All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace | Hacker News Reader

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

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57 pointsjpswade28 comments

You should be careful about claims made in Adam Curtis videos. His cinematography is great and I love him because of the ADD-style and music he uses, but a lot of information is very biased and, in very many cases, just plain false (e.g. In one of his movies he calls Herbert Marcuse the leader of the student movement of the 60s and shows a short clip of him talking. The short clip is taken from an interview in which one finds, if watched integrally, Marcuse himself explaining why he is NOT an important figure in the movement). So maybe one should see the movies as entertainment rather than documentaries.

>"The short clip is taken from an interview in which one finds, if watched integrally, Marcuse himself explaining why he is NOT an important figure in the movement"

That's called modesty. To deny Marcuse had no influence because he said he didn't is incredibly naive.

As far as "bias", every piece of media we consume has bias. Making claims of, "This is biased!" is something you do in high school readings; of course it's biased. Mr. Curtis is using film to express an opinion and theory about how he sees things work. That's what all artists, writers and film makers do.

Some of his ideas are a bit of a stretch, yes. But I think people are doing a great disservice to others by attaching a disclaimer to these films. In my opinion, Curtis makes some of the most well-done, stylized, intellectual and entertaining documentaries going (and this series is probably his worst). If you don't like his films, that's fine. But don't try to pass him off as a nutter. That's unfair and biased.

You are completely right, Marcuse is very modest in portraying himself as an influential figure, and I didn't want to sound as if arguing that he had no influence. He had an influence, but he was in NO way involved in organizing any of the actions the students took. To quote him, he was a "father figure" to them, rather than a leader.

To answer your second point, I don't want to argue that Adam Curtis makes bad movies, quite the contrary. But his intellectual contributions are very questionable. There is a reason why contrarian people like Noam Chomsky are widely respected, and there is a reason why people like Adam Curtis are not. To quote Carl Sagan: 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.'. And Curtis seems to provide the former without the latter.

I suppose I was a bit defensive because I generally consider this forum to have a slightly "high-brow" slant. I also take much advice from it. So while you're certainly entitled to your opinion, and to like or dislike the films, I think the works are all good enough that people should be encouraged to watch them. As opposed to you telling me Transformers 3 sucks, and me never having to think about watching it after that.

When I leapt into the comments there happened to be a slightly unfavourable sentiment regarding Adam Curtis. I just wanted people to know that everything he's produced is at least worth a viewing.

I would argue that Adam Curtis is not widely respected (or known for that matter) in the area of academic discourse and that if he could back some of the big claims made in his movies with solid arguments and evidence, he would have made more of a difference in the world of political thought.

It would be interesting to compare the number of people familiar with Curtis's work vs those familiar with Chomsky's.

I think Chomsky would likely come out ahead, but he's had a head start. I don't know I'd bet on that being true in 5-10 years.

What makes you say that Adam Curtis is not widely respected? By whom?

Bias is not a binary proposition. There are degrees of bias. More is, generally, considered to be worse.

"But they're all doing it too!" is not a defence against charges of bias in any case.

Understood. But this isn't Mein Kampf, or even Michael Moore. In fact, most of the work isn't even what you'd call political.

I think yours is the best assessment. The only one of his films i've seen ("The Trap") was a bizarre viewing experience, because I agreed with most of his conclusions and found the filmmaking technique and music impressive, but thought that his arguments were specious.

Adam Curtis bugs me.

He basically makes music videos for conspiracy theories.

His smug tone, the apparently relentless fondness for animistic fallacies and the surface-level treatment of complex phenomena really gets up my delicate nostrils.

Sorry to hear that. This subject was new to me but by now I have watched the OP's series and the first episode of the living dead (thanks HN for another stimulating experience). I find them extremely interesting, more like essays than lectures. You know, in an essay there are a bit more artistic liberties.

I have now finished The Living Dead and am halfway through Pandora's Box. Some observations with your permission.

Adam Curtis most definitely does not make music videos around conspiracy theories. He makes intellectually challenging documentaries based on absolutely stunning archive footage and refreshingly radical observations.

He seems to apply a kind of a dialectic method. For instance in the Living Dead he combines three quite remote subjects. The first episode is how the WW2 was painted as the battle between good and evil, while some think that in a war bad things happen at both sides. The second one is about cold war brainwashing techniques both in the U.S. and in Russia. The final one is all about how Margaret Thatcher bought Winston Churchill's dream of a Greater Britain. Looks like the last one is the point he really wanted to make and the two first are just preliminaries, although extremely insightful.

