
HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis (2016) [video] - kaivi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y
======
krrrh
While trying to parse the 2016 election I watched Steve Bannon’s magnum opus
_Generation Zero_ [1] and was struck by how much certain parts of it felt like
an Adam Curtis film, with its heavy use of stock footage for tone rather than
exposition. My main problem with Adam Curtis is that he’s more of a political
artist than a historian, but his fans treat him like the latter. I guess
that’s the problem with Bannon too.

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bsqu9gh6xhk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bsqu9gh6xhk)

~~~
bitoneill
I think of Adam Curtis as a journalist. You may disagree with his facts or
interpretation of them, but he tells an interesting story with his
investigations.

~~~
krrrh
It’s a stretch to call what he does journalism, but I suppose it depends on
where you draw the circle around “journalist”. He uses real world events and
people as his raw materials, but the subjects of his films are his own
perspectives even if he isn’t up front about that. I wouldn’t classify Erol
Morris as a journalist either, but he is much more in that category than
Curtis because he is more interested in making the unknown known than
presenting his own philosophy.

While I don’t think that Adam Curtis can hold a candle to Chris Marker as an
artist, or in terms of telling an interesting story or conducting an
investigation, I would put his work in the same category of “film essay”.

------
0wing
High resolution here:

[http://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/](http://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/)

More of Adam Curtis's filmography:

[http://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/](http://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-
curtis/)

~~~
pizza
wow thank you for the link, definitely downloading every last one of those
films!!

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blacksmith_tb
I like Curtis, but his style of narration always makes me think of Professor
Brian O'Blivion[1] in Cronenberg's Videodrome (which for all I know is
intentional...).

1: [https://youtu.be/xfUX9W5TJIQ](https://youtu.be/xfUX9W5TJIQ)

~~~
krrrh
Brian O’Blivion was heavily based on Marshall McLuhan if you want to go
further down the rabbit hole.

~~~
djsumdog
_The Medium is the Message_

~~~
pdkl95
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-
Jjvqu3U4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4)

Vi Hart's incredible explanation of the modern _medium_ (youtube) and how it
affects the _message_ , and the wise words (probably written by McLuhan) in
Edmund Snow Carpenter's "They Became What They Beheld".

------
pdkl95
For a summary of the _economic_ mechanisms creating our current hypernormal
situation, I _strongly_ recommend watching Mark Blyth's recent lecture[1].
(note that he is giving a summary to a general audience; see his actual
publications and/or other lectures for details/references)

Adam Curtis talks about the need for the "big vision" for actual change to
happen. Mark Blyth, at the end of the lecture, has a few very simple ideas for
"big vision" goals that are actually realistic and achievable.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A)

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maheart
In my opinion this is a bad documentary.

I see a lot of praise for it, but I see nothing but a disjointed, hard-to-
follow argument, that feels like its backed by no (or irrelevant) facts. I
leave the documentary feeling less enlightened, and more confused.

It almost feels like the narrative is written by a high-school student with no
ability to focus, or refine an idea -- and linking random pieces of
information together to push a narrative.

I think the Youtube video posted by user zajd in this thread perfectly
lampoons Adam Curtis's style.

~~~
knz
> disjointed, hard-to-follow argument, that feels like its backed by no (or
> irrelevant) facts

Respectfully, I have to disagree. I watched this documentary for the first
time last night and came away feeling that the jarring tone was deliberate
(the whole point was that our unease about the chaos of the world is being
exploited for political means).

I'm curious if you were familiar with many of the events depicted in the
documentary? I suspect it would have been harder to follow without some
knowledge of these events.

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grzm
Previous discussions:

\- 10 months ago (112 points, 19 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603570)

\- And a year ago (301 points, 136 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603570)

------
pizza
If you like this there are many other great documentaries by him - Century of
the Self, Every day is Sunday, Bitter Lake, The Power of Nightmares (?) -
watch them with a grain of salt, all of them, but definitely rewatch them,
too..

(I know this is going to be a bit of a controversial statement for HN bc of
politics and junk, but, to butcher and reconstitute a particuarly memorable
Slavoj Zizek quote about Peter Sloterdijk, "Adam Curtis may be a conservative,
but he's not an idiot!")

edit: if you dont have the 3 hrs to watch this documentary, you can get a
great taste by watching this podcast clip set to some particularly moving
imagery and music.. (hat tip to adam curtis editing style, perhaps? ;) )

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_R98EBO7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_R98EBO7s)

edit2: transcript, because its worth it:

> WILL MENAKER: _What would it look like to imagine a different world? Do you
> have a vision of it How would we know if we were beginning to imagine a
> different world? Even within this hyper-real one?_

> ADAM CURTIS: _You ask what real change might look like, and I think that’s a
> really interesting question for liberals and radicals, because there is a
> hunger for change, out there - millions of people who feel sort of insecure,
> uncertain about the future who DO want something to change. I think that
> change only comes though a big imaginative idea. A sort of picture of
> another kind of future which gives people - which connects with that
> fearfulness in the back of people’s minds. And offers them a release from
> it. That 's the key thing. But I think the question for liberals and
> radicals is - they are always suspicious of big ideas. That's what lurks
> underneath the liberal mindset. And the reason is - and they are quite right
> in a way - is look what happened last time when millions of people got swept
> up in a big idea! Look up the last hundred years - what happened in Russia,
> and then in Germany. The point is , Is that Political change is frightening.
> It's scary — it's thrilling because it is dynamic and is doing something to
> change the world but it is scary because it can change things in ways where
> nothing to secure. Its like being in an earthquake. Even the solid ground
> beneath you begins to move. And things dissolve that you think are solid and
> real. And I think the question liberals are left have to face at the moment
> is a really sort of difficult question which is: “do you really want change?
> do you really want it?” Because if you do many of them might find themselves
> in a very uncertain world where they might lose all sorts of things. What we
> were talking about, in many cases, is people who are at the center of
> society at the moment, they are not out in the margins. They would have a
> lot to lose from real political change because it really would change things
> in the structure of power._

 _Or - and this is the brutal question: Do you just want things to change a
little bit? Do you just want the banks to be a little bit nicer, or for people
to be a little more respectful of each other 's identities - All of which is
good - but basically you carry on living in a nice world where you tinker with
it._

 _That’s the key question. But you can 't just sit there forever worrying
about big ideas because there are millions of people out there who do you want
Change. And the key thing is: they feel they’ve got nothing to lose. You might
have lots to lose, but they feel they’ve got absolute nothing to lose. But at
the moment they're being led by the Right. So things won't remain the same.
But society may go off in ways you really don’t want._

 _SO in answer to your question, what you need is a powerful vision of the
future. With all its dangers. But it is also quite thrilling. It will be an
escape from the staticness of the world we have today. And to do that, you’ve
got to engage with the giant forces of power that now run the world, at the
moment. And the key thing is that in confronting those powers, and trying to
transform the world you might lose a lot. This is a sort of forgotten idea. Is
that actually you surrender yourself up to a big idea and in the the process
you might lose something but you’d actually gain a bigger sense, because you
change the world for the better. I know it sounds soppy, But this is the
forgotten thing about politics. Is that you give up some of your individualism
to something bigger than yourself. You surrender yourself - and it’s a lost
idea. And I think really in answer to your question: You can spot real change
happening when you see people from the liberal middle classes, beginning to
give themselves up to something. Surrender themselves for something bigger.
And at the moment, there is nothing like that in the liberal imagination.﻿_

