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February 19, 2021 - 7:00am
There are few better arguments for the licence fee than a new Adam Curtis documentary, and his latest offering, the six-part Can’t Get You Out of My Head, available now on the iPlayer, exemplifies why. It is impossible to imagine such a strange and discursive project, so intentionally tangled and impenetrable, on commercial television. For all the corporation’s flaws, only the BBC would broadcast such a work, in its own way a quiet form of British soft power.
Yet as with any Curtis documentary, there are dissenting voices. His films, so immediately recognisable as the auteur’s work, are easy to spoof. Instead of changing his style with each film, he has heightened it to the point of absurdity. His arguments are so circuitous, the links he draws so implausible, that his work is easy to dismiss as nonsense. It is tempting to say of his films of ideas, like Dr Johnson said of a dog walking upon his hind legs, that “it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
And yet… To attempt to critique the logic of his arguments is to misunderstand him. It is simply not true in any meaningful way to claim, for example, as he does, that Cecil Sharp’s collecting of English folk songs enabled the rise of ISIS. Attempting to parse his narratives for “truth” is just a category error: his films are art, designed to provoke, and shock us into seeing our world differently. Our rulers are corrupt and misguided, he warns us; all our institutions are failing: we need to forge a new path, and by doing so we will create new horrors.
Curtis’ medium is in fact his message: a sprawling, discursive, analogue Borgesian fiction constructed from film and VHS tape, marking his rejection of the digital world. The sudden jump cuts, the intentionally uncomfortable juxtapositions of footage and music, the shifts in tone, the leaps from grand ideas to grainy, blood-soaked footage are crafted to be discomfiting, alienating, disorientating. He constructs grand, absurd, all-encompassing theories of everything to deconstruct the failed ideologies we are trapped in, conspiracy theories that dissect conspiracy theories; an absurdist, he highlights the failure of liberal postmodernity from his improbable perch at BBC3.
The clues to his purpose are in his script: his characters, jihadists, fascists, murderers, outsiders, fellow dissidents against late modernity, are sympathetically portrayed. They are imprisoned by the “dreamlike myths” of modern politics, “trapped in a perpetual now, haunted by fragments of memory;” their memories are a “mass of fragments, nothing linked them, they made no sense;” His style is central to his purpose: his films are a bricolage, “extraordinary dreamlike stories built out of fragments of truth and fiction,” assembled from the misfiring synapses of modernity. Like the characters he follows, Edward Limonov or Dominic Cummings, his work is designed to shock the system into crashing down.
Like anthropology, Curtis’ films are crafted to make the familiar strange: it’s only fitting then, that his latest work is bookended by two quotes from the late anthropologist and anarchist thinker David Graeber, and culminates in his observation that “the ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
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SubscribeI think Curtis’ films reward a more ‘metaphysical’ view of reality. They are indeed works of art and in this they are able to hint to truths beyond the mundane and rational. For this, many misunderstand and downright revile him for his creative license but I think this is just a lack of appreciation for what he’s doing.
All of his films feed into a master narrative about the mythology of the 20th century and sitting there picking apart the facts will only lead to frustration.
Many also now dismiss Curtis as a no good left winger. But despite his progressive leanings, he has consistently been critical of the failure of the left, over the 20th century to change the world for the better. And his films are littered with examples of failed left wing movements.
No, he’s not perfect and there’s a lot he gets wrong. But maybe all those who dismiss him and his films so flippantly, should question why they still find them so interesting to watch..
Let me guess, has he been critical of the left for not being left wing enough?
You just know this guy operates via a PSC, takes his earnings as dividends and pays no income tax.
Not really. His criticisms are quite genuine.
I don’t know much about his fanatical situation I’m afraid..
My world view differs significantly from Curtis’ but I do respect him for his novel exploration of ideas.
Curtis idea that Mao’s wife started the cultural revoltuion out of being angry about her being sidelined in her movie career is first class historical revisionism.
It belittles the monstrous nature of Mao’s purges and reduces the death of millions to a family drama.
It is interesting like it was interesting to watch the first “Zeitgeist Movie”. I was well aware that it was all complete nonsense but I was fascinated by the narrative.
Curtis is a capable filmmaker, one with vision and a lot of artistic freedom, but he is not making “master narrative about the mythology of the 20th century”, he creates his own mythology in the disguise that there is something real behind. But it isn’t.
I’m willing to admit that there is much he gets wrong. And one thing I find frustrating, is his continued latching on to new left wing movements, only to be somehow surprised when they inevitably fail.
However the latest film does not insinuate that Mao’s wife started the cultural revolution. Only that she had some part to play in it. Though how much of that is true I don’t know..
