Adam Curtis presents a view of a world where we are constantly deceived and controlled by bad actors or more accurately maybe, twisted characters, you know, not held enough by mum when they were babies. We don't have any buy-in to the future, we just have to watch the dreams of these twisted characters unfold and collide.
There are four main issues with his presentation. I believe he is a nice man, so I would classify these as errors. Firstly he implies that narrativization, simplification, theatre and confusion are somehow new developments in politics, this is not actually true, they have been ever present since a city was established on seven hills by the River Tiber. Donald Trump is not a new type of character on the political scene, as many sick politicians, with panoplies of personality disorders, have done their turn on the catwalk of power in the past.
Secondly, whilst he is striving for a neutrality of sorts, he simply is unaware of the political right wing, and where their discontent arises; this is partly because the political right became an oblique presentation: after defeats in progressive battlegrounds like racism and women's rights, conservatism went guerrilla. Conservatives in fact learned many lessons from the left, particularly the importance of social media. Conservatives became very cautious about their statements, presenting themselves as victims of continuous change and cultural uncertainty, not the skinheads of old who posted dog mess through letterboxes of people with different skin colours. Progressives on the other hand throw all caution to the wind, teaching small children of a supposedly bewlidering array of genders. This was done in a well meaning way, but with no more rigour than that which the phrenologists of yore employed. All Curtis is really able to do when talking about the alt right is to make vague Tolkien-esque allusions to forces of darkness welling up at the edges of Middle Earth.
Thirdly, a film of his is an assault of propaganda techniques. Granted he is not trying to delude his audience, he is a man of integrity, but of course, no-one on the right would ever give him that benefit of the doubt when faced with the bombardment of manipulation.
Fourthly the segues between topics are often extremely tenuous. An example from the film would be going from algorithms to Donald Trump via a bizarre anecdote about the Yakuza fleecing one of his casinos.
I learn a lot when watching his films, he's an introducer of topics, he brought an emotional texture to Hafez al-Assad's life for example, and I did not know about the effective bankruptcy of New York. Also if you accept the manipulation, like an innocent at a magic show, HyperNormalisation is enjoyable to watch.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of the film isn't really political, per se, it's when Curtis mentions a US government security algorithm, optic nerve, which discovers that people are in large part using streaming for sexual purposes, they want to broadcast their organs. Most people are not sophisticated, they are not using the internet to learn or conspire. If, as it turns out, we are simply lustful monkeys, is a conservative an unreasoning monkey who wants to hold on to whatever they have (either cultural, polticial or physical capital) no matter what the cost, and a progressive an unreasoning monkey who wants to make leaps into the dark, and seeing their hands empty, want to grab from the conservatives? Whilst the world becomes ever more complex, we humans are not becoming more complex, we are bound in by the finite capcaity of our memories, lifespans, empathy, and intelligences. Welcome to the chimp's tea party.
There are four main issues with his presentation. I believe he is a nice man, so I would classify these as errors. Firstly he implies that narrativization, simplification, theatre and confusion are somehow new developments in politics, this is not actually true, they have been ever present since a city was established on seven hills by the River Tiber. Donald Trump is not a new type of character on the political scene, as many sick politicians, with panoplies of personality disorders, have done their turn on the catwalk of power in the past.
Secondly, whilst he is striving for a neutrality of sorts, he simply is unaware of the political right wing, and where their discontent arises; this is partly because the political right became an oblique presentation: after defeats in progressive battlegrounds like racism and women's rights, conservatism went guerrilla. Conservatives in fact learned many lessons from the left, particularly the importance of social media. Conservatives became very cautious about their statements, presenting themselves as victims of continuous change and cultural uncertainty, not the skinheads of old who posted dog mess through letterboxes of people with different skin colours. Progressives on the other hand throw all caution to the wind, teaching small children of a supposedly bewlidering array of genders. This was done in a well meaning way, but with no more rigour than that which the phrenologists of yore employed. All Curtis is really able to do when talking about the alt right is to make vague Tolkien-esque allusions to forces of darkness welling up at the edges of Middle Earth.
Thirdly, a film of his is an assault of propaganda techniques. Granted he is not trying to delude his audience, he is a man of integrity, but of course, no-one on the right would ever give him that benefit of the doubt when faced with the bombardment of manipulation.
Fourthly the segues between topics are often extremely tenuous. An example from the film would be going from algorithms to Donald Trump via a bizarre anecdote about the Yakuza fleecing one of his casinos.
I learn a lot when watching his films, he's an introducer of topics, he brought an emotional texture to Hafez al-Assad's life for example, and I did not know about the effective bankruptcy of New York. Also if you accept the manipulation, like an innocent at a magic show, HyperNormalisation is enjoyable to watch.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of the film isn't really political, per se, it's when Curtis mentions a US government security algorithm, optic nerve, which discovers that people are in large part using streaming for sexual purposes, they want to broadcast their organs. Most people are not sophisticated, they are not using the internet to learn or conspire. If, as it turns out, we are simply lustful monkeys, is a conservative an unreasoning monkey who wants to hold on to whatever they have (either cultural, polticial or physical capital) no matter what the cost, and a progressive an unreasoning monkey who wants to make leaps into the dark, and seeing their hands empty, want to grab from the conservatives? Whilst the world becomes ever more complex, we humans are not becoming more complex, we are bound in by the finite capcaity of our memories, lifespans, empathy, and intelligences. Welcome to the chimp's tea party.