Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head.
 |  |  |
| 0:00 | -1:34:22 |
In this ep we talk about Adam Curtis and our lack of excitement about his latest doc series, and how it’s gotten to the point that the promotional interviews he does are better than the films he’s promoting. Has Curtis gotten boring and repetitive, or are we so overwhelmed with information that his hypnotic propaganda style has lost its potency?
Towards the end Evgenia introduces the concept of “senilism” — an art idea developed by a Soviet artist after he moved to America. It’s perfect for our decaying empire and its stagnant capitalist realism. Embrace senility!
Missed our previous episodes?
| 13 | 9 |
Interesting stuff, especially where Evgenia mentions around the 41 minute mark:
"...how [Curtis] treats Russian material...and that makes you think if that is what he does to stuff I know, what does he do to stuff I know very little about?..."
That comment reminded me of a piece I stumbled upon a while back called "Why Speculate" by Michael Chrichton, where he discusses what he calls an amnesia effect:
"...Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows:
You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.
But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia..."
Source: https://www.docdroid.net/4wgVecr/why-speculate-michael-crichton-pdf#page=2
Haven't had time to do much listening/reading in part because we had no power or heat in sub 10 degree weather for the better part of the last 72 hours, but I will give this a listen when I have a chance. Hypernormalisation was always a conundrum to me. I liked it and thought it shed a different light on the events of the past ____ years, but it never quite gelled into a cohesive game changing message for me. I'm not familiar with any of his other work, but plan to try catching up on that as well.