Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World by Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis (left) is a film/documentary maker who stands firmly in a journalistic reportage mode. His past films include All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011), Bitterlake (2015) and Hypernormalisation (2016). The last two titles are currently available on the BBC iPlayer and are now joined by a new series entitled Can’t get you out of my head which is made up of six 74min episodes and is built on the idea of revealing how we have arrived at our current political and cultural position.
Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World (CGYOOMH) appeared on the BBC iPlayer on 11 February, 2021. The six episodes weren’t scheduled into the regular programming. Each programme runs for 74 mins, and although different subjects and time frames are explored in each episode, there is an overarching story that pulls everything together.
Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain
Shooting and F**king are the Same Thing
Money Changes Everything
But What If the People are Stupid
The Lordly Ones
Are We Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer?
It is a broad and deep critique of the current modern world, presented as a narrative over a film/music montage, primarily based around the history of the UK, USA, Russia and China since 1958. The format is similar to other Adam Curtis offerings, such as Bitterlake and Hypernormalisation.
The premise of CGYOOMH is that the world we now live in has been created by all of us, and has been an ongoing battle between personal individualism vs communism. If you have an understanding of postmodernism from the perspectives of art, critical theory and our global manufacturing industries, you will recognise most of the themes within the films.
It goes something like this … the world we currently occupy is very complicated and extremely interlinked. It is so complicated, it is very hard to comprehend a true meaning behind events. It’s the ‘hidden’ world that Curtis is trying to reveal to us. Man intervenes within the world, generally with good intentions, but more often than not, there are unintended consequences, which are usually worse than the original problem, and are very unclear how they came about.
The complex world can also be viewed as chaos within the post-industrial era we now live in, and predicting how people will act is vital to the controlling powers. However, it is very difficult to predict what an individual will do, but you can predict what a mass of people will do. Think of chaos theory, and predicting the weather. A complex system such as the weather, has a very fragile equilibrium, and all it takes is a tiny movement within the system, to create a substantial disorder, such as climate change.
Conspiracies and propaganda are deeply imbedded within our psyches, starting out as crazy rumours, legitimised through printed media, now spread like a virus through the internet. They are used to create fear and suspicion in the individual or nation states and the conspiracies are controlled by the hegemonic powers at any given moment in time, to suit their needs, whether they are elected politicians, unelected elites, or all powerful internet corporations.
The fear and suspicion which drives our acts is similar to Cartesian thought. The only thing you can rely on is doubt. But when you doubt your doubt we become more intolerant, even within the liberal times which we now live. We feel very helpless and angry. So we do things that don't really make sense. We elect populist governments and leaders. This then leads to unbelievable consequences, that just don’t make sense.
The above ideas are explored in great detail, with the life stories of several main characters, representing individualism - Michael X, Jing Quig and Afeni Shakur, (who was the mother of Tupac). The story of Tupac highlights the fundamental struggle with individualism, and our desire for a fair, just and believable world. Our true selves are only revealed when we are not being watched. To live a life authentically, we need to feel that we are not being watched. Once we know we are being watched, we 'perform' in the way culture expects us to. So as Tupac tried to break down the reality he could see around him, and enlighten his audience, he at the same time was fulfilling how culture sees him. This unfortunately led to his demise. Personal individualism is striving for consciousness which means we live as truthfully and authentically as possible, in order to see the real world around us.
To simplify CGYOOMH is almost impossible. It has to be watched and absorbed and then reflected upon. Has Curtis actually helped us to see the hidden world? Who knows; It’s a hidden world so by its very definition we can’t see and check it. This gives Curtis a lot of get out clauses, but that’s ok because there is so much to see within these films you have to acknowledge there are degrees of persuasion rather than a binary right or wrong. Left or right, good or bad, you often feel like the world has been turned upside down and that is probably a better way of reading these films rather than nit-picking facts and destabilising the whole project.
On a positive note, we are not all doomed. Curtis explains that If we made this world, we should be able to make a different world. And we presume a better one.
For the average Le Document reader/viewer we recommend Curtis’ films. We don’t subscribe to all the stories but agree that the world does seem to be chaotic and that we as individuals attempt to rationalise this chaos via our creativity.
Review by Richard Tosic & Chris Tosic
