Hypernormalisation, Adam Curtis’S New Film

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Balbus, Oct 21, 2016.

  1. Balbus

    Balbus Senior Member

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    There is a new Adam Curtis film out - the guy who made the Power of Nightmares and Bitter Lake that I’ve motioned here before a thing worth giving a viewing

    http://www.bbc.co.uk...ernormalisation

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ9DridFLCE

    A masterfully dark dive into our experience of reality

    If your various news feeds present a reality you don’t recognise, and scrolling through them leaves you desensitised, this documentary goes some way in offering the explanation you’ve been seeking. Bitter Lake director Adam Curtis’s latest film looks at how “we have retreated into a simplified and often completely fake version of the world”, and the various social, political and cultural agents that have landed us in this seemingly hopeless world situation.
    http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/hypernormalisation-review-adam-curtis-bbc-iplayer-a-masterfully-dark-dive-into-our-dissociative-a7367166.html

    *
    He argues that an army of technocrats, complacent radicals and Faustian internet entrepreneurs have conspired to create an unreal world; one whose familiar and often comforting details blind us to its total inauthenticity. Not wishing to undersell the concept, Curtis begins the film with a shot of a torch shining limply into a thicket, so that viewers find themselves literally unable to see the wood for the trees.
    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/15/hypernormalisation-adam-curtis-trump-putin-syria
     
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  2. Balbus

    Balbus Senior Member

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    First Posted by BlackBillBlake -commenting on the film.

    Balbus - I watched it last night. A lot there, and I thought well put together. The disconnect between the political and media discourse and reality that it highlights is something that many more people need to be aware of. However, I suspect that many will dismiss it as it would be too disturbing to accept the reality. They will continue caught fast in a web of distortions, half-truths and outright lies that the power holding elites propagate.

    One thing I thought was missing from the film was any mention of the rise of China and other eastern economies which I think is significant in coming to an understanding the current trends in the world, but it covered a broad sweep of the last 50 years or so, and the points made (and there were a lot) were all very relevant, I found the stuff about the falsification of the situation viz a viz the middle east in general and Colonel Gaddafi in particular very interesting, and it served to confirm my own take on that situation.

    If there are any points arising from the film you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to engage. I found it quite thought provoking, and I think maybe it should be on the curriculum for May's new grammar schools:)
     
  3. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    'We have retreated into a simplified and often completely fake version of the world'.

    I think that's what they were calling 'hyper-reality' a few years ago. The film argues that the hyper-real has now become entirely normal, and that many of the 'facts' of recent history are actually complete fabrications.

    The thing is that everyone, left, right and centre, should be alarmed by the falsification of reality, and the fact that they are being manipulated by lies, even if the lies are comforting, easily understood and offer a relatively unchallenging version of things. That's the whole point. Many people have died or been maimed because such lies have gained general credence.States have been reduced to anarchy. Many more have suffered economic hardship, and millions have been conned into voting against their own best interests.

    If we choose to go on living in a falsified version of the reality of the world, never questioning what we're told is the truth, this will go on and on. And the beneficiaries won't be us, but media tycoons, phoney politicians and bankers, just as they are now.
     
  4. Balbus

    Balbus Senior Member

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    To me the falsification of history and the spinning of myths is nothing new in politics it’s the thing that people in the internet age are still falling for it because they seem to prefer the lie they believe in rather than accept the more complex reality.

    To me that the depressing lesson of the film.

    Take Trump and Brexit – The supporters of Trump don’t seem to care about the lying or just accept it and there were people still believing in the ‘We send the EU £350 million a week lets fund our NHS instead’ even after it was well and truly debunked.

    Many people seem to have chosen a kind of self imposed isolation, were they only accept viewpoint that fit in with what they already believe.

    I saw an interview with a Trump supporter the other day who said she knew for definite that the media and polls were all rigged against Trump because everyone she knew and all the people she meet on Facebook etc where all fellow Trump supporters –so ipso facto- there could not be that many people opposed to Trump.

    As I stated here I was very worried about the Brexit vote becaue of what I read here and because I’ve got friends and relatives around the country – but people I know in London were convinced people would not vote to leave because that would be ‘madness’ and I know that some who didn’t go and vote to remain because they didn’t think they needed to.

    I do it myself and in some ways it human nature to gravitate toward those with similar views but I don’t think that there has been a time when that can be so reinforced.
    In a world of so many possibilities for connection and debate many seem to have retreated into a bunker of their own making.
     
  5. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    I think things have become too complex and convoluted to be comprehensible to large numbers of people. A comforting lie may often be more acceptable than the truth. People have entrenched views and don't want to hear anything that throws that into doubt. It's a kind of head-in-the-sand type of mentality. People like Trump or our own Farage seem to offer a simplified version of things which is un-challenging and props up existing prejudices.

    In the case of the film,some of what emerges is seriously challenging to the average reader of the Sun or Mail, so my guess is they would ignore it and continue to believe what their trusted sources of information tell them. It would be too much of a reversal to admit they have been systematically misled.

    But the trouble is, how can people get at the truth when they have a very limited understanding of the way things really are. Many who voted for Brexit for example had really very little grasp on what the EU actually is and does. Equally, many people have virtually no notion of how the banking and finance sector actually operates, even though when it goes wrong they end up paying a heavy price.

    The internet is a two edged sword. Whilst it allows anyone with a proactive curiosity to find out a great deal, social media sites like facebook dominate most people's usage, and they're only going to see what conforms to their own ideas. Thus it becomes just another channel for disinformation.
     

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