda.
AdamSignups 6y ago
Who?
thinkingemote 6y ago
One of my favourite day dreams is imagining what, in 20 years time, will the Adam Curtis documentary on the Coronavirus be like.
boraoztunc 6y ago
"We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know, we know they lie. They don’t care. We say we care, but we do nothing. And nothing ever changes. It’s normal. Welcome to the post-truth world." HyperNormalisation; https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/
WaldoLydecker 6y ago
https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg
cc_stoic 6y ago
this forum needs a downvote botton
omosubi 6y ago
I've always been skeptical of Curtis documentaries but I have to give props to the BBC for airing. I can't imagine any major network in the US touching these projects with a 10 foot pole.

256 points by DonaldFisk 6y ago

Can't Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World premieres on BBC iPlayer in February

I love Adam Curtis documentaries. The century of self, Power of nightmares, The trap and Hypernormalisation were all amazing. I might not agree with everything he says, but there is no denying that they are thought provoking, beautifully narrated and spectacularly well edited films. If you haven't watched them yet, I would encourage you to do so.

opnitro 6y ago
Just watching Bitter Lake, fascinating one!
- clircle 6y ago
  Bitter Lake's got to be my favorite!
lovemenot 6y ago
>> I love Adam Curtis documentaries. Me too. But I think you have to enjoy them as a performance. People looking for historical detail and justification can be frustrated by his very broad sweeps.
- mrslave 6y ago
  When we're trying to make sense of things in the big picture, forest from the trees sort of thing, we have to take broad sweeps. We should be able to address counter-points when making high level arguments. Their existence doesn't mean broad sweeps are useless or incorrect. Arguments in the weeds are disingenuous when they're not challenging the actual pattern. They believe to invalidate an argument as if by demonstrating an axiom in a mathematics proof false, when they may actually demonstrate ignorance of variance.
- Fricken 6y ago
  Adam Curtis films are horror movies to me. Existential horror, the worst kind. I haven't found conventional horror films to be scary since my mid-teens, but Adam Curtis knows how to keep me awake at night.
- CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  They're like Michel Foucault books, fascinating history with a clear slant that serves a central thesis.
lukifer 6y ago
Especially relevant to the HN crowd is AC's "Machines of Loving Grace" [0], critiquing a sort of techno-utopianism endemic to Western culture generally, and Silicon Valley specifically. While I'm still bullish on technology (sometimes!) making the world a better place, AC's perspective provides an insightful counterpoint. [0] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60xjdl https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60xjdl
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >AC's perspective provides an insightful counterpoint. As the saying goes, nothing cools you down like AC.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  I don't know if I'd call it pessimistic. I felt like he wanted to highlight how we've failed thus far at realizing the (techno-utopian) dreams of the early pioneers of computing. He wanted to show how technology was supposed to be a force to set us free, but somehow we lost our way, and by reminding us of that earlier vision we might be able to get back to work at realizing it.
  - varvar 6y ago
    Democracy + Capitalism was supposed to bring freedom to the world.. instead it bought domination, and realization, that it all comes down to who holds the power. The typical classical reality fundamentals. Techno-utopianism was supposed to bring freedom to the world... instead it bought domination by the Big Tech, and realization that it all comes down to who holds the power. The classical reality fundamentals. There are a few more cases.. it's Faust all over again, that turns into kind of a half-scam along the way to attract VC money or your money, then culminates into a power grab. "The next revolution in X"!, blah, blah.. blahblah.. blah. "We're no better than believing in or living in a Harry Potter novel sometimes" is more like his message - but it's a fact that societies like to look at the least of all facts. After all, that might prevent the next high-yield psychotic mass scam from occurring. I don't know - I'm not a westerner, so perhaps it's "normal" for high IQ individuals to create or mis-use abstract mini-ideologies, mini-religions really, dress them as a New world, a Revolution really, to exploit individuals like workhorses over the span of many decades, until they realize that this was an illusion. Btw we can't spin it like "Ooh, but if it wasn't for this silliness, we wouldn't have computers or the internet now". I disagree. You can't know that. Perhaps the ideology wasn't needed at all for technological development. Maybe it made for inspiration here and there, but that's it. So.. I don't think that "try again" is his message at all. Watch more of his documentaries and it will become clear.
patrickk 6y ago
His piece on conspiracies[1], mistrust of the ruling class and the early days of Rupert Murdock bugging conversations of powerful people is fascinating too. He also did an interview after he snuck into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones (yes that one). He maintained that Jones made up a bunch of stuff about what was going on there afterwards. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/8b69a786-56d5-317b-b8f4-461f6ebc1b70 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/8b69a786-56d5...
- drcongo 6y ago
  Are you not thinking of Jon Ronson sneaking into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones?
  - patrickk 6y ago
    Yes, indeed you're right, my apologies!

