New 6 part Adam Curtis documentary series on iPlayer

I mentioned his genius on another thread. I find I have to watch and rewatch each film before I watch the next. I'm taking them nice and slowly.
 
It’s a bit waffly and revisionist for me. Equating a non-entity like Michael de Freitas with Mao’s wife belies the fact that one was influencing a government responsible for the callous deaths of tens of millions , and one was a Notting Hill bruiser. Their stories don’t have any comparison.

Too cuddly, soft and naive on China - but, mind you, almost every Western commentator has been so for decades.
 
I devoured the 6 episodes in a couple of days just because I do love the imagery and soundtracks Curtis uses.

That said I do feel caution needs to be thrown into his tales he often puts his tenuous links across as unequivocal fact and I actually find him to be an apologist to the establishment. He always suggests that people in power do things because they 'believed it was going to be good etc..'. For his stories to work he has to almost intentionally not look at the large elephants in the room.

Don't get me wrong I get that he's looking at issue from a humanistic angle.

Just for fun here's a 2 minute Adam Curtis parody and Adam Curtis bingo card:-



IMG_20210218_084759.jpg
 
Watched the first two so far, very very good. Find myself needing a few days in between episodes to let it sink in (if that makes sense?)

Agree that some of the links seemingly overlook other factors but I think it's presented in a way which gives you "just enough" - i.e not a bat5hit conspiracy where everything in the world is linked, rather "here are some things which happened, make your own minds up"

Also, never realised that Tupac was Afeni Shakur's son.
 
It was okay, i thought. Needed a strong edit. Ambitious. Perhaps too wide ranging. Failed to weave a thread through the tales. Occasionally touched on something interesting and then immediately dropped it to go back to one of the other boring recurring tales.

Entertaining, still, due to his signature visual style and great ear for a tune!
 
If you haven't seen some of his older work, you can view quite a few of them on DailyMotion. "The power of nightmares" is a particular favourite of mine. I remember watching it at Uni just after 9/11, so it was particularly pertinent at the time and still is today. It's about how politicians are no longer able to sell you a dream so they have to pretend to protect you from nightmares, such as terrorism. There are some other great ones too on the link below.

Adam Curtis Daily Motion
 
Looking forward to this. I haven't started them yet but he was interviewed last week on the Blindboy podcast and i promised myself I'd watch them all.
 
Thanks for the link above (y)

Bitter Lake was a good one too - that (and Hypernormalisation) are probably the two where I think he gets closest to "nailing it" so to speak.
 
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