HyperNormalisation

[Robert]

Adam Curtis has a new film out. (apologies if some of you can't get iPlayer)

It's nearly three hours worth (I watched it over two nights) and a bit woolly in places but interesting all the same. Soundtrack is excellent as usual.

Worth a watch if you have two and three quarter hours to kill.

-EDIT-
here's the blurb:

We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks. And those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - they have no idea what to do.

This film is the epic story of how we got to this strange place. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening - but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.

It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.

But there is another world outside. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago - that then festered and mutated - but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.

 

[Robert]

El Reg review and interview with Curtis.

In the movie, Curtis puts the spotlight on characters such as cyber activist John Perry Barlow; AI pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum, father of the chatbot Eliza; and Judea Pearl, the father of the murdered hostage Daniel Pearl. These are woven around in a long studies of Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi and a modern history of Syria (“Isn’t it astonishing no one’s done a proper basic history of Syria on television?” wonders Curtis) and the apparent master media manipulator of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Vladislav Surkov.

The themes here are familiar ones for Curtis fans: how people retreat into simplified views of the world that are fantasies, and how we let politicians do this for us, too. It touches on many of his earlier series - hippies turning into self-absorbed baby boomers from The Century of the Self. There are no marmosets, but there is an agonisingly theatrical Remain campaigner, weeping for a lost European Utopia.

 

[JoBBo]

Trailer on YT...

 

[Robert]

And for balance, here's someone poking fun at Curtis' style:

 

[Robert]

Even the Daily Mash is getting in on this:

Man decides first 10 minutes of new Adam Curtis film should be enough to bluff it

A MAN who saw the first 10 minutes of Adam Curtis’s new documentary is to pretend he watched the whole thing.

Tom Logan thought he would enjoy Hypernormalisation after hearing positive reviews from people but he quickly found the subject matter a little bit heavy and quite confusing.

Logan said: “If anyone in the pub mentions it I’ll just say the stuff about Trump at the beginning was really fascinating and that I loved all the weird stock footage of stuff and the lovely, warm voice over.

“I’m sure if I’d have stuck with it I’d have definitely understood it, but it’s also nearly three hours long and Vin Diesel isn’t in it.

“Whose got that much time on their hands to watch a documentary? Especially as I still haven’t yet gotten round to watching all six series of American Horror Story.”