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

Is BBC iPLayer still geolocked to the UK? There are bunch of BBC productions that I would love to watch, that I would gladly pay money for online access, but I have not been able to. It has been some time since, I tried, so I don't know if they have changed.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
"BritBox" is the "iPlayer for the world", but it's not the same content. https://www.britbox.com/ https://www.britbox.com/
- mattowen_uk 6y ago
  The BBC content on BritBox should be free for all UK residents, seeing as we paid for it to be made via the TV Licence and shouldn't be asked to pay for it twice. For this reason alone I will never subscribe to BritBox, and encourage other people (in the UK) not to either.
  - techer 6y ago
    I may be mistaken but really we don’t pay for the full production cost and don’t really own them per se.
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    Do you think DVDs of BBC content should be free in the UK as well?
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> Is BBC iPLayer still geolocked to the UK? There are bunch of BBC productions that I would love to watch, that I would gladly pay money for online access, but I have not been able to. Get a VPN (Nord is practically spamming it with 1/2 pricing on every podcast) and donate 100 quid to the BBC as a write off. Done. That's what I did. Or better yet since this is YC, buy a laptop (or a few used ones off of ebay depending on your budget) to help kids in the UK without one in their charity drive [0]. This was one of the first things I used to do with TOR before it was a simple thing and required you to build your own SOCKS proxy setting back in the day (2008?) and had to learn to bypass the iplayer Geo-restrictions. I even did it when I lived in the UK for a bit just for the hell of it to prove that I could do it. Fun times! Honestly, I wish I would have created backups of Saturday Kitchen archives from back in the day; it had so many Michelin star chefs from all over Europe/US as guests just screwing around and making dishes from their flagships in a casual setting, drinking wine the shows 'wacky' sommelier picked out and just generally BSing on screen with omelette challenges and taking guest calls that made me think it was worth going to Europe to try my hand in. And now being retired from that Industry and seeing how COVID has shaken out for the culinary Industry I wanted to go back and watch them just to cheer up about the 'good ol days' but even youtube has very limited options for those episodes. They had a 1.5 month back catalog if I recall correctly, but I'm not even sure if that show is still on the air anymore. 0: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5SqHJMTKZx5sYhlltXJvB1Q/give-a-laptop https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5SqHJMTKZx5sYhlltX...

nkurz 6y ago

How would one go about watching this in the US?

DonaldFisk 6y ago
If iPlayer is blocked, his documentaries usually show up later on Youtube and topdocumentaryfilms.com
- nyolfen 6y ago
  his catalog is available here, i expect it to pop up there as well: https://thoughtmaybe.com/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/
garmaine 6y ago
docuwiki.net
- oriettaxx 6y ago
  wow, this is great! is it pirated content or all legit?
  - garmaine 6y ago
    It is all copyright infringing, unfortunately.
mrcartmenez 6y ago
Opera with proxy turned on + pirate bay (don’t forget to delete the trackers out of your magnet links)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

nr2x 6y ago

“This is the story of men who thought they could control the world, and a virus they couldn’t.” [stock footage of McDonald’s from 1986]

k1m 6y ago
https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg LOL! I had paused Hypernormilzation on the mid point when it got to AI and the picture of the screen was a one of these guys [0] and I just had it that way and kind of wondered why I prefer to just hear his work as as podcast as I do other stuff rather than hyper focus on the screen. This explains my latent feelings of the absurdity on screen rather well. His documentaries have so much exposition that you can kind of look up the topics on your own as you go along to try and compare and contrast the facts as they're narrated, his work is probably my first foray with interactive TV. 0: https://youtu.be/MRx2nskdAgY?t=12 https://youtu.be/MRx2nskdAgY?t=12
- nr2x 6y ago
  That comes from a place of love, hilarious.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
konjin 6y ago
It's an artsy version of the Gish Gallop. I enjoy the aesthetics of the documentaries though.
krrrh 6y ago
I really disliked Curtis after many people had told me that I would love him. I think it was because people talk about his films as if they he was a historian, or they were documentaries. Then I read someone refer to him as a political artist, and through that framing I now think he's pretty interesting.

