HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that governments, financiers, and technological utopians have, since the 1970s, given up on the complex "real world" and built a simpler "fake world" run by corporations and kept stable by politicians.
The word hypernormalization was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s.[3][4] He says that everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine an alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society.[5] Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the fakeness was accepted by everyone as real, an effect that Yurchak termed hypernormalisation.
Can’t find a YouTube link that allows embedded playback :| oh well
"Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them."
Brexit and the Trump presidency happened against the flow of expected order, so they were chaotic events to the ruling elites (and their normie cheerleaders) in that sense. Mass immigration has chaotic effects for those of us much lower down the chain. I presume that he's listing political phenomena that are chaotic and uncontrolled, from some perspective, to anyone anywhere.
Watch enough Curtis and you can catch enough glimpses that he's a leftie, but he hasn't put out enough in the modern era to confirm a diagnosis of TDS or EU-Remainer seethe, yet. He certainly knows enough about the history of the British left-wing to know Corbyn's relationship to Brexit and also know that the left had anti-EU campaigners in the 70s, when the UK joined. Point being, I would be surprised if he had been dumb enough to be terribly taken by surprise by Brexit or Trump, so it's more likely he's being a universal narrator in that passage.
But like I say, until he puts out his own thorough take on Biden or the scamdemic years, it's hard to know if he's managed to keep his brain between his ears. His most recent 6 parter was in 2021 and it had hints of the perspective of a leftie in denial, rehashing many of his older takes and not saying a great deal new. Hypernormalisation was 2016. I find his older stuff like Century of the Self, The Trap, Pandora's Box and The Living Dead to be interesting regardless.
I also have a soft spot for The Mayfair Set. From Curtis' perspective, his account of British magnates trying to revive or hold on grimly to the last vestiges of British empire is condescending towards them, yet you can't help but feel that he sympathises more with them than with the growing force of international finace they were up against. In fact I only just learn that The Trap, Curtis' docu which in large part concerns neoliberalism, shares its exact title with James Goldsmith's book about neoliberalism - James Goldsmith being one of the magnates featured in Mayfair Set and dealt with less than sympathetically, at least on a casual viewing.
So it's fair to say that Curtis' views are nuanced, or at least they have been across the years. I actually just watched the opening of Ep1 of The Living Dead; the first 10 minutes are a dispassionate and unjudgmental recounting of the Nazis' view for rebuilding Germany with their policies, against the backdrop of the disorder the country had descended into. It also essentially lambasts Nuremberg as a show trial. The latter part of course can't help but mention national guilt and the holocaust, but in any case it's a million miles from the kind of genuflecting, performative virtue posturing you have to go through when mentioning nazi history in the mainsteam nowadays.
It’s definitely from a certain perspective (lifelong establishment BBC filmmaker) - but I often find myself asking, when I hear an eyebrow raiser from one of his films (which they are most certainly full of), “is he actually wrong?”
To your specific example, do not many of Trump’s “supporters” (not the hardcore MAGA/MIGA-ites but more-so the kinds of people here and more generally on the dissident right) explicitly label themselves “accelerationists”?
I think he wants to explain the popular support for chaos, not a/the actual “why” for the chaos as revealed from behind-the-scenes
Unless I’m not getting what you meant by that, lol
Brexit and Trump's election are included in a list of generally bad things and calling them chaotic, as though supporters of those things need corralling.
Yes I see, it was just an interesting observation. I'm sure it was written from the limited perspective of a typical liberal normie, most likely to appeal to them. ZeroPercentCamoIndex's comment also indicates the filmmaker gave more nuanced picture than that blurb really let's on. I'll give this a watch.
Come to think of it I suppose the director didn't have anything to do with the description anyway.
And yeah whether we claim to be accelerationists or not, Trump is one attempt to answer an unbalanced equation some people call chaos.
Well I liked the part where he unironically called a crowd pointing thousands of laser pointers at a helicopter as evidence they were "welcoming military intervention" and not even alluding to the possibility they were trying to make it impossible to fly.
