Watch the Shifty series
Towers: ....I think your point about hypocrisy is also true. When I think about publishing on social media, when I think about the way that our political discourse is in part driven by it, and more broadly, you know, not just within politics, people, entire mechanisms of marketing and selling products now rely on leveraging the authenticity of people, call them influencers, these creators to say, you know, "I sincerely am recommending this product to you. I use it in my life. Here's a video of me using it in my life. And yes, someone may have paid me $10-20,000 to tell you I use it in my life, but nonetheless, I do." And again, hypocrisy, I think almost the sort of the worst thing you can possibly appear to be in this world now is inauthentic or disingenuous, hypocritical at worst, where you you told us you were this thing and it turns out you're not. And I think that explains the like ironic detachment that we have between from sort of Gen Zed now to where we are today where it's like they've watched if you are authentic you risk exposing your authentic self and then you're mocked or derided for being your authentic self. Well, far better to never be seen to try. Far better to remove yourself. Oh yeah, yes, I'm wearing Crocs. You know, I obviously couldn't be wouldn't possibly be wearing those. Seriously, do you see what I'm saying? And I think that authenticity also connects to some political actors, right? Whether it's Farage, Johnson, Johnson's a strange one. Maybe Trump's a strange one as well, but by being "bad" for once of a better word, they're kind of saying, "No, this is my true self, right?" It's like, cuz I'm not I've removed the veneer. This is authentically who I am.
Curtis: Yeah. I mean, I think it's gone through a number of stages that, Yes. In an age where there are and you aren't a member of any collective group that has power then who do you trust? And you you begin to trust those who you admire and those who you think are like you, or those who you want to be like, and that happens, I think, throughout the 1990s. Then when things go wrong you retreat into yourself. If I do, one of the things I found fascinating looking at a lot of the footage of uh factual documentaries, news throughout the '90s is somewhere about 1997, 1998, "real people", and I use that in inverted commas, start acting. I mean, I know that when you're filmed, you're always self-conscious, but something really big happened. If you look at those who did what I had to do which is just go through all this footage and read the footage people just begin to retreat and they replace it with you can you can see, I mean I'm not being a specialist in this you know, when someone is putting something on and and a sort of acting mode comes into play. and this is before big brother, it's really before the internet. I don't quite know the reason for it, it's something to do I think with not trusting those who you might have trusted before, like the politicians. So you retreat into yourself. In response to that, you get this sort of wave of trying to prove that you are authentic from those in power. When that fails, which I think is 2008, when you suddenly realize that that class who have been saying, "No, I'm authentically caring for you, when the banks crash are not going to do anything to help you, but actually they're going to do everything they can to help those who caused the crisis." And then introduce what was called austerity. you don't trust them any longer. What you do trust though are the people who come forward into the political world and say, "Yeah, I am bad, but that's truly me." At which point you get Donald Trump. And I think that's true of Johnson as well, is that it's sort of like, this is really me. And I think there is this new interesting very complicated dynamic going on between the retreated individuals and the powerful figures out there which is, they create a pantomime version of themselves. You see that in um Johnson but at the same time we also have a sense that that's sort of what he's like. I mean it's not just in politics. You saw it in Ricky Gervais, Ricky J in "The Office". I think he was one of the very early people who managed to spot this is that he was obviously playing a clown-like ridiculous character which we all know, but we also had a suspicion that he was actually quite like that as a person, and he knew that we knew that. And it gets very very complicated. And I think Johnson and Trump both now play on that. And it's the weird end of an age that started with the idea of being your authentic self has ended with millions of people retreating and creating an inauthentic self of themselves on social media, whilst actually only trusting those who are saying, "I am a bad person". Well, that's the absurd end of this strange age. That's what I was just trying to point out.
