"It may be that Britain – and much of Europe – is in a similar moment to that described by Clark just before 1848: on the edge of a new kind of society we don’t yet have the language to describe. It feels frightening because without that language it is impossible to have coherent dreams of the future. To build a better world, you need an idea of what should change and how.
And one of the things preventing that may be our obsession with constantly replaying the past. In the present age, the fog of experience has been thickened by the mass of recorded data that allows the recent past to be endlessly replayed, refusing to fade away. A constant loop of nostalgia – music, images, films and dreams from the past. It is another block to the future. And it is also the way this series is made. My bad."
Adam Curtis talking about his new-ish program Shifty
“You have this constant pantomime of hysteria which screws with your idea of time and yet it’s almost like you’re treading water. Nothing is actually happening. No one actually comes up with anything new. There are now four films being made about The Beatles. Four major movies about The Beatles. That’s like people in the 1960s listening to a musical from the time of Queen Victoria. It’s extraordinary! We’re trapped!”
“Taylor Swift is such a prim 1950s, almost Doris Day figure. That’s not to diss any of what she’s saying but it’s quite held together in time and I don’t think that expresses now.”
“What you’re left with now is this weird psychodrama-scape of everyone knowing that everyone is performing. The real self has completely disappeared deep within your and my minds and you’ll never find it.”
Adam Curtis also talking up and around his new-ish program Shifty
"That’s like people in the 1960s listening to a musical from the time of Queen Victoria" - this was possibly a tongue-in-cheek comment by Mr Curtis (who I admire), but lots of people were listening to musicals from 19th century in the 1960s, namely Gilbert and Sullivan. They were also greatly enjoying a musical based on a 19th century novel: Oliver!
ReplyDeleteYeah, the mid-late 60s - Granny Takes a Trip, campaign to save St Pancras, Victorian Society, the first 'knockers-through' of Victorian houses in North London, Bonzos, Mr Kite, etc etc - is really the precise moment where Victorian culture finally got rehabilitated, after 60 years of near-total scorn and modernist replacement and destruction of Victorian stuff, so it's not as good an example as AC thinks. The general point is true though, obviously!
ReplyDeleteA spectre is haunting this thread. The spectre of Bagpuss.
ReplyDelete