#and sure social media outrage is something. but it's difficult to interpret who were effected and how | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blapisblogs · 5 years ago

Photo

Oh god... Yeah, right after the in-video ad break, we’re hit with this: Doug Walker dressed like a Nazi with a smudged dotted line around his face and the words “person you hate” written on his forehead in sharpie. Dude, if this moment didn’t make you stop and wonder what the fuck happened with your life to bring you to this moment, then it damn well should’ve been.

Before you ask if this was based on something from the film or album, yes, but as usual there’s context for it. It’s difficult for me to explain, but in short the idea is that Pink’s attempt to build a metaphorical wall between himself and everyone else is making him more and more mentally unsound, right up to the point where after he’s forced to be drugged up for one of his shows he hallucinates himself as a fascist (the very thing his father died fighting against), the fans his zealous followers, and his concerts rallies where he encourages violence against marginalized groups. This goes on for a few songs with the violence and threats escalating in each one, and by the end of the last one he’s ranting and raving incoherently on a megaphone until the hallucination ends as he shouts for it all to stop, finally realizing how dangerous the things he’s been doing to himself are. It’s disturbing, and intentionally so. That’s what I got out of both the album and the film anyway. I have no clue what Doug Walker got out of this part of the film, though, because these next two parody songs have almost nothing to do with it. The first one mentions it so people will know that it’s a parody of something from the film, but that’s about it, and the second one doesn’t mention anything about the film or album at all.

The next two parodies are of “In the Flesh” (the reprise), and “Waiting for the Worms”, neither of which I will post links to based on what I explained earlier, but if you want to look them up yourself I will warn you that there are things said there that are identical to things the Nazis have said and done, and use words like “queers” and others that I dare not say nor want to. (Also, yeah, they didn’t include “Run Like Hell”, presumably because Doug couldn’t think of another full parody’s worth of “fuck you, haters” for it.) In the parody of the former, Doug addresses his crowd of followers, which are the same five people copy-pasted onto the screens of multiple devices (I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be intentional commentary or Doug didn’t have enough people willing to work with him to pull off what he wanted for this), in a place called the “Echo Chamber”.

Yes, really.

It’s supposed to be commentary on how bad callout/outrage/cancel/purity/whatever-we’re-calling-it-this-month culture can be, but considering who this is coming from, what his own fans are like, and the rest of the presentation in this “review” it comes off more like “technology bad” and “social media bad”. Worse than that, the latter parody song is still about callout/outrage/cancel/etc. culture, only now it’s even more apparent that this is his way of commenting on the Change the Channel movement. This isn’t just me saying this either, other people have taken note on it as well, including people who didn’t even completely hate Doug Walker after the Change the Channel thing happened. I’ve seen one person try to (rather weakly) argue that it wasn’t trying to mock the Change the Channel movement, but even if one were to give them the benefit of the doubt and they weren’t making fun of that, then 1: they still should’ve known that doing something like this was going to get people to draw comparisons to said movement whether it was intended or not, and 2: it’s still absurdly over-the-top and out of touch with why “outrage/cancel/callout/whatever culture” has become a thing. It’s about as subtle as, well, a hammer to the face. (Speaking of which, the hammers for this parody are used to make hashtags instead of an ‘x’ and instead of chanting “Pink Floyd” or “Hammers” the fans chant “hashtag”. I’ve been sitting here for five minutes trying to think of how to comment on this, but all I can do is put a hand up to my face like Captain Picard in those memes, I think that says it all.)

This message of “technology and social media bad” is so ridiculously passé at this point that it’s laughable, and yet it seems like Doug Walker is under the impression that he’s saying something new and brilliant. This is also a truly bizarre message to be hearing from a guy who had so much success with his internet career that he quit his previous job to pursue it full-time. You know, that career that’s dependent on technology. (Also, Doug, social media itself didn’t cause those problems with said internet career: that was all you.)

The sad part is that for this sequence we get some brief scenes with actually good CGI of things like marching smartphones (identical to the original’s marching hammers) and a decently-animated 2-D(-ish?) sequence of a six-fingered hand coming up from the ground and forming into a hammer much like something that happened during part of the film (not this part specifically, but a part). It’s weird in context, but these animated parts look far better than any of the other effects that were used earlier. I’m guessing the guest person who made the effects I’ll talk about later also animated this (at least the CGI bits; as I said earlier, the 2-D-ish parts look so suspiciously close to the original that I have to wonder if they were traced over for this). While it is good, that just makes me wonder that if they were hired to make the animation in this part then why didn’t Doug let them animate the black eagle scene for the “Goodbye Blue Sky” parody section too? He clearly had the time and budget to get a talented animator to do this stuff for him, so why not fully use them?

