The Century of the Self

There was a certain exaggerated quantity of psychical energy which accompanied the termination of my perception of Adam Curtis’ BBC television series The Century of the Self; yes, a sensation which could only be the derivative of powerful unconscious drives. Curtis crafts an exquisitely coherent acclamation of the centrality of the unconscious impulses of human society and the manner in which the U.S. and British executive administrations have used corporate tactics in buying the vote ( admiration, unconscious pleasure) of the proletariat as consuming citizens.

Freud becomes the mythical fortune-teller, whose repressed Cartesian Nietzscheanism saw him giving over to the will to power of the force of the unconscious drives over the politico-economical self-interest of exploited (over-repressed) classes. We see psychoanalysis ( rather the bourgeoisie’s ideo-psychological mappings) rise to the heights of the executive branch, apparently to the whims of sub-urbanites in Pasadena desires to see Welfare dismantled; from Freud’s nephew Edward Bernay’s through corporate public relations and the Spectacle, through 60’s and the appeal to the alternative individual self by corporate America, into the Reagan and Thatcher appeals to the individual against government (and for the private interests of big business), into the Clinton election and re-election (and the manner in which entire election campaigns were engineered by ‘analytical’ classifications of ideo-psychological personality traits of swing voters) and one can continue this into the election Spectacle the Democratic party put on this year.

Moreover, one begins to understand how the Post-industrial working consumer has been administered for the past century; ye, one might even see History in the making, thus gaining access to this river and past through onto the other side, the future, and take some of our repressed brethren with us.


Link to film Here.




First, we can not stress the importance of historical interpretations of Freud’s thought by politico-economic minorities of force in the control of the masses. Administrations have been in an enterprise of doping the public, satisfying libidinal and aggressive drives in individuals while maintaining the status quo. This is the very same group psychology interpreted by the German Joseph Goebbels and the construction of the Third Reich; Goebbels is quoted in film as saying his influences, as Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was none other than Edward Bernays himself.

The true importance of America must also be acknowledged by this film; American policy (cultural, political, economic) has truly effected the world over already. This is an experiment that must be the birth of the New World Order if there is going to be one for this World; it will either be the NWO of the same Old World Order of minorities of force manipulating the whims and desires of the masses (but only in the 20th Century with a scientific precision that might truly be considered systematic, though it be a system of self-interested founding principles riddled with catastrophic mis-interpretations of our world of Relationality) in order to maintain a repressive status quo of exploitation, or a New Socialist Order, holding no pretense to truly respond to the repressed impulses of Humenity.

We see how figures, certain enlightened figures, if you will, possessed with the shabby traces of Freud’s notions of the aggressive and self-interested trends of the unconscious impulses, rise to great personal success by developing these ideas for soiled wages from political and economic representatives of the forces of the status quo of private accumulation. Bernays, Philip Gould, Dick Morris; etc, these manufacturers of consent have created a government in the image of public relations firms; Freud’s most Nietzschean ideas have been emphasized, and successfully (though certainly not entirely) manipulated, through promises of change which are all but empty in all cases but the few promises to increase the power of the Spectacle (in the consumer-as-citizen’s own demand, we are told and Curtis’ interpretation of history and Freud’s pessimist thesis seems to make perceivable here).

Instantly we see Foucaultian insights. As the State has been progressively engineering the Discipline of the individual in society, through increasing classifications (sane, insane, psychological traits, class), it has used increasing knowledge of the citizen, increasing access and un-privacy ( for Foucault we are approaching the Panoptical picture of society) in order to impose the unequal relation between workers and capitalists more deeply into the self-regulated (ideo-psychological ecology of the psyche) conformism of the core citizens as working consumers. We see the increasing administration of the citizen as worker in the Bismarck’s government, and it is evident that capitalism created and is creating the bourgeoisie governments it needs to have help shape the economic climate necessary for continuing accumulation. With the introduction of public relations by Edward Bernays, however, corporate and political forces have gone past the manipulation of the simple whims of the consuming and ritualistic worker; it has dug into the very unconscious of the masses, and with simple techniques, it has truly discovered the ability to completely manipulate individuals, so that we may live in a society today waiting for a political figure to wield these desires and interests in a truly authoritarian manner. We see the executive branch of America slowly taking on unprecedented power throughout the 20th Century, and we now have a democratic House and Senate, and a president named Barack Obama.

