new adam curtis dropped

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > new adam curtis dropped

«‹›13 »

KaptainKrunk: Feb 6, 2006

idk the cultural revolution taught an entire generation to openly and violently defy authority

# ? Feb 14, 2021 01:46

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 9, 2024 16:40

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Victory Position posted:

Baloogan recommended me a book that was about the culture in and around the Soviet Union during perestoika and the word 'stiob' was thrown around. this is where my understanding of hypernormalization comes from

god I should have bought the book instead of getting it from the library

Was that Alexei Yurchak? My money says it's Alexei Yurchak. I want to read his book.

Anyways it was Peter Pomerantsev who is unrelated and is apparently associated with some liberal types and anti-Putin projects who wrote another book that borrowed some of these ideas, and I think that's where this theory that Vladimir Putin is deliberately using hypernormalization as a tool of control comes from, and that also might've worked its way into Adam Curtis films.

I think "stiob" was a form of avant-garde art comedy in the USSR where you overidentify with the source of the critique. Stephen Colbert playing a character as a Fox News talk show host is probably the closest equivalent where some people actually didn't know if he was serious or not and were fooled.

One group that did this in the USSR was AVIA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyIbGicgfPs

The music is like almost like Talking Heads, and it's kind of like an absurd sendup of the Communist Party. They have backup dancers dressed like Komsomol members, and use bathos in their comedy, like in this song they're singing about how spring has arrived to fill us with creativity and blah blah blah as we sing a bunch of nonsense like "yohohoho shala lai lai lai." And this is immediately hilarious to the audience.

They would construct human pyramids on stage and play with those fun and games tropes from the Soviet era:

I think if you were an artist in the USSR in the late 80s, it was extremely uncool to be unironically pro-government or anti-government. This attitude where you're go "bluhhh I don't like the system" would be like Green Day's "American Idiot" from the Bush years. It's just bad art and bad critique. The "stiob" artists on the other hand would be approaching the critique from this orthogonal or angular way, like getfiscal or somebody like that.

Anyways, going back to the Brezhnev era you'd have stuff like this about walking merrily on an open plain, and it's better... when you walk together!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8cOCtPqjPc

BrutalistMcDonalds has issued a correction as of 01:56 on Feb 14, 2021

# ? Feb 14, 2021 01:48

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Eric Cantonese posted:

And is that bad? I think you can totally dogpile on the many flaws of capitalism while admitting that attempts at communist governments so far have all been pretty dismal failures.

how many covid deaths in China and Vietnam? have their economies grown or shrunk this year?

# ? Feb 14, 2021 01:49

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

Anyways, going back to the Brezhnev era you'd have stuff like this about walking merrily on an open plain, and it's better... when you walk together!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8cOCtPqjPc

I am going to say that's a children's son for children and I wouldn't expect complex layered post ironic critique of the state and human condition from it.

Stuff like that was still being broadcast as children's entertainment on TV even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it was still popular. Although yes most of it was produced from that era, but nobody really bothered to change it up since.

Lostconfused has issued a correction as of 02:03 on Feb 14, 2021

# ? Feb 14, 2021 01:59

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Lostconfused posted:

I am going to say that's a children's son for children and I wouldn't expect complex layered post ironic critique of the state and human condition from it.

Stuff like that was still being broadcast as children's entertainment on TV even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it was still popular. Although yes most of it was produced from that era, but nobody really bothered to change it up since.

Oh I wasn't clear enough. Just posting it because it's a fun video from the Brezhnev era in contrast to the goofy ska-pop stiob stuff before the system fell apart.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 02:07

MisterFister: Jul 6, 2003; Sticking it to THE MAN, assuming THE MAN is an innocent casual dining restaurant.

