Kanye West gave people an insight into what he’s been watching recently on Twitter yesterday. While still seemingly on his “free thinker” tip, this time the rapper thankfully wasn’t watching dorks like Charlie Kirk or the Dilbert guy but the actually good video essayist Adam Curtis.
Kanye linked to a YouTube upload of The Century of the Self, Curtis’s four-part 2002 documentary for BBC Two exploring how Freudian psychoanalytical theories have been applied in advertising and government messaging. “It’s 4 hours long but you’ll get the gist in the first 20 minutes”, he wrote. “Basically Sigmund Frued’s (sic) nephew Edward Bernays capitalized off of his uncle’s philosophies and created modern day consumerism”.
He continued, “before Edward Bernays Americans purchased things based off needs There was a a time in the 20s when women didn’t smoke in public so Edward Bernays masterminded a campaign to make it culturally acceptable so that companies could sell more cigarettes..it’s that kind of vibe..”
We asked Adam Curtis how he feels about getting the Kanye seal of approval. “I think he (Kanye) is really interesting,” he says over email. “It would good to talk about the modern dream of ‘self-expression’ and its relationship to advertising and politics and power. He is right at the intersection of those things.”
Revisit our 2016 interview with Adam Curtis here, and watch The Century of the Self below.