SERIES

The Living Dead

19951 Season60m episodes7.1

Documentary

TMDB7.1

Votes12

Your rating

Runtime: 60m episodes
Genre: Documentary

About

Three Films About the Power of the Past

This series investigated the way that history and memory have been used by politicians and others.

Where to watch

Region

Not available to stream in United States yet.

Details

Director: Adam Curtis
Status: Ended
First aired: Mar 15, 1995
Network: BBC Two

Time to finish

3 hrs

3 episodes. About 1 week at an hour a night.

View on IMDb ↗

Cast

Adam Curtis

Narrator

SERIES

The Living Dead

19951 Season60m episodes7.1

Documentary

TMDB7.1

Votes12

Your rating

Runtime: 60m episodes
Genre: Documentary

About

Three Films About the Power of the Past

This series investigated the way that history and memory have been used by politicians and others.

Where to watch

Region

Not available to stream in United States yet.

Episodes

0 of 0 watched

E1 · Airs May 30, 1995 · 1h 0m
On the Desperate Edge of Now
This episode examined how the various national memories of the Second World War were effectively rewritten and manipulated in the Cold War period. For Germany, this began at the Nuremberg Trials, where attempts were made to prevent the Nazis in the dock—principally Hermann Göring—from offering any rational argument for what they had done. Subsequently, however, bringing lower-ranking Nazis to justice was effectively forgotten about in the interests of maintaining West Germany as an ally in the Cold War. For the Allied countries, faced with a new enemy in the Soviet Union, there was a need to portray WW2 as a crusade of pure good against pure evil, even if this meant denying the memories of the Allied soldiers who had actually done the fighting, and knew it to have been far more complex. A number of American veterans told how years later they found themselves plagued with the previously-suppressed memories of the brutal things they had seen and done. The title comes from a veteran's description of what the uncertainty of survival in combat is like.
E2 · Airs Jun 6, 1995 · 1h 0m
You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
In this episode, the history of brainwashing and mind control was examined. The angle pursued by Curtis was the way in which psychiatry pursued tabula rasa theories of the mind, initially in order to set people free from traumatic memories and then later as a potential instrument of social control. The work of Ewen Cameron was surveyed, with particular reference to Cold War theories of communist brainwashing and the search for hypnoprogammed assassins. The programme's thesis was that the search for control over the past via medical intervention had had to be abandoned and that in modern times control over the past is more effectively exercised by the manipulation of history. Some film from this episode, an interview with one of Cameron's victims, was later re-used by Curtis in his The Century of the Self. The title of this episode comes from a paranoid schizophrenic seen in archive film in the programme, who believed her neighbours were using her as a source of amusement by denying her any privacy, like a pet goldfish.
E3 · Airs Jun 13, 1995 · 1h 0m
The Attic
In this episode, the Imperial aspirations of Margaret Thatcher were examined. The way in which Mrs Thatcher used public relations in an attempt to emulate Winston Churchill in harking back to Britain's "glorious past" to fulfil a political or national end. The title is a reference to the attic flat at the top of 10 Downing Street, which was created during Thatcher's period refurbishment of the house, which did away with the Prime Minister's previous living quarters on lower floors. Scenes from The Innocents (film), an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, are intercut with scenes from Thatcher's reign.

Details

Director: Adam Curtis
Status: Ended
First aired: Mar 15, 1995
Network: BBC Two

Time to finish

3 hrs

3 episodes. About 1 week at an hour a night.

View on IMDb ↗

Cast

Adam Curtis

Narrator

The Living Dead

About

Where to watch

Details

Time to finish

Cast

If you like this

Similar

The Living Dead

About

Where to watch

Episodes

Details

Time to finish

Cast

If you like this

Similar

Episodes