But to say there’s no truth behind any of his work is a mistake. I think the thesis behind ‘The Century of the Self’ is solid and very compelling.
The ‘Zeitgeist movies’ by comparison, veered far too much into utopianism and blatant conspiracy theories.
Curtis films are complete nonsense nevertheless I enjoy watching them. Maybe it is the soft comfortable tone of his voice, the wisdom of an all knowing narrator, who keeps you under the strange attraction of these conspiracy mythologies. The thing about his films is: everything is true, until you study the phenomena yourself and become aware that nothing of this holds any scrutiny, but never mind. Nevertheless I enjoyed them watching and I learned a lot from these films, most of all how propaganda really has to work.
His success is simply explained. He tells conspiracies from a left wing perspective, criticising the “old power”, colonialism and racism and hence is not constrained by any problems of logic and consistency. One has to say “colonialism” and all measures of critical thought have been washed away with one single movement.
He manages to make left wing hegemony feel good about itself and that’s a rare quality, since left wing hegemony is bitter, self-loathing and constantly close to depression. Curtis is really good in assuring the viewer that despite all the flaws and nonsense, you are on the right track. He makes the audience feel good.
Especially now, the Trump drug is running out of supply and the cold turkey kicks in. So, Curtis produced another of his feel good horror documentaries at the right time. I need my fix.
For a moment there I was confusing him with Richard Curtis. The ‘Borgesian brilliance’ of Love Actually?!
Richard Curtis is more of an intellectual, but Adam Curtis provides more belly laughs.
They both make truly terrible films so perhaps the confusion is understandable
Our world (or worlds) is literally a fiction – that is all I think Curtis is trying to show us. I have a nice sensible fiction with no (or none that I notice) loose ends or contradictions, that reassures me and makes me feel safe. Curtis creates a sometimes persuasive alternative account – the point is not to accept his insanely elaborate story, but to question my own (equally insane, equally elaborate but mostly unrecognised for what it is – another story)
I’m embarrassed to admit I got hooked upto the 4th episode then it was glaringly obvious I wasn’t watching something interesting like bitter lake, it was just over indulgent, bourgeois post-modernist, pseudo-intellectual rubbish. A guardian readers wet dream.
And how in nearly 10 hours of utter guff he doesn’t once mention the media’s role in these ‘untrue, racist structures’ we’ve created out of thin air apart from his one nod to the bbc but that’s only because Hong Kong was never actually a democracy you see, it was just a system set up to enact racism and project British power. Oh and James Bond was just propaganda. And everything is Britain’s fault basically.
You can just imagine him strolling into the bbc with this. “I’ve got an idea for a new documentary. It’s about how racist and corrupt Britain is, and we’ll obviously gloss over any positives just make it really nice and spiteful. I’ve just taken a look at the world now and used every video clip I can find which makes them look horrible and racist and evil and spliced it all together with some cool music ok?” ,”yep sold just let us know what you need money wise and make sure you hire a diverse crew. thanks then Adam”
Wasn’t he the clown who made a documentary, just before 7/7, about how the Islamofascist terror threat is nonexistent and is made up by governments to control us all?
err, yes, it is. Funny how it’s pretty much been obliterated by the latest scare story
OK, but it should be filed on the i-player under Entertainment or Arts, not Documentaries. Really, Curtis gets away with it because his perspective is left-wing. A critical mass of fellow left-wingers fall in behind it and say it’s fantastic and then enough others follow suit – it’s like the emperor’s new clothes.
Absolutely true..I was led down the garden path for an hour with it then realised that someone was having a laugh at my expense..maybe if viewed drunk in company whilst in trendy,media savvy area of London?
..and ‘Documentary’ is most misleading.
Compelling – couldn’t stop binge watching even though I knew I probably should. Brilliant but batty. It’s a pity he wants to be seen as a documentary maker rather than an artist, because artist is what he is – and a good one, like a cut-price 21st century Warhol. One thing, he projects a partial and misleading picture of the nature of computers and algorithms and their relationship to humanity, and since he is clearly extremely bright, he is doing so deliberately – god only knows to what purpose. For example he picked out Boole and his afterlife (daughter, coincidences, etc.). Boole was one of the seminal figures, but far from the only one or even the most important one. Show me the same odd coincidences and living chains of connections across a dozen others, say, in the lives of Leibniz and Turing and Gates and Zuckerberg and so on, and his various theses might stand a better chance of hanging together. I imagine he is doing this retrofitting across the board with all the facts he is stitching together into stories – picking the ones that fit, discarding the ones that don’t. His art is really a genius for the the cutting room.
