Adam Curtis, All watched over by machines of loving grace

[caramelpence]

I'm really surprised that there hasn't already been a thread on this. For people in the UK, who else has been watching this new documentary series and who else thinks that Adam Curtis is overall a fantastic documentary producer? The new series (All watched over...) takes in quite a number of different issues but it is broadly about the emergence of new kinds of knowledge in the post-war period that emphasized the idea of the self-sustaining system that is able to remain stable over long periods of time without requiring a guiding centre through the mutual support provided by its individual components. The first episode was about utopianism in computer science and its application to economics and politics (who else thought that the footage with the game of pong controlled by an entire room was brilliant?) whereas the second was about ecology and ecosystems, which included some footage on intentional communities. I think anarchists in particular would find this kind of stuff fascinating because of how it relates to what people like Colin Ward and Kropotkin have argued about natural order and spontaneous organization. Anyone know anything about Curtis' politics? He's always struck me as fairly left-wing.

[Rooster]

I really enjoy Curtis' documentaries. Is this on iplayer?

Cool, I found it on youtube. I'll be watching this later then.

xX5jImWRREc

[Comrade J]

Yeah I'm gonna watch this later on iPlayer or youtube, forgot that it was on. I really liked the third episode of the Power of Nightmares that he made, another excellent documentary that I advise people watch if they haven't already. The whole thing is about the rise of Neocons in the US, how they operate and control etc. with the last episode looking at the myth of Al Qaeda, and how it is effectively just a franchise.

[x359594]

I watched the first hour on YouTube (I live in the US so that's the only way for me to view it.) I look forward to the next installment. It complements Inside Job by providing the ideological framework that the Inside Job lacks.

[brigadista]

i linked it in another thread - they have been good so far

[Manic Impressive]

I was going to watch it then I heard a reviewer say "it explains how the financial systems are all controlled by computers and this is why we are currently in a recession. Which is of course completely correct" That's the basic jist of what he said and why I haven't been watching but if it's not throw your tv out the window type stuff i'll give it a try.

[Tim Finnegan]

Watched the first two episodes last night. Good stuff so far, and the discussion of spontaneous organisation is certainly interesting for those on the left.


I was going to watch it then I heard a reviewer say "it explains how the financial systems are all controlled by computers and this is why we are currently in a recession. Which is of course completely correct" That's the basic jist of what he said and why I haven't been watching but if it's not throw your tv out the window type stuff i'll give it a try.
Well, the reviewer has mince for brains. It's not about how "computers control the economy", but, rather, about the emergent belief among the bourgeois that computers could be used to rationalise investment in such a manner as to overcome economic instability, which- as you would expect- lead to the economy becoming in fact less stable.

So, yeah, watch it. :thumbup1:

[Wanted Man]

Damn, I knew I had forgotten something important around this time. I don't know if the last episode has already been broadcast, but once it has, I'll definitely have to acquire it through different means.


Anyone know anything about Curtis' politics? He's always struck me as fairly left-wing.

He seems to me like the kind of person who strongly avoids being linked to any particular ideology or party, and those are sometimes the best allies to have. I remember how he concluded "The Trap" by basically saying that "positive freedom", often with revolutionary aims, is not always a bad thing. I think that's quite a thing to say on national television, where the main ideology has always been the exact opposite. Same with this:


He believes that because British politics is now obliged to appear non-hierarchical, it has become managerialist, obsessed with process over vision – a recognisable idea to anyone who lives in this triangulated, professionalised political age. He says this doesn't just affect the political parties (although he singles out Andrew Lansley as managerialist-in-chief), but politics in its widest sense. "Even the 'march against the cuts'," he says, referring to the TUC march in London in March, "it was a noble thing, but it was still a managerial approach. We mustn't cut this, we can't cut that. Not, 'There is another way.' Why are we so frightened of a few bond managers? Why can't we challenge the 'markets'? Why do we treat them as if they're their own precious ecosystem? The idea of proper change, or really shifting things, is alien to us today. We just argue about how to manage a system best. It's a moment of high decadence. And we've forgotten that we do have deep responsibilities to people who really are powerless." (He has fascinating material on this about the west's interventions in Congo, as "a place that generates different kinds of myths about us as human beings, things that the west longs for but that also make us terrified".)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/06/adam-curtis-computers-documentary

The bit about the anti-cuts thing kind of struck me. Here we basically have a BBC film-maker telling the unions that they're visionless bureaucrats and asking them why the hell they're not proposing an alternative to the system. This in a period where even some in the "rev. left" desperately try to conceal their aims. Or rather, when they do propose the alternative of socialism, they rarely manage to convey just how emancipatory and liberating this alternative is. Too often, you just hear managerial stuff about "nationalising the X biggest companies", "voting a left-Labour government into power", "building a new workers' party", etc.

