Over The Counter Culture

Elegance personified; novel but simple concept, beautiful execution. A motto for entrepreneurship?

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

Adam Curtis got bored of teaching politics at Oxford and went into making some of the most remarkable historical/sociopolitical documentaries I’ve ever seen. A BBC man through and through, he is an archive goblin, combing BBC warehouses to construct totally unique and convincing narratives of subtle but world-altering 20th century power shifts in diverse fields such as global and domestic politics, science and technology, management, marketing…

I just picked up on an interview he made with a US-based site, possibly part of an effort to break into the USA. It’s no surprise he feels the urge to get there – with the US featuring in a number of his documentaries, such as The Power of Nightmares, about the parallel and mutualistic development of neo-conservatism and Islamist extremist groups; or The Century of Self, charting the influence of psychology on advertising in the 20th century) – the impact could be large. For investigative journalists and documentary makers alike (where’s the line drawn?), what more are you looking for in life?

In it, he comes across as thoughtful, intelligent, grumpy, but also confident – to the point of narcissism. It’s a fascinating insight into the work of a strong but underexposed force in TV. Here are some interesting takeaways for the time-pressed amongst you:

On the underlying interest driving his work:

I was convinced that power in my society, the power in our societies, moves not just through politics, it goes through science, it goes through public relations, it goes through psychology, it goes through everything and that we should be telling stories about this. And no one was.

[..] the thing that fuels these programs is not a sympathy for a particular side or another, it’s just a general grumpiness about the way reality is being portrayed. And then on top of that, I’m trying to ask, well, why are they obsessed with portraying this fantasy? So there are two levels in my films. There is a factual story and then, on top of that, I try and say, hang on, why has this happened?

I’ve always been fascinated by 19th century novelists because they are very cinematic. They take a panorama of a society and they have characters moving through it and they tell the story of the characters, but they also tell you something about society at the same time.

On documentaries vs. journalism on TV and US vs. UK TV

I don’t think I make documentaries. I’m going to go on about this. I’m a journalist. I’m a modern journalist. I use pictures imaginatively to argue a piece of journalism essay-making. Documentaries are for people who make achingly plangent films with no commentary about graves in Bosnia. There’s a wonderful place for those in television and in cinema but I do something else. I tell people about the world and I use my voice and I tell them what I think and I show pictures that I like.

I don’t know how it would work here, but at the BBC, I argued that, although these films are critical, you wouldn’t know quite what my politics were. And actually, I keep my politics perfectly out of this. This is a very interesting area and I think that TV in my country is beginning to adapt to this. I don’t know whether your television is; I think it’s much more timid. It’s really a simple question. Why can’t television stations have Op-Ed pages? It’s as simple as that. Why not? It’s not like it’s a polemic – I’m writing a critical piece.

I am fascinated by the structure of television, because television is episodic. You can have ten episodes or twelve, or you can have 25 episodes; you can criss and cross and make things work in a structure which, in a one-off film, you can’t necessarily do.

I just think television is a really original medium which people haven’t yet fully exploited and discovered. I mean, we were talking earlier on about how so much really good drama, from our British point of view, is being done on American television now. It’s really inventive. Some of the cutting and the structure. The structure of a series like The Wire, even 24 – whatever you think about the ludicrousness of the plot, it uses many of the avant-garde techniques of the filmmakers of the 60s.

On the insufficiency of “big idea” journalism on TV:

Marlow: Do you ever feel that it’s not actually the politics that American stations disagree with, but the fact that you actually tackle big ideas, and we’re not well-known for dealing with big ideas?

Curtis: I think there is a fear of doing ideas on television. And to be honest, if you look at the mind of a television executive, it is quite well-founded. I know the archives at the BBC. Programs about ideas are so boring because what you tend to have is, you have a well-known personality. They do lots of shots of them striding around usually different parts of the world and then they do illustrative bits in between and they’re really dull. What I do is find stories that I then use to illustrate the ideas.

