“Can't Get You Out of My Head”, Adam Curtis (iPlayer)

[kernelbogey]

Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World, BBC. Strongly recommended - grown up television.

Lucy Mangan's ***** review in the Guardian is worth reading as a taster.

[kernelbogey]

Can't Get You Out of My Head

Thanks _ I forgot about this being on!

[kernelbogey]

Aaah - glad you have noticed, SA! I'm finding it fascinating, and am unable to pin any kind of label on it. Perhaps just iconoclastic. It doesn't take either a right or left political perspective, but exposes a kind of constant interplay between revolutionary movements and power/money, generally to the benefit of the latter. I'm enjoying seeing the events of my lifetime described in an absorbing filmic narrative.

[kernelbogey]

Thanks _ I forgot about this being on!

I've now watched all six parts, some eight hours of film. Its completely fascinating - yet I'm struggling to make sense of a coherent message, or series of messages, embodied in Curtis's work. I'm tempted to make a new thread for it, as I'd like to know more views on it.

Any thoughts?

[kernelbogey]

This review has helped me accept that it's not just me having difficulty finding the 'coherent message'....

https://artreview.com/the-reverse-marxism-of-adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-bbc-iplayer-review/

This, too, is interesting, if, like me, you are new to Curtis's work.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/can-t-get-you-out-of-my-head-review-adam-curtis-b1800407.html

[kernelbogey]

Yes create a dedicated thread, starting with these recent posts.

Done!

[kernelbogey]

I think Tom Whyman has got it right there in his assessment of both series and Curtis, in nutshelling it all down to an upending of the Marxist base/superstructure in which the individual and cultural are made the chief determinants over the economic substrate.

This is because the culture elevates the individual over the collective then denies it effective empowerment. But this in turn devolves onto the ways in which both categories have come to be defined, and that definition is in terms of the economic. This - to foreshorten what really needs to be a much more filled out picture of social and individual evolution - boils down to the human capacity to out-graze the carrying capacity of its environment, as demonstrated from pre-historic times when tribes battled over the resulting scarcity and ruling classes emerged as perceived protectors - though this is by no means universal nor ubiquitous as we know from anthropological evidence of tribes which managed to live in equilibrium and without exhausting the natural resource base. Presumed superior means of technological control, substantiating systems of belief, and conceptual evolvement to a point at which definitional finality trumped heeding and acting on inextricable connectivity with the surrounding ecosystems, created and shaped the consumer as king of his infinite imagined shopping mall domain, in opposition to imposed de-personalising models of collectivity.

The self isn't a bad place to start the process of unravellment, so long as we first ditch the self-cancelling inculcation of mistrusting its inner, beyond-identity core and see it as ontologically pre-connected.

Edit

Sorry to cause trouble, I didn't see that a new thread on this subject had been set up; would it be possible to transfer this and the previous post over, please?

{SA - there may be a neater way of doing this, but I'm not sure how atm. sorry.]

[Serial_Apologist]

{SA - there may be a neater way of doing this, but I'm not sure how atm. sorry.]

Thanks so much, KB!

[muzzer]

The music on this is cracking, lots of clips to track down, including in ep 5 a version of With Tomorrow by Gene Clark, I haven’t looked to see who by, I’m just really impressed that a cover exists and that AC has used it in this film.

[muzzer]

And on the subject matter of the series, can anyone recommend a good book on the opium trade and associated issues?

[eighthobstruction]

....yes really really marvellous. Finally found some time where I could properly watch and listen....fantastic distillation and narrative clarity amidst parallax....- be there or be square -OR-be there or be a one dimensional person....

2 banal observations.....a) Afeni Shakur was Tupac Shakurs mother

b) I'd never heard the track "Who killed Bambi" : Sex Pistols.....But I did say humourously while trying to break up a fight between Punks at a nightclub in Exeter " Hey guys be like the Hippies"....and got back the answer "I hate ¬/*]¬)> hippies...".....

....I must pop the word "propinquity" into a conversation soon....ha ha

[jayne lee wilson]

....yes really really marvellous. Finally found some time where I could properly watch and listen....fantastic distillation and narrative clarity amidst parallax....- be there or be square -OR-be there or be a one dimensional person....

2 banal observations.....a) Afeni Shakur was Tupac Shakurs mother

b) I'd never heard the track "Who killed Bambi" : Sex Pistols.....But I did say humourously while trying to break up a fight between Punks at a nightclub in Exeter " Hey guys be like the Hippies"....and got back the answer "I hate ¬/*]¬)> hippies...".....

....I must pop the word "propinquity" into a conversation soon....ha ha

You know this one...?


"Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower.
For by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be—
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity, and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved
As thou my sometime daughter."

[johncorrigan]

I'm halfway through the series and it is taking up a fair amount of my brain space. I've also started taking notes because I forget people's names. I was amazed by Russian cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, and hearing his dying cries as his Voskhod capsule careered towards earth, and then the sight of his charred remains on show. The story of Afeni Shakur taking on the Black Panther infiltrator was amazing - I was also surprised to find that Bobby Seale, the writer of 'Seize the Time' that I read in my late teens, had gone on to sell barbecues. Among the messages that I hear in this fascinating series is no matter what you try to do, the outcome won't be what you started off to try to achieve. Can't wait to watch episode 4.

[johncorrigan]

There is a playlist on spotify with some of the music featured in the series.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ioEeDoT30aqXk6KCoBSzS?si=SeAob5ygS1i9R9GzydRXyw

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm halfway through the series and it is taking up a fair amount of my brain space. I've also started taking notes because I forget people's names. I was amazed by Russian cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, and hearing his dying cries as his Voskhod capsule careered towards earth, and then the sight of his charred remains on show. The story of Afeni Shakur taking on the Black Panther infiltrator was amazing - I was also surprised to find that Bobby Seale, the writer of 'Seize the Time' that I read in my late teens, had gone on to sell barbecues. Among the messages that I hear in this fascinating series is no matter what you try to do, the outcome won't be what you started off to try to achieve. Can't wait to watch episode 4.

The manner in which Curtis gathers and builds up his case over a number of series over the past couple of decades, recycling previously seen footage with additional evidence, is impressively convincing. And he always bides his moment until sensing resolution around the corner - otherwise one might be led to very pessimistic conclusions as to the likelihood of humanity ever finding a way out of its deepening morass.

One of his main arguments in this latest series is that the advent of the Web and social media consolidate an already fragmenting narrative that once provided and expressed social connectedness, as a consequence of de-industrialisation, while at the same time deflecting mass attention away from the real benefactors at the top of the tree; but one gripe I had was that I felt he was rather unfair to impugn Cecil Sharpe and, by extension, the Arts & Crafts movement at the turn of the 20th century, for falsely mythologising a non-existent past aged of rural harmony. That apart, he is saying what I've been trying to say in so many words for the past 50 years!