Insane Films: The Trap, Conclusion

“they set us a terrible trap … they led us into a world without meaning” …

This documentary is replete with grandiose, nihilistic over-simplifications tantamount to lies.

Adam Curtis posits himself as guru-narrator, pontificating over decades, stringing together carefully selected historical footage to give his position an air of foregone conclusion.

Moreover, the images and accompanying audio are alternately highly seductive, frightening, romantic and violent – together, traits which don’t encourage the impartial judgement he finally suggests is essential in avoiding harmful socio-political decisions.

If Adam Curtis’ analysis of liberty had bona-fide autonomous humanist interests at heart, he would not have sought to disseminate a blanket, coercive documentary with properties similar to the propaganda and the simplicity of arrogrant political campaigns.

The “West” doesn’t have a “narrow definition of freedom”, nor are the millions of individuals which make up the societies Adam Curtis steam-rolls as uniform as he suggests.

I don’t appreciate his cheap, manic grab at world history dressed up as dignified, worldy scholarship in the name of utopia. Its offensive stance promotes cold, paralytic depression about the world.

The world is not without real meaning.