/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15800279]

What are the book equivalents of Adam Curtis' documentaries?

[Anonymous No.15800287]

>>15800279
Not a book but check out shane dawson's channel on YouTube

[Anonymous No.15800320]

how did adam curtis find this obscure youtube clip of little girls dancing? is he a pedo?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15800374]

>>15800279
Debord
>>15800320
There are other people on his production staff.
Should have used this one though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcs3OwrkcR4

[Anonymous No.15800457]

>>15800279
I watched All Watched Over and Hypernormalisation and they made me feel... weird, like there's something not quite right, what is up with that?

[Anonymous No.15800477]

>>15800279
closest equivalent is opening 30 tabs on wikipedia and reading 1/4 of each

[Anonymous No.15800529]

>>15800374
>There are other people on his production staff.
if someone else brought a youtube video with 30 views of little fat girls dancing, they'd be fired for being pedophiles. it was him

>>15800457
after all his documentaries i feel depressed like the world is going to hell, and then i look out the window and it's crickets. literally everything about life is getting better

[Anonymous No.15800571]

>>15800529
>literally everything about life is getting better

[Anonymous No.15800582]

>>15800529
> literally everything about life is getting better
what? the feel that the world is going to hell doesn't go anywhere for me

[Anonymous No.15800585]

>>15800571
bro whig history bro... fukuyama and pinker my idols!!

[Anonymous No.15800603]

>>15800279
Not a book, but I watched Rat Film last night and it’s very influenced by Curtis. Also documentaries are the most /lit/ film genre.

[Anonymous No.15800641]

>>15800603
>Rat Film
Sounds interesting, where can I watch it?

[Anonymous No.15800699]

>>15800641
For free idk, I rented it on prime

[Anonymous No.15800702]

>>15800279
There are none. By taking out the clips, the music and the editing you remove everything of value in his films.

>>15800477
Yeah this might be it actually.

[Anonymous No.15800744]

>>15800279
getting close to the truth but then trying to retcon it into some weird narrative where it's the fault of donald trump. idk, chomsky?

[Anonymous No.15800747]

>>15800279
Ellul maybe, and Manufacturing Consent kind of if you subtract the bizarre notion that capitalist thinking classes will always be right wing rather than whatever the hell is most useful at the time. The Hidden Persuaders is pretty good.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15800789]

>>15800529
Or the editors kids

> everything about life is getting better
>Pinker poster!
Ass! You’re the pedo!

[Anonymous No.15800830]

Adam Curtis is just a friendlier version of Baudrillard for brainlets

[Anonymous No.15800840]

>Adam Curtis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

[Black Cat No.15801158]

>>15800279
>>15800374
This. Debord, the whole Frankfurt School, and obviously Walter Benjamin

>>15800457
Lmao if this isn't bait then this is extremely good bait

>>15800477
LMAO

>>15800744
Lol absolutely this

>>15800747
>implying that the capitalists will ever be left-wing
You know that left=/=liberal, right? Like corporations will be woke or whatever but they will never advocate the seizing of the means of production nor democratizing the workplace

[Anonymous No.15801560]

>>15801158
>You know that left=/=liberal, right? Like corporations will be woke or whatever but they will never advocate the seizing of the means of production nor democratizing the workplace
No shit, retard.

[Anonymous No.15801793]

>>15800840
>haha adam curtis sucks shut up you brainlets
>check out this FUNY parody video lol it's SO true eheheahha

[Anonymous No.15801824]

>>15800279
Thanks for reminding me that I need to watch his other docs
Hyper was pure, undiluted kino.

[Anonymous No.15801896]

>>15801824
Hyper is the pinnacle of his work, so if you get it from just watching hyper, some of his other stuff might seem redundant

[Anonymous No.15801925]

Walter Benjamin. There's a lot of marxist lit on the Rationalization of labor, One Dimensional Man comes to mind, which in a sense is all that Curtis's work is about: tracking rationalizations and showing how it fell apart by its own design.

[Anonymous No.15801998]

>>15801925
I don't think you've summarized his work properly. He seems mostly concerned with the problems inherent in governing and guiding a mass society, attempts at controlling masses and steering history and the consequences thereof.

[Anonymous No.15802045]

>>15801896
I don't know, i've been told by other anons that Bitter Lake is and a few others are even better.

I'll see what I think myself.

[Anonymous No.15802059]

Marshall McLuhan
Most pop history

[Anonymous No.15802373]

>>15801998
Of course, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise, but all I'm saying is that these attempts of steering and control ultimately stem from the Enlightenment (or rather the most vulgar readings of it) and its material application in labor and technology: which is essentially the process of rationalization.

