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All Roll Is B-Roll: Adam Curtis Goes Quiet
- jdougan 3y agohttps://archive.ph/ejN76 https://archive.ph/ejN76
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago„MITCH THERIEAU IS A WRITER AND PHD CANDIDATE AT STANFORD.” These critiques of Curtis could be parodied just as much as his films. This one takes his decision to not use his voice as the starting point, but doesn’t really come back around to it in any really meaningful way.
- labrador 3y agoI enjoy Adam Curtis films the way I used to enjoy Jame Burke's Connections: As impressionistic history, entertaining art, montages of feelings, ideas and suspicions. They are daydreams and hallucinations of the past that offer explanations where there are none, not to be taken seriously but as a way of mulling things over. For our consideration. Like Bill Hicks said, life is a ride. Curtis films make that clear, fun and sometimes enjoyable, sometimes frightening. Many people think art is supposed to mean something, but that's not the case.
- mikub 3y agoWhen I watched Traumezone I often thought "Oh man, when that or that happend I was probably sitting at home playing Mario or Zelda on my NES, and couldn't care less about the historic events happening over there." So Adam Curtis movies for me are just a way to reflect on my past but also human civilization as a whole, that's what I like them for.
- atoav 3y agoI see it the same, not as a film that presents a chain of facts and truths, but as something that showcases a certain way of looking at the world. "I now know how X happened because Adam Curtis told me so", is a thought that has never once crossed my mind. Instead, after watching a film by him I feel a heightened sense of curiosity to look deeper into things myself. And as a filmmaker myself I'd say he does that on purpose. This in itself is an aspect that should not be undervalued.
- gambiting 3y ago>>I now know how X happened because Adam Curtis told me so I feel like I wouldn't have known about the whole Gadaffi situation if not for Hypernomalisation, but then it's a singular example.
- Ygg2 3y agoI wouldn't know of the Rwandan genocide and how it started with the Dutch. Dutch classified people into Tutsi and Hutu, and how their records helped Hutu find and exterminate Tutsi. The big gotcha being Tutsi and Hutu were genetically similar people with some slight differences.
- atoav 3y agoSure, there might have been new stuff in there that I have never heard about, but extrapolating from how he speaks about the stuff I know about I also take the exact phrasing and the sometimes implied causality with a grain of salt.
- gambiting 3y agoOh yeah, I definitely had to go away and read up on some of the stuff using other sources, I wouldn't quote him on any of it. But he made me aware of it.
- emodendroket 3y agoIt has the quality of a lot of popular stuff where it's glib and amusing and you nod your head, but then if you stop and think about it for a moment some of the arguments are not all that strong.
- aa-jv 3y agoLike what?
- emodendroket 3y agoFor instance, one I watched described the Clinton administration as being aimless because its policy was too driven by the whims of the public as expressed by polling. In context it seemed convincing but if I’m sitting here now thinking about it I don’t think it is remotely true.
- uoaei 3y agoConsidering that Clinton et al. gleefully adopted the moniker of "technocrat" in a period where the Internet, and digital connectivity more broadly, was ascendant, I'd say that probably even Bill would agree with that assessment. I challenge you to find a serious political commentator who can identify a coherent vision that governed the administration's decisions beyond "whatever gets my approval rating up".
- emodendroket 3y agoI don't see how that supports the argument. What does being a technocrat have to do with being "populist" or poll-driven? I'd see these things as opposed. And I think that Clinton and the New Democrats rather dramatically reshaped the Democratic Party in ways we're all still living with.
- uoaei 3y agoThe questions present in polls or surveys, especially their phrasing, largely dictate the scope of what's considered debatable politics. When that scope is defined from above, populism cannot exist. Technocrats act under the auspices of "campaigns" and "programs" which start with questions defined by technocratic thinktanks, which are then inevitably justified by the polls due to their imposition of narrow Overton windows, and then operationalized according to the whims of the techno-utopians with their fetishism of statistics (read: tyranny of the majority). It is this pattern that was pioneered by the Clinton administration. It's why everyone now has such gloomy views of "political consultants".
- mymythisisthis 3y agoOne thing that they share in common (Adam Curtis and James Burke), as well as Myth Busters, is that they have plenty of good footage/film (or whatever you call it). Most news stories have 30 seconds of footage, and loop it repeatedly. No historical footage, no old interviews being brought up, nothing filmed to help put a story into context. Even many documentaries I watch, suffer the same problem, a bit of real footage, then jumping straight to interviews with people. Not much historical footage, nothing extra filmed, expect interviews with people.
