Lost in a Fake World

October 16, 2016 2:33 PM

HyperNormalisation, the new documentary from Adam Curtis (previously), covers four decades leading up to today's seemingly inexplicable chaos - Trump, Brexit, the Syrian Civil War, the Migrant Crisis, the Islamic State, and on and on. Curtis argues "all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal." This version of normal, promoted by the Internet and 24-hour news cycle, is now under assault by forces that everyone from Colonel Gaddafi and Jane Fonda to Henry Kissinger and Putin's post-modern propagandist, Vladislav Surkov, has been trying to forget for forty years. (Youtube trailer)
posted by Doktor Zed (3 comments total)

First link is not available outside the UK.
posted by AFABulous at 2:44 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hypernormalisation is being released on BBC iPlayer and is therefore unavailable outside the UK, for now. Curtis's last documentary, Bitter Lake, is available in full on YouTube seemingly without challenge from the BBC so I assume this documentary will be up there soon as well.
posted by 3urypteris at 3:14 PM on October 16, 2016

ThoughtMaybe has a good collection of Adam Curtis documentaries too. No HyperNormalisation yet, but it does have Bitter Lake, so I expect it'll get added at some point. (Can't check about access outside the UK as I'm inside...)
posted by amcewen at 3:28 PM on October 16, 2016