[Anonymous No.15802651]

>>15800477
upvoted

[Anonymous No.15802834]

>>15800571
>>15800582
>>15800789

>the world is not getting better by every metric
you're either zoomers who haven't lived long enough to know what a pain in the ass the 80's were or you have undiagnosed paranoia

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15802865]

>>15802834
Homelessness is on the rise
A Depression is coming
Peak resources
Temperature rising
Ocean levels rising
Wars still raging with no oligarch planning on ending them.
You’re an ass.

[Anonymous No.15802938]

>>15802834
Check median income divided by GDP, you fucking brainlet.

[Anonymous No.15802941]

>>15802865
>Depression is coming
its already here

[Anonymous No.15803701]

>>15802865
Can't wait for this gritty modern reboot of The Great Depression.

[Anonymous No.15803717]

>>15803701
Kek. Butterfly zooming through history with her Dark Academia std infested Kabbalah chanting “wah wah wah”

[Anonymous No.15803749]

>>15800279
>2 hours and 40 minutes
>not one mention of Britain or Thatcher
>a BBC production
Hmmm, really gets my noggin jogging

[Anonymous No.15803764]

>>15800457
Because you're consuming extremely sophisticated pro-west propaganda and deep down you can taste the poison while it's having it's full desired effect

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15803765]

>>15803717
>speaking zoomer
>calls me zoomer

[Anonymous No.15803776]

>>15803764
>he thought he was saying something quite profound
>but this was a fantasy

*Brian Eno intensifies*

[Anonymous No.15803840]

>>15803749
Watch The Trap

[Anonymous No.15804030]

>>15802045
nah hypernomalisation is the best
all watched over is brought down by its episodic structure and how it keeps repeating the same points

[Anonymous No.15804249]

>>15800477

[Anonymous No.15804265]

>>15800840
Lmaooooooo fuck that is great

[Anonymous No.15804679]

>>15800279
wasn't he explicitly inspired by the USA Trilogy?

[Anonymous No.15804704]

>>15802834
the 1980s were trash but the postwar boom from 1950-70 is something we've been gypped out of.
growth is slower, and more unequally distributed
unemployment is consistently higher, and the figures are even more grim because a lot of people are in insecure jobs that didn't exist back then.
more qualifications and experience are required for entry level jobs, and everything's built on specialized qualification: you realistically can't go from the shop-floor to the boardroom.
housing is scarce, expensive, and new builds are often trash. (not as trash as those thrown up in the 80s-90s, but still trash.)

yes, crime is going down, less chinese people are starving to death, and nearly everyone in the world can read. but that doesn't make up for the fact that if you're living in a first world western country, the best you can hope for is a quality of life marginally lower than your parents, but you get an iPhone!

[Anonymous No.15804732]

>>15804704
It's not like the problems aren't solvable, but god forbid anyone actually try. The government has no incentive to build more houses because it would piss off the swing-voters who already own houses by devaluing their investment. You can see politicians make this calculation in real time as council house construction is entirely choked off, leaving the UK with a chronic undersupply of housing.

[Anonymous No.15805094]

>>15803776
Its true tho. Watch it again and notice how it completely forgets to mention the Brits role in things unless it's the just following America like the Iraq war.

[Anonymous No.15805101]

>>15805094
Britain is a third rate post-imperial shithole, any airtime given to it would be much better spent looking at America.

[Anonymous No.15805301]

>>15802865
so you have undiagnosed paranoia


>Homelessness is on the rise
pic related. it's not. Are you by chance saying it's on the rise since the 70's when a bunch of insane asylums closed? because they did that because the psychiatric community advised the government to move away from an asylum model to more of a model that integrates patients with mental issues into society. we listened to the scientific community. do you mean world-wide? because that's even less true. google: global extreme poverty graph
>A Depression is coming
we had full employment 3 months ago, and records in the stock market and consumer confidence. This lull is 100% due to coronavirus and will go away once we get a vaccine. In fact, recessions are cyclical (they come every 11 years no matter who the president is). plus i know you're a brainlet who doesn't trade securities because this is a great time to buy stocks.
>Peak resources
ok malthus
>Temperature rising
yeah ok, they are rising, but 2 degrees every 100 years. we can adapt
>Ocean levels rising
holland is built under sea level. rich countries will adapt. you have to worry about poor countries, and if you really want to help poor countries you'll let them go through an industrial revolution (that pollutes)
>Wars still raging with no oligarch planning on ending them.
the number of wars is down too
>You’re an ass
fuck you you cocksucker

[Anonymous No.15805387]

>>15804704
you also have undiagnosed paranoia

>growth is slower, and more unequally distributed
both the rich and poor are getting richer. if you still complain while everyone is getting richer, i don't think you'll ever stop complaining

>unemployment is consistently higher
we had full employment 3 months ago

>and the figures are even more grim because a lot of people are in insecure jobs that didn't exist back then
where did you hear that? if anything it's the opposite, their jobs back then (elevator worker, coach driver) were more insecure because they would be undone by automation and technology

>more qualifications and experience are required for entry level jobs
(why we should get rid of minimum wage) but who cares? WE HAD FULL EMPLOYMENT 3 MONTH AGO

>everything's built on specialized qualification
adam curtis even mentioned how people under-estimate our (the market's) ability to adapt. Assuming what you're saying is true (it's an abstract statement hard to quantify) you don't think colleges and businesses will find a way to train people for their jobs?