Towers: Toxic combination. There's a scene that I really liked and I've said this to you already where there's a woman who has a CCTV camera installed outside her block of flats and she can watch it on TV, and she's, "I don't spend all day watching it" and she flicks through the channels, sees the snookers on, and then goes back to the CCTV camera. And obviously it's very comedic in its' timing, but you can kind of see the seeds of surveillance, suspicion. Fast forward to today where data driven surveillance by these ginormous tech companies, surveillance in a way that, you know, while at the time a humble camera outside a door you'd be going well, "is that ever an invasion of someone's privacy," and with the perspective of today you kind of look back on it, and god that was actually quite sweet in a way. It's perhaps a little bit naive but what do you do, is it fair to draw that line in the same in the same way? I don't want to keep sort of coming back to you and saying the things, that the themes that you explore in the film, they're here in the in the present day because it's never it's things are never quite as simplistic or as simple as that. Is it is it fair to do that?
Curtis: Well, it's fair if you... I mean the reason I put that in is because she's lonely. Yeah. And in a really strange, odd and rather touching way, she she sees a companionship in sitting in her flat in her flat in a block of flats just watching people coming and going. And in that sense, you can see you're right. It was the beginning of monitoring, seeing what was happening in the world as a way of managing it. She was happy with it because it gave her a feeling of connection. There's a wonderful scene bit where she she suddenly decides yeah, you say, to switch over the snooker, then there's a comedy, but she doesn't like that, she switches back to watching the door. And I just thought, well a it's it's funny, and I think she sort of knew it was funny as well, but she was also clearly someone very much on her own, and it gave her a sense of security, and it gave her a sense of being part of the world. If you fast forward now, people feel the very opposite. people feel isolated in something watching them, and I sort of think it's the big shift in our time is that she was sort of part of something. We now feel that you're part of a system that's constantly not just monitoring you, but extracting stuff from you, taking stuff away from you. whether it be data, whether it be your anger. I mean actually you can see, I think, people are beginning to realize that they are deliberately provoked by people in power in order to make their attention longer online or whatever. And also I think there's this loop system at the moment. I haven't really quite fully got this in my head, but it's it's almost like I call it "distraction extraction" in that you get distracted, like she's distracted by this stuff, because it's sort of... it's something going on. You can see early "doom scrolling" actually, in that woman. She's just watching and watching and watching of it with a slight sense of nervousness, which is what sort of doom scrolling is about. It's not really about panic. It's just a sense," oh, there's something might something might happen. It might. Yeah, it might happen." The dull hum of anxiety, which I think is much more prevalent than the apocalyptic journalism we get at the moment. The real feeling that people have at the moment is what you say, "the dull hum of anxiety thrumming away in the background all the time." You see that very early on in her. But what we've got to the point is we we now realize that that dull thrum of anxiety might be actually a way of managing us. I don't mean it's conspiracy or anything like that. It's just what has emerged out of that thing of monitoring people is a way of it distracts you into this constantly slightly jittery world which keeps you online cuz you don't really want to go out in the real world. It's a bit too angsty. And out of that, they can extract all kinds of stuff. So, it's a constant loop of "distraction, extraction". And I think you're beginning to see the roots of it in her.
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Curtis: It's appropriate to see today's political horizon as darkened. What I found fascinating about his (Christopher Clark) book, which I suppose I hadn't really thought about, he argued that back in the 1830s and the 1840s, right across Europe, there was a sense that no one really knew what was coming. Everything was very uncertain. There were big inequalities. There were all the things we sort of feel now. But what I found most interesting, as he points out, no one had a language to describe all that. That all the terms that we now think of as having been with us forever like Left and Right, social class, inequality, even the word ideology, we think that they're forever terms. He was saying no, they came out of the 1848 revolutions. Most of the revolutions failed in their main. But out of it came a new managerial class based on what was called mass politics. And, that it created these terms that we just accept today as the sort of cathedral-like foundations of our belief. But actually, they don't seem to apply any longer. And what I thought was interesting about that is whether the same thing might be happening now, is that the terms that were useful for that new managerial political class to manage these complex societies, and I don't mean this cynically, but they found a way to actually manage the mass migration of people into the cities, working in giant factories, social class, sociology, the idea of statistics... as a way of understanding society didn't really exist, whether those things were applicable to a mass industrialized society. Whereas really, as I try and show in the films, Mrs. Thatcher accelerated the de-industrialization of this country. In the process, she helped tear away the foundations of a mass society. And what's replaced it is a highly atomized fragmented society, where we all live in our own little village of one. That's what we live in. And what my brain is saying to myself is well, as Christopher Clark points out in the 1830s and 1840s, it was just amorphous. There was no language to describe it. Well, what was happening? Maybe we're at that point again. And in fact, actually, he says that towards the end of his book, is that I think he says we're now leaving the old governing forces of mass politics, and no one knows what it is that is coming next.