lethologica 6y ago

I've recently been on an Adam Curtis binge after watching HyperNormalisation and Century of the Self. I am very keen for this. There's something about his style that just sticks with you. Bonus points for watching while stoned.

flycaliguy 6y ago
Absolutely one of the best mushroom/thc enabled TV shows. The fuzzy abstraction layer that all these other comments are mentioning basically glues the universe together when you are tripping.

rm_-rf_slash 6y ago

Something Adam Curtis has been going on about lately with more emphasis in each production is the assertion that we as a society are so blinded by the illusions we live in that we are incapable of imagining what a better world would look like. Often conspicuously absent is what such a world ought to be, in his view. As brilliant as his works are and have been, the longer he keeps asking the same question without providing an answer the more it becomes a well-researched “we live in a society.”

frabbit 6y ago
If that interests you I highly recommend Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.
Guthur 6y ago
It is entirely possible that there is actually no significantly better way for us to go about this. The assumption that life can be good and happy for all is just fundamentally flawed in the face of the human condition and physical reality. In the absence of infinite and exploitable energy it's hard to see how you wont have a society that is going to directly or indirectly impose limits upon the individuals life and well being. And given the differences in the human psyche it seems inheritently impossible to please all of the people all of the time.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  There's a gulf between something better and utopia.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Better can be very subjective. What you think is better may not align with what I think is better. One of us may feel individual freedom at all costs, one might be the greater good trumps the individual.
    - pietrovismara 6y ago

dayofthedaleks 6y ago

One of the major themes of this series is the genesis of modern conspiracy theories, and I'm definitely ready to hear Curtis' take on the matter. I feel like he's had to scrap several projects over the past few years as events overtook one's ability to digest.

frabbit 6y ago
I'm hoping he mentions something about the liberal/russiagate conspiracy theories as the emotional counterbalance to the rightwing/qanon-kenyan theories. Also a discussion of how the current dismissal of all conspiracy theories as axiomatically untrue is foolish.
- tjr225 6y ago
  This comment appears to be an attempt to paint these conspiracy theories as equivalent. One posits there was a Russian influence on an election(which is probably true if not likely in all of our elections for the past 50 years) and the other is an almost comical rejection of reality. For what it’s worth the parent likely knows this and I don’t think the person I’m responding to is making this comment in good faith.
  - konjin 6y ago
    This is a classic motte and bailey argument. You are holding the factual motte: that Russian intelligence agencies bought some adds on social media and pretending it's the same as the bailey of the larger conspiracy theory: that Russian agents did everything up to an including hacking into voting machines, changing tallies in swing states, having blackmail on Trump, Trump having a Russian handler, Trump being a Russian asset and all sorts of other nonsense. Russia gate is Qanon for liberals. We even have a factual Jewish pedophile with ties to Clinton, the British Crown and the CIA who died in 'mysterious' circumstances for the Qanon motte.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      There's an interesting kind of reverse motte and bailey I've noticed happening with QAnon too. Motte: Trump was not an undercover operative working to undermine a deep state cabal with patriots who have secretly arrested almost every major politician and celebrity and replaced them with holograms. Bailey: there's no such thing as elite pedophile rings.

teh_klev 6y ago

This is excellent news. My first encounter with Adam Curtis was The Mayfair Set back in 2000 or so, and I've been an avid follower of his work since then. There's something oddly satisfying about his films, and there's always something new to go and learn more about afterwards.

olivermarks 6y ago

I'm very proud to say I flew from California to NYC to see Adam Curtis vs Massive Attack at the Armory in 2013 and it was probably the best live show I have ever seen. Huge video monitors, live Massive Attack behind them (gauzy) and Curtis voice booming out. It was superb. https://youtu.be/3e3I1mLc3RM https://youtu.be/3e3I1mLc3RM I really hope this new Curtis work is as thought provoking as his previous series! I really miss his BBC blog which is hidden now but still there, those posts were terrific too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-385e-808f-c9c7c38d1cb7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94...