Also, I swear one of the visuals looks more like a mashup between something from the opening of Phantom of the Paradise and The Wall than anything actually from The Wall alone. Maybe Doug and/or the person animating this got their rock operas momentarily mixed. Maybe they did this on purpose to mess with people. Maybe my brain’s making up this shit because a Phantom of the Paradise/The Wall double feature sounds infinitely better than this “review”. Maybe the headache I’ve gotten while watching this dumpster fire is fucking with me. I don’t know.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

Oh yeah, I’m the P-Person you all think you know That sucks up all your angst and confusion I’m that nameless foe, huh!

[Oh, so you are trying to do an impression of Bob Geldof. ...It shouldn’t take me over half-way into the “review” to figure out for sure that’s what you’re doing. Or did you choose to only actually do an impression of him for just this one part? I can’t even fathom almost any of Doug’s thought process for this “review” anymore.]

I’ve got some weird news for ya, sunshine, This was dissin’ Thatcher’s administration

[So I have seen Wikipedia mention that at least some people have either interpreted or used this part as commentary on Margaret Thatcher, and I don’t know enough about UK politics to dispute whether it was intentional or not. What bothers me is that if this was intentional, then how did Doug pick up on this? That would mean that he either caught this but somehow didn’t pick up on any of the other, more obvious things in this film that doesn’t have “the slightest bit of subtlety”, or he researched this and only this. Or it was a random guess he made that happens to coincide with what some others have interpreted from this part. Who knows.]

But it’s vague enough to put anyone you fear - Politician, showman - just put their face here!

[Uh... Are you talking about how someone edited this part of The Wall so that it was Drumpf in there because of how much he talks about his stupid wall? ...You are aware that the entire point of the film and album is that those kind of walls aren’t good and should be broken down, right? You know that Roger Waters himself openly despises Drumpf, right? ...Right?]

Are there any authority figures in the crowd tonight? Well put them in The Wall! (Get. Them. All.) That one’s looking stressed, he wants to feel oppressed Put him in The Wall! (Post. His. Balls!)

[Oh yes, The Wall - a film about the cycle of abuse and the effects it has on people and how taking self-isolation to its most extreme is unhealthy for the health of one’s self as well as those around them, among many other things - is something that adults don’t take seriously, not like this web video that has lines talking about people posting some dude’s balls on social media for shits and giggles. (In case you couldn’t tell that was sarcasm.)]

And that one looks sheltered, like she never leaves her room I’ll be that friend that you can blame for all your gloom That one looks like he really wants to be outraged! Now with social media, you have the stage!

[...You know, as awful as the previous songs in this “review” were, at least they were about the film and album. This, however... What even is this?]

(This is the part where the five-person audience starts chanting “hashtag” which goes on until Doug and his two goons run outside, run back inside due to it being too bright out, and then start the next parody. There’s not much to comment on for that, it’s just stupid.)

[End “In the Flesh” parody, begin “Waiting for the Worms” parody]

(One, two, three, post it!) Ooh, you can’t convince me now Ooh, I’m too far on my side Goodbye, nuance I never will abide

[You are not one to talk about nuance, not regarding this film or album, and certainly not about the Change the Channel movement, which this parody is pretty transparently about as we’ll see soon enough.]

It’s us vs. them, I don’t even know who us or them are

[“Us and them, and after all we're only ordinary men.” Come on, man, I know it’s not from The Wall, but the opportunity was right there. Actually, since Rob Walker is there as the Charts Guy (a recurring character in Doug’s reviews), you could’ve even thrown in a “Have a Cigar” reference if you wanted (also not from The Wall, but still). I know at this point I’m nitpicking, but I’m forcing myself to watch a “review” where a guy dressed himself like a Nazi to make a blatant “take that” statement against his “haters” without understanding and/or caring why the Nazi comparisons were there in the original; if Doug Walker doesn’t give a shit about those kind of details, then why should I.]

I just wanna be angry so I can be (Tweeting) About those who hate me (Tweeting) I need their attention (Tweeting) Love me or hate me, just look at me more

[Sadly one can’t say that this train wreck of a “review” didn’t make at least some people look at Doug Walker again even after they didn’t want to.]

