Introduction - Adam Curtis’ both disturbing and entertaining series, Cant Get You Out of My Head on BBC I player is a stunning piece of work. The six hour-and-bit long documentary series wants us to understand how we got from there to here - from the ends of the British empire, from the end of the Second World War to the unsure and uncertain 2021. This is deeply researched piece of surreal education.
Name of show: Can't Get You Out of My Head
Year: 2021
Official Poster
Trailer
Review
Curtis describes his series as an emotional history of the modern world. Both Western and Eastern powers do not escape Curtis' unique scrutiny – he looks at political, industrial and and cultural influences, and how the West is always linked to China and Russia. Meticulously put together from archive and sometimes strange footage, music soundtracks and Curtis' simple concise and narration, the series analyses the effect of different individuals in history before returning to the main thrust - how those in power manipulate the individual to their own ends.
The viewer may at times be confounded - Has one scene anything to do with the next? If you make it to the end, a full rich tapestry will be revealed. Someone said to me, this is the way history should be taught in schools, another friend said this was just an auteur's view of the past. “It feels like the truth to me,” I said, “What is the truth”, he said.
Curtis’ aim is made clear at the beginning. To avoid possible accusations that he could be a history manipulator himself. The opening caption reads, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make. And could just as easily make differently – David Graeber 1961-2020.”
We move through 50's London and the impact of Britain's crumbling empire - immigrants arriving to what was promised to their homeland, how we are still carrying the guilt about how we aquired and lost our colonies. Then, to how the seeds of American paranoia were sown, how the drug Valium, then Oxycontin were marketed as harmless relaxants to quiet the minds of disenchanted suburban American families, mostly women.
Then on to the growing domination of China and how that has happened.
Curtis looks at the impact of technology, how massive power was handed to banks, leading to a shadow manipulative system of government. He looks at the rewriting of history by Chairman Mao’s formidable and dysfunctional fourth wife, Jiang Qing, during the Cultural Revolution, and on to psychologists looking at “the self” and experimenting on drugged individuals to introduce new patterns of behaviour.
He looks at the Black Panthers – how undercover officers incited more violence than the panthers ever planned, to the feminist movement, to the counter culture.
So really, very little escapes this auteur's scrutiny. The idea that we are living, as those in charge want us to live - in the dark - is presented in a compelling way.
The power dynamic, how it shifts and how it hides is Curtis’s overriding interest.
Whether or not you are convinced by Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – this is an exhilarating ride. The work is dense, searching, ambitious and respectful of the audience. Curtis was apparently given complete creative freedom by the BBC to realise this project, yet it is free from anything highbrow. What it does do, is present a vision and story for us to think about.
If you like this series there are others by him. Bitter lake looks at the history of Afghanistan- why it became a burning hub of chaos, or Century of the Self - how advertising moguls use Freud's theories of man's chaotic unconscious mind, to manipulate and sell their products. "If you liked that you will love this."
But that is for another day.
Number of SUBs out of 10 - 10 out of 10
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Thanks for reading my review, always up for comments and a chat about films and TV.
