A tale of two Curtises

It seems that not all Curtises are treated equally in US media-land.

While Richard Curtis is making his own kind of transAtlantic "New Labour Agitprop"(!) splash with "The Girl in the cafe," another British Curtis - Adam, no relation, I think - is having less success State-side.

Adam Curtis is responsible for a somewhat less Blair-friendly media project on the political scene, thanks to his three-part BBC documentary series, The Power of Nightmares - described by Peter Bergen in The Nation as "arguably the most important film about the 'war on terrorism' since the events of September 11. It is more intellectually engaging, more historically probing and more provocative than any of its rivals, including Fahrenheit 9/11."

Curtis is described by Andy Beckett of The Guardian as "perhaps the most acclaimed maker of serious television programmes in Britain. His trademarks are long research, the revelatory use of archive footage, telling interviews, and smooth, insistent voiceovers concerned with the unnoticed deeper currents of recent history, narrated by Curtis himself in tones that combine traditional BBC authority with something more modern and sceptical: 'I want to try to make people look at things they think they know about in a new way.'"

Perhaps that's why we haven't yet seen it in the States. Although it was aired in the UK (on BBC 2) last October 20, and, as Bergen notes, has been shown "at Cannes and at a few film festivals in the United States, it has yet to find an American distributor, and for understandable reasons." Such as?

The documentary asserts that Al Qaeda is largely a phantom of the imagination of the US national security apparatus. Indeed, The Power of Nightmares seeks nothing less than to reframe the past several decades of American foreign policy, from the Soviet menace of the 1970s to the Al Qaeda threat of today, to argue that neoconservatives in the American foreign policy establishment have vastly exaggerated those threats in their quest to remake the world in the image of the United States.

There are good reviews of the documentary in the UK press, e.g., at The Times of London and The Guardian. Yet interestingly, Bergen is more skeptical of Curtis than the aforementioned UK reviewers. While Bergen notes that "The fact that the film has not been widely shown here [in the U.S.] is our loss, since it raises important questions about the political manipulation of fear," he also thinks the documentary series is "troubling for reasons other than the ones Curtis supposes. For the thesis he advances--that the war on terrorism is driven by nightmares rather than nightmarish potentialities--is one that merits considerable skepticism." Bergen goes on to pick holes in the narrative - unable, perhaps, to accept the true power of Curtis's thesis (although I'll have to wait to see the film myself to make sure). Yet he still concludes that The Power of Nightmares

is a richly rewarding film because it treats its audience as adults capable of following complex arguments." This is a vision of the audience that has been almost entirely abandoned in the executive suites of American television networks. It would be refreshing if one of those executives took a chance on The Power of Nightmares. After all, its American counterpart, Fahrenheit 9/11, earned more money than any documentary in history. And what Curtis has to say is a helluva lot more interesting than what Michael Moore had to say.

But is it possible that what Curtis has to say is also more interesting than what the other Curtis (Richard) has to say? And could HBO's resident Brit Colin Callender be "one of those executives" who might take a chance on this other film in America? I'm not so sure. HBO might like to think of itself as a bit edgy, but I don't think it's ready for that kind of heat. What about BBC America, which in May 2003 rebroadcast “War Spin: Saving Private Lynch”, which embarrassed the US in its attempts to mytholigize Private Jessica Lynch. Well, as far as I know, BBC America hasn't taken it up, and I doubt that it will.

So who will show The Power of Nightmares in the US? Will anyone? I'd guess that if anyone could really tackle this subject and get it aired in the US, it's probably the Brits. There's something about doumentaries and authoritative British accents that allows US audiences to negotiate meaning from such texts at a greater cultural distance - just far enough but not too far - than would be the case with a domestic attempt. But even so . . .

Perhaps the trouble is, while Richard Curtis's project has the backing of Blair (and, perhaps covertly, even the Bush administration), Adam Curtis's project is still well beyond the Washington pale. The Power of Nightmares is the sort of project that can still get funding and screening on a (British) public service system that still displays some independence from political and commercial forces. But it deals with a subject that's more sensitive in the US than the UK (which has had a lot longer to deal with terrorism and its impact on the national psyche). In the '70s and '80s British broadcasters were able to tackle the issue of Irish Republicanism and terrorism in ways inconceivable to present-day US MSM. Perhaps the time is just not yet right. And perhaps the "tale of two Curtises" shows the limits of British media's ability to push a new political agenda onto a jaded US audience. And, to be just a little facetious, it's a subject that doesn't have a cute entertainment lead-in! Yes, it will be a long time before we see a two-hour movie about a love affair between a naive Scottish girl and a grizzled senior Al Qaeda veteran who's off to negotiate a lasting peace with the United States.

PS. The Power of Nightmares apparently is not yet available yet on DVD or video.