Adam Curtis rules.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 02:15

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

KaptainKrunk posted:

idk the cultural revolution taught an entire generation to openly and violently defy authority

imagine being given permission by the central government to storm your college's economics department and beat all the neoclassicals with sticks

# ? Feb 14, 2021 02:22

Honest Thief: Jan 11, 2009

someone make the sister thread on d&d where it's the russiagate bit that will trigger goons

# ? Feb 14, 2021 02:24

Mythical Moderate: Jul 5, 2002; My heart and actions are utterly unclouded. They are all those of 'Justice'.

Doctor Jeep posted:

I like Curtis a lot but mila kunis is right, he's absolutely anticommunist

Watch this, not instead but maybe after:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NMr2VrhmFI

Mods, please rename me to Consumer Slave.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 02:25

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

Oh I wasn't clear enough. Just posting it because it's a fun video from the Brezhnev era in contrast to the goofy ska-pop stiob stuff before the system fell apart.

Oh ok, now I am just looking through soviet era children's entertainment.

Also the thing about people slacking off at work in ussr reminded me of this scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ5iHFSdAU4&t=951s from one of the popular comedy films. The man sentenced to forced labor gets better treatment while slacking off than the hard working student who believes in ideals of socialism and progress.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 02:38

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

how many covid deaths in China and Vietnam? have their economies grown or shrunk this year?

You can say the same thing about most countries. It's the Global North that's been embarrassing itself with COVID and economic management (New Zealand being a major exception).

# ? Feb 14, 2021 03:00

The Atomic Man-Boy: Jul 23, 2007

Some parts of the series own more than others. The "Yellow Peril" as a reaction to the opium trade, painting the British as a potential victims of the violence they put on China wasn't something I knew about. Parallels to Qanon nicely.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 03:04

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Lostconfused posted:

Also the thing about people slacking off at work in ussr reminded me of this scene from one of the popular comedy films. The man sentenced to forced labor gets better treatment while slacking off than the hard working student who believes in ideals of socialism and progress.

Nice. I'm saving that to watch later. I really liked this movie too from the late 70s, which I think is probably pretty accurate about what life was actually like. People seem to be doing fine, but they're also bored and stuck in a rut, and the economy is heavily built around heavy industry (hey it's a job at least) but one girl is studying chemical engineering and is like "I'm doing all this, for what? To work in a factory the rest of my life?"

I also like it because it shows what street life, and life in the workplace and so on, actually looked and "felt" like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7GuhjGZ-xs

# ? Feb 14, 2021 03:16

Idia: Apr 26, 2010; Fun Shoe

I'm up to part 2, half an hour in, and the Notting Hill community committees staffed with white young professionals or college students just canvassing the neighborhood is like pre DSA poo poo.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 03:51

Eh! Frank: Mar 28, 2006; Doctor gave me these, I said what are these?
He said that they'll cure an existential type disease

The Mods & Admins are Sex Pests, Pedos, and Sex-Pest-and-Pedo Enablers

Eh! Frank has issued a correction as of 22:50 on Mar 16, 2021

# ? Feb 14, 2021 04:51

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

I came across another recent interview of Adam Curtis promoting Can't Get You Out of My Head and I thought it was a good share given what we were arguing about whether Curtis has any real ideas for a way forward.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ad8db/adam-curtis-charlie-brooker-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head?utm_source=reddit.com

Vice posted:

Charlie Brooker:
Also, you say �those who run our societies have completely run out of big stories to tell us�, as though that�s a bad thing, but having watched your series it certainly looks to me like the big stories those who run our societies used to tell us generally turned out to be untrue, or too simplistic or na�ve. And so did the theories underpinning those stories. And the consequence of all that storytelling and theorising was usually disappointing or terrible. So I�d be pretty suspicious of anyone who did come along touting a big grand story.

What I�m saying is you seem to be arguing in favour of meaningful change, while also illustrating how most attempts at meaningful change end in failure. Which makes for a bracing but idiosyncratic pep talk. How wrong have I got this?

