Review: Can't Get You Out Of My Head

Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is English filmmaker Adam Curtis’ latest offering following the success of Hypernormalisation (2016). The new six-part BBC documentary stretches just over six hours long and employs Curtis’ signature style constituted of bold and abstract headings on colourful backgrounds alongside archive footage backed by a retrofuturistic soundtrack, provided mostly by Burial, Aphex Twin and Nine Inch Nails.

Across the episodes, Curtis weaves together a vast and intricate tapestry of events, theories, phenomena and individuals that he deems to have shaped the world we live in today. He touches on power systems, global banking, pharmaceuticals, climate anxiety, fascism, communism, folklore, individualism, bureaucracy, democracy, colonial guilt, American exceptionalism, the war in the Middle East, intelligence agencies, terrorism, slavery, chaos theory, complexity theory, big data, Russia, China, Putin, Mao, Blair, Cummings, Tupac, Clinton, Nixon, Hinton, Navalny, transsexualism, machine learning, conspiracy theories, austerity, mass surveillance, social media, and more, in a dizzying, overwhelming and sickening investigation of the formation of world society as we see it in 2021.

The intensity of the information Curtis dances through is only exacerbated by the idiosyncrasies of his presentation. The overload is delivered via Curtis’ indifferent and unconcerned narration. His unwavering monotone emphasises his message of the powerlessness we feel in the face of these increasingly shocking events and complex systems that proliferate across the world. The visual aspect of the documentary only adds to this high emotional charge. Archive footage of everything from 9/11 to stock footage of the industrial heartlands of Northern England in the 1980s is underpinned by haunted and ethereal music of Burial and Aphex Twin, as well as many others. Images from history, accompanied by music seemingly belonging to both the past and the future simultaneously, place the viewer at the centre of this swirling network of connected events. These images are repeated and added to, each receiving their own musical motif and thus enhancing the feeling of cyclicity and exponential perpetuation of these global crises.

This feeling of being out of control is core to the documentary. Curtis cites repeated instances where pre-existing systems of power are proven to be corrupt and then are consequently toppled but nothing really ever changes. Revolutionary forces are either crushed by malignant forces, or simply evolve into new systems that maintain and reinforce the status quo, as dictated by the powerful and the wealthy. He tracks this from the formation of the ‘world economy’ to the birth of the digital age. Arriving at a point where we are increasingly struggling to find meaning in the world around us, and therefore are unable to work towards a shared vision of the future. Curtis identifies this search for meaning and yearning to tell stories as intrinsic to human nature. It is this misalignment with the machines and systems that run the world around us, that have no understanding of meaning, only patterns of data, that make us experience this confusion and sense of loss.

Curtis is by no means calling for us to ride out into the streets, instead, he is inviting a revolution in thought. This sentiment is encapsulated by the quote he places at the start and at the end of the documentary: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make. And could just as easily make differently.” Attributed to the American anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber, this quote reveals the core of Curtis’ investigation. The world around us, the systems of power and the global forces that dominate our lives are human inventions. Alternate systems, better systems will be theorised and formulated. Such a message is likely to get lost in the chaos and melancholy of the documentary, but it remains there to be found by those looking for it.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer