Hypernormalisation

[Steve Kinney]

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On 02/09/2017 09:50 AM, No wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM
> 
> aka inception asto propaganda about propaganda +_+
> 
> Opinions about ^
> 
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603570
> 
> let's see how long it takes before the usual suspects start
> bashing eachothers worldviews. nazis, nazis everywhere and oh
> hitler and ... sigh
Hypernormalisation

I recently watched Adam Curtis' latest documentary,
Hypernormalisation.  Being a long time fan of Curtis' work, I found
Hypernormalisation a little disconcerting.  Mainstream historians
often do very well at exposing the "important but neglected" details
of once-controversial political events.  But when their accounts
directly involve living persons in positions of power their standards
of evidence may take a holiday.  As an example, Overthrow:  America's
Century Of Regine Change by Stephen Kinzer stands out as a remarkably
complete and insightful work until it arrives at the first Bush
Administration.  From there, the author begins repeating the U.S.
propaganda line contradicting well documented, readily available
factual evidence.  It now appears that Adam Curtis has also found a
need to exercise discretion in truth-telling.

I may change my mind tomorrow.  Maybe there's something ironic or
Mobius-self-referential behind the narrative of Hypernormalisation
that I just don't get.  But right now I question the wisdom of Curtis
even starting this project, which accepts current propaganda
narratives, rejected by a consensus of independent journalists, as
plain facts.  This is largely accomplished by dancing around the
ground truth of key turning point events central to the narrative's
accounts of the present wars in Libya and Syria.

In a film whose message might be summed up as "civilization has gone
insane and no one knows what is real any more," gross misattribution
of the origins of the wars against Libya and Syria casts a long
shadow:  Had more factual views of the role of US/NATO powers in these
events been acknowledged, however briefly, that shadow would not be
quite so dark:  But as the presentation stands, it proves its own
point by hiding information essential to understanding reality,
depriving the audience of insights with regard to fact vs. fiction on
the world stage - a definition of insanity.

I don't expect Mr. Curtis to be a superhero or a martyr.  But I have
come to expect better work than Hypernormalisation from him.  Parts of
the show were really quite excellent.  But the more he built on the
central themes of the presentation, the more disjointed and dissonant
the narrative looked to me, until Curtis appeared to prove his own
point about the world going insane as the narrative itself went off
the rails and broke contact with reality.  I do not expect a Call To
Action at the end of a Curtis story, but an implicit statement that
our only option is to "just give up," reinforced by an object lesson
in same, is a call to action of its own sort.

I appreciate and recommend the whole Curtis canon of documentaries,
and my expectations for the future are not diminished:  I can easily
believe that in this case, the material Curtis was working with bit
back and he did the best he could to salvage a no-win situation.  So I
do suggest that readers who are not familiar with Adam Curtis check
out The Power Of Nightmares and/or The Century Of The Self before
viewing Hypernormalisation.




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