Adam Curtis:
I�m afraid I disagree with your take that the stories I tell means that all attempts to change the world always end in failure. I would argue that that is the pessimistic ideology of our age that you are emotionally projecting on to my films. What I am trying to do in all these films is to explain why those attempts attempts to change the world failed. Because I think we are living in a moment across the world � not just in the west, but in Russian and in China too � when there is a growing yearning and demand for some kind of change. An escape from societies that have become riddled with inequalities and corruption. It�s a demand that is repeatedly knocking at the door, in all kinds of forms, from Occupy to Trump to Black Lives Matter. Which means it is really important to look back and examine what it was that went wrong, so we can learn. And one of the blocks on that idea of changing things � as I try and show throughout the films � is a view of human beings as fundamentally irrational, not fully in control of their actions, and easily manipulable. Which means that it is always too dangerous to try and change things, and instead we should just gather as much data as we can and try and keep things stable.

The other thing is the fear of big stories. And we live in a time that was born out of horror and disaster created by great sweeping narratives, both Soviet communism and fascism. That experience deeply frightened the generation that came out of the Second World War. And the world they created from the 1950s onwards was a response to that. To try and build a world free of big stories, where instead individuals would live peacefully and happily in their own stories, their own dreams. That was an extraordinary achievement � but one of the things I am arguing in the films is that that world is now decaying. And instead of confident, empowered individuals, you now have a world of anxious and uncertain individuals who are terrified of the future and live in a mood of inevitability. That there is nothing we can do � and something horrible will come along soon to replace the horrible thing that has just happened. In the face of that, more and more people want change. But I think that one of the things that is stopping that change is the failure of any group to actually describe an alternative and better kind of future. And one of the reasons for that is that they remain trapped in a mood of total distrust, constantly imagining what is being done to them as weak, manipulable individuals, rather than imagining what they as strong people can do to change the world.

But the key thing to remember is that not all big stories lead to horror. America � for all its faults � was born out of a big story. The welfare state was born out of a big story. The freedoms we have today and the idea of mass democracy and the ability we have to challenge those in power were all born out of a grand story. The science � which, in the last nine months, has done something incredible and wonderful in producing vaccines that will save millions of lives � was born out of a big story. The key thing to do is to try and work out why some big stories fail disastrously � and why some transform the world in a wonderful way.

So I guess I'm feeling less like he's punting, but if his responses in this interview are truly what he thinks, I think he needs to explore more about when good change comes from a feeling of strength and confidence that things can change.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 06:07

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

i agree with him that people are irrational but he is still circling back around to this postmodern atmosphere about how "we are the stories we tell" like in the nike ad. the welfare state was born out of a big story? or was it born out of objective historical forces? and then there's the implication that disillusionment is a bad thing and illusions are good for us, but are they? in a life or death struggle, illusions can be fatal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDyZd-QbZeI&t=38s

# ? Feb 14, 2021 06:21

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Eric Cantonese posted:

I came across another recent interview of Adam Curtis promoting Can't Get You Out of My Head and I thought it was a good share given what we were arguing about whether Curtis has any real ideas for a way forward.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ad8db/adam-curtis-charlie-brooker-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head?utm_source=reddit.com

So I guess I'm feeling less like he's punting, but if his responses in this interview are truly what he thinks, I think he needs to explore more about when good change comes from a feeling of strength and confidence that things can change.

He detailed this on an episode of Chapo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlaPZ-xMPGY

# ? Feb 14, 2021 06:42

Idia: Apr 26, 2010; Fun Shoe

Maybe he's using the word "story" because it's the only way to get to people if our brains are wired to think of narratives rather than objective truth that are behind major events/revolutionary change or whatever that's close to it. I got that impression on 2nd part at least. It works to move people and used in the right way to help build an alternative future to look forward to.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 06:49

Marx Headroom: May 10, 2007; AT LAST! A show with nonono ~~commercials~~!; Fallen Rib

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

adam curtis: "no, i'm adam curtis. i'm here because you have a sense of everything being slightly unreal, that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing. this is what you're seeing happening in your past. do you see yourself in these images?"

me: yeah, i think i remember some of that.

adam curtis: "but this is false."

heard his voice in my head while reading this

# ? Feb 14, 2021 06:57

Gods_Butthole: Aug 9, 2020; Can't post for 8 years!