- mrcartmenes 3y agoOoooof. The largely unspoken kernel of this writer’s argument is that Curtis is wrong. Once you take that as given you can disparage his style as much as you like.
- beebmam 3y agoI don't think it is largely unspoken, the writer is quite explicitly critical. Curtis's films are highly enjoyable for me, but much more art than argument. I find the criticism is valid.
- StockHuman 3y agoSome of them certainly are, though I got the impression that the author might not understand Curtis or his work to any real degree. Characterizing him as a potential conservative (for effect)? whilst also noting his Graeber quote struck me as odd – identifying 1960s counterculture as a source of ideas with lasting damage is rather popular with leftist discourse in his particular generation/ stripe of leftism. That, and as you write: they’re art films; being frustrated as the author was for their lack of clarity or specificity as if they should’ve been straight documentaries is silly. If anything, many documentaries engage in a false determinism where their chosen subject matter is 100% consequential in the slice of history they’re exploring – something Curtis’ work doesn’t do by instead leaving the totality of recent history as a paradoxically more accurate haze of loosely connected events with unknowable detail.
- trgn 3y agoThe criticism is valid, but also a little lame. The author takes on a ridiculing tone, painting Curtis as having big ideas but being too naive and infantile to actually develop them, a 16 year old raging at the shadowy elites, it's the system man, puts on RATM. That's the whole content of the critique, especially the first 3/4. Which is fine, I can see that. And yet. Curtis _does_ have big ideas, just chooses to develop them in an impressionistic manner. He's an artist in a way, a polemicist maybe, philosopher certainly. The writer is (for now) facing one of his betters, yet intuitively senses something is off, awash in a slight sense of superiority. The way this usually arises is because he's likely saturated by Curtis work, and has "cracked the code", the stylistic choices, the narrative structure. The veil has fallen, and now, as a God, he only sees the void. But that's because he's fully internalized Curtis' message, there's nothing new for him there anymore.
- theage 3y ago>[his work] begs for and preempts parody Funny accusation because that is how I would describe most modern media. It's as if their meta inclusion of anxious self-parody is simultaneously deserving of and suffices for critique. Curtis needs to make another doco called the "Dislodging of the Self: Individual assessment not required. And that's a good thing"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AndyNemmity 3y agoThis led me to check out Traumazone. It's fantastic. It's a picture into Russia over a period of time, and while not comprehensive, it tells a story of the history of Russia through footage taken at the time.
- jefc1111 3y agoObligatory link share: https://www.tomscott.com/infinite-adam-curtis/ https://www.tomscott.com/infinite-adam-curtis/
- AndrewOMartin 3y agoOfficially sanctioned parody here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dk9y/the-love-box-in-your-living-room https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dk9y/the-love-box-...
- plasticeagle 3y agoI have come to this comment section only to implore everyone to make sure that they watch "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace" - and in doing so, perhaps also discover Richard Brautigan's poetry. Brautigan's story was a tragic one, and in this poem's suggested naïve future vision - in which the machines we build actually do as we might imagine they ought - maybe suggests that he would never be satisfied by the way in which the world really worked out. I am a huge and unapologetic fan of Adam Curtis. In All Watched Over, he argues that borderline psychopaths, in the thrall of Ayn Rand's poisonous ideas, built American capitalism. It seems as good a thesis as any, to me.
- swayvil 3y agoOur machines are realizations of our dreams. And our dreams bind us. Like a man buried in a box. Maybe it would be better to fail here.
- techterrier 3y agoAdam Curtis: QAnon for BBC 6 music listeners
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoI think this is a very incisive take, wrapped in a joke. The world is full of bizarre coincidences and strange occurences that "don't fit the narrative" and connecting those together appeals to people across the political/intellectual spectrum. Connecting George Boole to the Voynich Manuscript via 2 degrees of seperation tickles my brain in a weird way that I imagine is similar to the conspiracy theories that drive QAnon.
- tclancy 3y agoI got really into the docs around the time of Covid and liked them a lot, but I could not shake the feeling they were meant to appeal to guys exactly like me in much that way so I am ambivalent about consuming more. The first step to not being the sucker in the room is accepting you are very much capable of being the sucker in the room. I haven't worked out step 2 yet.
