HyperNormalisation

A fascinating dive into the current world of politics and the vast significant changes worldwide over the past 30-40 years which have seen a change in systems and beliefs. This documentary provides the facts behind political conflict and gives reason for particular events which have triggered truly shocking outcomes. The run time might be off putting but this is an important watch

I don't know what Curtis plays for fun in between film productions, but surely he is losing his marbles. And it takes a particular type of person to like what Curtis does.

So Stage 1. New York City. The city is run by incompetents. Erase that. The incompetents are in serious debt. Keep that. The incompetents want to raise the bar and bring in some more debt, when they are unable to pay even the first part. Flash a light over this fact. Nobody wants to make business with the incompetents. Film that. So the incompetents are fired and brought to court to recoup some of the incurred debt. No way, that would be common sense! So the incompetents beg the creditors to forward some more money. The creditors, surprisingly, want to have some of the money back, unlike the taxpayer. So the creditors ask for an overview of the spending. Boom-boom! Conspiracy alert! And can you imagine? For the first time the financial committee has 8 bankers out of 9 people. Who has ever heard of anything like that done by the state? Accountancy should be done by pharmacists and highway construction should be left to the midwives like any good state syndicate would do. Now, if you replace banker with Jew Curtis' discourse is precisely the centuries old Christian propaganda.

Stage 2. Patty Smith. She somehow decides to fit in the tableau instead of "changing the system." What? Right! Like the 16th century theater owners who were fighting the system by brown nosing to the king and aristocrats, like the poets who were writing poems for a bowl of soup, like painters satirizing their patron's religious beliefs. Oh! What days of decadence Mr. Curtis has lived.

And so on, for almost three hours. Nice story. So the voters should give more power to the... power?

Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

At the core of this film is a message which I think we can all appreciate; that the world is complex and filled with diversity but at the same time we are encouraged by our media, hobbies, and politicians, to believe it is much more black/white, and not to expose ourselves to views that contrast with our own. This is not new unfortunately – the politics of the right/wrong is everywhere, and the echo chambers of Twitter, CNN, Fox, and many other "people who liked this also liked these" type tools – it is pretty clear where we are. How we got here is more interesting, and there are worse ways to explore it than to allow Adam Curtis to have a run at explaining it.

The way he does it here is as compelling and confusing and frustrating and flawed as one would imagine; it really succeeds in making some of his other work look like the tightest factual presentation ever. In almost three hours we explore the story by touching on Gaddafi, Ayatollah Khomeini, the internet, politics, Donald Trump, 1970's Russian sci-fi; the Arab spring; perception management, drugs, Brexit, UFO conspiracies, Twitter, and so on. Often the links are tenuous, but Curtis structures it really cleverly – we are given chunks of facts in a presentation that makes sense, and as a result we accept the links even as they jump countries and decades.

The downside is that many will be turned off because this is polemic incorrectly presented as a documentary. It is not the latter but as the former it works very well. Although it runs to almost 3 hours, I did not find it boring, but rather found it quite compelling in its message and the manner in which it is presented. The strength of the film to me was not that it convinces in every word, or that I agreed with it wholly but rather that it gave me plenty to think about. It helps that I am old enough to remember many of these events – to have seen the shifting political allegiances, to experience the moments, and to feel like they were not organic in all cases.

HyperNormalization is a niche film – it did not even make it not a BBC channel but rather was put on the streaming service directly. It is not as smart as it wants to, but it is engaging and interesting whether you agree with all of its assertions or not.

This is a very long film so I recommend breaking it up into two or more chunks and leaving some time for digestion in between. It has lots of interesting ideas and I guarantee even the best-read will learn something and have a couple of "Hmmmm" moments, if not an "Aha!" one.

Curtis has a way of imposing a narrative upon your active perception using images, music and sounds in ways you would expect from, ahem, a film maker. He even casts himself as a journalist, rather than a storyteller. As a result, you are always aware that you are being manipulated, just like the manufactured reality discussed/presented in the film. You are the audience of the audience.

Proceeding in this spirit, though many people have found Hypernormalisation depressing and frightening, it should not take you anywhere you haven't been before (if you are over 50 anyway). Barbarism in the pursuit of power is not peculiar to the 20th and 21st centuries, it is just a lot bigger and it's online. Hypernormalisation is not for the squeamish, but when you become aware that you have developed a level of immunity to these myriad images of horror, you get to understand what normalisation means. Neither is it for the faint hearted; the target audience may be those who are already deeply cynical.

But Curtis is a clever film maker, let him entertain you.

Adam Curtis is a talented film-maker. He has an ability to locate interesting clips, audio, and stories; and to draw previously un-remarked parallels between them. His weakness lies in his tendentiousness; not every parallel is a cause, and his tendency to make numerous, semi-random connections can obscure any final point. His most over-used word is "then" - things do happen, one after the other, but the order of succession is not always noteworthy. I watched a live interview with him a couple of years ago, in which he covered some of the themes in his film 'HyperNormalisation', and his answered ranged from perceptive to exasperating ("the politicians have let us down by not providing us with something to believe in", he said, but seemed to have no idea himself about what that something could be). The way to take his films, I think, is to look for the nuggets, those strange stories you haven't heard of before which just might be worth giving a little more thought to. 'HyperNormalisation' itself is nearly three hours long, and could fairly be described as rambling. But it's great to look at and it does make you think.