Alfonso Cuaron, Amazon “Related Media” for Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”

video for Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine
by Alfonso Cuaron, undated

chers—

Amazon runs this as “related media” on its order page for The Shock Doctrine. I don’t feel comfortable viewing it, because it shows the effects of electroshock therapy (and not particularly icky footage for what it could be — no blood, no urine, no feces, everybody is wearing clean flannel pajamas to go with their tremors). But I think the film ought to be available to be viewed. Electroshock therapy is a core metaphor of injustice and driver of Klein’s thesis. 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805079831/downandoutint-20 is the link, in case this doesn’t work tidily. Links going everywhere. Cuaron’s film should be in here somewhere.

—rk

Check Out Related Media

Amazon Video

Naomi Klein (No Logo) and Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (Children of Men) have created a short film to accompany her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” whose thesis is that present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labor conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention elsewhere.Klein attributes this technique to Milton Friedman, who is reported to have said that “only a crisis — real or perceived — produces real change.” She connects this idea to the fundamental notion underpinning CIA torture techniques (as reported in CIA interrogation manuals from 1963 and 1983) — to produce a state of shock in which the victim is out of control of her faculties, a “suspended animation” that can be exploited to get victims to do things that violate their own ethics or beliefs.

The Cuaróns’ filmmaking is superb, as is Klein’s writing. This is a chilling and powerful 7-minute film, and it made me want to pick up the book as soon as possible. Link to video, Link to The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Thanks, Csims!)

Filed under: Uncategorized