Adam Curtis
- Thread starter rob_giri
- Start date
computer_rock
Well-known member
this.
i would say the most important thing to bear in mind when read marx is methodological. marx is a dialectician, the concepts he deploys obtain their meaning through their relationship with other concepts (the totality) - nothing can be understood in isolation from the whole. when he focuses on a particular concept he is not performing an act abstraction (like a scientist might), but rather he is viewing the social totality from a particular vantage point/perspective to provide a certain kind of illumination.
i think to appreciate this is to read marx in the right spirit, and in doing so you will find the common accusations of determinism/reductionism MELT INTO THE AIR (lol).
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Just started watching Century of the Self. Enjoying it, although obviously it's been oversimplified at certain points - but given the vastness of the topics and the hourly format/need for clear narrative, can't see how this would be avoidable. Dunno much about Anna Freud, but her ideas sound terrifying.
His voice/intonation is a bit like Paul Scofield in London, or maybe I'm imagining that.
His voice/intonation is a bit like Paul Scofield in London, or maybe I'm imagining that.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Apparently he's currently producing a programme about the guy who was the British press mogul prior to Murdoch (not sure who this is), and his downfall.
Sectionfive
bandwagon house
crackerjack
Well-known member
Cecil King? Not sure he's big enough, but certainly mad enough.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Interesting idea but while I get what he's going for I think that he could have chosen a better example than Neu! for the first clip. I love the band and that tune but I don't think that it necessarily makes me think of togetherness across the clips in the way he suggests - not that it's not warm in a way, I just don't think that's the main quality that leaped out at me and made me like Neu!. Obviously that now requires me to say what I would have picked, and I guess I would have gone for some soul or something - obvious perhaps but sometimes things are obvious cos they're right.
I appreciate that Curtis has anticipated this in the second clip by selecting tunes that, from their sound palette could be conceived as warm but which undercut this with their structure.
I appreciate that Curtis has anticipated this in the second clip by selecting tunes that, from their sound palette could be conceived as warm but which undercut this with their structure.
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luka
Well-known member
craner
Beast of Burden
He's been an open wound on this forum ever since it started, when he made that ludicrous, laughable, fantastic, ill-informed documentary The Power of Nightmares in 2004. That at least had the advantage of Michael Ledeen being interviewed in his living room, next to his African objet d'arts with a wry smile on his lips, effortlessly playing Curtis at his own game and winning.
craner
Beast of Burden
Without wishing to sound too preposterous, the Curtis schtick reminds me a bit of some of the stuff I tried to do early on with A Time For Fear: the mix and cut of geography, terrorism, biology, ideology, money, sex, etc. all washed over with stylistic attempts to dazzle (prose poetry, deluge of words, alliteration, lateral jumps) and iconoclastic posture. A fucking awful over-baked soufflé, in other words, which is possibly why I hold his stuff in such contempt. It's remarkably easy to do, and requires zero scholarship or earned knowledge. Makes me think these days of Camille Paglia's masterful destruction of post-Foucault New Historicists, which still makes me wince. I'm sorry, Miss, I wasn't actually paying attention, I was just showing off, I'll try harder next time.
craner
Beast of Burden
The mayhem in Rwanda/Congo had to do with the following:
- the end of the Cold War
- the disintegration of Françafrique
- U.S. fear and incompetence after Somalia and the Rwandan genocide, and "genocide guilt" which gave the RPF/RPA a blank cheque
- the fall of Mobutu, after the invasion of the RPA and their continental allies
- the nature of Kagame and the RPF/RPA, ignored or mistunderstood by Western allies and NGOs after the genocide (understandable for a time, maybe)
- Museveni's war against the LRA and Sudan in Uganda
- the Angolan civil war, with the MPLA and UNITA alliances that divided the belligerents in the Congolese wars and infested both
- the ethnic disintegration of Congo-Brazzaville and CAR at exactly the same time as the Rwandan genocide and subsequent related/follow-on Congolose wars
- the Tutsi/Hutu schisms in Rwanda/Burundi
- Zambia's multiple alliances in a doomed attempt to maintain relative tranquility
- Mugabe's desperate lunge to prop up his regime with lucrative looting in the Congo (failed drastically)
- the Sudanese civil war, and the NIF attempt to rout the SPLA, attack Uganda and spread Islamism across the continent
- chaos, incompentence and impotence among UN forces in the early '90s
- lack of international public interest and understanding in the Congolese war and an inability to connect it to Rwandan genocide
- ditto, with regard to refugee camps following this catastrophe
- the compromised and unhelpful position of aid agencies in above
- the non-state interests of (and deals made by) mining and oil companies
- the fear of the economic and political power of resurgent South Africa under the ANC (see particularly Mugabe)
- the meddling of Gaddafi's Libya, inserting troops from Chad on a whim
- the fractious, unstable and complex nature of the North and South Kivu
- the Kabilas, father and son
- Jean-Pierre Bembe
- the post-Cold War African democratic elections, intersecting with tribal, local, national interests and constellations, particularly Congo 2006
- IMF HIPC status, very important for Uganda
- etc, etc.
The machines involved included guns, tanks and fighter jets.
Mr Curtis has exactly nothing to say about any of this.
- the end of the Cold War
- the disintegration of Françafrique
- U.S. fear and incompetence after Somalia and the Rwandan genocide, and "genocide guilt" which gave the RPF/RPA a blank cheque
- the fall of Mobutu, after the invasion of the RPA and their continental allies
- the nature of Kagame and the RPF/RPA, ignored or mistunderstood by Western allies and NGOs after the genocide (understandable for a time, maybe)
- Museveni's war against the LRA and Sudan in Uganda
- the Angolan civil war, with the MPLA and UNITA alliances that divided the belligerents in the Congolese wars and infested both
- the ethnic disintegration of Congo-Brazzaville and CAR at exactly the same time as the Rwandan genocide and subsequent related/follow-on Congolose wars
- the Tutsi/Hutu schisms in Rwanda/Burundi
- Zambia's multiple alliances in a doomed attempt to maintain relative tranquility
- Mugabe's desperate lunge to prop up his regime with lucrative looting in the Congo (failed drastically)
- the Sudanese civil war, and the NIF attempt to rout the SPLA, attack Uganda and spread Islamism across the continent
- chaos, incompentence and impotence among UN forces in the early '90s
- lack of international public interest and understanding in the Congolese war and an inability to connect it to Rwandan genocide
- ditto, with regard to refugee camps following this catastrophe
- the compromised and unhelpful position of aid agencies in above
- the non-state interests of (and deals made by) mining and oil companies
- the fear of the economic and political power of resurgent South Africa under the ANC (see particularly Mugabe)
- the meddling of Gaddafi's Libya, inserting troops from Chad on a whim
- the fractious, unstable and complex nature of the North and South Kivu
- the Kabilas, father and son
- Jean-Pierre Bembe
- the post-Cold War African democratic elections, intersecting with tribal, local, national interests and constellations, particularly Congo 2006
- IMF HIPC status, very important for Uganda
- etc, etc.
The machines involved included guns, tanks and fighter jets.
Mr Curtis has exactly nothing to say about any of this.
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