Strategy of the shock

[Soapy]

Watched it yesterday and I had seen parts of it before. I like Naomi klein's books in general, and her lectures featured in the doc were interesting. But I felt that it was a clunky premise to compare behavioural re programming ( or de programming) on individuals with the societal version from the Chicago boys and Pinochet onwards. I'm not a fan at all of Milton Friedman and his concepts ( or crank economics as they were viewed not too long ago ). In fact his theories as applied by Thatcher in the UK caused a lot of pain for a lot of people.

In fact I'd go so far as to consider some of the points in the doc naive if they assume that that kind of stuff is a recent invention. Also, whilst I agree with most of the points in the doc, I still felt it was manipulative in it's editing and graphics style, anyone can edit part of what someone says out of context and I saw this maybe 2 or 3 times ( having seen longer versions of some of the interviews featured.) I don't think they needed to do that and it lessens the impact of the message when they use cheap techniques like that.
The narrator was a bit crap too, ( Michael Winterbottom ? ) His tone could have been a bit more even, but instead came across as a tad bolshy in places.

However, it is worth watching if only to compare to other docs in the same theme, and I did learn one fact that I didn't know before ( i.e. at the time it was made Moscow was the city with the most billionaires living in it ) but which made a lot of sense concerning how their money was made. Maybe the book is a better option ( No Logo is a great read ) but I doubt many people here would buy one of Klein's books never mind watch the doc.

So from my perspective, nothing new in the Doc really, might be a good primer for people who don't have a clue what has happened in the last 50 years and spur them on to more research. I agree with the main message about the Shock Doctrine in society, but think it could have been put across a lot better. And it will leave itself open to criticism from just about anyone with right wing or republican tendencies and maybe even some left wingers/democrats who felt that the Doc tries to manipulate rather than inform.

[nicolas10]

Quite a good assesment. There is really no need to manipulate information, it only serves to diminish the credibility of the message. In the part I've been watching I didn't observe it, but maybe I hadn't seen the parts that you mention.

Nic