Lessons on Rebellion from Adam Curtis’ ‘HyperNormalisation’
Adam Curtis, ex-political lecturer at Oxford University turned cult-filmmaker, has spent his career peaking behind the curtain, exposing the narratives and actors that shape society. His latest film, ‘HyperNormalisation’, is concerned with the deceitfulness of power, and in extension, the all encompassing deception that runs the modern world. Through weaving together footage of the last 50 years, Curtis takes us on an illuminating journey from the machinations of Hafez Al-Assad of Syria to the New-Age visionaries behind a misguided conception of utopian Cyberspace, and far beyond. His narrative aims to expose the multitude of lies perpetrated by our leaders, and those who hold, exercise and defend existing structures of power — the pundits, the business elites, the complicit journalists and academics, who add credence to the narratives of deception required to control public perception and opinion. Politics is a charade; a parade of misinformation concerned only with short term gains and self-preservation, a puppet for our economic overlords whom society is built to please. Of course, this burden of fakery lies not only with structural hierarchies, but also with our culture of individualism, distracting from visions of collective empowerment and reducing mass entertainment to triviality. Those who have influence hold on to it, casting out an ever more delicate web of lies as their only means of defending the necessity of glorified tribal conflicts and egoistic ambitions. The rest of us are too concerned with ourselves to worry of the greater reality unfolding behind the scenes. Chaos merchants, like Putin’s Vladislav Serkov and the new President Trump, further warp reality by launching a war on objectivity, blatantly lying, contradicting and fuelling atmospheres of distrust. Come the end of Curtis’ near three hour tale of intertwined power, the viewer is subjected to a palpable sensation of disillusionment, now urging themselves to reject this construction in its entirety, understanding the world around them is not as real and unavoidable as it seems.
The power of Curtis’ cultural analysis is to provide a blank state of cynical objectivity. My brother remarked three quarters through: “It’s like watching an Alien planet”.Through critical narration combined with allegorical visuals, Curtis illustrates each point both in concrete detail and in big-picture conceptual significance, communicating to us the post-modern absurdity of the last 50 years. Our rational minds then, unconcerned with the ego trip of global power play, immediately distance themselves from the events unfolding. Captivating and otherworldly, Curtis achieves a sense of dream like removal. This lets us absorb the meta narrative without becoming a part of it, engaging with the construct of reality as an outsider looking in, freeing us from our perpetual state of a player or cog. After disengaging from the film, and internalising the messages of it, one is gifted with a highly valuable sense of detachment. This detachment is necessary for achieving change; revolutionary change cannot happen when people are too swept up in the game of politics. Immediately, the tribalism of modern political discourse; the need to take sides and stick to it, our tendencies for cognitive bias, are broken down in the light of the full picture. We must be able to step back and grasp the whole of this dynamic societal tableau, otherwise visions for radical change are inhibited by a deep, dogmatic involvement in the present. This isn’t to say we can’t engage with current affairs, indeed I believe the contrary. We must engage in order to exercise power, however insignificant, in defence of the truly powerless — the poor, the persecuted, the forgotten — and in pursuit of as much change as possible, without allowing ourselves to be blinkered by ideological doctrine. ‘HyperNormalisation’ galvanises a critical, rational assessment of everything around us, so we can look at the world we’ve grown up with and realise this is not normal, that our institutions and ingrained systems are not the unstoppable force of nature we are lead to believe they are, as necessary as oxygen or gravity or the molecular forces that bind atoms together. Instead, it is man made, and it could be made otherwise.
The central message of the film serves to initiate the uninitiated; to persuade the complicit, the distracted and the unconcerned to become concerned, which I believe it does with striking efficiency. A common criticism of films of this nature is that they make no effort to be constructive. Sure, the world is fucked, but what do you suppose we do about it? In truth, this critique is unfair. Curtis didn’t set out to make a audiovisual manifesto, and expecting him, and directors like him to do so is evident of misunderstanding the role these creative endeavours play. It is not their job to invent the future; it’s to break down the facade of the house we live in, douse it in petrol and light the spark, setting in motion the fire of change. The role of these films is not to tell us how to revolt, but to communicate why we must.
