the shock doctrine

This weeks film was...

Well, actually, this weeks film was going to be Domino, starring Keira Knightly, which I'd recorded off of Film4, but about half-way in it started breaking up and became unwatchable. Then I was going to watch Tales from Earthsea, which I'd also recorded off of Film4 (due to timings I've not had a rental DVD for the last two weekends), but that turned out to be a re-dub version and I didn't fancy it.

So I ended up deleting both of those and watching The Shock Doctrine (this actually meant that I yet again cleared my PVR down to empty, though I've a feeling that with the autumn and winter TV seasons approaching, this state of affairs won't last long).

I enjoyed The Shock Doctrine.

Though, to be fair , I'm both a bleeding heart liberal and socialist (maybe even communist) at heart.

If you're neither of those things then your mileage may vary.

However, I have to admit to some degree of confusion with the shock doctrine. The basic premise seems to be that some scientists did some work with electric shocks and/or sensory deprivation and this somehow lead to a bunch of economists deciding that the same thing would be a good idea for the economy.

Actually I don't think that's what it was saying at all, but that's kinda how one of its messages came across. What I actually think it was trying to do was draw a parallel - that a branch of economics called "shock economics" (Google it) can be seen to parallel this shock therapy.

The shock therapy was intended to use the electric shocks (not sure quite where the sensory deprivation came in, or, indeed, the CIA's torture bible came in) to blank out a person's personality, and in its place construct a new, better personality.

So it is with shock economics - some crisis allows a particular type of free market economics to be bullied through and forced upon a population while they're busy trying not to die in floods or be disappeared by a dodgy dictator or whatever.

Now here it made some good points and the evils that are totally free-market economies and unrestrained capitalism are things I too would whole-heartedly disagree with.

The problem was it got a bit confused. While it was making totally valid and good points, it also seemed to be joining the dots in a way that didn't quite make sense.

Which isn't to say I can see kinda what it was going for, it's just that I'm not sure that event a) could be quite so definitively proven to be the cause of event b). In other words, it seemed to be fining a big conspiracy where I'm not really sure there was one - not in the planned and organised way it was being suggested anyway.

What I think I'm going to do is buy the book it was based on and see if that makes more sense.

As for the film, I'd recommend it if you're already of a similar mind-frame as mentioned above, but if you're not, I don't think it would exactly convince you to change your mind.