- cribbles 3y ago“Curtis’s stitched-together compositions are less collages than they are Rorschach blots: look into their murk, and you can find your own worldview confirmed.” This passage, which I see as being core to the author’s critique, doesn’t really jive with me. Basically he’s saying these movies are enigmatic, they offer space for reflection, they resonate with a lot of people across the ideological spectrum. Well, you can look at that cynically, or you could say that’s precisely — almost definitionally — what makes them effective art. To go a little further than that: I don’t think it’s a fair claim. Each of his movies since Bitter Lake have had the same general arc of “emerging ideological apparatus promises to resolve social contradictions and empower the common person, fails to do so.” In this sense, his narrative angle is broadly _anti-confirmatory_. Then there’s the aesthetic critique, which, whatever. I really can’t fault someone for finding fault with Adam Curtis’s style. And it’s least overbearing in TraumaZone out of all his movies I’ve seen, so I get why this author favors it. As it happens, I’m about halfway through TraumaZone right now. It’s great. Poses some interesting questions, doesn’t offer any easy answers.
- jahnu 3y agoTraumaZone is in my humble opinion a masterpiece. But to me it doesn't show that his previous work is any less incredible. In his previous work he explicitly sets out a (usually unconventional) thesis and then attempts to explain it in detail. In TraumaZone the subtitle explains what he wants to do this time, "Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone What It Felt Like to Live Through The Collapse of Communism and Democracy". He wants only that you get a feeling of what it was like to experience what these people experienced and he does that incredibly well as far as I can judge. From TFA: > And yet this is hardly a sufficient explanation. I find it incredible that this isn't sufficient for the author. It fits with everything!
- denton-scratch 3y agoI was going to comment on the same passage. There's definitely something Rorschach about Curtis's work. But the author's focus on ambience, Eno and what he calls "texture" I think misses the point. I appreciate Curtis's eschewing of an explicit "voice of God" narration, like you get in most PBS documentaries. The Rorschach Test forces you to peer into the murk; you can't consume these documentaries passively. That is, they make you think. That different viewers can come away with different takes on a film is a good thing, not a criticism. I think the author is unduly dismissive.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThe thesis that I felt Curtis was pushing in recent works, and which I didn't particularly care for was: "Trump/Thatcher/Reagan/Brexit told a fictitious story that people liked, because people like simple stories even if they're not true, and if we (people who think that Trump/Thatcher/Reagan/Brexit are net-negatives to society) want to improve the world, then we need to tell a similar story and stop pissing around with facts and reality." Which I feel is both giving too much credit to Trump etc. (who were all backed by big financial incentives, which covered up and normalized their insanities and inanities) and too little to modern political movements which have achieved incredible progress by doing boring, factual, useful work.
- trabant00 3y ago> political movements which have achieved incredible progress by doing boring, factual, useful work The work and the way you market yourself to be elected to do the work can be quite different. You can certainly be too verbose when describing what you are working on and lose the audience. Happened to me many times.
- denton-scratch 3y agoIn "All Watched Over" Curtis isn't just critiqueing the Reagan/Thatcher/Brexit themes; on my reading (I last watched it a couple of years ago), he is attacking Blair/Mandelson-style technocratic managerialism. I still can't work out what Curtis actually believes in. I suspect he's some kind of revolutionary. I suspect that part of the murkiness is strategic: that if he said what he meant, the BBC would stop commissioning his films.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThere's some interesting links between Curtis and the old Revolutionary Communist Party / Living Marxism crowd which has weirdly transformed itself into provocative right-wing libertarians of Spiked. https://twitter.com/cstross/status/417666074298318848 https://twitter.com/cstross/status/417666074298318848 That whole group baffles/fascinates/frightens me: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked They'd actually make an amazing subject for an Adam Curtis style documentary.
- warkanlock 3y agoIt's incredibly amusing to watch people stretch an argument too far to bash Curtis and still manage to fail, grandly
- freddybobs 3y ago> The largely unspoken kernel of this writer’s argument is that Curtis is wrong. What I'd like to see is some concrete examples of things Adam Curtis gets wrong. Unfortunately the article referenced doesn't appear to have the goods, and the crux of it appears to be a critique of the style. I like the style. It's accessible. It's interesting. It's engaging. Which was his intent as he has discussed in interviews.