On point parody of Curtis' work https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
21–30 of 65 posts
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#22My only complaint about Curtis is that some of the music samples he uses over and over again are phenomenally bad and distracting to the viewer. The trope of using discordant, clashing notes is obviously retro, but its day has come and gone. It's never been clear to me as to why he would want to turn his audience away, but the only thing I can come up with is that it's generational, as many of these bad sound clips c…
His latest work certainly uses a lot of This Mortal Coil and other early 4AD bands.
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#23I genuinely like Curtis' work, and Bitter Lake is peppered with interesting stuff and fantastic stock footage. But the dialogue in his recent films has been predictable: *But the old systems had never gone away. And then one person realised there was a vacuum at the heart of it all. But they had forgotten to program the computers with the one thing that really mattered. And then...." etc. I honestly can't tell if it'…
> I honestly can't tell if it's meta-parody. And that's why I'll keep watching. I'm kinda in the same boat. But I think one of the things I like about Curtis is that he's made me read more about things I didn't know about. For example I'd never given much thought about Afghanistan (other than Afghan coats) until the Soviet Union invaded. I was an early teenager (I'm in my mid 50s now), but reasonably interested in wo…
It was very weird to go the other way around and have read Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More before HyperNormalisation came out.
I love Bitter Lake and The Power of Nightmares, but cannot stand HyperNormalisation for having almost nothing to do with the book's concepts, regardless of whether it stands on its own.
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#24Curtis should really scratch a certain part of me, the part that listens to numbers stations and stays up at night reading old declassified cold war papers etc., But I just can't believe anything he says. The ratio of confidence to lack of citations is just alarming.
I enjoyed and somewhat agreed with the main thesis of hypernormalisation but it just seemed impossible to verify.
It doesn't help that a lot of his work is inspired by philosophers writing about society, which is usually completely unfalsifiable and comes with a certain smugness.
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#25Curtis should really scratch a certain part of me, the part that listens to numbers stations and stays up at night reading old declassified cold war papers etc., But I just can't believe anything he says. The ratio of confidence to lack of citations is just alarming. I enjoyed and somewhat agreed with the main thesis of hypernormalisation but it just seemed impossible to verify. It doesn't help that a lot of his work…
If you take it as a piece of entertainment, more of a historical clip show with some connected narrative they can be enjoyable to watch even without trusting the information entirely.
Curtis has a gift of picking out obscure and interesting clips many of which were filmed before many of his audience (including myself) were even born. His British slant (and the fact that they come from the BBC archives) may make their relevance to those watching from outside of the UK particularly low however, depending on the overall film's subject matter.
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#26Article has some aesthetic appeal but I don’t think really pulls together a reasonable argument. “Liberty: antidote to death” is ... not quite right - Christ was certainly that, and the “breaking of chains” of Christ does follow, but seems like a false connection in particular.
Also FYI this mag is a project of the “dissident right”, formerly “alt”, broadly construed, (don’t intend any judgement just informing).
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#27Overall it's an interesting review, but saying that 99% of Afghanis want Sharia Law and citing an unsourced claim in a blog post is poor writing and undermines the author's credibility, which is unfortunate. Edit: The cited blog actually does cite a research poll, my mistake! https://www.unz.com/isteve/why-the-taliban-won-sharia-is-dem...
a bigger problem is what “they support sharia law” actually means. any two supporters of any broad political signifier in the US often mean totally different things
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#28Curtis should really scratch a certain part of me, the part that listens to numbers stations and stays up at night reading old declassified cold war papers etc., But I just can't believe anything he says. The ratio of confidence to lack of citations is just alarming. I enjoyed and somewhat agreed with the main thesis of hypernormalisation but it just seemed impossible to verify. It doesn't help that a lot of his work…
If you take it as a piece of entertainment, more of a historical clip show with some connected narrative they can be enjoyable to watch even without trusting the information entirely. Curtis has a gift of picking out obscure and interesting clips many of which were filmed before many of his audience (including myself) were even born. His British slant (and the fact that they come from the BBC archives) may make their…
The clips are why I bothered to finish watching it. Its interesting it just isn't true...
I am British so no complaints about archival footage
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#29Curtis should really scratch a certain part of me, the part that listens to numbers stations and stays up at night reading old declassified cold war papers etc., But I just can't believe anything he says. The ratio of confidence to lack of citations is just alarming. I enjoyed and somewhat agreed with the main thesis of hypernormalisation but it just seemed impossible to verify. It doesn't help that a lot of his work…
> But I just can't believe anything he says.
He is the only guy I believe when it comes to politics. He things as they can be seen (often backed up by video evidence) not narratives.
Its an accurate view of politics that actually explains a lot of what happens
Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review
#30> Curtis draws a conclusion without a narrative trajectory; he leaves multifarious discordant happenings to interplay... I think Curtis does this on purpose. Whenever I watch a Curtis doco, I feel I'm being told a compelling story. However, if you ask me afterwards what it was about, I will stumble to explain what it was about. I think Curtis is trying to show the viewer the complexity of the world and how difficult…
Agreed on nearly all points except the following. >there are no good guys and bad guys I don't think that's what he is implying. He is leaving it up to our interpretation but the absence of a position does not mean he is saying that there are no good or bad guys. From what I gathered, he's not saying anything at all. Big fan of his work regardless.
Well, I think he's definitely saying that we've been tricked and that the narratives that are pushed supporting our lifestyle and societal choices are lies told to enrich and empower others.