...re-processed media. Perhaps a better expression would be re-purposed media. It’s different from the traditional use of found footage in news documentaries. Here stock-footage becomes expressionistic – never literal – an excursion into a dream – or, if you prefer – nightmare.The problem here is that in Adam Curtis's expressionistic nightmares, reason doesn't apply. His film produce a kind of mesmerising unease through, emotional appeal, hypnotic soundtracks, and artfilm editing.
And this is really all I'm saying, in all these films, to go back to what you were talking about -- the disappointment you shared, is that I'm very sympathetic to a lot of the protest movements and to challenging power in society. But you're not going to do it through self-organizing networks where you all sit 'round and there are no leaders and there is no sort of guiding vision except self-organization. It's a retreat, I think. And in many respects I think it's a cowardly retreat on the part of the Left from confronting the fact that power is getting more and more and more concentrated in our society, but they don't have an alternative. And they retreat, like bureaucrats, like librarians, into process. Processes of organization. Without actually inspiring me with a vision of another kind of way of organizing the world.posted by hippybear at 8:57 AM on May 31, 2011 [4 favorites]
But in your earlier comment where you link those interviews , you say "the host of the show (which describes itself as "a live talk show about ideas and culture with an emphasis on ideas of the Enlightenment" and is generally awesome) turned into an fawning fanboy while Curtis waxed incoherent about how the UK student protest movement was a failure because it had been infected by 'cybernetics.'"
There is little or no fanboyism going on by the interviewers. They express disappointment with the new series and discomfort with his thesis. Furthermore, he doesn't mention the UK student protests. He does specifically say this (starting at 27m02s):I'm really sympathetic to anyone who challenges the vested interests of power, because I think we live in an age where that's increasingly going to have to happen. But self-organizing systems, on their own, are what they say: they're organizing systems. They're managerialism. And managerialism isn't about changing the world. It's a retreat into bureaucracy or is a sort of rearranging things. It is managerialism which is really the prevalent ideology of our time, is that we're all systems. We hold things stable. And what I argue in ALL those revolutions, which if you look at them now have gone backwards, they were incredibly noble, brave... hundreds of thousands of people poured into those squares in places like the Ukraine, challenged those in power and got rid of them. But then, what next? Because it was a brilliant piece of organization. But what next? And they've actually gone backwards. And I just think that what I'm trying to point out in that is not that they're wrong, it's just that this ideology, of systems of which we are all parts and somehow that system stabilizes itself and that's it... is limiting or actually useless when you actually want to really change the world. You have to have a vision of a different way of organization.You see conspiracies in his work. I see someone pointing out that things haven't turned out the way they were expected to because people didn't think through to the actual end goal and instead were focused on the processes in the middle.
[...] hippies are the most nakedly hierarchical animals I've ever observed and frequently peck lower caste individuals to death leaving behind only a smear of feathers and grease.posted by fleetmouse at 4:58 PM on June 2, 2011
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posted by Artw at 2:14 PM on May 26, 2011 [8 favorites]