All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Posted by Leon Haller on February 11, 2012, 07:36 PM | #

Edward Teller was a great American patriot, even if he was also a Jewish emigre. I hope there is no disrespect for him here. As Revilo Oliver once said, “It is our technology alone which prevents our immediate annihilation by our racial enemies.” As Euro-populations continue to dwindle, relatively as well as absolutely, and as other countries steal or are given/taught Western techniques, we will have to rely ever more on constantly evolving technological hard-power for our preservation.

You Europeans need to take note. I’ve broached this before. Between 1) your guaranteed dwindling populations over the next few decades (if not forever); 2) the equally guaranteed expanding populations of the Maghreb and Middle East (and black Africa) over the same period; 3) the considerable demographic breach of Europe already accomplished by Islamic settler-colonialists; 4) the insane decline in your collective military spending, effected in order to free up more money to shovel into wasteful, civilization-enervating socialist programs, and to be furthered still more due to current budgetary problems (how about cutting redistributionist spending? getting rid of those six weeks of paid vacation, early retirements, heavy pensions, etc?); 5) the impending nuclearization of Iran (and then Turkey, perhaps); and 6) the coming withdrawal of American forces from Europe, not out of a proper desire to see Europeans muscle up and pay for their own defense (which would be good for European survival prospects), but because of our own socialist spending-created fiscal and economic problems, Europeans are going to find themselves literally vulnerable to Islamic invasion and conquest - a scenario made still more likely by the growing Middle East/North Africa deficits in water, and concurrent projected declines in oil supplies.

Europe is going to need new Tellers (or perhaps, if some prefer, von Brauns) to ensure its survival.

La dolce vita, lived since WW2 under American security guarantees, is just about over.

On another note, I recall having wanted to see Century of the Self when it first appeared in the US, but I never did. I had read the book PR! upon which it is based in the late 90s.

Posted by Graham_Lister on February 11, 2012, 07:46 PM | #

Dan I’m glad someone else here is a Curtis fan - he is a very sharp guy indeed. I have listened to him discuss his ideas at a media/literary festival and briefly chatted with him - he’s nice guy too.

“The Century of the Self” is, in my view, his ‘must watch’ documentary - good analysis of the witches brew of counter-culture meets consumerism in the ever expansive concept of ‘expressive individualism’.

I think there is much more to say in fully unraveling just how we got to where we are both culturally and socially. Understanding the problem (in all of its aspects) is the first step to hopefully correcting it. Curtis helps in that task.

Like you suggested, I too am a little amazed that the generally dumbed-downed and ‘safe’ BBC gives him a platform. But then they let Roger Scruton make a series on beauty and Jonathan Meades also pops up from time to time, so it’s not always simplistic PC propaganda. Only 99% or so of the time!

Posted by Leon Haller on February 11, 2012, 07:53 PM | #

Based only on this clip, I suspect this doc is the kind of thing that shallow people mistake for profundity. It’s the same problem with most non-doc “experimental films”. They are less insightful or adventurous (as they suppose themselves) than merely weird. Juxtaposing radically distinct images is only amusing, at best.

I read the link on The Power of Nightmares. I’m no friend of neocons, and I do think the terrorist threat gets exaggerated for bureaucratic funding purposes, but it is real, Curtis notwithstanding. Basically, Curtis sounds like an asshole, Left-conspiracist division (which doesn’t mean I’m not still interested in seeing Century).

Posted by Dan Dare on February 11, 2012, 07:58 PM | #

Leon - I suggest you make an effort to watch the entire series following which you may be qualified to express an opinion.

In the meantime, your uninformed comments simply serve to make you appear foolish.

Posted by Graham_Lister on February 11, 2012, 08:25 PM | #

As I said I think the “Century of the Self” is the strongest film. It certainly helped to start the process of my own rethinking of certain issues. I guess some of it might be old news to many, but everyone has to start from somewhere.