(Tweeting) Whatever side you choose, just don’t ever wane (Tweeting) Waiting for the point

[I’d joke about how that’s how most people felt about the video at this point, but everyone has made that joke already. Everyone.]

Don’t fear that you’re wrong Just fight until the end, my friend

[At this point I could just say “Okay, Boomer” at every line in these two parody songs and it’d be about as meaningful as all of Doug’s comments about the actual film. Remember, the film he’s parodying here and supposed to be reviewing (allegedly)? The film he’s not mentioned once in this particular parody?]

All you need to do is fight off something Don’t worry! As long as you don’t see me as human, You can hate me all you want! Because remember, this can never happen to you! I’m bad! You’re good! The more extreme you can get the more happy you’ll become! They’ll put that person whose face you hate here, and tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet!

[...Doug, please tell me you didn’t have these parody songs in mind first as a sort of rebuttal against your detractors and then used it as an excuse to make a “review” for the actual film in this style as well as a whole parody album of it...

Also, this may be another nitpick, but towards the end the guys aren’t even “marching” in time to the music. Because of course they’re not.]

#Blapis tears down NC's The Wall #Nazi mention //#long post #bold text warning #eye strain //

1 note · View note

talabib · 3 years ago

Text

How To Be More Adaptable In Life & Business

What do Allied defense departments battling Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the creators of the iconic Mini Cooper and Starbucks have in common? In a word, adaptability – the ability to change with the times and piggyback on technological and social changes to achieve success.

Adaptability is a skill that’s becoming indispensable in today’s frenetic world of business. Markets and consumer tastes are fickle, and nothing is as likely to land you in hot water as complacency.

In this post, we’ll analyze adaptability in action everywhere from a small Italian village battling post-financial crisis austerity measures, to the boardroom of a multinational coffee chain and the post-war British car industry.

Life is unpredictable even for the successful, which is why adaptability is so important.

In 2009, American golf star Tiger Woods’s position in the sport’s global rankings took a nosedive. By 2011 he’d slipped from number one to 58th place. It was an odd sight, especially since Woods had been known for his incredible consistency since bursting onto the scene in 1996. So what went wrong?

Well, it was a sign of the golfing god’s mortality. Life is unpredictable, and even the most successful people can’t always dodge the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It turned out that Woods’s on-field performance problems had roots in his personal life.

In 2009, the media ran a story about him crashing his car outside his house. Neighbors told reporters they’d seen his wife chasing after him with a golf club in her hands. Rumors of substance abuse and infidelity began circulating and major sponsors including Gatorade and Gillette dropped their formerly prized sponsee.

Woods didn’t let any of that get to him, however. In fact, he demonstrated just how important adaptability is when you’re faced with setbacks. He continued working hard, even as his stats slipped, and learned how to deal with the media pressure he was under. His perseverance paid off. By March 2013, he was back at the top of world golf rankings.

That makes Woods a poster boy for what experts calls, “High adaptability, high achievement people,” or HAHAs for short. That’s a pretty fitting acronym: HAHAs are people who can laugh in the face of adversity and, over time, claw their way back to the top.

What sets them apart is their ability to focus on solutions rather than problems. They look on the bright side of life even as things seem to be falling apart around them, and they remain determined to achieve their goals. They’re also typically unafraid to ask for help and reach out to people who can support them in their struggle to reassert themselves.

Now that we’ve seen what adaptability looks like in practice, let’s take a look at how it works in business contexts.

Only companies that have perfected the art of adaptability will truly succeed.

At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, the US government offered to bail out car manufacturing giant Ford. Despite being up to its eyeballs in debt and looking like it might go under any day, the company ultimately turned down the proposal.

There was a good reason for this refusal. Chairman Bill Ford was convinced that companies that fail to adapt fail, period. Sure, an injection of government cash might have solved Ford’s short-term liquidity issues, but it wouldn’t have gotten to the root of the problem – its longstanding failure to adapt to the new realities of the automobile market.

The company’s board of directors and its managers decided on an alternative strategy and hatched a plan they called “The Way Forward.” At the heart of this roadmap was a reappraisal of Ford’s relationship with the environment, an issue it had long sidestepped. If the carmaker wanted to remain relevant to American consumers, it would have to move toward their views on environmental matters.