The scary part – bemoaning absences of elitist confidence. Doesn’t that advocate dogmatism? Isn’t that a prerequisite for fascism? What does he think of Obama I wonder?

Many of the people who make television programs have run out of ideas. They haven’t got anything more to say. So what they do is they entertain the masses by making reality TV. It’s as much their fault as it is the fault of the masses. They’ve run out of confidence. They haven’t got the faintest idea of what to do. They don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong any longer. It’s partly what my programs are all about; it’s the failure of the elite to really have confidence any longer. That’s true in television as it is in politics and journalism.

And he makes no bones about being part of that elite:

Marlow: And you use yourself as a benchmark?

Curtis: I think I’m quite normal. I think what I would like, other people would like. People like stories, it’s just a given fact. However much some filmmakers try to get away from it, storytelling, even in it’s most dislocated form, is what drives movies.

[discussing works that  intertwine initially disparate storylines, and social commentary] Personally, I think that people like me are pushing television towards what great novels were like in the 19th century.

He puts across a narcissism in this interview that I’ve rarely encountered before, though thankfully it’s a lot less apparent in his work. What’s more, his talent, points of view and the stories he tells are so unique that he gets away with it – proving his point, in a way.

Again, the link to the interview in full: https://www.greencine.com/central/node/430?page=0,0

Rishikesh was a great post-Delhi break, worthy of its own post. Whereas Daz and Katie left yoga, the Beatles and the Ganges behind and moved on to Missouri, Tom and I ended up spending an extra night (total of 2)
It hadn’t started out great. Having finished up the previous post, we went out for the worst dinner we’ve had since getting to India. The “ice tea” we were served was foul – a murky brown colour and a taste to match. I hypothesised that someone had run down to the Ganges and scooped some up into a glass. The rest of the food was rubbish – and frequently had nothing to do with what was ordered. “Never order the Waldorf Salad!” had warned Tom, quoting Fawlty Towers. I found out why when ‘it’ arrived – the dish I was eventually served, I believe, was a WonTon Soup. Even the amazing location of the restaurant – a platform built over a cliff-face with the Ganges 30m below – couldn’t make up for just how bad the meal was. A beer (Kingfisher) cost as much as a night’s stay for 2 people in our hotel.

The next day (as Daz and Katie went off to Missouri) Tom and I went to take a look at the Beatles’ isolated ashram (spiritual community), the fertile grounds credited with the White Album’s conception. It was abandoned in 1997 and the tropical forest has been rapidly reclaiming it ever since – Tom and I walked right past it at first, and noticed throughout that it was covering the traces of previous tourist visitors faster than they could carve paths through it. For a modest 100 Rupees a half-dressed man – ostensibly a caretaker – opened the rusted and creaking gates to us, and after a half minute’s incomprehensible garble (probably some ground rules, duly disobeyed) we were left to our own devices in the huge hillside complex. The feeling of freedom and and adventure we enjoyed as we clambered around the crumbling, vegetation-strewn ruins is difficult to put into words – but it’s a deep-felt liberation when less than a week ago we were in Britain, where rules are king and all visits are perspex-framed, path-defined and velvet cordon-bound.

It was in this complex that we made our first on-the-road acquaintances – a strange ad-hoc bunch comprising two Israelis traveling the world after compulsory military service; a mute Finn woman, and delicate Swede, and a swarthy – but totally barmy – Iranian university professor. He was familiar with the layout, leading us through dense vegetation to a now hidden auditorium, the dilapidated roof echoing the Israeli’s weak Beatles renditions. We stopped for a smoke and shared backgrounds, musical tastes and racist jokes, and scheduled a meetup at a local cafe that night.

