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girrll · 7 years

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Adam Curtis - Hyper normalisation

I think the most successful element of its documentary is its pacing and flow between topic to topic. The basic premise being that in society there is an inevitable cycle of those in power lying to us and us as a society simply ignoring it. “we become so much a part of the system that we are unable to see beyond it. The full definition of hyper normalisation was provided in Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book Everything was Forever:

‘everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to maintaining a pretence of a functioning society.[6] Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the "fakeness" was accepted by everyone as real, an effect that Yurchak termed "hypernormalisation" ‘

I think the very nature of basing a whole documentary about terminology and looking at different cases that show this instead of say a documentary about “trump” or “brexit” or “facebook” is so much more potent. The ability to seemlessly link the social engineering behind islamic suicide bombing to facebook’s echo chamber algorithms to Trump’s rise to power not only is jaw dropping but also beautifully poetic. It’s a fantastic way to cover a huge range of material in a genuinely linked way.

For this reason I intend to shift my focus of my work.

I from now on intend to yes, focus on perception and how we perceive the world but with the angle of exploring the nature of “doubt” and scepticism towards commonly accepted truths such as:

. The external world existing

. Logic being true

. We exist as mind

. We exist as a physical body

. What we perceive correlates to the external world.

why shift?

I think it’s really tricky in philosophy (unless one already has an interest) to create genuinely engaging work to a demographic of “regular people” (not negative or looking down whatsoever) due to the abstract disconnect between philosophical discussion and our every day lives. I think taking the idea of scepticism in a as Curtis explains in his documentary “Post Truth world” where the media will happily skew facts, create caricatures and shift focuses out of self interest.

This trailer by Curtis voices it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtjfoEvsR9w

With that in mind, creating work based on being sceptical of information at face value I think not only is more impactful, but more genuinely useful and engaging for any audience with a slight interest in politics and the media.

Visuals

Going back to hyper normalisation, Curtis is able to create an extremely visually fluent cohesive work through “found footage” which can either directly correlate to what he is saying or hold a more subtle symbolic meaning. A screenshot provided depicts this most effectively. As Curtis discusses a disconnect between politicians and the real world he could have used a direct clip of say, trump saying an inaccurate truth, but he doesn’t. He picks a clip of David Cameron walking through a ghost-like town with noone living in it. I think this almost ironic re-purposing of film, combined with the “found footage” aesthetic really enforces the anti-establishment and somewhat “punk” themes of the documentary.

#x

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girrll · 7 years

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