What followed was a pretty radical overhaul. Ford downsized by around 25 percent and implemented a system to produce cars more quickly. Most importantly, it shifted to manufacturing smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.

The carmaker dodged a bullet, but the company almost left it too late. A better idea than waiting it out and hoping for the best would’ve been to take a leaf out of Toyota’s book. The Japanese corporation is a master at adapting to changing market conditions, a characteristic that allowed it to increase its share of the global car market from 7.3 percent in 1995 to 15 percent in 2005.

So what’s the secret of its success? Well, the company has a solid reputation for quality products, but what really sets it apart is its constant search for improvements that satisfy changing consumer preferences. This allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate changes in the market long before competitors like Ford saw them coming.

To take just a couple of examples, Toyota was already developing low-emission cars in 1992 and hybrid petrol and electricity-powered vehicles in 1995!

Sometimes adaptability means swimming against the current, and that can help the environment.

In the summer of 2011, the Italian government was facing financial issues. Deciding to cut back on expenditures, it introduced a reform to incorporate villages with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants into larger administrative units headed by a single mayor. But one small village called Filettino resisted these measures. It understood that adaptability sometimes means swimming against the current.

As far as the villagers were concerned, reacting to new developments didn’t mean rushing into old reforms or embracing change for change’s sake. In their view, one way of adapting was to defend the status quo, and that’s precisely what the mayor of Filettino decided to do.

Defying the government, he declared the village’s independence and issued its own currency. It was called the fiorito, meaning ‘flowering’ in Italian – a reference to the settlement’s belief that it would continue to flourish. The village looked to the past for inspiration, harking back to the age before unification when Italy was ruled by many small city-states, kingdoms and principalities. In the end, its act of resistance preserved Filettino’s independence and sense of community.

Headstrong Italian villagers aren’t the only beneficiaries of swimming against the current, however. Bucking trends and following one’s own path has also helped a number of companies thrive.

Take Levi Strauss as an example. Manufacturing jeans is traditionally a resource-intensive operation. The finishing process alone requires around ten separate washes and gallons of water. If the jeans have a special pattern or a fade effect, that requirement increases even further. That was accepted as a given until the American firm decided to shake things up.

Rather than simply going along with the idea that the only thing that matters in business is generating profits, Levi Strauss began factoring environmental considerations into their calculations. Soon enough the company had figured out a way of finishing jeans without using any water at all. By using stones to soften the fabric and rinsing them with a special type of resin, the company cut its water consumption by an incredible 96 percent!

Adaptability is an innate part of the way the brain functions.

It was a regular day in New York in 1985 when Pedro Bach-y-Rita, a Spanish teacher who’d lived a happy and successful life in the city for many years, suddenly collapsed. He’d suffered a massive stroke and was left paralyzed. The doctors treating Bach-y-Rita claimed there was nothing they could do for him. But they were wrong.

What they had underestimated was how adaptable humans are. Both of Bach-y-Rita’s sons were in medical school when their father fell ill. Unhappy with his doctors’ diagnoses, they decided to physically re-educate him from scratch, as though he were a baby. The first task they set themselves was teaching him to crawl using kneepads and the support of a wall.

Once he’d mastered that, they began setting more difficult tasks like catching balls, which were designed to train his motor systems. Bach-y-Rita made remarkable progress under their supervision. He was soon sitting and, a little later, walking. Astonishingly, within a year he was back at work teaching Spanish at the City College of New York, where he remained until his retirement.

So how did Bach-y-Rita regain control over his basic motor functions despite the serious brain damage he’d suffered during his stroke? It comes down to the plasticity of the human brain. Essentially, the undamaged parts of his brain took control of the damaged areas.

Bach-y-Rita’s son Paul returned to medical school after helping his father. He later became one of the first scientists to verify the theory of neural plasticity – the idea that the human brain’s capacities and functions aren’t set in stone but can adapt and change.

In one experiment, Paul demonstrated that blindfolded participants were able to catch balls thanks to a head-mounted camera which relayed images to their brains through sensory receptors on their tongues. That’s a shining example of how different neural pathways and neurons in the brain can adapt and tackle new tasks, like interpreting images.

Effective adaptation means learning from mistakes and resisting the urge to go back to square one.

When people first fail at a task, they tend to lower their expectations and claim that at least they learned something from their mistakes. The crucial question, though, is what past failures teach us: Do we learn how to fail, or how to improve so we don’t fail again?