Yet in departure of convention, ‘HyperNormalisation’ contains salient, constructive points within its analysis of major political events. Namely, the grassroots Occupy movement and the furious Arab Spring. In 2007, the crisis in the subprime mortgage market of the United States, and the resultant collapse of Lehman Brothers on September of the next year began the rapid unravelling of the international financial system and the collapse of the world economy. The Financial Crash of 2008 is the most dramatic example of the cracks forming within, and the instability of, our modern civilisation, taken hostage by the dangerously volatile model of 21st century capitalism. Worldwide breakdown, however, didn’t ensue. Societal collapse was avoided by the bailing out of banks to the tune of trillions, and fiscal policy designed to re stabilise an economy on the brink of shutting down. Instead, what resulted was the global economic downturn; a Great Recession that hit the populace viciously. Millions lost their homes, possessions and stable jobs, yet the arrogant financiers-the architects of the crisis itself-were not punished for their criminal actions, and instead were employed by governmental treasury departments to clean up the mess they created. The electoral repercussions of crisis is only now being seen; a delayed rejection of the current socio-political order is being heard in the ballot box. The resurgence of anti-establishment, populist political candidates across the globe; evident in the rise of the nativist, neo-fascism of which President Trump, Le Pen and Wilder’s are leading, and the radical, anti-capitalist critiques of Sanders, Corbyn, and Melenchon, are symptoms of an anger that has been simmering for years. Politics takes time to catch up, to transfer sentiment into votes, but there was direct action taken in the few years succeeding the crisis. A gradual atmosphere of protest arose, first by students of the University of California in 2009 and 2010, wherein the slogan ‘Occupy Everything, Demand Nothing’ first arose. Thousands of miles away, The Spanish Indignados movement began in May of 2011 and by December, mass protests arose in multiple cities in multiple countries across the globe. This was a worldwide opposition to social inequality and the tight grasp of large corporations over our democracies, with the aim of changing the dynamic of power back towards the people. It was, in effect, a mass uprising against the corrupting influence of our current monetary system on human civilisation. It’s sentiment, and it’s power, was distilled into a single phrase: “WE ARE THE 99%”.
Known as the Occupy Movement, protesters employed non-violent means of civil disobedience, occupying symbolic physical spaces, such as Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange, in order to disrupt the continuation of normal proceedings. It was an exercise in revolution, and it’s methods of organising contingents of diverse, autonomous individuals, without the exercise of hierarchical power provide a lesson in democratic theory. Dividing into working groups, a kinaesthetic language of hand signals enabled the silent expression of reactions, allowing each to have their voice without the forums descending into unworkable cacophonies.
Their use of the ‘human microphone’ technique was key to the workings of democratic cooperation. There was, at one time, one speaker, but the voice of whomever it happened to be was spoken back by the crowd as a whole, simultaneously amplifying the voice of the individual, whilst forcing the collective to consider the premise of each position by adopting it into their thoughts through the process of dictation. It was a hive mind of sorts, yet it protected the individuality of each member, amplifying the autonomous and assimilating it into the body of the whole, giving power to a lone voice by changing it into many. Occupy was totally devoted to this notion of participatory democracy, of cooperative endeavours without surrendering the individuality necessary for plurality, and the human microphone is passionately indicative of this vision. Any vision of modern revolution must employ such cohesive democracy, or risk being dangerously divisive, plotting a path to its own downfall at the hands of totalitarians.
William Gibson, a science-fiction writer highlighted in the film as an internet visionary, conceived of a realm separate to the cynical reality of physical society. He called it Cyberspace: a dimension apart from the oppression and tedium of the human world, allowing people, uninhibited by the constraints of physical distance, to come together to share and debate their collective knowledge and ideas. An emancipatory world of plural democracy, free from the influence of the gatekeepers of wealth or power. In some ways, Gibson’s utopian vision was achieved, yet he failed to predict the dystopian duality of his ideas. Like a mirror, the internet reflects all aspects of humanity, with room within the Cyberspace given not only to innovation and intellectualism, but to depravity and viral triviality as well. Interconnection democratised power, yet it also compounded and centralised it — big data, internet monopolies, mass surveillance, all gave more tools to the very gatekeepers Gibson’s utopia was attempting to circumvent. Yet this is only one side to the story of the new internet age, and the social potential of the most significant technology humanity has created should not be underestimated.
