
Adam Curtis: Bitter Lake - dredmorbius
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gyz6b
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gpvos
"Available to play in the UK only". Better link to the Youtube version.

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s_kilk
Just wanted to say I found the segment of the Marines gloating over their un-
authorized butchery of civilians to be deeply unsettling.

Good film.

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dredmorbius
The documentary is long (2h 16m 44s), and somewhat nonlinear. It includes many
segments of footage presented without explanation or context, though the
narrative is highly informative.

There's a YouTube link for those outside the UK:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXcpDO8_3qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXcpDO8_3qU)

The story told is a fascinating one, and links up with a few others I've seen.

There's an alternate telling of the Bitter Lake story in Daniel Yergin's the
Prize. See episode 5, at 23m 34s:

[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IIJxBrHcSUo](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IIJxBrHcSUo)

(The entire series is excellent.)

And while it covers some different ground, Robert Newman's "History of Oil"
also covers the petro-politics of the middle east in a highly provocative
mannner:

[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=2DCwafIntj0](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=2DCwafIntj0)

Some have claimed here that Curtis is creating opinion pieces.
ThatsThePoint.jpg

The stories we've been told of the Middle East are opinion pieces, with a
specific narrative and agenda. The introduction to this piece notes that the
stories that narrative is composed of no longer hold together, and no longer
make sense. A frame _is_ necessary for understanding (though as I've said,
Curtis often removes that entirely), and yes, Curtis is offering an
alternative one, but also quite deliberately breaking the conventional frame.

It's a large part of the excellence of the piece.

I'd also like to credit dmschulman for pointing out the documentary to me.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9006688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9006688)

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alx
Also available on youtube :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXcpDO8_3qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXcpDO8_3qU)

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dredmorbius
Thanks, meant to include that.

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garblegarble
I really enjoyed this, but I was a bit dismayed that he didn't really back up
or explain his assertion that politicians don't believe in anything and are
now reacting at random (particularly because that makes it sound like an over-
simplified story itself!)

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duncanawoods
The Adam Curtis "Century Of the Self" is where he explains this assertion in
substantial depth. IMHO its much better than Bitter Lake. It has much more
content and insight about the history of psychology in the hands of
politicians and corporations.

The short story is that during Clinton\Blair era of government, political
parties changed from devising policies based on principles which they would
then try to popularise to discovering what policies _would_ get them elected
from the voters themselves.

They did this by using the new sciences of marketing psychology i.e.
demographics, polling, focus groups, psychological profiling etc. to identify
what appealed to the whims of the tiny minority of swing voters that truly
determine the outcome of elections.

This may not sound too bad but this is the "not believing anything" because
any question whether foreign or domestic was answered by carefully designed
focus group instead of a leader with a vision of what type of society we want
to live in. It won elections but bred inconsistent, short-term, short-sighted,
minority desire driven policy.

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smcl
For a slightly shorter, more digestible introduction to Adam Curtis you might
want to check out this piece he did for the BBC series "Screenwipe" about
Vladislav Surkov's "non-linear warfare":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM)

~~~
jmkni
He did another one for Screenwipe about Richard Nixon, I prefer it to the
above -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA)

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simonveal
I enjoyed this film, but I can't help thinking it would have been better if it
had been shorter (it's well over 2 hours long). The really interesting bits
are where he tells the story of Afghanistan from the 1940s onwards. I found
this absolutely fascinating, but this probably totals less than half the
running time.

The rest is raw footage from the country since 2001. While this is also
fascinating (and harrowing and distressing in many places) the overall length
is only really going to prevent people from getting to the end and
understanding the whole story. Given that Curtis's stated aim is to tell the
whole story, without the simplifications that modern news media requires, the
length seems to counteract that aim.

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dredmorbius
There's a lot of slack time, I'll grant that. It's also quite curious how it
plays out -- there are many clips shown with little or no explanation. I'm
only about an hour into the video myself at the moment, but the example of the
Karzai assassination attempt shown comes to mind.

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cmsj
I wondered if it was a deliberate device to make us feel the confusing
complexity that can't just be neatly explained by a simple voiceover
narrative, which was kinda the point of the show.

~~~
fit2rule
That's what I'm getting out of this as well. We're supposed to think about
this; its supposed to give us a jolt. Talking about it critically is the
desired result, no?