Adaptability is, in large part, the art of learning from mistakes – ideally, the mistakes of others! Take the British automobile industry. In the 1950s, virtually every carmaker was set on developing ever more powerful – and fuel-guzzling – vehicles. They were so fixated on this goal that they overlooked a massive segment of the market: young, urban and environmentally-minded people.

The advantage thus passed to German competitors who were churning out popular, compact microcars like the Messerschmitt KR200. As a result, British brands were being crowded out altogether. Did that make them change their approach? Hardly. There was, however, one notable exception: a small team of auto engineers at the British Motor Company headed by designer Sir Alec Issigonis.

Observing their peers’ stubborn refusal to change with the times, the team decided to spearhead the production of a new style of car – the iconic Mini marketed by Morris Mini-Minor. Learning from the mistakes of others and adapting to new consumer preferences quickly led to success. Over the following decades, the British Motor Company went on to sell over five million Minis.

That said, you can take learning from mistakes too far, as PepsiCo found out in 2009 when it developed a new brand image for Tropicana orange juice. When the company’s massive marketing campaign backfired and sales plummeted by 20 percent, PepsiCo panicked.

Realizing that the branding made the product look anonymous and cheap rather than promoting awareness of its quality, they scrambled back to square one. Instead of making a few minor tweaks and fixing the mistake, they reverted to the old branding. The upshot? They blew $33 million to change absolutely nothing!

Successful companies understand that experimentation is crucial to adaptability.

In 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered the shutdown of all weapons development research programs expected to take longer than six months to reach completion. It was a costly miscalculation for Germany. Why? Because experimentation is the cornerstone of effective adaptation.

The mistake would haunt Nazi Germany as the tide gradually turned against it in the Second World War. While German scientists were shackled to short-term targets, their Allied counterparts were given free rein to experiment with new weapon technologies for as long as they pleased. When defense scientist William Butement came up with an idea to develop a proximity fuse, for example, he was encouraged to delve deeper.

A proximity fuse is a useful piece of gadgetry if you’re in the middle of a shooting war. A bomb fitted with the fuse’s radar technology will only detonate when it’s sufficiently close to its targets. Older bomb types, on the other hand, used standard timers that often exploded long before – or after – they’d reached their targets. Needless to say, the bombs with the proximity fuses did the most damage.

Crafting the perfect proximity fuse took time and dedication, and it was only after years of experimentation with prototypes that the finished article was ready for deployment. It came just in the nick of time. In 1944, a German counteroffensive caught the Allies off guard and the outcome of the Battle of the Bulge hung in the balance. Lucky that they had the perfect weapon to beat back the onslaught: artillery units equipped with lethally accurate proximity fuse shells.

Experimentation also has its uses in the metaphorical war between businesses. Take Apple, a company that has long been synonymous with a culture of experimentation. When its new products meet a negative reception, it shelves them and gets to work on a superior alternative. You may or may not remember Apple’s first handheld computer – the clunky, error-prone Newton. The Newton crashed and burned and Apple responded by going back to the drawing board. The result? Its designers used the prototype to develop the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Rushing to adapt can lead to a crash, and failing to think ahead isn’t any better.

Learning to drive is thrilling. The world suddenly becomes broader as exciting new possibilities come into focus. But you have to be careful. It’s easy to get carried away and put your foot down. That’s when things go wrong and you find yourself at risk.

The same thing happens to businesses when they push too hard: the wheels come off and they crash. Take Netflix. The company understood that the future of movie watching was streaming before any of its competitors, and it steamed ahead. What was the problem, then? It was too quick for its subscribers, who were still satisfied with the old offer which allowed them to rent DVDs and stream for $9.99 a month.

In 2011, Netflix decided to push its customers and split their offering into two separate components: rentals and streaming, now priced at $7.99 each – a pretty hefty price hike for people who wanted to continue using both services.

The decision didn’t go down well. Netflix hemorrhaged a million subscribers and the value of its shares fell by 25 percent. The service did eventually recover, of course, but if it hadn’t been so hasty it would have achieved its current success much sooner.

Failing to anticipate changes in the market is even more damaging, however, as Blockbuster found out. Founded in 1985, the movie rental business quickly grew over the following decades. By 2008, it had thousands of stores across the US. But despite its dominant position in the market, it was caught entirely unawares by the streaming revolution.