Dr Johnson said that dog-walking-on-its-hind legs bit about a woman preaching, Aris; ah, but in our new nineteen-eighty-big-brother-four world you can’t reference that, now, can you… lest you, or the Great Cham, be cancelled! Haha.
I switched off halfway through Episode 1, when I told myself – “there are more valuable things to do with my time”. Heaven knows, why then, I read this whole article of twisted prose, itself designed to signal how clever the author is.
I enjoyed Hyper-normalisation, it had some continuity; but this follow-up (from what I saw) just seemed to be presenting controversial segways for the sake of it, whilst sprinkling the rest with his Chomskyist view of the World. Perhaps Adam has been swayed by praise for his non-sequiturs? Who knows? The succession of Inspectors in Murder in Paradise are more believable when, in the blink of an eye (doing something totally unrelated to the case), they declare they’ve solved the case! Well, it’s only a 55-min long programme, and they’ve got to give enough time to offer 3 or 4 viable culprits, and a few minutes at the end for a rum and giggle. Not long remaining to find the killer 😉
I only made it as far as there apparently being “renewed hope” with the election of Joe Biden.
About a minute, which is nearly a new record of mine for Curtis programmes.
Curtis has been making programmes at the BBC for quite some time and has his feet under the table. I doubt they would commission someone like him now if they walked in off the street.
“the ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
David Graeber could have easily done many things differently, including not smearing a colleague by making up sexual harassment charges in order to take over his journal.
https://quillette.com/2019/09/09/the-anarchist-and-the-anthropology-journal/
“There are few better arguments for the licence fee than a new Adam Curtis documentary” – maybe, but only because there are so few arguments for the licence fee at all
“only the BBC would broadcast such a work” – perhaps, which is another good argument against the BBC, that it promotes such overblown, self indulgent garbage
“Instead of changing his style with each film, he has heightened it to the point of absurdity.” It is indeed absurd, absurd that pretentious critics rave over it, the media luvvies disappearing up their own back passages yet again
So it’s not that Curtis is just pushing conspiracy theories. He’s pushing conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories to expose the real conspiracy theories?
Either that or Adam Curtis can’t accept that it was the political right who have lead the way reasserting political sovereignty and as a result, has tied himself in conceptual knots trying to justify why he can’t support something he agrees with, because the other side did it.
Is Bricolage a recognised category of art? because it is what the French call DIY ( mr.bricolage = B&Q). So isn’t all art DIY , except for plagiarism?
I’d love to see him do one about how mass immigration into the UK after WW2 – against the express wishes of almost the entire settled population – was in fact a cunning sleight of hand.
This is a rather typical review by an author clearly quite out of touch with reality. Why do I say this? because the smug liberals who live somewhere along a leafy lane in England are always and inevitably so. Yes, they may have flirted with an alternate lifestyle while at Uni, or if they are old enough, in the Sixties. But soon enough they will all have rejoined the gravy train to sobriety. Thinking differently is far too exhausting for them. Better by far to agree to the liberal consensus heart and soul and leave all possible disturbing influences to that lucrative mindset well alone. Adam Curtis projects an invitation back to that closer to the ground, intuitive reality where darkness is looked into rather than remaining within a facile well-heeled facade, rigorously adhered to. The liberal mind knows it occupies a select elite ground and endlessly speaks its shallow support to those sharing it. The author here cannot help but expose his inability to peek even slightly over its border. He knows nothing else. So stays exactly where he so comfortably abides. Within a liberal consensus, a self-perpetuating myopia of elitist thought that fears all else.
The Curtis films lure like the hypnotism of Twin Peaks and I think there is something in common there.. with the aesthetic.. just what is it saying. Both are nostalgic in a way that brings new life to sentimental old visuals. Unless I am filling in voids with my own meanings.. I feel people could observing a little more about themes, repetitions, patterns, which amount to circuitous points.. the fascinating re-telling of the drama of Jiang Ching, for example.. could be read as historical revisionism.. but this is not quite the point or logic here.. it is a story that Curtis wants to make about her individualism, and about her feminism and how gender, how some women, also including Afeni Shakur, tended to challenge certain neat complicit managing systems that were also male and also racist.. There is a point here about how (sometimes faked, sometimes manufactured) rebellion could be manipulated and folded neatly into a cycle of surveillance and mass management, but how those who spoke against complicity found an open door to their individual power. More broadly it feels as though in this series we see patterns, form over content, emerging as a point, so that people are fragmented as individuals in larger patterns that are complicit, structured, IT-ized.. I think to dismiss it as inexplicably desirable junk for the over-educated may be a little too hasty and sloppy: find the threads.