“Can’t Get You Out of My Head” grew out of Curtis’s response to the populist insurgencies of 2016. Curtis was struck by the fury of mainstream liberals and their simultaneous lack of a meaningful vision of the future that might counter the visceral appeal of nationalism and xenophobia. “Those who were against all that didn’t really seem to have an alternative,” he said. –Adam Curtis Explains it All

I’ve been watching this terrifying docu-series made by Adam Curtis lately and I’m always watching it late at night and it is terrifying but I can’t stop watching it. The most recent of his films that I just finished viewing is “HyperNomalisation.”

I feel like I’m learning something I’m not supposed to. Which is probably why I keep watching, because, like many people, I get off on defiance and anti-authoritarian behavior but according to Curtis, revolution and uprising may just be another long way back to the old models of power we have no alternative to. This seems to be what he is suggesting using uniquely disturbing editing devices and a deadpan voice over that at their most brutal simply state the truth about power and society that no one wants to know.

It’s a hard pill to swallow and yet the way Curtis strings together alarming connections using footage and rarely seen before rush cuts of violent political coos, wars and upheavals spliced with popular film and television clips and scoring them darkly and ironically with a range of songs that accent and emphasize the hard truth, it’s hard to press pause. And each of these videos, narrated by Curtis himself are about 2 hours or more long so that’s saying a lot for me. Raoul Peck used a very similar editing device of disillusionment using jarring visual juxtapositions in his film “I Am Not Your Negro” which I’ve watched multiple times and highly recommend.