Even worse, it failed to launch its own streaming service while Netflix began establishing itself. That would have been simple enough – after all, Blockbuster held all the aces: it was a household name with a large customer base and plenty of capital.

But Blockbuster wasn’t nimble enough to adapt to new realities. It continued focusing on customer experience in its bricks-and-mortar stores even after a new CEO was hired in 2007. By 2010, the writing was on the wall. Blockbuster declared bankruptcy and was gobbled up by the American TV company Dish Network.

Radical leadership is often the only solution when companies lose sight of their goals.

It’s easy to look good when the economy’s booming and you’re backed by a reputation built up over decades. But success can breed complacency. The result of taking your eye off the ball? You lose sight of your goals.

Take Starbucks. Everything had been plain sailing for decades when it hit the rocks in 2007. The coffee chain’s chairman Howard Schultz had an idea about what had gone wrong: its dominant position had incubated an arrogant outlook and the company had stopped taking care of its customers.

He was right. Formerly loyal patrons weren’t happy and had started going elsewhere in search of their coffee fix. That same year, Starbucks closed over 900 stores and fired 1,000 of its employees. That was the end of the growth policy championed by the company’s CEO between 2002 and 2007, Jim Donald, who had become obsessed with opening more and more stores. The mad rush to expand had resulted in Starbucks losing touch with its founding values.

In the end, Starbucks scraped through this rough patch. So how did it turn things around? Well, it had a leader who was prepared to push through radical reforms: Howard Schultz. One of the first things he did after taking charge was to close 7,000 Starbucks stores in the US and give every barista extra training to help them up their coffee game. When a test revealed that McDonald’s had better-tasting coffee than Starbucks, Schultz introduced new roasting and grinding processes.

None of that was rocket science. Schultz simply understood that a coffee chain has to do two things to retain its customers’ loyalty: prepare a great cup of joe and offer a selection of delicious cakes and pastries. But sometimes it takes a radical visionary to do the commonsensical thing. By 2010, his policy had paid off. Starbucks had recovered and its revenue increased to $10.7 billion!

That just goes to show how important adaptability is when you’re struggling to get ahead or just treading water. While you shouldn’t rush change, it’s worth keeping an open mind, experimenting and seeing what incremental changes you can make to improve your situation.

Adaptability is all about looking ahead, reading the signs and using the prevailing winds to chart your course. Once you’ve mastered that art, you can plan ahead and avoid being caught off guard by sudden changes. That’s especially true in business. The most successful companies consistently demonstrate an ability to change with the times, experiment with new solutions and adapt themselves to customers’ changing desires and needs.

Action plan: Believe in the impossible. What stops us adapting? Well, nothing throttles innovation like the belief that some things are simply impossible. Take it from American biologist George Church. He was convinced he could design a machine that could decode the entire human genome. Ignoring the naysayers, Church pressed ahead with his vision and constructed his device. While the procedure initially cost a staggering $3 billion, Church managed to reduce the price to just $5,000 over the years. Today, there’s a real chance that it might become affordable enough to be integrated into routine medical testing, opening up the possibility of all sorts of medical breakthroughs!

#How To Be More Adaptable In Life & Business

0 notes

nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

Text

Hyperallergic: Documentarian Adam Curtis Dissects the World that Gave Rise to Trump

Still from “Hypernormalisation” (2016) (all images via BBC iPlayer unless noted otherwise)

Towards the end of Adam Curtis’s latest documentary, Hypernormalisation (2016), the BBC filmmaker and journalist spotlights Donald Trump’s constant policy shifts, his utilization of the extreme racist right, and the trivialization of his primary campaign by liberal onlookers and the media. Curtis ends the segment with an examination of social media bubbles, one of the many factors subsequently cited by journalists as instrumental to Trump’s victory. The filmmaker’s narration is accompanied by eerie footage of dimly lit server farms:

The liberals were outraged by Trump, but they expressed their anger in cyberspace — so it had no effect. The algorithms made sure it only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead, ironically, their waves of angry messages and tweets benefited the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. As one analyst put it, ‘angry people click more.’ It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the Internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead, it was becoming a fuel that was feeding the new systems of power, and making them ever more powerful. None of the liberals could possibly imagine that Donald Trump would ever win the nomination …

