Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review • Hacker News Board

Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review

#61

Post by remarkEon » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #54

nyolfen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aq & taliban are both the result of a chain of events you can draw to the post meccan siege shift in power among the saudi elite to the clerics that led to the mass establishment and funding of salafi madrassas abroad, sending young men and funds abroad to the afghan conflict, etc. the taliban come directly out of these madrassas. they are part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic betwe…

I don't think it's reasonable to describe the Taliban as "part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic between royals and clerics in ksa". The Taliban are interested in Afghanistan. In fact I suspect they are primarily interested in "Pashtunistan", or Waziristan. They are interested in western Afghanistan only insofar as it is primarily Shia, and the Taliban are very much sectarian Sunnis.…

This is accurate. The Sunni-Shia divide is something I think westerners struggle with understanding, likely because- and perhaps especially for Americans- Islam is a distant religion and the only analog they can come up is the Protestant Reformation, which for reasons that need not be said is not usefully similar. Your last sentence also helps explain why the current administration, assuming they understand and are aware of these distinctions in a way that actually informs policy, is giving so much deference to the Taliban right now.

Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review

#62

Post by mhh__ » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

okmnji wrote: post #46

mhh__ wrote: post #24

Curtis 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…

you sound like someone who would say they cant read Shakespeare because he writes fiction so he has nothing to say about the human condition.

So you're saying Curtis is writing fiction?

FWIW I am deeply sceptical of fictional accounts of the human condition. What's the difference between (say) Lord of the flies and some white supremacist novel - ignoring the actual quality of the writing? They both purport to tell deep truths about the human condition, but does that mean they are right? Telling us something does not mean that thing is true; I think this is a real blight on our discourse (and probably will be forever).

The only time something like the lord of the flies ever actually happened in real life, the story was apparently very different

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review

#63

Post by thinkingemote » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

VieEnCode wrote: post #49

Curtis makes interesting films and digs up some fascinating footage. And yet, what he offers up is profoundly orthodox, explicit, postmodernism with a capital P: the music, visuals, world view, narrative style, overlapping narratives, the intertextuality. My sense is that he is somehow simultaneously frustrated and altogether too pleased with the fact that this is the best story he can tell. That is, that everything…

I think you are close to the truth with this. I saw a talk with him and regarding morality and the media he was basically saying, basically, that he was sad but that the media just likes sensation, and that changes.

He basically said he makes films for an amoral media industry. But perhaps his art reveals this?

Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review

#64

Post by thinkingemote » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

ryhtgergf wrote: post #51

It seems relevant to mention to anyone who isn't english that the BBC channel Adam Curtis works with is British State Media. A lot of his indecisive dialogue and orthodoxy being weirdly at odds with the information and footage he shows the viewer might be explained as a man with more controversial opinions trying to subvert from inside the establishment. If he'd come out too damningly against the UK military or estab…

Indeed the article hints that Curtis work is very pro liberalism at heart. The article suggests that this is hollow because Afghanistan in recent times (5 years after his film) has shown it to be fruitless.

Re: Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review

#65

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 8:44 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #61

denton-scratch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's reasonable to describe the Taliban as "part of the same great cultural current which is at its root a dialectic between royals and clerics in ksa". The Taliban are interested in Afghanistan. In fact I suspect they are primarily interested in "Pashtunistan", or Waziristan. They are interested in western Afghanistan only insofar as it is primarily Shia, and the Taliban are very much sectarian Sunnis.…

This is accurate. The Sunni-Shia divide is something I think westerners struggle with understanding, likely because- and perhaps especially for Americans- Islam is a distant religion and the only analog they can come up is the Protestant Reformation, which for reasons that need not be said is not usefully similar. Your last sentence also helps explain why the current administration, assuming they understand and are a…

I didn't mean to over-emphasise the Sunni/Shia divide. I've been told by moslem friends that most ordinary moslems regard all fellow moslems as brothers, regardless of their sect affiliation.

My point was that the Taliban have limited geographical ambitions; even within Afghanistan, the regions on the border with Iran (like Jalalabad) are not Taliban-friendly. In the north, the tajiks, turkmen and so on are likely to oppose the Taliban. They face a lot of internal opposition, even without the West interfering.