Who saw this on Channel 4 (UK) at the weekend? I thought it was very interesting, even though he did shy away from truly stating what he was really thinking. A bit too much of “I just want you to think this out for yourself” for my tastes.
Anyway, for those who didn’t see it…
Derren Brown is an illusionist/hypnotist/mentalist. He’s quite well known in the UK but apparently unheard of in the US. He is scarily good and just a little bit creepy, though I’m sure that’s all part of his act. His ‘Messiah’ programme used his unknown status in the US to good effect. What he set out to show was not an attack on US society or beliefs, it’s just that there he could act out his experiments without being recognised.
What he did was represent himself to five different sets of “experts” as something he wasn’t. He always made it clear that the moment any of them asked if he was pulling a trick on them he would admit to it. But they never did…
“The purpose of that rather bold title is that I am clearly not the Messiah but could somebody set themselves up as one if they wanted to?”
Experiment 1: New Ager psychics at a psychic school. Derren claims he has developed a gift of remote viewing and proceeds to demonstrate. He correctly identifies four drawings in another room with impressive accuracy. In fact it’s the best demonstration of remote viewing I’ve ever seen and the New Agers are equally impressed. They are totally convinced and proclaim it a text-book example of psychic ability.
Experiment 2: Derren tells an evangelical preacher that he has been struck by lightening and can now convert non-believers with a touch. A group of suitable non-believers are recruited and he does his stuff. One woman explains she is an atheist. One touch to the side of the head later and she’s crying and wittering about ‘inner-hugs’. Another guy is doing the whole falling over backwards thing, without either being touched or even seeing Derren behind him. Then everyone is falling over. It gets kind of frightening and they all leave proclaiming they are believers. None of them are stooges. The preacher is impressed, but a bit wary. I suspect he has worries about the apparent lack of free-will involved.
Experiment 3: Derren punts his ‘Crystal Dream Catcher’ machine to a successful New Age magazine editor. (This is pure Randi territory.) The ‘Dream Catcher’ he has asked the editor to try out is a metal box with a on/off switch, a light, a couple of wires and a pillow case. But this doesn’t stop him telling the editor what dreams she’s been having over the last week. She is mightily impressed and offers to do a review of it in her magazine.
Experiment 4: Derren meets a woman who writes books about alien abductions. He tells her he was abducted and can now diagnose people’s illnesses by touch. Then he tells her she has trouble sleeping and had trouble with her throat. She is gob-smacked. He is spot on. She wants him to come along to her next meeting of alien abductees and appear on her radio show.
Experiment 5: Derren contacts the dead. He demonstrates to a Medium his ability as he contacts the dead for a group of skeptical New Yorkers. I thought this was his weakest performance, but he still has quite a few of them convinced and the Medium. He actually says he found this one the hardest, as he is in effect lying to people who get quite emotional.
The programme does say that all the innocent victims involved were later let in on the true nature of what was happening.
So what was his point? Well, I thought it was rather lost in the ‘think for yourself’ message. But what he said was if you are going to buy into any of these beliefs you need to be aware how you can get conned. He stopped short of saying that they were all frauds, though he did get closest to saying this with the Mediums.
Anyone got further thoughts? Anyone an idea of how he did the tricks? He states that he is using cold reading for contacting the dead and the instant-conversion is clearly hypnotism. I think the alien diagnosis is probably a case of him getting hold of background info, but I’m at a total lose how he manages the remote viewing or the dream recorder.