Hypernormalisation was released on BBC iPlayer (the broadcaster’s online streaming service) on October 16, just under a month before election day. Curtis had not only anticipated Trump’s victory, but also zeroed in on the abject disbelief and shock that followed in its wake. Following the election, Curtis’s analysis of Trump had shifted from thesis to historic fact. The film, which includes C-Span’s footage of Seth Meyers excoriating the future president at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, had taken on a new, sobering inflection. The camera centers on Trump’s glowering reaction to the comedian before switching to a shot of President Obama laughing uncontrollably. Five years later, the two men would be sitting in the oval office, solemnly shaking hands before the cameras of the world’s media. Part of Curtis’s extraordinary talent as a filmmaker is his knack for culling fragments of archival footage that crackle with emotional resonance. Watching Hypernormalisation, one can’t help but wonder whether Trump’s resolve to become one of the most powerful men on earth was realized in that very room on May 1st, 2011.

Composite of footage from the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner (via Youtube/C-Span)

Curtis’s American viewership has slowly but gradually grown since the release of his three-part series, The Power of Nightmares, in 2004. The three films traced the rise of Islamic extremism, arguing that the threat of Al Qaeda was not only exaggerated, but that its ideology paralleled many of the central tenets of neo-conservativism. In 2012, e-flux organized The Desperate Edge of Now, an exhibition dedicated to Curtis’s films. A year later, the Park Avenue Armory staged Massive Attack V Adam Curtis, a rock-driven “video spectacle” during which Curtis — using one of his signature narrative devices — weaved together seemingly unconnected figures and events, including Donald and Ivanka Trump, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Jane Fonda, “everyone in Goldman Sachs who made a killing in 2008,” and the Chernobyl disaster.

Curtis’s films are fundamentally about power, how it’s obfuscated and where it really resides. His stories, built up through the use of rich archival material and music, are constructed as overarching grand narratives. He typically centers on a particular idea, tracing its interpretation and implementation by different persons and movements. For instance, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) focuses on the notion of the ecosystem, namely the belief that nature can stabilize itself. The filmmaker follows the concept’s influence on economic discourse, computer networks, communal living, and genetics. You’ll know you’re watching a Curtis film when you hear the phrase “this is a story about how….”

During a talk at his 2012 e-flux exhibition, Curtis critiqued the rise of individualism and implored the audience to “surrender themselves” to movements with ideals and ideas that they admired. This, Curtis argued, was “difficult in our age” because the culture of individualism has resulted in people not wanting to “give themselves to other things.” It was a striking departure from his prior focus on how ideas and mass movements have often been implemented with disastrous consequences. I asked Curtis about the shift in his thinking (you can hear the exchange at the 131-minute mark here):

There are two answers to that. One, I’m a creature of my time. I have made a series of films that have analyzed why the optimistic visions of the past 100 years didn’t quite work out as they were supposed to […] The other is, yeah, it is really dangerous [to surrender to mass movements] … and that’s why we distrust it. The generation who came out of [World War II] were frightened of mass movements. They had seen what it had done. They promoted the idea of the free individual as an alternative. My argument now is that we’re sort of trapped by that […] You’re not really going to be able to challenge something unless you unite people. That’s what makes people powerful. It’s what the trade unions were about. You’re much more powerful when you are in a group than if you’re on your own. And I think since 2008 people have increasingly — or certainly in my country — come to realize that alone they are much less powerful. But no one’s offering them a way of uniting. But I mean you’re right. I’m being a hypocrite. It’s true.

Curtis was — in a stereotypically British manner — being hard on himself. The shift in his thinking wasn’t a contradiction but a development. The entrenchment of individualism has left people divided and without agency. This is why, Curtis argues, that efforts such as Occupy and the Arab Spring have had limited success. Although both movements successfully utilized the internet to bring people together, they failed to proffer any alternative visions of the future. Meanwhile, the failure of Western governments to deal with disasters, such as the refugee crisis and rampant inequality, has allowed reactionary actors to enter the world stage, manipulating the truth in order to keep their atomized citizens powerless, disunited, and confused. Our fear of any alternative future, combined with our pining for an impossible political stasis, has finally come home to roost. This is the premise with which Hypernormalisation opens. “This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place,” Curtis states. “It is about how over the past 40 years, politicians, financiers, and technological utopians — rather than face up to the complexities of the world — retreated. Instead, they constructed a simple vision of the world in order to hang onto power. And as this false world grew, all of us went along with it, because the simplicity was reassuring.”