We will continue to ride the wave of speculation this film catalyzes, tracing our own thoughts and trying to find confirmation in this presentation. The portrayal of both the masses and the minorities of force seem to fit Nietzsche’s and Freud’s accounts of civilization; the large majority of society must be interpolated and administered by a self-interested and enlightened minority ( in this historiography wealthy, powerful, or ideological English German American capitalist middle-aged and elderly males) always and forever, for the people are mere pegs completely slave to unconscious infantile drives and wishes. Nay, we won’t accept it, just to be critical!

Yes, we already knew how powerful the Unconscious was, is, and always will be, and the extent to which elemental Life and Death drives shape the desire of humen. Yes, we already knew about the wealthy, powerful, ideological, and yes, English, German, American old white males who are the most likely candidates for the minority most representative of power hungry aggressivity in society. This must mean that some form of an powerful elite will be necessary even if there were even a possibility of transition into something ‘other’ than what history as of yet given. This is the Bolsheviks, the Zapatistas, the avant-garde revolutionary class of capitalist nations.

Question: is King Rucks an elitist? The answer must certainly be an affirmative, as are all the people who make the very important decisions of our world today. The proletarian is not the leader, the general will is not the leader, the state is not the leader, the free-(unfree) market is not the leader; the extremely small group of individuals who have gained the trust of the people are the leaders, and they must rule this world into a New Socialist Order.

This idea has always been under the surface of my thoughts for the last four years now, since I was first introduced to Freud, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Marx, but I have always used a claim of having the interest of the people in mind as means of fortifying a false fortress in my mind; that humen are equal and that the will of the people, however blind to themselves this will has been made, is my call to authority and leadership, and thus I am no leader at all. This is only half true, for leadership and authority are just that, and the most diligent adherence to the conscious (consciously known) wishes of the masses is nevertheless the rule of the minority of the majority. This minority has been and, King Rucks here concedes, is still necessary to the functioning of civilization, and the avant-garde class of revolutionary capitalist nations must not shy away from positions of control. Our basic principles will be new, as socially produced value will be used for society and not private accumulation, and we will make rational us of the knowledge of the relational union of all citizens of every nation, and thus our actions and words will have less contradictions; in any case, true leadership (i.e. little – though more than under capitalism- direct politico-economical participation of the majority) is necessary in the administration of society, and we must head the organizations that will become the institutions of a New Socialist Order.

Further, we now understand that we must appeal to these desires as effectively as, nay, more effectively than, the mouths of the Old World Order (the Spectacle, the politicians, the capitalist private interests). Our praxis must no longer be one of fairness, truth, integrity, and appealing to the rational interests of discontent individuals. We must make whatever art necessary to agitate repressed revolts against a repressed world to the surface; we must appeal to the most powerful, destructive, and constructive forces of the unconscious of the phylo- and ontogenetic psyches of civilization.

Forget about the truth in art; I am from this day forward appealing to the unconscious impulses to rebel against the father (or mother as father, and especially against the father as the established legal power relations between men) in humen civilization across the world. If you are not upset enough, hopeful enough, moved enough, to at the very least punch a wall, hug a relative, cry, sing, or dance after experiencing the art of King Rucks, I have failed as an artist.

There is no question of whom we are to appeal to, the masses or the elite. The primitive impulses of the unconscious run across cultural or politico-economic lines, as Bernay’s Spectacular transformation of the American public has shown; we must appeal to the sameness within the majority of ‘psychically healthy’ subjects across the world.