He is also obsessed about the relativity of truth and the feasibility of rational planning and free will. Which are not subjects readily emptied methinks.

And I don't find his voice annoying at all. So all in all, my first impression is extremely good and I have already recommended him to a couple of friends.

That was exactly my point.

Curtis takes reams of archival footage, sets it to funky music, then ties together disparate historical events into a seamless narrative.

The problem is that he likes that narrative to have agency. But a lot of history is "one damn thing after another". No particular cabal animates this or that outcome, people just act based on what's in front of them.

And that's what I mean by the animistic fallacy. Curtis sees the lightning bolts of history and supposes that some god is throwing them (usually, dunh dunh duuuuh, it's economists). But it basically doesn't happen that way.

It's style over substance. Mind-candy. Sweet and ultimately unfulfilling.

He smiled. “My dear girl, in Culture history alone it has been about nine thousand years since a human, marvellous though they are in so many other ways, could do anything useful in a serious, big-guns space battle other than admire the pretty explosions… or in some cases contribute to them.”
“Contribute?”

“Chemicals; colours. You know.”

-- Iain Banks, "Surface Detail"

A list of assertions from the film:

Ayn Rand was very influential to the Silicon Valley of the 90s.

There was a dream of large scale cybernetic/emergent self-regulation enabled by computers, which would do away with hierarchical organizations and government as we knew it.

This "Californian Ideology" held that government would need to become a facilitator rather than a regulator. Bill Clinton was originally opposed to this ideology, believing in the regulatory role of government.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had been a follower of Rand's philosophy since the 1950s.

In 1992, Greenspan convinced Clinton to cut government spending to lower interest rates and grow the economy, the opposite of Clinton's original intentions as president.

A belief emerged called the New Economy, which said the booming economy would be different than previous booms because computers could calculate risk in a way that enabled more feedback and self-regulation.

In 1996, Greenspan noticed that rising profits were not tied to rising productivity, and warned of a speculative bubble. He then reversed this outlook due to political pressure.

Implied cinematically: Rand's affair with Nathaniel Brandon, which she considered rational, had parallels to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The rising economy of the 90s prompted a speculative boom in Southeast Asia. Concerns about this were intercepted and put down by Robert Rubin, former head of Goldman Sachs and believer in computer self-regulation.

Carmen Hermasillo (Humdog) raised concerns about cyberspace not being a utopian platform, but rather a corporate profit center for user generated content.

The speculative bubble in Southeast Asia collapsed at the same time as Clinton became entangled with the Lewinsky scandal, leaving the treasury to deal with a fiscal crisis in Indonesia.

Indonesia signed with the IMF, but their currency collapsed anyways. The IMF loans were really to pay off western investors, who then left.

> In 1992, Greenspan convinced Clinton to cut government spending to lower interest rates and grow the economy, the opposite of Clinton's original intentions as president.

Clinton didn't cut total spending at any time during his 8 years. (He did cut defense, but spent that money, and more, elsewhere.)

The rate of increase may have decreased somewhat after 94, when the Dems lost both the House and Senate.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-unde... shows that the deficit reduction trend started a couple of budget cycles before Clinton's first budget.

Note that none of this counts unfunded liabilities. They erase much of the Clinton surplus.

Make sure to read the original poem:

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8508991-All_Watched_Over_By_Machin...

Obligatory parody link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

Psych.

Watching his videos reminds me of the punishment described in Anathem where people are forced to learn random or illogical content and then pass an oral examination:

http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Book

[PS A Machine of Loving Grace would be a splendid name for a Culture GSV].

Given that three people posted a link to the same parody video within three minutes of each other, I'm forced to assume that Adam Curtis is a brilliant filmmaker.

The rest of the comments go too far. Adam Curtis does nothing that "real news" doesn't do. I'm not saying that everything that he says is true (he doesn't provide references, so it would be difficult to verify anyway), but I think the other comments are a little unfair.

With regards to the parody, I think it places too much weight on the belief that people can't watch a succession of images and follow a (albeit winding) narrative at the same time.

To back you up on this, another parody, this time of conventional news: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI

If you're going to watch any Adam Curtis documentary, it's worth watching the parody video "The Loving Trap"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

For a better watching experience, here is is on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/29865018

"Century of the Self" was my favorite of Curtis' films, and very relevant for anyone involved in marketing.

Describes how industry went from manufacturing necessities to constructing lifestyles by linking consumption to self-expression.

Part 1 of 4 (links to the others): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo

These are not good films. These are bad films. Adam Curtis is not a good film maker. Adam Curtis is a bad film maker.

This is better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

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