Can you conclusively rule out the possibility that the people in Tahir Square, just after the army coop’d the (new) Muslim Brotherhood government, weren’t supporters of that action? By my understanding of things that was popularly supported (as well as supported by, for example, the American gov)
I doubt military helos can be brought down by laser pointers either
But I didn’t post the video to argue about it or defend claims made by the filmmaker in one direction or the other, so...what did you think about the other 2 hours and 30 minutes, lol?
Nah, but I'm not making the claim that it's a sign of welcome. I'm just pointing out it's a little stupid to 100% assume that the supposedly internet savvy and organized protest can't possibly have also heard the widely held internet belief that laser pointers can make helicopter flight dangerous. And I'm not in the business of giving supposedly competent truthtellers even second chances anymore
As for the rest, it's obviously a film before am educational video. I listened to it doing other things rather than directly watching, which made it particularly apparent that it's about 50% emotional/foreboding music and 25% famous political soundbytes that were just there to keep the mood. The earliest parts were the most interesting as the older history is less well ingrained for me, the latter half didn't really deliver anything new to me, but it's probably a good primer for normies who still have the bizarre faith that their leaders wouldn't just boldly lie to them on a daily basis.
Ahh, I find much of the effect of his movies comes from the shifting contrast/agreement between what you’re seeing, hearing, and thinking, so I imagine only half watching would lead to a far less impactful version of things.
If you at all enjoyed it, especially for its historical insights, I think you’d enjoy far more some of his earlier work on more obscure subjects. There’s another comment chain in this thread which lists some of the best ones he’s done
There is a Bible verse, forget the specifics, that notes that people will worship falsehood and hate truth in the end times. That seems to be a common theme when empires end.
My grandparents are really into the idea that we're in the End Times. I'm not convinced that we're in THE End Times, but rather in A End Times. History is cyclical, with rising and falling empires. I'll bet people thought that the world was ending when Rome fell too. We're on the precipice of a major fall, but that doesn't mean that the entire world is ending just yet.
Can’t find a YouTube link that allows embedded playback :| oh well
"Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them."
What did he mean by this? 🤔
Brexit and the Trump presidency happened against the flow of expected order, so they were chaotic events to the ruling elites (and their normie cheerleaders) in that sense. Mass immigration has chaotic effects for those of us much lower down the chain. I presume that he's listing political phenomena that are chaotic and uncontrolled, from some perspective, to anyone anywhere.
Watch enough Curtis and you can catch enough glimpses that he's a leftie, but he hasn't put out enough in the modern era to confirm a diagnosis of TDS or EU-Remainer seethe, yet. He certainly knows enough about the history of the British left-wing to know Corbyn's relationship to Brexit and also know that the left had anti-EU campaigners in the 70s, when the UK joined. Point being, I would be surprised if he had been dumb enough to be terribly taken by surprise by Brexit or Trump, so it's more likely he's being a universal narrator in that passage.
But like I say, until he puts out his own thorough take on Biden or the scamdemic years, it's hard to know if he's managed to keep his brain between his ears. His most recent 6 parter was in 2021 and it had hints of the perspective of a leftie in denial, rehashing many of his older takes and not saying a great deal new. Hypernormalisation was 2016. I find his older stuff like Century of the Self, The Trap, Pandora's Box and The Living Dead to be interesting regardless.
I also have a soft spot for The Mayfair Set. From Curtis' perspective, his account of British magnates trying to revive or hold on grimly to the last vestiges of British empire is condescending towards them, yet you can't help but feel that he sympathises more with them than with the growing force of international finace they were up against. In fact I only just learn that The Trap, Curtis' docu which in large part concerns neoliberalism, shares its exact title with James Goldsmith's book about neoliberalism - James Goldsmith being one of the magnates featured in Mayfair Set and dealt with less than sympathetically, at least on a casual viewing.
So it's fair to say that Curtis' views are nuanced, or at least they have been across the years. I actually just watched the opening of Ep1 of The Living Dead; the first 10 minutes are a dispassionate and unjudgmental recounting of the Nazis' view for rebuilding Germany with their policies, against the backdrop of the disorder the country had descended into. It also essentially lambasts Nuremberg as a show trial. The latter part of course can't help but mention national guilt and the holocaust, but in any case it's a million miles from the kind of genuflecting, performative virtue posturing you have to go through when mentioning nazi history in the mainsteam nowadays.