heavyset_go 6y ago
I regret missing Adam Curtis and Massive Attack to this day.
possibleworlds 6y ago
Loved his blog. My favourite post was this one on interventionism: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/goodies_and_baddies.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/goodies_and_b... You may need to enable flash temporarily, the archival videos are half the fun.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
I saw Massive Attack in their 2019 reunion tour, and Adam Curtis did all the visuals. Without those visuals it would've just been old timers playing their old hits, but instead the show was visually arresting, challenging, political, and indeed, superb.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  The experience of all my vision and peripheral vision being dominated by huge screens at the 2013 Armory show was incredible. Massive Attack (who I'm pretty luke warm on apart from Karmacoma) were pretty much the backing band to a lengthy Curtis documentary. This was the trailer for the show that made me instantly buy a plane ticket to NYC https://youtu.be/yv_S8GdylEA https://youtu.be/yv_S8GdylEA

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

blazor 6y ago

Thanks for the info. The guy is not an oracle but I enjoy his docs like Power of Nightmares, etc., as much as Pilger's docs. True quality in a sea of crap.

shimonabi 6y ago

I really love his documentaries, but he is essentially a conspiracy theorist for the thinking man. He always tries to glue different disconnected stories into one overarching narrative. The world is not that coherent. Things happen for no reason at all.

317070 6y ago
I disagree. There is often no conspiracy or intent by the people in the individual stories he uses, he is putting them together to show in broad strokes things in society which were not there before or which he thinks are changing. You need to read Max Weber or David Graeber, and you will recognize the sociologist or even anthropologist lens he uses to look at the modern world.
- shimonabi 6y ago
  Thanks, I was not educated in the humanities, but I know of Max Weber. David Graeber's works sounds interesting; I will read some of it when I have time. Sorry he passed away.
sooheon 6y ago
Connecting ideas in a historical narrative is not equal to alleging conspiracy. Reading that into his documentaries says more about your perspective.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
> Things happen for no reason at all. Correction, some things happen for no reason at all. Some things do happen for a reason. Deductive and inductive logic helps us decide which is which. I greatly dislike this "all conspiracies are false" approach to understanding the world, as it feels like a "logical safe space" that is intellectually bankrupt, but especially given the state of public discourse and other events, there is such a stigma for being associated with any sort of belief in "conspiracy" that there seems to be a huge knee-jerk avoidance that just doesn't stand up to the test of history. Conspiracies are real, and are the breadstuffs of history. Failure to acknowledge this will leave one always a few feet off the mark when trying to understand the past, which means failure to understand the present and hence, is an obstacle in helping one to guide the future.

max_ 6y ago

I thought this was the one he was making on Dick Cheney [0]. But it isn't. This guy is really not a journalist. If your to ask me, he is an investigator of complex systems. The complex system being humans societies. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/adam-curtis-and-vice-director-adam-mckay-on-how-dick-cheney-masterminded-a-rightwing-revolution https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/adam-curtis-and...

317070 6y ago
Something between a sociologist and an anthropologist, but making video art rather than books.

cm2012 6y ago

Your reminder that documentaries are the absolute worst medium for learning the truth about complicated subjects. The nature of the medium is to construct emotional appeals and narratives at the expense of truth. Articles and books are much better in this regard. Documentaries shine for slice of life type things.

monadic3 6y ago
Narrative is how most people communicate. This is hardly a bad thing. This idea that a medium can do anything but communicate narrative is ridiculous. Anyway, I wouldn't trust anything purporting to communicate the unadulterated Truth with a ten-foot pole. Name your bias and we're in business!
gmtx725 6y ago
I wouldnt class Adam Curtis's work as documentaries. More like... interesting stories and moods crafted from a collage of archive footage. They're just an interesting take, not necessarily claiming to be the capital-T 'Truth'...
tobylane 6y ago
BBC’s Horizon, especially before roughly 2012, was great for going to an hours worth of depth into a subject. Since then they’ve gone too emotional and narrative for me, no longer requiring gsce science.
- dingaling 6y ago
  We joked that you could play a drinking game with the post-scienrlce era Horizon. Take a shot every time the narrator rhetorically asked "But why did it happen?"

subsubsub 6y ago

This is my favourite Adam Curtis documentary... The Loving Trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg Only 3 mins long.

DonaldFisk 6y ago
It's a parody.
grey-area 6y ago
That was rather good and highlights in 3 minutes the significant problems with his stylish yet incoherent films. They’re convincing on an emotional level in the way that a speech from a politician or a well crafted advert is - by appealing to secret desires, fears and aspirations rather than persuading with the truth.

_cs2017_ 6y ago

Could someone please summarize Curtis' opinions and claims, aggregated across his documentaries?

