But what if the people are stupid?
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.
#20 : Can't Get You Out Of My Head
Adam Curtis polarises audiences like few other documentarians. For some, he is television’s ultimate truth teller. For others, he’s an impenetrable conspiracy theorist. If you’re in the first group, Can’t Get You Out of My Head was an absolutely breathless delight.
I've never watched any of Adam Curtis' stuff but I have heard him chatting on Adam Buxton's podcast and he certainly sounds like an interesting, if possibly somewhat earnest, fellow. So I was looking forward to this, even if I wasn't convinced I would consider him to be either the ultimate truth teller or an impenetrable conspiracy theorist.
And well, this is an odd one and no mistake - he's making some (or many) points about the power and weakness of the individual vs the collective and how it affects us all. He does this by taking us on a very circuitous trip through many centuries of history (but mostly concentrating on the last century) - well, I say circuitous but it really jumps all over the place without warning or any obvious connection.
However, whilst jumping about it gives us a lot of interesting history and some absolutely fascinating (and often very obscure) facts. For example, did you know that George Boole, the man who gave us Boolean algebra, had five daughters - the youngest of whom was Ethel who wrote The Gadfly. Which I'd never heard of, but it's sold something like 5 million copies worldwide. Yes. FIVE MILLION. It's a book about revolution and was declared essential reading in Russia, China and Iran - which is quite some number of people. It's also been made into plays, ballets, operas and film - and I still know absolutely nothing about it. However, if that's not interesting enough for you, Ethel was married to Wilfred Voynich who was a Polish revolutionary who lead an interesting life but is best known for giving his name to the Voynich manuscript (but only because he bought the time). Which is, I kid you not, fucking wild - it has 240 pages, dates from the early 1400s and is written in a code which no-one has been able to decipher to this day.
The other highlight for me was learning about Discordialism, in which Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill decided, during the 60s, to start a conspiracy theory so utterly ridiculous that no-one would every believe it - which would obviously show everyone how stupid conspiracy theories were. Yes, people - this was code-named Operation Mindfuck and was obviously going to save humanity from themselves. And the conspiracy theory they started? Well, using adverts in various underground publications, they tried to convince everyone the world was controlled by a Bavarian secret society set up in 1776. Ridiculous, right? And the name of this secret society? Oh - it's the Illuminati. Yes, that's EXACTLY how that all started. Jeeezus - people, eh?!?
As well as all the facts, it has some simply wonderful vintage footage in it from archives from all over the world - the whole thing really has been superbly researched. But..
...and there's always a but. Large sections of this are just long sections of vintage footage (sometimes overlaid with a modern track) with absolutely no context, which make no sense. And there are large sections of episodes that go way off piste for no obvious reason - sometimes just to be clever, you suspect. One section shows a clip where a trans woman was being interviewed for gender reassignment surgery with the psychiatrist rejecting her idea that she felt like a woman but merely wishing to conform to female stereotypes which is then followed by a clip of Mrs Thatcher giving advice on ironing (and it's quite some clip, I can tell you). But it doesn't really add anything to anything as far as I can tell.
I can't help but feel that whoever commissioned it was a bit of a fan of Mr Curtis and let him get away with quite a few things that others might not have. For instance, it could probably have made exactly the same points (whatever they are) in half the time without all the random footage involved. You really have to pay attention - and even then it's not clear what's going on, so overall I'd have to say it's hard to know how many people will have actually sat down and watched all of this. I did mostly enjoy it and I absolutely loved some of the stuff I learned from it, but I can't help but feel that half of it was an utter waste of time - and it doesn't help that I'm not entirely sure which half. However, I'd have to say I'm intrigued to watch more of his stuff, so I guess it had the desired effect.
If, unlike most people, you've made it to the end of this review, you're probably thinking it was too long and unstructured and, although it included some interesting facts, it didn't really seem to come to any kind of conclusion. And, if you watch this series, I suspect that's EXACTLY the feeling you'll be left with.
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