It’s definitely from a certain perspective (lifelong establishment BBC filmmaker) - but I often find myself asking, when I hear an eyebrow raiser from one of his films (which they are most certainly full of), “is he actually wrong?”
To your specific example, do not many of Trump’s “supporters” (not the hardcore MAGA/MIGA-ites but more-so the kinds of people here and more generally on the dissident right) explicitly label themselves “accelerationists”?
I think he wants to explain the popular support for chaos, not a/the actual “why” for the chaos as revealed from behind-the-scenes
Unless I’m not getting what you meant by that, lol
Brexit and Trump's election are included in a list of generally bad things and calling them chaotic, as though supporters of those things need corralling.
Chaotic need not be synonymous with bad or evil, and like I said to assassin, from many perspectives those events were chaotic
Unless your whole comment is you trying to clarify what you think assassin meant by his comment, in which case: yeah, maybe
Yes I see, it was just an interesting observation. I'm sure it was written from the limited perspective of a typical liberal normie, most likely to appeal to them. ZeroPercentCamoIndex's comment also indicates the filmmaker gave more nuanced picture than that blurb really let's on. I'll give this a watch.
Come to think of it I suppose the director didn't have anything to do with the description anyway.
And yeah whether we claim to be accelerationists or not, Trump is one attempt to answer an unbalanced equation some people call chaos.
Well I liked the part where he unironically called a crowd pointing thousands of laser pointers at a helicopter as evidence they were "welcoming military intervention" and not even alluding to the possibility they were trying to make it impossible to fly.
Can you conclusively rule out the possibility that the people in Tahir Square, just after the army coop’d the (new) Muslim Brotherhood government, weren’t supporters of that action? By my understanding of things that was popularly supported (as well as supported by, for example, the American gov)
I doubt military helos can be brought down by laser pointers either
But I didn’t post the video to argue about it or defend claims made by the filmmaker in one direction or the other, so...what did you think about the other 2 hours and 30 minutes, lol?
Nah, but I'm not making the claim that it's a sign of welcome. I'm just pointing out it's a little stupid to 100% assume that the supposedly internet savvy and organized protest can't possibly have also heard the widely held internet belief that laser pointers can make helicopter flight dangerous. And I'm not in the business of giving supposedly competent truthtellers even second chances anymore
As for the rest, it's obviously a film before am educational video. I listened to it doing other things rather than directly watching, which made it particularly apparent that it's about 50% emotional/foreboding music and 25% famous political soundbytes that were just there to keep the mood. The earliest parts were the most interesting as the older history is less well ingrained for me, the latter half didn't really deliver anything new to me, but it's probably a good primer for normies who still have the bizarre faith that their leaders wouldn't just boldly lie to them on a daily basis.
Ahh, I find much of the effect of his movies comes from the shifting contrast/agreement between what you’re seeing, hearing, and thinking, so I imagine only half watching would lead to a far less impactful version of things.
If you at all enjoyed it, especially for its historical insights, I think you’d enjoy far more some of his earlier work on more obscure subjects. There’s another comment chain in this thread which lists some of the best ones he’s done
Is this dude retarded? Trump was elected because of mass immigration.
It’s a 2.5 hour doc, any one-paragraph attempt to “summarize” the video and much less the filmmaker will suffer from myopia
Trump/Brexit are really quite a small part of the overarching narrative
I highly recommend it, make up your own mind
There is a Bible verse, forget the specifics, that notes that people will worship falsehood and hate truth in the end times. That seems to be a common theme when empires end.
My grandparents are really into the idea that we're in the End Times. I'm not convinced that we're in THE End Times, but rather in A End Times. History is cyclical, with rising and falling empires. I'll bet people thought that the world was ending when Rome fell too. We're on the precipice of a major fall, but that doesn't mean that the entire world is ending just yet.
To be fair, "our world" is ending. Or Hell, it already did and we are coming to terms with it having already died.