Applejinx 6y ago
"power corrupts"

leg100 6y ago

> Get You Out Of My Head is an epic history that shows how and why that happened. How we made this particular world. And that it was not inevitable. Oh no he won't. He never explains why or how anything happened. He might attribute the present state of affairs to the bankruptcy of new york city in the seventies. Or to shady deals the west made with middle Eastern regimes. But none of it adds up to a coherent argument. It's just a long lamenting binge. I'll still watch it of course.

robert_foss 6y ago
I think he tends to portrait a thread of events, but they aren't always the only thread.

KaiserPro 6y ago

I was a fan, but then as I got older, and better at critical thinking, I realised that his films are basically a rant with a backing track of b-roll from the 8/16mm bin. I think the thing that tipped me over was the assertion that alan greenspan and a few others were all in league together because they read Ayn Rand. After that I realised that hes basically peddling left of centre rants in a pretty style[1]. [1] Left of british centre, and mid 2000s centre. There is nothing wrong with this. I am vaguely sympathetic of his views. But they should not be represented as either fact, or balanced.

_cs2017_ 6y ago
Ah you essentially answered my question about summarizing his views. It's quite scary that what seems like a conspiracy club lite is getting such a huge amount respect from the highly educated HN audience. It seems the near future is converging to a bunch of conspiracy theorists duking it out with each other in front of the captive audience -- the general electorate. Maybe it will make things easier for everyone involved if some conspirators actually do take over the world, thus making this spectacle slightly less surreal.
- gmtx725 6y ago
  IMO it's a strange misinterpretation of his work to think he's a conspiracy theorist. I think it is undeniable that every era has an ideology that captures the zeitgeist of the times, I think Curtis just explores the origins of those ideologies and what motivated their progenitors, he is not alleging they had shadowy plans for world domination...
polytely 6y ago
Oh I read that not as a literal "it's a conspiracy" but more that the echos of Ayn Rand's worldview are visible in how the people in power view the world and their role within it.
gmtx725 6y ago
Calm down, his films are just interesting takes on the ideologies that govern our times, combined artfully with arresting archive footage and music. They're not always claiming to be capital-t 'truth'...

darawk 6y ago

Curtis documentaries are in this weird uncanny valley that I intensely enjoy, but deeply uneasily. They're very pleasurable. They string together a grand narrative that says...something. Not quite sure exactly what. But man it sure does feel like you're learning a deep truth when you watch them. As much as I like them, I suspect they are essentially poison. They're Alex Jones for smart people. Half cocked ideas strung together in a deeply aesthetic, but mostly meaningless way. I don't want to impugn him too much. He seems like a good guy and I genuinely enjoy his work. But it really does feel like there's something narcotic about it, something insidious about the way it creates the feeling of insight without actually teaching you anything.

jowday 6y ago
I think his work is a great jumping off point. After watching Century of the Self, I started reading pretty heavily into Walter Lippman, Edward Bernays, and the general development of neoliberal thought. Most all of what I read backed up his thesis with much more concrete details. I think it would be great if he released a reading list alongside each of his documentaries - let the films serve as a compelling aesthetic work and the reading as essentially a citation. Alternatively, maybe I should try to compile some for each of his films.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  > let the films serve as a compelling aesthetic work and the reading as essentially a citation. Alternatively, maybe I should try to compile some for each of his films. Yes, that would be awesome, and would add much more weight to the arguments he makes in his documentaries.
- 317070 6y ago
  I would absolutely love that and use it. Curtis is the reason I got into Max Weber and Jacques Ellul. I cannot remember which of his series led me into that rabbit hole though.
  - DSingularity 6y ago

238473913569 6y ago

Adam Curtis is a leftwing conspiracy theorist whose films are just well-crafted propaganda.

AdamSignups 6y ago

Who?

thinkingemote 6y ago

One of my favourite day dreams is imagining what, in 20 years time, will the Adam Curtis documentary on the Coronavirus be like.

boraoztunc 6y ago

"We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know, we know they lie. They don’t care. We say we care, but we do nothing. And nothing ever changes. It’s normal. Welcome to the post-truth world." HyperNormalisation; https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/

WaldoLydecker 6y ago

https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg

cc_stoic 6y ago

this forum needs a downvote botton

omosubi 6y ago

I've always been skeptical of Curtis documentaries but I have to give props to the BBC for airing. I can't imagine any major network in the US touching these projects with a 10 foot pole.