With one of the Israelis acting as our guide, we watched the village’s daily riverside ceremony, a pooja delivered in honour of Shiva (the creator/destroyer of worlds). Dozens of small candles were sent twinkling down the Ganges as locals and pilgrims burned petals in a central pyre. As night fell and the ceremony drew to a close, the clouds rolled in from the Himalayas and opened up, dispersing the pilgrims. Tom and I ran back to the hotel across a vast footbridge over the Ganges, as solid sheets of rain came down and bolts of lightning over the mountains lit up the suspension wires in the night. The power in the hotel was off so my shower was taken in the flashing glow of my strobe bike light – a decent approximation of what we’d just experienced!

Typed from Rishikesh, in the Uttarkhand province, where the hills rise up suddenly from the flat plains of northern india to form the start of the Himalayas. This is the village which George Harrison brought the other Beatles to in order to open their minds (and write the White Album!), though they eventually lost their faith in the spirituality of the place when faced with escalating money demands of their yogi. So it goes. As you can see from the hotel balcony – the environment is reason enough to come here, even if you feel your mind is open enough not to need the zillions of yoga classes on offer here. Rather go rafting, personally.

– the view from the balcony today – in stark contrast to our previous residences:

– our Delhi hostel – TV, shower and sofa + coffee table! luxury. Except when the electricity cuts out in the middle of the night and you wake up with rivulets of sweat pouring down your every nook & cranny. Fenton has once again left a mystery stain on the bedsheets. Must be a common feature to all his travels.

– the sleeper train. Not so bad, actually. Might smother my couchette with vicks vaporub next time though – tad smelly sometimes.

We arrived here having taken a sleeper train from Delhi Wednesday night after a crazy dash through the crumbling, traffic-gorged streets of old Delhi in two autorickshaws, getting on the train 5 minutes after it was due to leave (thank goodness the trains, like us, run on Delhi time, a local unoffical +20min timezone!) Not much sleep to be had on the sleeper, despite decent comfort and nice temperatures. I put it down to the constantly changing (interesting) scenery along the trip, the driver’s addiction to sounding the foghorn (like all drivers in India, for that matter – it gets used more frequently than both the indicator and the gearshift), and the men walking down the train every 20 minutes shouting ‘Tea! Coffee! Chai!’

Delhi is an interesting city, where India’s upwardly mobile youth – skinny jeans, bling, slick hair, westernised (but distinctly Hindi) music – come shoulder to shoulder with abject poverty. It’ll be interesting to see what happens should this dichotomy accentuate – which it seems likely to do, given the huge problem the government faces brining so many millions out of poverty whilst attempting to nurture growth of the other classes. As argued by Prospect several months ago, vast swathes of the Indian middle class seemingly lacks the will to contribute to a social program aimed at helping India’s poorest. The use of technology is fascinating, too – the ‘mobile phones’ you see in use of the street tend to be rows of satellite phones fixed to bike carts, like a mobile phonebox! No iPhones visible, despite its supposed availability in India.

The new Metro system is largely overlooked by the Lonely Planet guidebooks we’ve been using – we discovered it almost by chance, after an unsuccessful con was tried on us (and again the next day, by the same guy! what cheek!!) – it’s modern, built for capacity, much, much cleaner and more efficient than the London Underground; and it’s extremely cheap. Here’s a photo putting Delhi’s traffic problems in context – one can only hope uptake of tube services will grow exponentially. Indian traffic is MENTAL.

Delhi is also home to a seriously new-age temple of the Ba’hai faith (which Daz subscribes to). Set in the middle of huge, green grounds (in Delhi!), the moment of Zen walking around and sitting inside the huge hall was refreshing after a blackout night in the madhouse – though the smelly banter with an american Bah’ai convert in the Information Centre was not.

Also zen: the Red Fort, one of India’s most famous monuments

For an up to date gallery of the photos I’ve been taking on this trip, view the whole thing here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/philbradley/India#

As always, email us with your news – it’s good to know what’s going on back home, plus we may soon find we need other talking points than Katie’s voracious appetite for pizza.