The Living Dead (1995)
Written and Produced by Adam Curtis
#1. On the Desperate Edge of Now.
This episode takes through the victors attempt of suppressing history. The victorious Allied Forces successfully rewrote the history of the Germans. The Germans were portrayed as the pinnacle of all evil through the doctored Nazi propaganda films, conveniently blanking out their sufferings and deeds. Hermann Goering's testimony at the Nuremberg trial was sped through without listening to the justification of Nazi party's path of life. Goering's justification of why Germany took the path of Fascism over democracy to steamroll the country into modernity after WW1 when democracy had failed was just pushed aside. Instead, testimony from low ranking Nazi officers were given credence.
In a single trial, the Allied Forces justified to the world their march into an evil war to ward off an evil regime. The suffering Germans were too traumatized to fight the altered course of history but instead suppressed that time of their history. The US used that sanitized history to control the course of West Germany in effort to combat the growing prowess of the Communist Soviet in the Cold War era.
Even though the final account of the Second World War paints the Allied Forces as liberators of Europe, American veterans had recurrent nightmares of the brutality of their Army to young Germans and civilians.
They thought that part of German was long forgotten but it kept resurfacing like a blob of fetid air from the swamp. In 1968, their old wound was rekindled by the 1968 students' rebellion and Red Army uprising.
Just when the Europeans thought that they had left their savage past behind, the brutal events occurring around the Bosnian War in the 90s was evidence that their inner evil is very much still alive!
#2. You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
It all started in 1938 when Dr Wilfred Penfield in Montreal, operating the brain for seizures, discovered various areas of the brain where information and memory could be stored. This discovery excited many psychologists, including Dr Ewen Cameron. After witnessing the terrible acts committed by man in WW2 during the proceedings of the Nuremberg trial, scientists were toying the idea of suppressing unpleasant memories. It further progressed to device ways to make a clean slate of the mind and implanting thoughts. With the Cold War looming, this process was used for 'brain washing' to spy into each other's territory with the American thinking that the Soviets were superior to them in mind manipulation. There were even theories which suggested that Lee Oswald was brainwashed by the Russians to assassinate JFK.
At the end of the day, all the presumed good work failed to suppress unpleasant thoughts. It only wrecked some lives. The dangerous memories of man kept trapped deep in the crevices of the human mind.
Since mind manipulation was unsuccessful, scientists tried to develop artificial intelligence to do human's dirty work, especially in wars. A living example of this is the wide use of guided missile and intelligent bombs in the Iraq War.
#3. The Attic
This episode shows how Margaret Thatcher used the nostalgia of the glorious past of the British to boost the public morale to bring the country to greater heights. This similar technique was also used by Winston Churchill during the WW2 when he stood alone against the Nazi's advances.
Coldwitz Castle, a tight security prison in Germany was where Airey Neave proved to be a British hero in 1941. He managed to escape incarceration through a trap door that even the Germans did not know about. He later became an English MP.
In the 70s, Britain became chaotic with industrial strikes and the values held by Brits during the war slipping away. Its power was also slipping away.
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| 10, Downing Street. |
The same Neave was the play-maker, after being discontented with Labour Party policies, who introduced Thatcher as a possible PM candidate.
After winning the elections in 1975, Thatcher tried to instill patriotism and romanticism of their glorious past to boost economy. Even though this helped to boost the morale of the soldier during the Falklands War and gave them pride, the ghost of the past did come haunting them. The Irish, with their own side of history from their perspective were up in arms against them. Neave was killed in an IRA initiated car bomb.
In order to boost economy, the market was freed with minimal central interference. This was also their own undoing when panic selling crash the market on Black Monday in 1987 after a freak hurricane attack. She received the same fate as Churchill did. After being a key player in the course of WW2, reality hit Britain when the war was over. Reality hit them. The post war realized that they were literally bankrupt with only a past to boast about. Churchill lost the elections and was not even considered in the post war reconstruction of Europe.
(# In keeping with her obsession of remembering of the glorious past, Thatcher refurbished 10, Downing Street in the 18th century styled setting and she lived in the attic!)
Either way, the human species seem to be at the losing end. Forgetting old unpleasant history is sometimes necessary but not possible. It would still come and haunt you later in life. On the other end, we cannot go on living by basking in our laurels for long. Some old evil things in our past would catch up with us.
We have to look forward to move on....
When I was in primary school, two of my schoolmates who were initially bosom buddies just decided to stop talking to each other. I later found out that their fathers who had gone into business together fell into disrepute which led to massive showdown between the fathers. The animosity spilt over to the family members, hence the cold treatment towards each other. 40 years later, both guys having excelled in their respective fields of choice and their fathers had passed on, they just cannot bring themselves together to rekindle their childhood friendship.