Stories are how you can often best communicate truth to masses of people. No one is ever going to have an actual understanding of every nook and cranny of objective truth, you always have to abstract things out into metaphors, more or less fantastical. Simultaneously, people need to consciously understand the limits of the stories that tell ourselves.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 07:04

Taintrunner: Apr 10, 2017; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

https://twitter.com/GarbageApe/status/1360056588002803712

# ? Feb 14, 2021 07:27

Gorn Myson: Aug 8, 2007

I'm only a bit into episode 2, and I'll wait until watching all of it until I make any kind of judgement on what Curtis is expressing in this, but I will say for sure that his knack for finding perfect footage from the archive to express something hes leaning towards makes leaps and bounds in every movie he makes. The opening to that episode tells you everything you need to know about modern Britain, and I bet he found it while skimming footage of a mess of tedious daytime TV shows from half a century ago.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 07:46

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Finished the entire documentary.

While enjoyed it and was thoroughly entertained, the entire thing felt as if it had no point.

If I had to pin down the premise, it would be that throughout the 20th and 21st centuries several people have tried to change the world. Yet they kept failing often by either becoming corrupted themselves or giving up. There also isn't much positive in the documentary either. Like in the end it says "people can create whatever reality they want and have to think of new ideas", yet the documentary shows that this fails over and over again.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 08:59

KaptainKrunk: Feb 6, 2006

Yeah.

I just don't see how Curtis thinks we can escape the embedded story of commodities. No one really believed the grand narratives about capitalism except the ultra wealth or sicko libertarians, yet it persists. Social dislocation and decentralized make humans easy prey for commodity fetishism.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 09:14

fanfic insert: Nov 4, 2009

Nichael posted:

I watched the first episode with my friends tonight, and that was completely out of left field. Is that not followed up?

if it were i missed it, ive still got an hour to go on 6 though

# ? Feb 14, 2021 10:48

Mega Comrade: Apr 22, 2004; Listen buddy, we all got problems!

mila kunis posted:

They are.

nah

While I don't think Curtis is actually in any way pro-communism. I reject the idea that you can not be in favour of it and also deeply critical of the USSR and China and their implementations.

punk rebel ecks posted:

Finished the entire documentary.

While enjoyed it and was thoroughly entertained, the entire thing felt as if it had no point.

If I had to pin down the premise, it would be that throughout the 20th and 21st centuries several people have tried to change the world. Yet they kept failing often by either becoming corrupted themselves or giving up. There also isn't much positive in the documentary either. Like in the end it says "people can create whatever reality they want and have to think of new ideas", yet the documentary shows that this fails over and over again.

I enjoyed it. Many of the individual stories were incredibly interesting. But this being his longest work while also being the work that says the least does make it difficult to recommend over his over stuff. You could have easily cut it down to half its length and lost none of the message, but I believe most people watch these things to be entertained, not educated.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 10:52

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

Was that Alexei Yurchak? My money says it's Alexei Yurchak. I want to read his book.

right on it, that is the book I was thinking of. it was incredibly illuminating, a real actual depiction of a hall of mirrors effect throughout society

# ? Feb 14, 2021 11:19

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

One group that did this in the USSR was AVIA:

you know, every time I try to think about them, I just think about KMFDM

# ? Feb 14, 2021 11:23

mistermojo: Jul 3, 2004

our brains model the world and make predictions based on that, and its very hard to change that when you become an adult, with good reason since they made it this far. really you have to get them as children when theyre still learning how to operate in their environment

# ? Feb 14, 2021 14:57

inconsequential: Feb 6, 2004

If Bernie had won the primary against Hillary, could he have beaten Trump and if so, could he have made definitive, real change in America? I think something that gets lost is that yeah, most people who pursue power are inherently corrupt, but occasionally you get someone who has the right idea, the right vision, and who is not corrupted, it's just really rare. I'm not personally saying it was Bernie, that's just a thought experiment, but I don't think he's saying there's no chance for positive change, just that it's difficult and it doesn't just happen in a vacuum. The left has to envision what it wants and how to enact it, right now that's Biden's centrism approach which will just try to keep the system stable, not rectify or radically change anything.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 16:10

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

Adam Curtis refuses to talk about Production and its loving weird.

