Shameless plug for the Glossary of Broken Dreams, which I saw last night. Deleuze, Latour, Marx, Foucault and loads more but my favorite was the scene where the American President explains the Global Economy and Labour Economics with green slime.

"Glossary of Broken Dreams" definitely has an interesting concept: what kind of buzzwords do we use in our (social media thread) bubbles, but most people don't really understand what they mean? Through a series of short vignettes and using pop culture as the prime example, that concept succeeds in more ways than one. It's one of more entertaining documentaries I've seen and it's massively thought-provoking. Highly recommended!

First of all, this is not a documentary but an essay. Some reviewers seem to be a bit confused about what genre this is, mainly because the heyday of essay film was in the 60s-80s. Google Chris Marker.

Then some people don't know who the director Johannes Grenzfurthner is. He is a very Austrian phenomenon of multimedia philosopher, a bit like Slavoj Zizek but more cynical. He's done a lot of social theory parodies before this film, so don't let the amateurish production misguide you.

Now for the problems. As rather typical for our current cerebral climate, there is a veritable smorgasbord of social issues addressed here, some in a rather cliché 1960s Marxist way (hard to figure out if that's parody),some in rather original, thought-provoking ways (like the segment on media culture in which Politics consults a shrink in early 1990s 8bit video game animation).

The best point: US-style particularized social movements foster inequality, because they demand more individual rights at the cost of the common good. But then one waits for a resolution, some sort of proposal for taking action, and there isn't any. The biggest weakness of the film therefore: starting a lot of conversations, and then let these peter out into nowhere. This becomes increasingly frustrating as one realizes that there will be no proposition at the end of the film, and indeed: it just ends (clumsily).

Grenzfurthner correctly criticizes at various points the currently hip dismissal of Constructivism, but in not really coming up with anything but concluding that society is effed up, he inadvertently confirms critics who view postmodernists as vacuous relativists. To which I would have said: You know, the murkiness of perpetual uncertainty feels pretty safe compared to the battleground of competing absolute truths.

And as much as I hate the term "mansplaining", that's exactly what much of this film amounts to: Men talking vividly about stuff without checking if anyone cares.

Feel frustrated because there are so many questions but no answers? How about reading some books? Google Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Silvio Gesell for instance (don't stop there, i.e. Montaigne never gets old).

Find the sections of the film talking about liberalism incomprehensible because you are not Austrian? Google Austrian School / Viennese School of Economics.