A short review on Adam Curtis new film 'HyperNormalisation'

by system failure

It's always a pleasure for someone to watch documentaries created by Adam Curtis, as they enlighten a less known dimension of global scale politics, society behaviour, culture, technology, ideas and ideologies.

Among his most interesting films are The Century of the Self, The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom, The Power of Nightmares, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, etc.

We could say that the latest film of Adam Curtis, 'HyperNormalisation', is an update of some of his previous films, which is enriched with the most recent global events and developments. The new film presents also interesting stories about some key figures in the development of cybernetics and the modern perception of non-linear politics.

Curtis concludes that the retirement of politicians to deliver a new vision to the societies has transformed them into simple managers who, more and more often, have no clue on how to deal with chaotic situations. As a consequence, societies completely abandoned faith to politicians and turned to the cybernetic universe without, however, being able to create and pursue a new vision about a better world, by themselves.

In one more film, Curtis masterfully connects the dots and manages to make us see and understand things from a different - and almost unknown to many - perspective. Yet, we observed also some 'gaps' in specific issues that the film describes. Always, of course, according to our humble opinion.

For example, the film describes how the Western powers, and especially the Agglo-American axis, have used the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, as a scapegoat for justifying their failures in various military interventions. They were treating Gaddafi, essentialy as a puppet that was playing various roles according to their goals.

Yet, the film ignores a more simple and cruel dimension of the final overthrow of Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya: the new colonialism exercised by the big corporations in the race for country's natural resources. A race that has been started by the French and in which the Agglo-Americans rushed to participate in order to secure a piece for their corporations.

In the case of Syria, Curtis explains the Russian intervention in terms of Surkov's non-linear war, and actually claims that it is not clear why the Russians finally intervened in the Syrian chaos. Again, it seems that he totally ignores the geopolitics of the region. The fact, for example, that the West wants to pull out the Russians from the Eastern Mediterranean, and therefore, remove their ally Bashar al-Assad and replace him with a favorable puppet regime.

Moreover, Curtis ignores the geopolitical dimension of the pipeline game, in which many powers are involved, like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others. This is an important reason which explains to some extend the complexity of the Syrian war.

It's understandable that Curtis prefer to focus on the reasons of the increasing inability of politicians to deal with chaotic situations, but sometimes, other important reasons behind devastating wars, cannot be ignored.