It's like he keeps talking about how our ideology stops us from seeing an alternative future or attacking the problem of change, and then there's this huge thing, Production, that is, the method and means of production, he refuses to look at.

mistermojo posted:

our brains model the world and make predictions based on that, and its very hard to change that when you become an adult, with good reason since they made it this far. really you have to get them as children when theyre still learning how to operate in their environment

i dunno man i completely changed my mind about everything in my 30s

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 has issued a correction as of 16:33 on Feb 14, 2021

# ? Feb 14, 2021 16:19

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

I also like it because it shows what street life, and life in the workplace and so on, actually looked and "felt" like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7GuhjGZ-xs

Oh yeah I heard about that one, but never really watched it. Maybe I should find some time for it.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 17:31

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

inconsequential posted:

If Bernie had won the primary against Hillary, could he have beaten Trump and if so, could he have made definitive, real change in America?

Depends on if you think the Democratic Party apparatchiks would have sabotaged him or not. Looking at the elections in England and the Labour party, and how hard Bernie got screwed in the primary elections. That makes it seem likely that the democrats would have taken another 4 years of Trump over Bernie.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 17:39

Al-Saqr: Nov 11, 2007; One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

If Bernie had won any of the primaries he would've been Jeremy Corbyned to hell and back and they'd cook up an anti-semitism scheme around his supporters being pro-palestinian human rights.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 18:38

QUEER FRASIER: May 31, 2011

Bernie�s campaign was already fully planning, against many staffers� and volunteers� protests, to hand the campaign apparatus over to the DNC if he�d won the primary. He probably would have lost all 50 states

# ? Feb 14, 2021 18:42

Doktor Avalanche: Dec 30, 2008

if bernie had won the primary faiz or some other climber would've gotten the heart attack gun from his fbi/cia handler

# ? Feb 14, 2021 18:50

How Darwinian: Feb 27, 2011

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

i dunno man i completely changed my mind about everything in my 30s

It's not so much that you can't change your understanding of the world, but more that your understanding of the world is closely tied up with all of your relationships and things that make your day to day life run smoothly. People can change their minds about things, but suddenly reversing course on your understanding of the world (e.g. from Christian fundamentalism to radical leftism) can alienate you from social relationships and force you to rebuild your social world, sometimes from the ground up.

So, you changed your mind about everything once already. Do you think you could do it again? Especially if it involved throwing out every social relationship that depends on those beliefs that has built up since? It may be that you could, but the point is just that it's a hard, and the more socially embedded one is, the harder it gets.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 18:52

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Honest Thief posted:

someone make the sister thread on d&d where it's the russiagate bit that will trigger goons

oh drat someone make the thread, I�m not enough of a sadist to

# ? Feb 14, 2021 19:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 9, 2024 16:40

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3: Nov 15, 2003

How Darwinian posted:

So, you changed your mind about everything once already. Do you think you could do it again? Especially if it involved throwing out every social relationship that depends on those beliefs that has built up since? It may be that you could, but the point is just that it's a hard, and the more socially embedded one is, the harder it gets.

This is true. I was not under any social coercion. Perhaps intellectual freedom, and therefore democracy, requires material security as a prerequisite.

There's a catch-22 there. We need democracy to get material security for all, but maybe we can't establish democracy without first obtaining material security.

# ? Feb 14, 2021 21:20

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > new adam curtis dropped

«‹›13 »