From the same interview:


In his films, Curtis draws on recent attempts to overthrow power in autocratic countries, describing the spontaneous revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan as a "triumph of the visions of computer utopians of the 1960s, with their vision of computers allowing individuals to create new, non-hierarchical societies" – just like in that mass game of Pong. "The internet played a key role in guiding revolutions that had no guiding ideology, except a desire for self-determination and freedom." But the desire for freedom itself was not enough, he says. "In all those revolutions, that sense of freedom lasted only for a moment. The people were brilliant at overturning the power – but then what? Democracy needs proper politics, but people have given up on saying that they're going to change the world." The Arab uprisings began after he finished making the films, but he sees these in the same way. "It's as if these people assembled spontaneously on Twitter and they just want freedom. But what kind of society do they want?"

He does not deny that Twitter and Facebook had some impact – at least organisationally. But he has strong views on social networking for anything beyond straightforward organisation; he considers the sharing of emotions online to be the "Soviet realism of the age".

Also important questions that the left should debate. Which they do at the moment, but mostly along the lines of: "They need Marxist leadership; here, read this summary of Marx by our leading theorist and all will become clear." And that's the best response; the worst is mindless cheerleading.

A swift kick in the arse is what a lot of people need, and it's because of this that I often have more appreciation for one Curtis than for dozens of self-appointed revolutionary thinkers.

[Kotze]

Why does Curtis throw cybernetics and Ayn Rand together? I don't know anybody who is into both. I also don't know how you could put these two worldviews together, one is all about dependencies and the big picture, the other is a fairy tale about rugged individuals.

What I don't like about film is how you can suggest a lot of things by montage without actually saying what it is that you suggest, so you can be very manipulative without being caught lying. For example, this series starts with Rand fans in Silicon Valley, then it briefly shows an Apple computer. Is Steve Jobs a Randroid? If it turns out to be true Curtis can pat himself on the back for showing the computer, and if it turns out to be false he has plausible deniability, so why care about research. Now multiply this by 1000 and add ominous audio and you have an Adam Curtis "documentary" :P

[RED DAVE]

Why does Curtis throw cybernetics and Ayn Rand together? I don't know anybody who is into both. I also don't know how you could put these two worldviews together, one is all about dependencies and the big picture, the other is a fairy tale about rugged individuals.

What I don't like about film is how you can suggest a lot of things by montage without actually saying what it is that you suggest, so you can be very manipulative without being caught lying. For example, this series starts with Rand fans in Silicon Valley, then it briefly shows an Apple computer. Is Steve Jobs a Randroid? If it turns out to be true Curtis can pat himself on the back for showing the computer, and if it turns out to be false he has plausible deniability, so why care about research. Now multiply this by 1000 and add ominous audio and you have an Adam Curtis "documentary" :Pin fact, in the US, a lot of the programmer and entrepreneurial types in and around Silicon Valley and New York, were libertarians if not randoids. They really conceived of themselves as some kind of an elite. The bursting of the dot.com bubble more-or-less shut them up in public, but in private libertarianism is very popular as an ideology. People like Bill Maher, Rand Paul and Penn Gillette are into it.

RED DAVE

[Kotze]

I don't need Adam Curtis to tell me that.

My point was that cybernetics and Rand don't fit together. That is, while you can certainly find people in Silicon Valley that are into the former or the latter, they don't mesh into one ideology. Curtis shows people who are into one or the other, but nobody's noggin (except that of Curtis) seems to contain both.

Neither is political propaganda that refers to supposedly strong self-adjusting processes in nature influenced much by 20th century biologists, nor is it true that it really took until the mid-seventies of that century for somebody to question the strength or even existence of these processes. Fuller wasn't the first to come up with geodesic domes, he popularized them, and what do these domes have to do with the shown protests from the early aughts, or are these protests supposed to be connected with something else, is there a connection with the conservative assholes at the Club of Rome or Ayn Rand? No wait, these protests had something to do with the internet. Okay, got it. And how did Ayn Rand invent the internet again?

It's not better than the first Zeitgeist movie. The whole thing is a wild association collage. I can see how this style of film-making appeals to very emotional people, with all that music and fast cuts and having that air of being vaguely critical of everything while saying nothing of substance. Curtis should spend more time on actually researching information instead of searching for archive footage to appear informed.

[x359594]

...nobody's noggin (except that of Curtis) seems to contain both...

Don't underestimate the power of negative capability.

[Arlekino]

I watched two serious is good, one my thoughts I wanted little more radical presentation and little more telling about Indonesia left wingers struggles.

[Comrade J]

Saw the first episode last night, gonna watch #2 later. Really insightful look into Ayn Rand's inner circle, and their hypocrisy in conducting themselves in an altruistic manner at times. :rolleyes:

Looking forward to the next one, I like well-made and insightful documentaries like these, and also some by Louis Theroux.

[Tommy4ever]

Just watched the whole thing through. Wow. That was a truly magnificent documentary.

:thumbup1:

[brigadista]

the last one was so good -