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Monday, October 01, 2007

Adam Curtis



Pictured is not Adam Curtis, but R.D.Laing, whose work I believe could be appropriate reading these days. Curtis thinks so too, I'd say. He features many such slightly obscure but influential thinkers of the 20th century in his BBC documentaries on the state of the world today, and how it got here. A riposte to the charge of the dumbing down of TV (too little too late, of course).

In any case, the point of the post is just to highlight the benefit of watching Adam Curtis' documentaries 'The Power of Nightmares', 'The Century of the Self' and 'The Trap'; all of which you can find on google video here.

An insightful man, with an excellent speaking voice. Perhaps his theses would find it harder going in dialectic rather than broadcast form. Yet still even if there are points to disagree on, he forces you to reach for the counter-arguments, to think and that is a rare thing in television (even if it's not television I'm advocating you watch it on, the point applies).

Better than sitting down to another run of Coronation Street, I would say.

4 comments:

Patrick said...

I've seen CotS and PoN, great stuff, I'll check out "The Trap".

nomad said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
nomad said...

(Having watched the first part of Century of the Self last night am very much struck by the impact Edward Bernays has had on our society.) - thank you for pointing out this man of clearly brilliant documentaries.

Unknown said...

well, word has been going around the grapevine - I was alerted to PoN 2 months ago. just thought I'd make it zenBenLand official.