Well, it happens here. It doesn't happen too much "out there" ..

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Udo
I have to say I do enjoy Adam Curtis movies very much, even though I often
find myself disagreeing with the opinion being presented.

For all their watchability, it's important to remember that these are not
straight-up documentaries. They're well-crafted opinion pieces with narratives
that (depending on your perception) may or may not be shoehorned into the
shape of facts with a blunt instrument. Also the copious library footage,
while always tantalizing, tends to be only marginally connected with the
subject at hand. They're still worth watching for the presentation alone, and
they are great discussion starters.

Personally, I found one of the most disagreeable Curtis projects to be "All
Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace", as entertaining as it was. If you
ever have a spare weekend and would like to spend it thinking about the
trajectory of society, I recommend binge-watching Curtis movies.

~~~
benkant
Yes. I disagree with most of his points of view. Some of his statements are
outright incorrect and a majority are at least questionable or wanting for
references. In _The Trap_ he constantly uses the phrase "based on numbers" in
a negative fashion, as if it were an inferior method of analysis. I find that
particularly strange considering that if you just listen to his narrative
without the images, there is no analysis and often no cogent argument.

One argument, if I remember correctly, was that game theory should no longer
be used as a tool because it was largely developed during the cold war, which
is over now.

And yet I'm utterly I'm fascinated by his movies. I probably (re)watch one
every 2 months. Go figure.

edit: You can't miss this parody:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

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chazu
I agree that Curtis' arguments are often articulated in such a way as to make
them easy to debunk or dismiss, however I think the germ of his arguments
often highlight interesting or compelling ideas. I suspect that many others
commenting here, however much they disagree with Curtis' ideas (or his
articulations of ideas) feel the same.

From my perspective the common thread of his arguments is that over-reliance
on specific models (generally of how the human mind works, but also of how
systems work, e.g. ecology) can lead to unintended consequences. For example,
the ways in which British hospitals skirted performance targets under New
Labor, or the spectacular failure of the approach taken by the Defense
Department in Vietnam.

To take another example, Curtis highlights in 'The Century of Self' the damage
done by over-reliance on Freudian models of the mind, and then the subsequent
follies of those who borrowed from Wilhelm Reich.

Perhaps stated more generally, I think the core idea behind Curtis' work is
perhaps simply that ideas can be extremely dangerous or powerful.

~~~
benkant
>the core idea behind Curtis' work is perhaps simply that ideas can be
extremely dangerous or powerful

That's as good a description as I'm likely to come up with. Aside from the
delivery, which is at once engaging and completely lacking the nuisance
necessary for a topic like this, my issue is that the core idea is a truism
and I'm not sure he actually makes an interesting point, much less offers
alternatives (he'd have to make that point first).

He does however touch on interesting topics. He then attempts to find causal
relationships between events, but I believe doing this to arrive at a
conclusion is intellectually dishonest. He must know that, which makes me more
frustrated. That's personal preference. If I was trying to convince someone of
something, this is not how I'd go about it.

Re NHS: ask anyone who designs incentive programs and they'll tell you that
it's a cat and mouse game. I fail to see how hospital managers gaming the
system implies "KPI + autonomy about how to achieve it" is a dud idea
entirely, and that proponents of such systems are paranoid RAND Corp game
theory psychopaths stuck in the Cold War.

Incentives need to be tweaked just like anything else, and the rational agent
model need not be a complete description of human behaviour for it be useful.
It need only be sufficiently descriptive of portions of workplace behaviour
that designing incentives raises KPIs. If those KPIs aren't working you tweak
them, using those dreaded numbers Curtis despises so much.

Models are useful until they aren't. But as someone said- they're all wrong.
We modify them or replace them as necessary. Sometimes that takes longer than
we'd like. We'd still be bashing each other with clubs without them. I'm not
sure what Curtis proposes, which is perhaps why I watch these movies over and
over again- trying to get the point. Or maybe it's just soothing to hear vague
thoughts about economics and systems theory set to music and stock footage.

As others have said, perhaps it's more useful as a conversation starter than a
thesis. Don't get me wrong. I love the damn movies.

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Torgo
He seems to have not actually understood game theory, from my watching.

