mind_philip
saw the light
Like God, he withdrew in silence, ashamed of his creation.
Adam Curtis
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BBC - Can't Get You Out of My Head - Key Characters
Can't Get You Out of My Head profiles: Key Characters
entertainment
Well-known member
I saw the first episode last night and thought it was great.
I liked how he kept going "but out of that revolution an even newer revolution was born and would sweep through the nation" so you get this diegesis of a matryoshka doll dialectic which is of course a bit comical but I don't suppose anyone is taking him too seriously.
Don't know what his point is though. I mean you can really only keep doing these psychoanalytic readings of modern culture for so long before the hermeneutics of suspicion get old.
I liked how he kept going "but out of that revolution an even newer revolution was born and would sweep through the nation" so you get this diegesis of a matryoshka doll dialectic which is of course a bit comical but I don't suppose anyone is taking him too seriously.
Don't know what his point is though. I mean you can really only keep doing these psychoanalytic readings of modern culture for so long before the hermeneutics of suspicion get old.
I watched the last episode last episode. I think it might have been the weakest one. Did anyone else go "huh?" when he said "Oh yeah, all that stuff I said earlier about how you can use stimuli and prompts to alter people's behaviour was actually total bollocks"? Something like $600 billion is spent on advertising globally each year, and I don't think that would be the case if the businesses that spend that money didn't see some benefit from it. Ditto propaganda for political parties and candidates.
I also thought the note at the very end about how we can do things differently and avoid the traps of the past rang a bit hollow after we've been told for eight hours that democracy is a sham, revolutions invariably get corrupted and fail, we're all slaves to irrational animal fears and passions that we're not even aware of, much less able to control, and that the mass movements of the past that produced real, positive change are now impossible because we're all hopelessly narcissistic individualists.
I also thought the note at the very end about how we can do things differently and avoid the traps of the past rang a bit hollow after we've been told for eight hours that democracy is a sham, revolutions invariably get corrupted and fail, we're all slaves to irrational animal fears and passions that we're not even aware of, much less able to control, and that the mass movements of the past that produced real, positive change are now impossible because we're all hopelessly narcissistic individualists.
Although I did like the descriptions of Putin as a sort of cypher - an unhuman - a politician with no ideology beyond power for its own sake, and essentially no personality to speak of. The perfect bureaucrat. I guess that's just some people's opinions of him, but it's an evocative image.
And the senior British spy who thought the USSR was only pretending to collapse to fool the West was hilarious.
And the senior British spy who thought the USSR was only pretending to collapse to fool the West was hilarious.
entertainment
Well-known member
it means that he's got this habit of interpreting things where strangeness or absurdity is always the residual odor of some dark force brooding beneath the surface of society instead of just absurdity or strangeness because things generally don't have an order or logic to them.
and it can make for a good plot if you build towards something but if you just go and apply it to everything that's ever happened it does get boring after a while
entertainment
Well-known member
"there's a strange mood to the modern world"
when in history was the world less strange? there's just way more information to be processed and less time
when in history was the world less strange? there's just way more information to be processed and less time
linebaugh
Well-known member
that might contribute to a strange mood, no?
entertainment
Well-known member
not saying it's shit just that i'm hoping it builds towards some grand theory of the mind or the nature of society or something, not this archipelago of quirky events and curious webs of thought
mind_philip
saw the light
You say hermeneutics of suspicion, I say ontology of order.
Can't see it catching on like "I say 'Ayia', you say 'Napa'!"
pattycakes_
Well-known member
I put him onto Cosmic Trigger when I posted about listening to the audiobook of it on here a year and a bit ago. Adam if you're reading, let's collab, baby!
He's going to keep developing the conspiracy theory theme but his take is not as sophisticated as RAWs