I was just scanning the comments on American identity etc., and noticed Leon mentioning the regional origins of the Nazis. Funnily enough I’ve been reading around that subject myself, I think it’s quite an interesting topic. If my I feel my ideas on the subject become semi-interesting I’ll ask GW if he might let me post something on the front page.

But it’s late here and it has been a bit of draining week both in the real world (and the virtual one), so I’m out of here for now.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 11, 2012, 09:08 PM | #

One particularly interesting aspect of ‘Watched Over ...’ concerns Alan Greenspan and the extent to which his enthusiasm for the ‘New Economy’ was a function of the Objectivism that he came to embrace as a disciple of Ayn Rand.

Was Greenspan himself in fact another ‘Randian hero’, motivated purely by self-interest? Unfortunately Curtis neglected to fully explore this line of enquiry.

Posted by Leon Haller on February 11, 2012, 11:13 PM | #

Leon - I suggest you make an effort to watch the entire series following which you may be qualified to express an opinion.

In the meantime, your uninformed comments simply serve to make you appear foolish. (DD)

Hardly. Comment #1 was a digression on Teller. I am a rightist, and am ever on the lookout for leftism being smuggled into, and thus muddying the waters, of the racial struggle. The Left is the enemy.

Comment #2 stated “Based only on this clip”, which did not impress me (and, as I further implied in #2, I am familiar with enough in the way of avant garde cinema - Maya Deren, anyone? Tarkovsky? I went through a very openminded cinephile phase 1-2 decades ago - to smell the type, though of course I could be totally wrong about the Curtis oeuvre, having seen none of it). I also stated that I’d read your Wiki link on the first doc. From its description came my dismissal (while still acknowledging that the subject matter of Century interests me).

As for Greenspan, he was an early and somewhat marginal member of the Ayn Rand Cult. Libertarians and real Randians (you probably know this, but not all libertarians by any means, let alone mere capitalist supporters like me, are Randians) were intensely unhappy with his tenure at the Fed. They thought he completely betrayed his libertarian/Randian roots, as indeed he had.

Whether Greenspan really believed he could ‘guide’ and ‘smooth’ the economy through monetary manipulations, or was basically just a short-term obsessed selfish prick, however, is certainly a live question.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 13, 2012, 11:20 PM | #

As filler of a sort while awaiting the flood of further insightful commentary which is bound to turning up any moment now on All Watched Over by ..., I thought I’d take an opportunity to recycle a previously-published appreciation of another idiosyncratic documentary maker, namely Jonathan Meades, name-checked earlier by Graham. Meades will almost certainly an unknown quantity figure for most readers here, not surprising really since his works have never appeared on US television and, unlike Adam Curtis, his efforts do not tend to focus on the turbulent side-effects of American post-war hegemony.

I hadn’t really been much aware of Jonathan Meades’s oeuvremyself until a few years ago, when I caught a snatch of the second episode of Magnetic North and was instantly hooked. Meades offers a unique and curiously entertaining brew of highbrow artiness (think Kenneth Clark), nostalgic whimsy (John Betjeman) and knockabout dadaism. His insights into culture, particularly local architecture and folkways are usually highly original, often provocative and refreshingly politically incorrect, though certainly not in the sophomoric style of a Baron Sacha Cohen. This is telly for grown-ups.

A recently issued DVD anthology (PAL format only, unfortunately) provides a good selection of many of his more recent works including the two episodes of Magnetic North. This recounts Meades’s journey through northern Europe, from French Flanders to Helsinki, in which he attempts to rehabilitate the cultural reputation of the North in view of what he perceives as the modern prejudice that anything that derives from the South (ie the Latin world) is automatically superior and preferable, at least in the eyes of contemporary ’opinion formers’. I think he succeeds. The gloomy northern lands of beer, schnapps and herring prove, in Meades’s exposition, to have just as much cultural capital as the southerly lands of wine and olives.

Here is a review of the DVD set that appeared in a recent issue of “The Oldie”.