~~~
kaivi
Thanks, I've enjoyed it a lot, strange how I haven't heard about Adam Curtis
earlier. When I watched it, I've had a similar feeling as that during the
first semester of philosophy class - things I've noticed and ideas I've had
before were not novel, and here is a whole movie made to organize these things
in my head. Thought the narrative of isolated bubbles in social networks would
resonate with HN crowd.

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alexnewman
One of my favoirte movies.

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zajd
Love Adam Curtis but this video more or less ruined his films for me:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

~~~
dna_polymerase
I don't know how many people recommended HyperNormalisation to me already, yet
I've never been able to sit through the whole thing. I absolutely dislike his
style, the image so dispatched from the narrative... So thank you for that
video, it really fits my feelings about his work.

~~~
danbruc
I on the other hand like the style for its own sake but enjoyed
HyperNormalisation a lot less than Bitter Lake or The Power of Nightmares. But
the style really does not help the credibility of the story or allows
following the argument and spotting potential holes in it. In the end I am
left with the feeling to either forget about it or having to fact check the
whole thing. There are certainly interesting points in his films but they are
almost impossible to evaluate without consulting other sources.

~~~
freshhawk
I also like the style. I get why people wouldn't, the argument is in the
narrative and the video part is just flavour (and often a little bit of
subtextual commentary/comedy).

I don't see how it effects credibility either way though. Do you just mean it
would _seem_ more credible with a full audio/video argument? I can buy that,
it might feel more convincing while still having the same content.

~~~
danbruc
I think he mixes hard facts, like descriptions of events that undeniably
happened, a lot with interpretations or connections he draws and that he often
presents as causations but then fails to substantiate them. It may be
plausible that X did Y because of Z but that is not really supported by any
facts and could as well just be a correlation. If you watch carefully enough
you can spot those things but if you are watching more casually and enjoy the
pictures and the music it becomes easy to miss such things. I think if the
story was narrated in a dryer, more classical documentary style it would be
more evident whether and where there are holes in the argument, after all the
visuals and music certainly consume part of your attention.

~~~
dpwm
I think you've nailed the problem for me as well: possibilities and opinions
are presented in the same style as facts. This is more like what is done by
news reporters than history documentarians.

I am not happy when opinions and possibilities are promoted as though they are
facts, but I only tend to pay attention when I do not agree with the position.
Adam Curtis does this a lot to link things together that seem otherwise
unconnected and the position he takes tends to be rather inoffensive to me.

This is made worse by being combined with archive footage: we tend to believe
our eyes in a way we don't our ears. I don't feel qualified enough to confirm
that the archive footage is even about the events which are being discussed.

Thinking about it some more, I would be outright hostile towards his methods
if the narrative were to move into a position that I did find offensive.

~~~
frabbit
This was interesting to read. Especially the fantasy/thought-experiment about
how I might feel if the narrative were to move to a position that I found
offensive.

But then I switch on 60 Minutes. Or read the NYT. And I realize that they do
not even have the courtesy to make it possible to distinguish fact from
opinion and possibly (and in the case of the NYT outright fabrications planted
by the military).

I do not take Adam Curtis as Truth. But his work has suggested that there are
ways to stitch together narratives that suit different mindsets.

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kpU8efre7r
Yeah I like his style but they really all seem like opinion pieces with no
sources whatsoever.

I still enjoy them but they are barely technically documentaries.