Anthropologist Alexei Yurchak coined the term ‘hypernormalisation’ to describe the Soviet Union during its latter years. The country’s citizens knew that the reality presented by its leaders was a lie. Food was scarce, industry was failing, and yet everyone was expected to maintain the USSR’s façade as a formidable world power. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, everyone was surprised. Even its own citizens had bought into the fakeness. “You were so much a part of the system, that it was impossible to see beyond it,” Curtis explains. “The fakeness was hypernormal.” Curtis’s use of the term suggests that we’re now laboring under a similar delusion. The film’s title also happens to chime with the post-election calls to fight the “normalization” of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Hypernormalisation is divided into nine chapters. The film opens with footage of New York City during the 1975 fiscal crisis. The event marked a “radical shift in power” Curtis argues, because “the financial institutions took power away from the politicians.” The committee set up to deal with the city’s finances — the majority of whom were bankers — implemented a severe program of austerity. “The old politicians believed that crises were solved through negotiations and deals, Curtis states. ” The bankers had a completely different view. They were just the representatives of something that couldn’t be negotiated with. The logic of the market. To them, there was no alternative to this system. It should run society.” Curtis then cuts to Damascus during the same year. Enraged by Henry Kissinger’s manipulation of leaders in the Middle East (a policy that the then Secretary of State referred to as “constructive ambiguity”), Hafez al-Assad — Syria’s President and the father of current President Bashar al-Assad — retreated from his belief that the region could be united. Following the United States’ involvement in the Lebanon War (1982), al-Assad allied himself with Ruhollah Khomeini. This, Curtis argues, marked the escalation of suicide bombing throughout the region.

Still from “Hypernormalisation” (2016)

Curtis then sets up multiple narrative threads — the development of cyberspace, the rise of the banks and computer networks, the use of perception management techniques, and the rapid fracturing of the Middle East — weaving in and out each story whilst binding them together. He regularly returns to a few key figures, among them Hafez al-Assad, Ronald Reagan, Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

The overarching narrative is both compelling and convincing. That said, some of Curtis’s chosen subjects are unabashedly idiosyncratic. One section of the film is dedicated to US counter-intelligence efforts to manipulate ufologists. Military officials allegedly forged classified memos regarding alien activity in order to divert public attention away from secret aerial weapons programs. The result, however, was that more Americans began to believe in UFOs as an alien phenomenon. Curtis cites the affair as an example of perception management. It also sowed an ever-growing distrust of the government. Of course, there are many other documented examples that Curtis could choose from. For instance, a segment on the Iraq war — namely the absence of WMD’s and the so-called “45- minute” claim — feels rushed by comparison. The problem is that Curtis can’t fit everything in, an expectation that is bolstered by some of his more creative sequences. Some sections of the film, particularly those that depart from the narrative, might feel like an indulgence to some viewers. One such sequence is comprised of footage from Hollywood disaster movies (all of which were produced before 9/11) cut to Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” (1979). The result is eerie, disturbing, and utterly compelling. Curtis’s detractors typically zero in on his style, arguing that it’s incompatible with his role as a documentarian. But Curtis has always been unafraid of spectacle and humor. It’s what makes his films so engrossing. His visual style and flair are essential to the articulation of his thesis.

Still from “Hypernormalisation” (2016)

Hypernormalisation breathlessly weaves together many of the filmmaker’s chosen themes over the years. Long-time fans will also recognize the incorporation of subjects from Curtis’s shorts as well as his blog. It is, without question, Curtis’s most all-encompassing project to date. Clocking in at two hours and 45 minutes, the film constantly threatens to collapse under the weight of its narrative breadth. It just about manages to avoid this, in part because the film is less about one specific idea and more about tracing the mood of our time. In this regard, it conceptually resembles It Felt Like a Kiss (2009), Curtis’s audio-visual history of post-World War II America. Similarly, Hypernormalisation functions as a multi-faceted meditation on the present. Curtis’s critique of individualism has also become more pointed. Have our politicians failed us? Yes. The bankers, kleptocrats, and technologists? Of course. But it’s our apathy that allowed these forces to consolidate their power. If recent events have demonstrated anything, it’s that we need to unify and develop a new vocabulary of protest. It’s time for a new vision of the future.

Hypernormalisation was released on BBC iPlayer on October 16, 2016.

The post Documentarian Adam Curtis Dissects the World that Gave Rise to Trump appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2l0qjpk via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hyperallergic

0 notes

talabib · 5 years ago