Adam Curtis

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ah fuck

strange, though; where Iā€™m up to on ā€˜Canā€™t Get Youā€¦ā€™, it feels like heā€™s exposing some of those things heā€™s said in the article to espouse?

I was thinking about the way posts upthread have said that his films should not be consumed like those that aim for fly-on-the-wall remove/objectivity, but as an emotional weave of modern history?

I was thinking about this in the context of Jiang Qing, and the way the ā€˜Shooting/Fuckingā€™ episode seems to be trying to stir the viewer, somewhat like she did in China, but then I figured this was done knowingly?

I guess that makes perfect sense in the context of that article, in his love for Big, Important Ideas, and also in his supposed knowing nods towards right wing figures and their attempts to bend the world to their will.

also, on the basis of that article, Iā€™m seeing a parallel between disinformation and his documentaries? if he is to be taken on bad faith and is no leftie, then his docs are manipulative in a similar way.

ugh. I donā€™t know what to think anymore.

makes me think of what I said to @ttf in another thread, that what people gesture to/embrace in their formative years can be all over the shop, and the way we turn out sees more shallow ideas fall by the wayside.

these people are privileged dilettantes, basically, and we need to stop being surprised by their heel turns and keep on confronting/deconstructing the societal forces that inform how they turn out.

(smash the patriarchy)

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What do we think of this then?

A whole TV series and a three-part TV episode under ā€˜filmsā€™? Hmmmm but still.

feel like i need to watch the trap again. i remember thinking that curtis had showed his hand quite a bit in that one, but iā€™m probably being reductive in my memory of it.

they look like the kind of films I would expect Adam Curtis to list, now especially.

i.e. there arenā€™t any films made by or about those on the wrong end of all of his privilege

ā€¦and he picks a three-part episide of South Park

Iā€™ve not seen that one

Iā€™ve seen Bitter Lake, Hypernormalisation, and three of this latest series

I think the conclusion of that article - that heā€™s just a fucking idiot - is on point.

ā€¦which is something that again ties into what he touches on in the Shooting/Fucking episode, that these people with big, important ideas who try to change the world donā€™t really know what theyā€™re doing, and that the idea of control is a comforting illusion

maybe he doesnā€™t realise that central irony himself

idk. sigh

mm I donā€™t really get this point of viewā€¦are you saying that he should conform to what your expectations of him are? isnā€™t one of the big things about his documentaries is that the world/society is incredibly complex/contradictory and you canā€™t always fit things into binaries?

I think to take him wholesale is a bit foolishā€¦some things I find really interesting and insightful, some things I take with a pinch of salt. thereā€™s probably some elements that veer to the right side, thereā€™s probably some parts which people would consider radically left.

To me that just reads like a take-down based purely on selective quoting. Youā€™d have to stretch very, very far to see Curtis as anything other than Obviously On The Left

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Lolwhat

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Ha, I was having a normal one and stretching

I literally read that back when it got a like about 20 minutes ago and I couldnā€™t fucking understand what I was saying so yeah.

Iā€™m saying that heā€™s on record as being all about the idea of stirring up an emotional collectivism, and a proven way to do that is through disinformation.

I was gonna say that I get that you have to try to document the full complexity of the world, but Iā€™m wary now of how ā€˜marketplace of ideasā€™ he seems.

I donā€™t think heā€™s trying to manipulate us in such a way; I find it mostly coherent, and the ideas he explores tie into my own leftist worldview

however, Iā€™m wary of this being purely how I see it, and I think to people who arenā€™t familiar with the stories heā€™s telling might end up bewildered and as such ripe for coercion by whatever thematic sweep heā€™s aiming for?

parallels with disinformation, anyway - I donā€™t reckon heā€™s actually trying to adopt such practices.

I find it hard to square with so much of what heā€™s presenting to us, though; exposing systems and threads of recent history, only to also want something along the lines of what heā€™s exposing, itā€™sā€¦ yeah.

this isnā€™t a very coherent post, sorry. Iā€™m thinking on my feet. I just do not trust him anymore.

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so many red flags, though

Curtis is basically an academic who has accidentally found himself making arty documentaries. His personal politics probably wouldnā€™t get him ranking as one of your twitter favs if he was just posting his takes there, but he has a clearly dialectical understanding of social change and that in itself lends itself to a left interpretation/appreciation (in the same way that the people writing The Wire probably arenā€™t full-blooded Marxists, but because itā€™s so dialectical itā€™s absolutely ripe for Marxist analysis).

I donā€™t really get and donā€™t like the idea that analysis not being grounded in a materialist lens means itā€™s not left wing. For one thing, loads of left academic analysis is essentially interpretivist, which denies the whole idea of objective material reality. But also as I say itā€™s not the materialism in your analysis that makes things ā€˜Marxistā€™ I think, itā€™s the dialectical structure of it. Marxism is concerned with the dynamics of different forces and structures interacting with each other and constantly producing new outcomes that are realised as social and economic relations, thatā€™s basically the foundation of any Curtis documentary.

Also he went on Chapo whilst promoting Hypernormalisation and was clearly very at home there, so yā€™know

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Just wondering, because I could do with some education on this and youā€™ve got a good grounding in it, does that open up the possibility of someone being able to be ā€˜academically Marxistā€™ as youā€™re describing, and approaching concepts dialectically, but also holding right-wing views?

Like, if itā€™s an analytical framework that sits at a higher level than materialist analysis (not pejoratively but in a framing sense) then is it not ā€˜politicallyā€™ agnostic?

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please can you expand on the bit about dialectics and left interpretation?

the bit about Chapo you just added is another red flag!

I mean I guess if you really want to break it down, ā€˜left wingā€™ and ā€˜right wingā€™ are bad concepts anyway. Youā€™ll get plenty of Marxist professors at Goldsmiths or whatever who are total misogynists. Plenty of socialists who are racist. Plenty of anti-racists who are essentially pro-capitalist etc.

If youā€™re talking purely from an economic point of view, Iā€™ve seen people make the point before that institutions like the FT basically understand the world in a similar lens to marxists, but just from the point of view of the capitalist rather than the worker (though they also disagree with the principles of marxian economics, like labour theory of value etc)

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Yeah, I was using broad terms which arenā€™t that valuable! I guess perhaps an issue is the conflation of Marxist analysis with Marxā€™s analysis, so his tools versus his analysis.

In what way?