"Good guys" and "bad guys" are just a part of this narrative we create. People are a product of their past, which is also complex, but good and bad are powerful models we are programmed since childhood to apply to the world.
I think one of the core ideas that is smeared across Curtis’ work is that these narratives are created and fed to us as an explanation of the world that we rarely question.
In fact, he seems to rebuke moral relativism, if HyperNormalisation is any indicator.
>there are no good guys and bad guys
I don't think that's what he is implying. He is leaving it up to our interpretation but the absence of a position does not mean he is saying that there are no good or bad guys. From what I gathered, he's not saying anything at all.
Big fan of his work regardless.
Agreed.
> I think Curtis is trying to show the viewer the complexity of the world
An alternative, more reasonable take is that Adam Curtis is a bullshitter, whose documentaries give the illusion of understanding complicated subjects without any actual understanding.
Only God knows the whole truth! /sarcasm
Both can be true imo.
The problem is that the media which we consume is made ephemeral by way of omission. Media is turned into 'intellectual property' by our outdated copyright/IP system, which makes (now)digital media artificially scarce. Someone like Adam Curtis is merely lucky because he has both the time and the access to this material, and the BBC is paying the 'licensing fees' for the footage he uses.
The average working class person in the US is constantly bombarded with media, yet our collective memory (in the form of archival video/media) is often lacking universal access. So the means to reflect and make connections and conclusions is artificially scarce, which means we jump from newsworthy 'event' to 'event' (without seeing and understanding their interconnectedness):
"To describe the spectacle, its formation, its functions and the forces which tend to dissolve it, one must artificially distinguish certain inseparable elements. When analyzing the spectacle one speaks, to some extent, the language of the spectacular itself in the sense that one moves through the methodological terrain of the very society which expresses itself in the spectacle. But the spectacle is nothing other than the sense of the total practice of a social-economic formation, its use of time. It is the historical movement in which we are caught."
- Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord [1]
or Wikipedia summary:
"Debord analyzes the use of knowledge to assuage reality: the spectacle obfuscates the past, imploding it with the future into an undifferentiated mass, a type of never-ending present; in this way the spectacle prevents individuals from realizing that the society of spectacle is only a moment in history, one that can be overturned through revolution." [2]
In other words, the schizophrenic capitalist-owned media isn't followable without serious mental health implications as it's an overwhelming never-ending assault that captures the working class' imagination. The confusion and alienation it creates solely benefits the propertied class.
[1] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.ht...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
He is trying to give perspective rather than telling a story. Yet, by selecting the elements he uses to base the perspective, he’s kind of telling the skeleton of a story.
I think Curtis does this on purpose. Whenever I watch a Curtis doco, I feel I'm being told a compelling story. However, if you ask me afterwards what it was about, I will stumble to explain what it was about. I think Curtis is trying to show the viewer the complexity of the world and how difficult it is to actually get a grasp on reality and that there are no good guys and bad guys and that we're all the good guys and bad guys and that most of what we "believe" to be true is a simplification (a caricature) of reality.