TELEVISION seems hell-bent on eating itself, with one channel’s new hit show replicated by a rival outfit before the credits have finished rolling-It’s surprising, then, that nobody has tried to emulate Jonathan Meades, one of the medium’s great originals. For nearly 20 years he’s been striding across our screens in dark suit and glasses, making a distinctive mark on arts documentaries.

In BBC4’s recent Art of Arts TV series, Meades was depicted as a light-hearted alternative to serious arts programming. This is a woeful misunderstanding of the man and his work. Meades uses humour and frivolity to make very serious points - he regards his shows as ‘heavy entertainment’, part lecture-hall, part music-hall. Rather tellingly, he refers to them as performances. He trained not as an art historian, but at RADA as an actor. His wide knowledge is that of the auto-didact.

In The Jonathan Meades Collection, we have access to ten of his best performances, beginning with a couple from his 1990 series Abroad in Britain, and ending with this year’s two-parter, Magnetic North. Meades starts from the basic idea that everything is interesting, indeed that seemingly mundane objects and, places can be gloriously bizarre when viewed from a certain angle. In The Absentee Landlord, a survey of ecclesiastical architecture, we see a church tower that seems perfectly reasonable until Meades stands in front of it and and observes how much it looks like a cheap party hat.

He and his directors mess gleefully with the conventions of the arts documentary. When a talking head is addressing the camera, the documentary maker is assumed to be behind the camera asking questions and prompting. He is not expected to be found wandering around in the background, inspecting the interviewee’s habitat, as Meades often is. An apparently straight piece to camera will begin in close-up before zooming out to reveal that Meades is apparently walking on water in a lido. This sort of trick was much beloved of light-hearted 1970s current affairs show Nationwide, where it was known to crews as ‘pull back to reveal no trousers’.

Watching these programmes in close succession, recurring themes become obvious, as does the consistency of Meades’s opinions. None of his trenchant positions is assumed for show or effect. Most obviously, he abhors tedious uniformity. He approves of the hastily-improvised inter-war shacks featured in 1990’s Severn Heaven because of their individuality. Four years later, in Belgium from Further Abroad in Britain, he contrasts the eclectic Belgian suburbs with their dull British equivalents

In 2007’s Father to the Man we discover the origin of many of his enthusiasms: the ‘asymmetrical and bodged’ buildings viewed on the childhood journeys he took through postwar Britain with his biscuit-salesman father, and the Shell Guides he devoured as a ‘midget auto-didact’. His formative years also shine through in Remember the Future from Even Further Abroad, where he explores the television transmitters, Cold War military installations and nuclear power stations that marked an era of progress at all costs, where food in pill form and day trips to the moon seemed just around the corner.

My only complaint with this set is that three discs aren’t enough. When it first appeared on the release schedules, it was going to be an eight-disc set, containing the complete Meades. This is just a selection, and while it’s all superb, some of the greatest hits are absent. Notable omissions include his essays on Nazi and Soviet architecture Jerry Building and Joe Building, and his visit to Salisbury Cathedral. Maybe it was thought that nobody would buy the complete works, but, I disagree. People who care enough to buy any sort of Meades on DVD are exactly the kind of people who would want the whole lot nestling on their shelves. Me included.

Me too.

Well worth catching even if only on the wretched Youtubes.

Posted by Graham_Lister on February 14, 2012, 05:28 AM | #

Dan

I love Meades - he is very witty - also he is an author. I have a couple of his novels (“Filthy English” &  “Pompey”) but sadly have yet to read them.

Didn’t know he had a DVD out. BTW did you catch his last couple of series on Scotland [Off Kilter] (very funny as always) and a great one on France which was on just a couple of weeks ago - I think he very much ‘got’ the texture and feel of the place.

Even if one disagrees with some of what Meades says he is a man of stunning erudition, is immensely knowledgeable and widely-read - and very funny too!

Sadly Dan he might be thought a pseudo-intellectual by many of our ‘middle-American’ minded friends - no matter where they geographically reside.