ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the documentary film Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, directed by Adam Curtis in 2021. Premiering during the COVID-19 pandemic, the six-part series was avidly, discussed and ‘read’ on small screens throughout the world. CGYOOMH offers a critique of twentieth, and twentieth-first, century ‘Masters’ – from Madam Mao to the post-Soviet regime. Throughout the documentary Curtis grapples with the power of paranoia and conspiracy. Viewing under lock-down conditions intensified engagement with the film; with people, tethered to devices, tweeting, discording and otherwise dissecting Curtis’s point of view from multiple perspectives. In this chapter, four such perspectives are gathered together, asking: How does Curtis, and CGYOOMH in particular, account for and, perhaps, critique, power? The authors tackle this with an eye to psychoanalytic approaches, but also critical theory more broadly with considerations of Foucault’s and Baudrillard’s work. Though ‘written up’ here, each section was originally delivered as part of a Symposium on the film; the chapter closes with some questions from the almost 300 viewers who Zoomed in to join in the conversation.
