Adam Curtis presents

[Midas]

in these complex times we no longer understand we've lost our mythology the news is not the news is not *This Mortal Coil starts playing* in the 1960s a new counterculture - and this includes the LEFT - the Soviet Union a new darkness rising from beneath the Wahhabist Trump Cleft-Arse-Opiate in Cyberspace the Occupy Movement began a new Mephistophlean Megiddo prance in cock rapt a fictional world in Tarkovsky's Gawker in these complex times we

*Whicker's World B-roll unspooling into a bin*

[Ferris]

And nobody seems to be regulating that... at all.

[gabrielconroy]

*Brian Eno Warm Jets plays* It was a new age of enlightenment, where the populace could happily reap the rewards of their society being guided by the technocrats.

But those politicians and scientists had overlooked one thing *cut to man spasming from bad illness, Burial plays* - that society was, at its root, irredeemably insane.

In the membrane *sudden cut to Cypress Hill* This was not, in fact, the age of technocracy. It was the age of the juggalo

[Russ L]

... but this was an illusion.

[FeederFan500]

*cuts between fields with unmanned farm equipment and military parades*

For many years, North Korea has been presented by Western politicians as both a threat and a joke. They have characterised it as an immediate danger to its capitalist neighbour, regularly referring to its nuclear capability. Yet at the same time they have allowed it to be portrayed as an economic backwater, headed by an instantly recognisable comic figure, limited by its basic and ineffective technological advancement.

*Gorbachev, shots of lone Korean people, new Korean buildings surrounded by empty roads*
Some people have an answer to this apparent paradox. They posit that in fact, North Korea is a giant film set, created after the fall of the USSR to remind the populace of capitalism's superiority. The few guides who meet Westerners and are reluctant to speak openly have nothing to hide. Instead, they have nothing to tell.


And without ever crediting who "some people" are, I will spend the next 90 minutes presenting this crackpot theory as fact.

[superthunderstingcar]

It all began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves; immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven, to the Dwarf Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern over each race.

But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made. In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged in secret, a master ring, to control all others. And into this ring he poured all his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life. One ring to rule them all.

But this was a fantasy.

[FeederFan500]

Ha, I think Curtis has written under a nom de plume Lorraine Daston in LRB

When the first tea bushes arrived in Uppsala in 1763, Linnaeus said that he was about to 'close the gate through which leaves all silver in Europe'

This was fantasy.

[Senior Baiano]

Check out these fifties broads doing calisthenics

[Video Game Fan 2000]

 I used to read Word Up! magazine. Salt-n-Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine. Hanging pictures on my wall. Every Saturday Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl.

I let my tape rock 'til my tape popped. Smoking weed in Bambu, sipping on Private Stock Way back, when I had the red and black lumberjack With the hat to match.

It was all a dream.

[PlanktonSideburns]

in a small village east of Ukraine

A man is dreaming

Dreaming of an beach lapped by roiling waves of orange flavoured carbonated sparkling sugary water

BUT THAT










WAS JUST











A


















FANTA-SEA

[M-CORP]

When routine bites hard and ambitions are low, and resentment rides high but emotions won't grow, and we're changing our ways, taking different roads... love will tear us apart.

Why is the bedroom so cold turned away on your side? Is my timing that flawed, our respect run so dry? Yet there's still this appeal that we've kept through our lives.

Wrong Curtis, sorry






... or, actually, wait a minute...

Spoiler alert

Curtis on Curtis:

"The genius of Ian Curtis' bleak, depressing lyrical imagery... is how bleak and depressed Ian Curtis was when he conceived it. In taking his own life, Curtis revealed the sincere meaning behind his songwriting... and singlehandedly precipitated the rise of the neoliberal elites... and George Osborne."

"Today we examine how, in naming themselves after a Nazi sex slavery wing, Joy Division aptly anticipated the non-linear warfare of the 1980s and the height of the Cold War."

[close]