Towers: So wait, I'm apologize to the audience. I'm drawing the dots, connecting the dots myself now. Is the lecturer that appears in the series and talks about these words. Is that Christopher Clark, the author of the brother?
Curtis: That is a famous old historian called Eric Hobsborn. That's right. Who wrote a great big three-part history of the rise of industrialism, rise of capitalism, in the in the West and in America. They're very good books. Yeah.
Towers: So possibly then, if you were to try and look at what the defining terminologies of modern government are, you might think about targets and KPIs and efficiencies. That starts with Thatcher, but certainly, it's more of a a new labor thing. You know, there's that really funny clip where Blair's getting harranged by a studio audience because the man can get a doctor's appointment too quickly, because they've targeted that everyone can get a, gee, I think it's within 2 weeks or something. I don't want an appointment in 2 weeks. I want I want it in the future. And that kind of obsession with, well, if you want to bring down waiting times, we'll set a goal. We'll drive at that goal. You know, how does it play out in the grid? And that actually maybe that verbal architecture now perhaps serves a better purpose, a better descriptor of our time than the terminology you've been running through there about class, industrial action, industrialization, de-industrialization.
Ciurtis: Yes, but, and this is the fundamental problem of this time is. It was the late conservatives, and under John Major, and then Blair, that brought them in. Targets can be easily gamed. They can be manipulated, played with by those in power. What the target culture cannot deal with is power. It is portrayed as a new democratic way of dealing with you. "We're not telling you, as a patrician elite class what to do. We're saying these are the rational targets. It's up to you how do you achieve them, and in response you will get rewarded." It's again you're seen as a self-interested individual. The problem with it, as everyone who's ever worked in a large organization knows, they can be played with, manipulated. I mean, there are lots and lots of stories about the absurd outcomes of managerial targets. And what you're talking about is power. And I think, to go back to the revolutions of 1848, it was trying to find a set of concepts that could give people the power to be a counterveailing force against those who were controlling their lives. And that's what's interesting about factories. They were the thing that gave us the language, because millions of people were put in these giant factories, ruthlessly exploited in the early parts of industrial revolution. But then they realized they were actually together in this place, and together they had collective power. Out of that came trace unions, socialism, and a wider sense of being able to challenge power. What targets don't give you is the chance to do that. So in a sense, yes, they are the defining thing of our time. But possibly people would look back at them and say they were the final end of an attempt to manage a mass society. Rather like the Soviet plan, at the end of the 80s, was that they tried to bring in computers to make the plan rational, and it got even more absurd. And I sort of wonder whether we're back there.
Tower: Yeah, "Trauma Zone"... worth watching as well, for any for anyone interested. Do you ever worry that your own work is contributing to that sort of sense of helpless awe, you know, that in a way could contribute to political paralysis or paralysis of political action?