>housing is scarce
in democrat NIMBY san diego? because in the rest of the US it's fine. plus, you don't think people are building houses to meet this demand?

>housing is expensive
things are neither cheap nor expensive: prices are information, and the information they give you is how is supply relative to demand. you can say it's expensive, but if someone else comes and buys it (which people are) then it wasn't expensive. plus, if you own a house, you want the market to be on a high. so this grim statistic is a good one for them. if you owned a house and you had a loss on it, you'd be here complaining about that too.

>new builds are often trash
safety-wise they can withstand fires and earthquakes better than ever. do you mean aesthetically?

[Anonymous No.15805601]

>>15800840
>>15800840
You can tell that Curtis made this guy seethe hard. I'm will hazard a guess and claim that this parodist was an ardent fan of Queer Eye until he had an existential crisis over Century of the Self and made this parody to cope.

[Anonymous No.15805611]

>>15800840
You can tell that Curtis made this guy seethe hard. I'm willing to hazard a guess and claim that this guy was an ardent fan of Queer Eye until he had an existential crisis over Century of the Self and watches this parody to cope.

[Anonymous No.15805651]

>>15805094
Curtis does a lot of British focused things. The Mayfair Set argues that Britain started the free market meme because public schoolboy gamblers wanted to be Lawrence of Arabia and go back to the golden age of Empire. A lot of his stuff focuses on postwar history of the alliance between the UK and US, so a large amount is obviously going to be about the US being the more dominant partner, but he's usually very quick to underline UK resentment and tactics against that power imbalance.

[Anonymous No.15805678]

>>15800840
>comments turned off
>NO PLEASE DONT MAKE FUN OF ME VIDEO AS I MAKE FUN OF OTHER VIDEO
some people are truly pathetic

[Anonymous No.15805700]

>>15805301
All your points are correct, but if we don't change our way to stop or stall the environmental change then we will need to adapt ourself to a much crueler word. I want my kids to have the beautiful planet of the now.

[Anonymous No.15805863]

>>15802373
>>15802373
>all I'm saying is that these attempts of steering and control ultimately stem from the Enlightenment
I don't know. Perhaps the specific techniques used do but I think fundamentally the issue is that we have unprecedentedly large and complex societies and increasing applications of coercive or covert control techniques are necessary to prevent the whole ordeal from devolving into chaos or directionless entropy.

I don't think the folks in charge have much of a choice but to do what they are doing. I don't know that societies such as ours could function at all without mass psychological warfare, control of opinion and disposition, shady goings on and so on. I would love to be wrong though.

[Anonymous No.15806306]

>>15805387
>both the rich and poor are getting richer.
No they aren't. Look at the image again: Incomes now are no higher than they were in 2009 for Britons, and for the US the poorest are worse off than they've been in the past. Their incomes have contracted in real terms. The rich get much richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle is about $500 up on where they were before.
>we had full employment 3 months ago
No we didn't. You had "full economic employment", that's not the same thing.
>plus, you don't think people are building houses to meet this demand?
Yes, actually. See >>15804732 (Or even just your own concession that NIMBY areas exist. WHY people are NIMBY - most of the time it's because they want more money rather than because they really care - doesn't really matter. What matters is, the average graduate today will never be a home owner.)

[Anonymous No.15806906]

>>15805387
Only the rich are getting richer. Check the median income divided by GDP you ignorant brainlet

[Anonymous No.15807169]

>>15800840
i always find it really strange how the biggest criticism of adam curtis' films seems to be that he presents his arguments too strongly

[Anonymous No.15807170]

>>15805301
>actually believing any of this

[Anonymous No.15807266]

things can only get
things can only get
things can only get
betterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[Anonymous No.15808044]

>>15806306
>No they aren't. Look at the image again
you look at your image. the image you posted yourself shows an upward trend, and if you zoom out further to the 1950's the trend upward will be higher still

>and for the US the poorest are worse off than they've been in the past
you're thinking of the income gap. yes the gap between the rich and poor is wider, but the poor --did get richer-- just not as much as the rich did. pic related

>No we didn't. You had "full economic employment", that's not the same thing.
if you're even complaining when we have full employment, then you're never going to stop complaining

>the average graduate today will never be a home owner
who cares? If they don't want to, they don't have to. for a long time interest rates were at like 3% in the US. There have been countless articles on how millenials just don't want to buy homes. If they did want to, they would have with 3% interest rates. It's extremely affordable for anyone to buy a home now.