As we see, not only our art but also even our socio-political public theoretical pronunciations must appeal to these primitive drives. Though we have not the privilege of appealing to the same desires developed by a century of psychological programming, nor the repressive mechanisms already entrenched in the phylo-ontogenetic psyches of the American subject, we can always paint our vision in the clothes of the Spectacle. Those who see only the paint are at least as psychically satisfied with us as with the robotic representatives, (who have no need for masks, for their artificial faces have been engineered to please the masses) of the Old World Order. And, for those who see more than the paint of sensorial appeasement, those who follow the lines of speculation and memory-traces and begin to associate our symbols to re-create the subversive conscious intentions working quietly in our art, they are even better off in the conscious abandonment of One Dimensional Egotistical ideo-psychological conventions which must be destroyed if new realities (and reality principles) are to arise.

What seems obvious is the danger of the mask becoming more than just feigned affirmation; dancing with the programmed psychological expectations of consumers as citizens by denigrating the Authenticity (progressing content-form) of one’s art, in an effort to remain in fact non-identical ( to kitsch created psychological desires, i.e. subversive, unconformist, Art) yet satisfying, history makes perceivable the all too often failure to maintain the transformative quality of Art in the presentation (throughout a historical career), falling pray to affirming the order of the Old World. Coppola went Hollywood, and he never came back. As such, our art must satisfy, yet it must be critical, subversive, and avant-garde throughout. We want to satisfy the masses, and we will tweak the corners of our presentations to do so, but are Difference must always be evident enough. No, not even monetary success must rattle this commandment.

This insight has sweeping ramifications for all my previous thoughts on future artistic presentations. I was increasingly giving over to the need to progress content-form (form as content, content as form) even at the expense of the satisfaction of the experiences of the rear-guard classes. Marcuse, no doubt, played a great deal in this conception. Again, I legitimized this ‘elitism’ denied as such by convincing myself that I am make elitist art in the unquestionable interest of the people, for their discontent must be aroused even if it means they do not get my work. The Century of the Self seems to commend completely pandering to the whims and unconscious desires of the masses themselves, as they exist today in our consumerist society. Goodbye art, hello propagandistic Hollywood-like narratives with hidden subversive messages.

However, I was never given over completely to the idea of the elitism of King Rucks’ praxis in any case. Perhaps a naive universalism, perhaps with regard to cinema in particular, has always allowed me to maintain, beneath the surface, the idea that my elitist art will and must satisfy the masses, so that true AuthentiCinemArt can bring high art to the television of the American worker and be as well received as a kitsch blockbuster. I see know how this elitism for the masses might just be coherent; it is this pseudo-universality of the Unconscious Humen society.

The conscious associations my art will catalyze are structurally incapable of being identical amongst any two individuals in even similar conditions, let alone millions of vastly different individuals. But my art works under the surface, just like the dreams my art will follow in content-form; my art aims to tap into the unconscious energy of the psyche, into the deep reservoir of libidinal energy. My (authenicinem)art aims to tear down the gates of the conventions in the mind constructed by social institutions, the gates that ensure constant self-repression within the subject with promises of the increasing wages (and psychical satisfactions) of this administered world. You are not supposed to understand the art of King Rucks (or avant-garde art in general), but you are supposed to be powerfully affected (at least as much as kitsch) after experiencing it. The avant-garde filmmaker must have this need to effect universally in his mind, even if she is to use symbols which only few consciously interpret as she consciously interprets them. Here is a real demand.

We have drained this film of too much already in this first transcription; and we will no doubt further elaborate what we already have in the repetition of the writing of our interpretation of Adam Curtis’ four-part television series The Century of the Self. We can not over state our congratulation to Mr. Curtis on this historical perspective, and can not overstate the psychical stimulation said film has provided us and no doubt any one who is to take it seriously; yet we would be unclear if we did not briefly mention at least one serious criticism. Curtis’ portrayal of Freud seems standard for those revisionists of Freud which he chronicles, but he completely misses the revolutionary undertones to Freud’s thinking (we admit these are stretches of Freud’s thoughts, and only slight stretches, in the interests of progressing the science by Freudo-Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse, who is given the place he should here in this historiography); society is repressive, and Curtis’ represents this, yet he represents society as identical to this repression.

