Product Details

• Region: All Regions
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0930852753
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #48,345 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. Curtis quotes a Wall Street banker saying "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. Man's desires must overshadow his needs." Four one-hour segments: Part 1: Happiness Machines. Part 2: The Engineering of Consent. Part 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads. He Must be Destroyed. Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A sober look over the last century, April 19, 2009

By	snapper - See all my reviews

An interesting, well-made documentary on the changes in the relations between business/government and their subjects. I'm not sure which was the more ludicrous -- the lengths to which the former went to justify their contempt for the latter, or the long-running scam on everyone's credulity by the "sciences" of psychiatry and psychology. Not to go all Tom Cruise on ya (speaking of long-running scams), but is there another "science" with such low predictive value? I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of real scientists who are tired of laughing at the old joke of psychiatry's efficacy.

I was mildly surprised that, having laid the foundation for the elite's morbid fear of the "irrational masses," the esteemed doctors never stopped to wonder how a self-selected group of specialists would somehow be immune from irrationality, without which immunity their recommendations for management and governance were no more than another howl from the mob. Did they really imagine that Nazi Germany (a watershed motif throughout the film) was run from the bottom up?

This product seems to be another of the home-made bare-bones DVD-R's created from the video files available at archive.org. For myself, with my indifferent dial-up connection, it was certainly worth it to go this route. The video quality is VHS-level or thereabouts, but as most of the original film was assembled from decaying old film stock, I don't think even HD would've been much of an improvement. Everything, menu and chapters, played as well as a commercial DVD, with no glitches or unreadable portions. Also, the seller seems to have a generous customer service policy, though I never tested it.

P.S. Loved Reich's daughter, especially her "Freudian slip."

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent video, don't buy it, get it for free, August 30, 2009

By	amarkist (san francisco) - See all my reviews

This is one of the most interesting documentaries I have ever seen, deeply thought provoking and insightful.
[...]

5.0 out of 5 stars How corporations got their power over us, August 10, 2009

By	John Takahashi "Robinhood's Angel" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ever wonder why we seem to be slaves to fashion? Why you derive so much pleasure from shopping? DO NOT MISS The Century of the Self as Adam Curtiss explains the history of advertising, propoganda, and credit, even showing the link between "retail department store" chains and the banking industry!