>most of the time it's because they want more money rather than because they really care
if they get too greedy and set the price too high, their investment will yield $0 because no-one will buy the house. they have to be reasonable. and if they don't, then who cares? it's their private property. nobody is entitled to their private property. But outside of those NIMBY hell-holes, there's really affordable housing anywhere else in the country.

[Anonymous No.15808055]

>>15806906
>the median income divided by GDP proves the poor are not getting richer

[Anonymous No.15808090]

>>15808044
the fact that people are better off than they were in 1950 doesn't offset the fact that things have been frozen for a decade. (and that's just the average, some people have been utterly rinsed.)
>you're thinking of the income gap
no i'm not. the very bottom are poorer: if they were being paid $10 (real terms, not nominal) in 2008, they're being paid $9 today.
>if you're even complaining when we have full employment, then you're never going to stop complaining
i'll stop complaining when everyone who wants a job can get a job. not when we've hit 4% and the government goes "oh, well that 4% need to be unemployed to control inflation"
>It's extremely affordable for anyone to buy a home now.
yes, provided you rob a bank to get your deposit first.

and now since you've got me in a mudslinging mood: household incomes are an unappealing measurement. all it takes is for your wife to get a temp job and boom, your household income is up even if you haven't seen a pay raise since Blair.

[Anonymous No.15808107]

>>15800279
What the fuck does hypernormal even mean? The only definitions I can think of is a loss of the possibility of representing normality because of it's simulation, or the seduction of normality into a sort of game of imitation like what the main character does in that one woody allen movie.

[Anonymous No.15808144]

>>15808055
it proves the median worker is getting poorer

[Anonymous No.15808206]

>>15800279
Adam Curtis' stuff always seemed a bit dull to me

[Anonymous No.15808214]

>>15808044
An older image (2017) showing the uniquely terrible position of the UK in Europe. Italy, Portugal and Greece have a justification for wage contraction: Their economies were contracting. Some economies have an interesting story: wages are higher despite contraction. Britain? Britain is uniquely in the position of growing while cutting wages.

It's obvious that you're mainly focused on the US, but the UK situation provides a case study in why "things can only get better!!!" is a nonsense.

[Anonymous No.15808234]

https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf

80 pages - 3 hours at average reading speed, one afternoon if you take it slow

[Anonymous No.15808255]

>>15808234
surprised it hadn't been posted before

[Anonymous No.15808303]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OVvJOeUdUs

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007666.html

https://k-punk.org/marxist-supernanny/

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/burial_unedited-transcript

http://xcentric.cccb.org/en/programas/fitxa/after-networks-in-defence-of-adam-curtis/229869

[Anonymous No.15808343]

>>15808255
We've had a few threads about it.
Good discussions.

[Anonymous No.15808376]

>>15808303
didn't know Mark had written about All Watched Over, thanks for sharing

also reading Mark writing about Tricky makes me wonder if he wrote something about Portishead??

[Anonymous No.15808462]

>>15808376
nvm found it
>I must confess, I've never been that enraptured by Portishead. I became quickly fatigued wading through the gloopy designer despair of their debut, and had all but lost interest by the time of the follow up

no... Mark ;_; Dummy is my favorite album

[Anonymous No.15808496]

>>15800830
This desu

[Anonymous No.15808543]

>>15808214
A hundred bucks that the unmarked dot between Luxembourg and where SK and Ireland are kissing next to the Jews is Switzerland.

[Anonymous No.15808608]

>"Radicalism soon became beneficial to the very system it opposed"
>this is said in a BBC documentary opposing the system
lol.

[Anonymous No.15808881]

>>15800320
yeah idk why it ended with that clip. Kind of ruined the entire thing for me tbqh

[Anonymous No.15808907]

Try reading Mark Fisher. If you like how Curtis explores culture and society then you'll probably like this. I just read Ghosts of my Life and with it's articles on Joy Division and Burial and hopelessness, it gave me such an Adam Curtis vibe that I ended up here after searching for "books like Adam Curtis".

Also maybe idk Chris Hedges if you're just into the bleak atmosphere of a Curtis film.

[Anonymous No.15808908]

>>15800477
I tried to watch hypernormalisation but turned it off as soon as he said strangelove was based on Kissinger. I assume the rest of the documentary was poorly researched.
>spooky music over a white family
AHHHHHHHHH IM GOING INSANE AHHHHHHHH

[Anonymous No.15808923]

When is his next documentary coming out? That'll be a wild ride for sure.