The power of Curtis

There are few enough people making coherent, provocative, aesthetically persuasive political documentaries. In fact Adam Curtis might be the only one. Now he’s got a blog, so you can keep up with him in the too-long intervals between films.

Adam Curtis grab

4 Responses to “The power of Curtis”

  1. His documentaries are brilliantly made… but I nearly fell out my chair the first time I saw Power of Nightmares and heard the voiceover say:

    “But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision.”

    Which gives you a vague hint of the areas in which he studiously and repeatedly misses the point :)

    There’s excellent criticism of Nightmares here:
    http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/041118_Power_Of_Nightmares_1.HTM
    http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/041119_Power_Of_Nightmares_2.HTM

    And analysis of Curtis’s response to the above here:
    http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/041207_Curtis_Response.html

    Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it (“Century of the Self” even more so) but when I read “coherent, provocative, aesthetically persuasive” I only fully agreed on the fact that he’s persuasive. I’d also add “funny” as the bits I love most in his documentaries are the clever and sarcastic use of archive footage :)

    • Thanks for that – I’m still playing catch-up with Medialens, and when I first watched The Power Of Nightmares I was deep in lit crit and not very well-informed anything apart from semi-colons. My main grumble with Century Of The Self was the treatment of game theory, which I think can be a lot more subtle and humane than he allows (not that it always is, just that it seemed a little unfair to blame it for late-stage capitalism).

  2. Yeah. And still they’re some of the best things on telly :)

    Joel Bakan’s “The Corporation” shits on em though IMO. Heartily recommend the book if you’ve not read it.

    • solidchris Says:

      The Corporation, book and film is the business. Cracking stuff. Best of a string of business docs that came out around the same time.

      I’ve subscribed to Curtis though. TV like that is shamefully rare.

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