I recently met a woman who is into conspiracy theories. I’m not fond of conspiracy theories (think the Zeitgeist rubbish). Why invent injustice when the world is riddled with very real injustice already? By coincidence (or was it? haha) a week later, I stumbled upon “Living in an Unreal World“[below] by famed and brilliant documentary maker Adam Curtis, whose The Trap,The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares I had seen and admired. So I decided to check some of his more recent work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtjfoEvsR9w

And so it came about that yesterday I watched Bitter Lake and for the first time I was disappointed by Curtis’ work. It struck me as a conspiracy theory film lacking a culprit. Arty and well executed, but a conspiracy theory nonetheless.

So I googled “conspiracy theory” and “Adam Curtis” and found “The Loving Trap“[above], a Bitter Lake spoof by a certain Ben Woodhams who described Bitter Lake as the ‘televisual equivalent of a drunken late night Wikipedia binge with pretension for narrative coherence’.

I see Woodhams’ point but remain a loving fan of Curtis’ work.