The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society discussion

I'm guessing most of you know all about Adam Curtis. I am a long time fan.


For anyone not in the know, Adam Curtis (born 1955) is an English film maker. His best known work is The Century of the Self (2002), a film that examined how Freud's theories of the unconscious shaped the development of public relations and advertising. He says, "My favourite theme is power and how it works in society", and his works explore areas of sociology, philosophy and political history. He describes his work as journalism that happens to be expounded upon through the medium of film. His films have won six BAFTAs. He has been closely associated with the BBC throughout his film making career.

In these days of YouTube etc. most of his documentaries are available online. Since 2004 he also has a wonderful blog that he regularly updates. As with the documentaries, it is idiosyncratic and provocative stuff. By 2011 his blog page was consistently the most popular on the BBC website.

Here it is...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/

I was reminded about Curtis yesterday when someone in another group suggested reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Everything I know about The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is from the Adam Curtis documentary "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" which I thought was fascinating. It was Cecil B. DeMille who gave Ayn Rand the inspiration for The Fountainhead. Once she moved to New York she set up a reading group called The Collective. Alan Greenspan joined. The rest, as they say, is history....

Click here to view "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" The first one starts with an Ayn Rand interview. Well worth checking out.

All his work is detailed on his Wikipedia page...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis

Adam Curtis - HyperNormalisation


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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...

Good review here...


HyperNormalisation review (Adam Curtis, BBC iPlayer): A masterfully dark dive into our experience of reality

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

Finally finished my first watch. Very thought provoking. The use of Carrie at the end was inspired as was a couple of airings for Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream"

This post under the Curtis Hypernormalisation blog had some interesting thoughts....

Are you confused about reality? Well, according to Adam Curtis, you are supposed to be. Curtis, the controversial, and radical, English documentary/film maker, that brought us intellectually stimulating binge TV such as,’The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?’, ‘Century of the Self’, and, ‘Bitter Lake’, has returned to our small screens, with his latest Goliath BBC iPlayer production, the 166 minute, ‘HyperNormalisation’.Fascinating, complex, macabre, and beautifully edited, much like our own world, the production is a thought-provoking attempt at explaining why, and how, the world we live in is a confusing reality. Curtis, beneath the smoke and mirrors, is merely another journalist with his own perspective, and his own sources. Therefore, he's as much subject to scrutiny and questioning as any. However, as a dramatist, he is second to none.

In typical style, Curtis sets off, traversing a mindbending sequence of historic, and not-so-well-known events, analysing cultural, social, and political agents, whom he describes as architects of a “fake version of the world”, into which we have all retreated. Through his works, he provides viewers with an insight into the motives, and devious practices, of the elites and tyrants, that have controlled the world, and continue to do so to this present day, however tenuously. He argues that this existential existence, brought about by neoliberalism, and the wholesale handing over of power from politicians to financiers, has plunged societies into a world of loneliness. There is no denying the ever-increasing gap in global wealth inequality, and the dramatic rise of suicide rates everywhere, from West Belfast to South Korea, the latter of which is described by radical Slovenian author, cultural critic and philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, in his penultimate book, 'Trouble in Paradise' (2014), as having the highest suicide rate on earth. Therefore, taking this into account, one could be compelled to accept the merit of such accusations. But, where did we, or they, go wrong?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis...