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You are completely right, Marcuse is very modest in portraying himself as an influential figure, and I didn't want to sound as if arguing that he had no influen
by cvursache 14y ago
You are completely right, Marcuse is very modest in portraying himself as an influential figure, and I didn't want to sound as if arguing that he had no influence. He had an influence, but he was in NO way involved in organizing any of the actions the students took. To quote him, he was a "father figure" to them, rather than a leader.
To answer your second point, I don't want to argue that Adam Curtis makes bad movies, quite the contrary. But his intellectual contributions are very questionable. There is a reason why contrarian people like Noam Chomsky are widely respected, and there is a reason why people like Adam Curtis are not. To quote Carl Sagan: 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.'. And Curtis seems to provide the former without the latter.
- drcongo 14y agoWhat makes you say that Adam Curtis is not widely respected? By whom?
- cvursache 14y agoI would argue that Adam Curtis is not widely respected (or known for that matter) in the area of academic discourse and that if he could back some of the big claims made in his movies with solid arguments and evidence, he would have made more of a difference in the world of political thought.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoIt would be interesting to compare the number of people familiar with Curtis's work vs those familiar with Chomsky's. I think Chomsky would likely come out ahead, but he's had a head start. I don't know I'd bet on that being true in 5-10 years.
- tatsuke95 14y agoI suppose I was a bit defensive because I generally consider this forum to have a slightly "high-brow" slant. I also take much advice from it. So while you're certainly entitled to your opinion, and to like or dislike the films, I think the works are all good enough that people should be encouraged to watch them. As opposed to you telling me Transformers 3 sucks, and me never having to think about watching it after that. When I leapt into the comments there happened to be a slightly unfavourable sentiment regarding Adam Curtis. I just wanted people to know that everything he's produced is at least worth a viewing.