When I first watched a bunch of Adam Curtis stuff I thought it a long winded way of stating bad things have happened and have resulted in these bigger, overarching, bad things.
Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.
For me, the key lies in the "We know they lie. They know we know they lie.". I'd argue that the transparency of lies is a fairly immature theme, relative to the long arc of history. Probably post-Iraq WMD is where I think it really started to ramp up and the emergence of virality/segmentation aspect of social media has really revved it up.
I would view that kind of lying as show of force: "Everybody knows it, but nobody can do anything about it, we are above even these rules."
Worse still is when it's an "affirm the falsehood to show you have been dominated by our threat of punishment" scenario:
> 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'
> Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.
> 'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.'
Curtis tried to make these statements on the downside of neoliberalism + postmodernism but I don't think he did a very good job based on the discussion on these films.
I think his work is just too stylized. He has such an interesting style that it overwhelms the message. I barely remember what his messaging is in films. Just the interesting visuals and ominous music.
If you read Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition together you will understand exactly what he is going for. As a film it doesn't really work that well though beyond a kind of depressing entertainment. The themes are too subtle and philosophical along with most people don't have the background knowledge to really make sense of his points.
Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.