On the 25th January 2011, protesters began rapidly streaming out of their homes across Egypt. Flows of humanity rushed through the concrete labyrinth of city streets like violent rivers, racing towards convergence at large public spaces across the country. These demonstrations, now known as the start of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, were staged in opposition to President Hosni Mubarak’s increasingly oppressive police state. Appearing to many as spontaneous, the uprising was nothing but. Carefully organised and galvanised for months on social-media, revolution of the physical world was being planned in the digital. Cyberspace provided a democratic haven, a free forum away from the violent arm of the state, and in cities across Egypt, from Cairo to Alexandria, clashes between state and protesters resulted in the deaths of hundreds and injuries of thousands. The intangible world of bites was dramatically transferred into the irreversible spilling of blood.
Social-media was instrumental in the formulation of Occupy, too, dispersing information vital to the wider engagement and support. Once again, knowledge could avoid typical structures of hierarchy, and instead was being beamed directly to the pockets of an ever receptive audience. Our reactionary nature helps fuel the spread of passion; word of mouth amplified by the millions, each tweet and post engaging increasingly large circles of people. With each view comes access to more eyes — our culture of internet virality is not only for cat videos. It seems part of Gibson's utopian vision has been realised, and used to breakdown structures of power outside Cyberspace: the distant unreality of cyber organisation can achieve immediate, significant results in the physical – the power of the internet should not be overlooked in its possibilities for organisation, education and participation.
Despite their powerful techniques, neither movement truly succeeded. Though they definitely didn’t fail either. After 18 days of revolt, Mubarak resigned, a clear victory for the anti-government revolutionaries behind the insurrection. Supporters of Occupy can also point to indicators of progress made by the mass movement. The Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic Presidential Nomination will go down in history as the most successful of any socialist in U.S. history, by a wide margin. A cantankerous, angry old man from Vermont; an obscure senator with an area of influence confined to the small pond of his own state and leftists with a commanding knowledge of progressive politics, who proudly declared his stance as democratic socialism in the face of a largely hostile media, has now become the most popular politician in America. The audience for Bernie's radical platform may not have existed without the Occupy Movement, who dramatically raised the profile of issues central to his insurgent campaign: the grotesque levels of economic inequality and environmental degradation. Other than these consequential effects, the power of Occupy failed to translate into any direct change. Speaking generally, the movement appeared to oppose the very rotten core of society; the greed and destruction necessary for it’s sustainability. But short of the total redesign of our economic system, Occupy essentially stood for nothing. They failed to point to concrete demands, and so, in a world built on transactions, their point of rebellion fell into the ether, as they had nothing to offer but anger and opposition. A necessary, just anger, but mere anger nonetheless. The reason for anarchy in Egypt could now be viewed as futile, their resistance against an oppressive regime has resulted not in liberation but in violent division between warring factions, and a return to the police state the righteous revolution aimed to remove.
The common thread between the Arab Spring, Occupy, and often other radical leftists movements across the globe (with the exception of recent developments, such as Varoufakis’ DiEM25, and the offshoot of the Bernie 2016 campaign, Our Revolution) is that too often they fail to have a vision. They proclaim the need for an alternative, endlessly criticising existing structures and institutions, yet fail to provide one. A revolution needs destruction then construction, you cannot have one without the other. Without a unifying vision of what lies ahead, the passion is only destructive, leading to dangerous vacuums of leadership and infighting as with the Arab Spring, or downward falls towards irrelevance for the likes of Occupy. Failure to plan ahead; failure to decide on the immediate course of action after the fall, leads only to chaos. And chaos is not conducive to construction. We need not only radically act, but to radically think; to develop ideas and demands and visions which will form the makings of a genuine, coherent alternative — whatever it may be.