Freud himself thought repression necessary, but we must be able to separate quantity and quality differences in potential degrees of social repression. Society could be less repressive, and Freud hints at this throughout his career; Curtis’ misses this, and his portrayal of Freud seems to be of a man who was an unwelcome prophet of a truth of control and force of which even he did not want to know. We must claim that Freud was in fact conservative (whatever this term means) at decisive points in his intellectual career, and we must claim that he might agree to this interpretation; we nevertheless maintain that glimmers of a better world (less unnecessarily over repressed) are in Freud; glimmers in which, though they be few, one finds every color of the light spectrum of a much more valuable and satisfied world in prismatic beauty.

We could continue finding fault in the content of the film (and even of the form if we so chose i.e. the master narrative of the white male removed God-eyes narrator and its invisible interests, the lack of real surreal and poetic use of cinema though the subject be so admitting, etc), but I will end here. I cherished the film, and do not need to embellish it here with my own masturbatory critical reflection. Watch the film, and go out and experience and create images of the socialist democratic alternative, and always, always satisfy the self of the people.

Century of the Self

The Poverty of Culture: Fiction of Customs

The Fiction of Customs (aka The Poverty of Culture) is a venture into the farther reaches of, the most abstract and experimental forms of, what I, King Rucks, call, AuthentiCinemArt; more specifically the AuthentiCinemArt (or style, perspective) of King Rucks. Fiction is experimentation into the de(and re)construction of both the cultural and cinematic codes of contemporary society. The film is a denouncement of some of the major illusive, deceptive, and repressive components of historical human society and specifically those of dominating 20th Century societies, and an avant-garde attempt at a cinematic art piece. I aim to make a film that is visually, psychologically, and emotionally unsettling, agitating the viewer to consciously transform its repressed psyche and subjectivity. Through an ordered aesthetic transformation of found footage material, I look to affirm the possibilities of an unrepressed cinematic form. Indirectly then, The Fiction of Customs is a call for new cultures and for new cinemas.

Imagine Brakhage’s Prelude to Dog Star Man meeting Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. Fiction will be at this nodal point. The film is a poetic usage of the authority of reality (Deren’s conception of cinematography), the meanings made from montage, and the hypnotic visuality of cinematic perspectives on locales of time-space (Vertov and his perfect camera eye as truth). Fiction shall be an exploration into the surrealistic, lyrical, architectonic, historical materialist, detourning , poetic, and visual film. The film will be primarily silent, highlighting the visual element of cinema. We will be using found footage and documentary footage for the film, in a voiceless use of detournement, highlighting the importance of the reality itself; both the reality of the unstaged reality of the historical world as documented by cinematographic devices, as well as the reality of the staged reality of historical cinema- the Spectacle and its call to consumerism. Through montage alone, we will aim to criticize specific cultural codes, each act having as its theme a particular code. These include commodity culture and the Spectacle, religion, upper-class veneration, and xenophobia.

Montage will also help us achieve the surreality of cinema. Through juxtaposing and overlaying images, meaning will poetically arise in the relations of difference between image-concepts. This film will aim to act as a springboard for the repressed psyche to make conscious its discontent. The film attempts to merge reality with dream-state in an attempt to include the imagination of the viewer into the experientiality of the film; each individual is to create different associations to their own personal psychical life through the apprehension of the surreality of Fiction. Fiction attempts to both catalyze the thought of the viewer as well as act as the actual functioning of thought; as the mind works through images and associations, as will Fiction, and these two will combine in a dialectical dance whose only aims are to agitate the repressive apparatus of the psyche as well as give sublimated satisfaction to this psyche through aesthetic beauty (which provides invisible feelings of hope, as opposed to the nihilist despair such a deconstructive endeavor could catalyze within an individual).

The Fiction of Customs, then, is an attempt at an attack on the apparent validity of existing cultural codes (customs of society and cinema). It is a cinema of poetry, of intervals, of surreality, of Relationality, of detournement, and of the avant-garde raison d’etre. We will be trying to create a visual poem that can communicate the audience’s (and the historical audience’s) discontent with the arbitrariness and unfreedom of its psycho-socio-political codes. The Fiction of Customs aims at being a part of the seventh art; the poetry of the visual ideo-experience that is AuthentiCinemArt.