Curtis: I do think one of the big problems of our time is that, partly because of technology, partly because we're terrified of the future, and partly because we're obsessed by culture. We constantly look back and replay the past to ourselves. I don't think it's fetishizing. It's sort of an attempt not to look forward, attempt to go backwards. And part of it also involves the technology, where you can cut and paste the past in any way you can, which was a godsend to me when I was starting in television. It's how I found my voice. And I do sometimes wonder whether I am part of the problem, as well that I came into this with sampling. It is when sampling was rising up, because that's really what I do. I sample the past and rework it. I mean, in my defense I would argue I'm doing it to try and provoke you to look at the present in a different way. But I do sometimes wonder whether I might be part of the problem. It's true. And and that actually, if you are ever going to move forward into some kind of better future, there's going to have to become a sort of quite, almost like, tough thing which says "no, forget the past. Just forget it. You're you're trapped with the dead." It was ever since someone pointed out to me that that when you watch old comedies on YouTube, you're listening to the laughter of the dead. And I just do wonder whether we're sort of the people in 100 years time will say, "they just spend their time living with ghosts, playing back John Lennon, old strange images of Kurt Cabain endlessly again and again." And not just for older people. Everyone watches it. Everyone plays with it. Everyone sends memes around with it. But what you're doing is, you're endlessly living in a kaleidoscope of ghosts. I just think people will look back and say, "they were too frightened to go into the future. They were they were frightened". And I think it's something to do, and this is me joining the dots, that back in the 80s, a very powerful class retreated from politics into culture, and they began to obsess about it and possess it. And we're sort of trapped in that world now, just as much as we're trapped with targets, as the designated end of a way of managing society. We are trapped with an obsession with culture, and the culture has passed, which came about when the liberals went and colonized culture in the 80s.
Tower: It's so interesting you saying that because I was thinking about during COVID, when I was trapped in my house, scared, didn't want to think about the future. And what I watched on YouTube. Invariably, it was like a variety of things, nana, at reading. But generally there would be a crowd. Do you know what I mean? And it was, I think, a pretty simple yearning for being in a space with other human beings... But when you just said, that Laughter of the Dead. There's definitely some old concerts I watched, where you go, well, a fair amount of the crowd probably aren't here anymore. Fair amount of the band possibly aren't here anymore. And absolutely, fear played into my rationale for watching it. Because I absolutely did not want to think about the future. I didn't even want to think about the present. It was escapism.
Curtis: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's very strange. And I think it's it's partly the technology, but it's it's us. We're frightened. No, we're not frightened. It's a safer place.
Tower: So if individualism is a trap, and politics is possibly theater, and culture is a retreat, where does that leave someone who intends to be a serious thinker in the modern day? What is it that is coming? Yeah.
Curtis: Well, the truth is no one knows. I mean, I have a sense that there is there is something beginning to this, is why was so influenced by Christopher Clark. There is a sense that this fluxiness, out of it will come something. And what you're talking about is a language that actually describes to people why they feel why you felt like that in covid. I mean, you can argue it's cuz you were frightened, but actually, it's something to do with knowing you're part of something bigger, but having no idea of how to deal with it, how to change it. Because the fundamental thing of our time is that most people feel dissatisfied with this time. So it's a paradox. We endlessly play back the past to ourselves, which keeps us paddling treading water. We're not moving forward into the future. But at the same time, we don't like this time. We think it's unequal. We think it's unfair. We think it's frightening. There's a sense of dread about the future. So you've got this strange mix. No one in power has come along and given an explanation which people go, "oh yeah oh I see that's what it is." And out of that would come a language, I can't describe any better than that, that makes sense of it all, which then allows people to come together and still retain a sense of being individuals, you're not going to get rid of that, and we're waiting for that. I mean some people go, "oh, it's going to be religion". But I think that's yet another nostalgia that...
Tower: Trapped in an aesthetic loop from like yeah 2,000 years ago.
Curtis: Is culture possibly the thing we have to get rid of? Is self-expression really all it's cracked up to be? If everyone wants to be self-expressive, I mean I'm just asking questions about about the fun. Because I always think, when you've got a problem which you can't really solve it's problem. It might be in the very thing you never question. Yes. So the very thing we never question is our right to be self-expressive. Why? I mean, I've always been interested in that religious idea of freedom, which is the Christian idea of freedom. Which is, that our real problem as individuals is that we're trapped inside our own heads, with all these buzzing thoughts, and things we know are selfish. We know are narrow. We know, mean things we never admit to to anyone else. We're trapped in this what you call "a thrum of anxiety". We're trapped in that. And what Christianity says is, "we will liberate you from that". And and the whole point about faith and belief is that you say, "in whose service is perfect freedom". You are liberated from that. That's a concept that is so alien now. No one would believe it. But what I'm trying to say is a bit like Christopher Clark's 1830s, when things were completely different from now. I can see a future where a lot of the things that we believe absolutely are fixed, like self-expression, like the idea "what I feel is the most important thing", that they might have just disappeared. I don't know. It's not just about who distributes wealth and inequality. It's about having a language to understand how we relate to each other, and the world.
