Part of Curtis's "The Trap - We Will Force You to Be Fr

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Despite a fair amount of historical and intellectual oversimplifications, I've found Curtis's "The Trap" a rather fascinating documentary. It's a gem of quasi-documentaries [1] and is a lot better than most North American punditry as it actually transcends the baser talking points and looks at the contradictions and paradoxes in all ideologies.

A few main points are…

• Stemming from Revolutionary France there’s been a perfectionist idea of liberty – positive liberty – that requires transforming human beings.
• Positive liberty has been the rallying call of all radical revolutionaries, including the Iranian Revolution (with Western intellectual influences via Satre)
• Negative liberty, by contrast, is the freedom to do what you want without interference. It’s paid lip service to by governments of developed societies.
• Revolutionaries believed violence and terror could transform people and free them from bourgeoisie norms.
• The US Gov’t countered destabilizing third world radicals via propping up dictators.
• The Neoconservatives – self styled “Democratic Revolutionaries” – vowed to change this.
• When in power they succumb to absolutism, seeing negative liberty as the “final solution” and entering into “ends justify the means” thinking.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNZ28na7ksY&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV_LmK7_kxo&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f-_JlI1Ck4&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edOLc21YP-U&feature=related[/youtube]

Personally, I knock a lot of this off on pure cynicism of those in charge. I also dislike how Curtis associates Homo Economicus with a dull view of liberty (I find it a stretch).

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1. Curtis him self has said his films aren't quite documentaries. I'm sorry to say that I can't recall the source and googling has failed me.

Nice, I know you probably have but you should check out the Pandora's Box series he did as well as the Power Of Nightmares. I love the way he does these the music words and images work so well together to create that ironic tone. Superb.

Very interesting.

ruveyn

"The Power of Nightmares" was the first film of his I watched. I have yet to find a youtube version of "Pandora's Box", though I'd probably disagree with the premise.

Personally, I love it how he superimposes Robespierre - a figure who has come to be an archtype for leftish excess - with auditory descriptions of "democratic revolutionary" (neoconservative) ideas.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=P ... Box&dur=3#



Haven't finished watching yet but very interesting so far.

The Engineers Plot and To The Brink of Enternity (I think that was the 2nd video's title) were interesting. I found it particularly ironic how Curtis criticized an over-rational view of humans when, in The Century of the Self, he also criticized an overly emotional/Freudian view of people.

Because any over-anything is bad/stupid.

Overly emotion is just as bad as overly rational.

Though, the biggest problem with overly rational is that it requires all the information to make rational decisions and all the information is almost never available. Partial information...snapshots...but not everything. Not yet.

Forced freedom? That's the kind of coercion I can live with.

I watched two parts. It looks a bit lightweight and abstract to me, like he's trying to build a great narrative out of a bunch of disconnected facts.

He made another series I don't think anyone's mentioned yet called The Mayfair Set, about asset strippers and other financial parasites. That one looks quite interesting.