Tower: Challenging underlying assumptions basically of your ideas in...
Curtis: Whereas I think just going on and on and on about inequality is like, it's almost a nostalgic language from that old mass politics which you're not going to recapture.
Tower: There's a book by Walter Shidell. It's "The Four Horsemen of Inequality", or I think it's called "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", and essentially he makes the argument, backed with like, a political economy looks and at genie coefficients, which is the number we use to express inequality in a society, and does a historical analysis, and says, "you know I've crunched the numbers and essentially, the only ways you can effectively reduce inequality shown by history, is state collapse, mass mobilization warfare, plague, or like horrific natural disaster, or state collapse/ revolution. And obviously what's downstream of all of those things, tons of people die... therefore, labor shortage, wages increase, perhaps some of the aristocracy gets wiped out in the plague as well. And as a result, society reconvenes towards baseline, and then it gets worse and worse and worse again, until the next horrific thing that happens." When I hear people talking about inequality, his book kind of looms into my head every time. I go, "yeah maybe there aren't any other ways of addressing it, maybe it is horrific thing happens, and we reset."
Curtis: That's not necessarily true. The inequality. I mean, there is a sense of that doomed vision around a lot at the moment. But it neglects the fact that some of the great achievements of our society, and American society, have happened through mass politics and mass democracy. And you mustn't diminish mass democracy. It was an extraordinary achievement, because it allowed people to come together, have power, challenge those in power, become a counterveiling force to it, and actually liberate a lot of people from poverty and transform the world. It had lots of side effects which are terrible. But what it led to was a an emerging idea of the self. And out of that, began to eat away at some of those mass democratic ideas. That doesn't diminish those ideas in any way at all. The choice is whether you have some apocalyptic thing that you're describing about, or whether you find a way of actually allowing the sense of being a free individual, which is a noble idea, to connect again with a sense that you can actually have a countervailing force against those in power. And I think that's probably achievable. I think it's probably achievable with the technology we have. I think the internet is probably in its early stages. It got co-opted by venture capital in the dotcom crash of 2000. It probably could be liberated from that if we, if the governments, had the courage to bust open some of the cartels that are really dominating it. I think there is a wider intelligence abroad, a sort of sense of understanding the world because of the internet than we've never had before. I'm not saying I'm optimistic. I'm just saying it's wrong to diminish those ideas and just say, "Oh, it's only going to happen because of war." I don't know whether that's true, but I think we neglect that at our peril.
Tower: That we have the capacity to be transformative...
Curtis: It's not. Human beings can be anything. We are endlessly mutable as human beings. It's just extraordinary, and every age when it comes to the end of itself, has a limited view of human beings. It says, "no that's what we are. That's it." And I don't believe that's true because if you look back at history, other versions of people become, we're mutable, which is actually why being in a sort of fluxy, hazy, morphy time might actually be the other way forward. Might.
Tower: what do you want to do next?
Curtis: Well, I've been given... because I've got this fantastic guy who just goes around the whole world. He works for the BBC. He's called Phil, and he goes around to all the BBC offices all around the world and digitizes all the unedited material in the back cupboards of every single office. He's been going around for about 5 years. He's come back and given me unedited tens of thousands of hours from practicing but Japan, both Koreas, India, large chunks of Africa, all of China, America, Latin America, Cuba, and Italy, interesting enough. And the BBC would like me to do a history of the modern world. I'm not sure how to do it. I mean, I'm tempted to do it by saying, "Look, the really interesting country that we're beginning to look at in a very different way now is America. It's suddenly changing. We grew up more in American culture than we did in British culture, but it's changing now. We're seeing it differently. It sort of feels differently." And I wondered about trying to do a sort of a story of America, but completely from the perspective of all these other different countries, whether it be the Democratic Republic of Congo, Japan, because Italy, because these were all countries that were set up by America in the years immediately after the Second World War. And I just think there's some very clever thing to be done there, but I don't know how to do it.
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