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Derren Brown: The Experiments
I caught up with Derren Brown's latest series this weekend.
These shows are getting more manipulative.
I quite enjoyed Hero at 30000 feet.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eglantinedreams disagreed there seeing it as manipulative. And it was. I didn't have a that huge problem with that though, since the victim did seem to have a better life as a result. Trick or Treat was a bit mean (also a bit dishonest) but then the victims knew what they were getting into.
In The Experiments. Derren uses the public to try out certain "experiments". Cuts for length and spoilerage. If you're reading this on the Facebook feed, or other RSS feed, look away now;
Episode 1: "The Assassin.
Could someone be turned into a killer, Manchurian Candidate style? It was interesting but since we already saw 3 out of 4 people turned into armed robbers in The Heist, didn't really tell us anything new. Turns out that very suggestible people can be made to do so. Seemed rather odd that they felt the need to actually simulate the assassination. Also seems that the subject could have acted the same way if he wasn't under a deep trance. Stage hypnosis works, in part, by choosing people who are most willing to play along. They know they're on stage but trust the hypnotist enough to play along. The subject here knew they're not actually going to make him shoot Stephen Fry. He could easily have been playing along.
Episode 2: "Remote control".
Very disturbing, but for the wrong reasons. It was set up as a gameshow called "Remote Control". They had a victim (who I gather wasn't an actor) and had various actors interact with him according to votes from the audience. The audience were given masks in order to make them "anonymous", then allowed to pick a cruel or a fun thing to happen to the victim and whichever option got most votes. They also had a producer in the guys flat, and he was encouraged to mess with things. So they all picked cruel things to do then at the end he was hit by a car. This was then revealed to have been a stuntman.
Firstly, this was in no way an experiment. If there was a parallel show going on at the same time where the audience weren't masked then it might have been interesting, but all we learned was a majority (not even a vast majority - most of the time this was 60:40-70:30 split so roughly a 2:1 split) chose the cruel option. But the audience wasn't *that* cruel. The audience knew full well this was controlled circumstances. They knew that their victim was going to have some reward at the end so they were just making him work for it. The thing is, Derren Brown's career has been based on manipulating groups of people. We know the show was designed so that people would pick the cruel option. Hell, a lot of the time we didn't even hear the results. We have no idea whether the "suggestions" shouted by the audience were plants but we do know that Derren expected them to tell him to smash the TV (the fact that the producer had goggles and Derren provided a nice new telly proved this).
But the guy being run over served no purpose at all. It was just needlessly cruel to convince an audience that they killed someone. Derren was punishing them for having been manipulated by him. He was being cruel to them for our entertainment.
Episode 3: The Guilt Trip
Manipulate someone into confessing a crime that he hadn't committed. Once again this was highly manipulative. We had a volunteer, who thought he was somewhere to give a talk, get messed with to the extent that he doubts his own memory and believes he may have committed a murder. Honestly, what is this? Beadle's About? Unlike The Heist, the victim here just didn't get anything out of it. Rather unnecessary manipulation in order to prove a point.
Episode 4: The Secret of Luck.
I actually rather liked this one. After 2 episodes of pointless cruelty, this was actually quite positive. We learned that
So, focus was on this statue of a dog, Wayne, an unlucky butcher, and a documentary, where the presenter asked people about the lucky dog. At the start, nobody had ever heard this rumour. At the end, they'd all always known about it. It's interesting that people can fool their own memories like this.
Luck is about taking opportunities. Poor Wayne, completely failed to scratch a winning scratch card (well, neither would I), answer a survey where he could win 20 quid for naming 5 cuts of beef, and didn't spot 50 quid laying on the road. We also had a lucky publican win a free gig at her pub from a famous comedian. This was amusing, but considering how it's all set up by Derren it doesn't really prove anything. Finally Derren confronted Wayne, and Derren explained that he was unlucky because he missed out on opportunities.
Finally the townsfolk were given the chance to prove the dog was lucky by betting money on the roll of a die. Whoever bid the most got to make the bet. And the highest bidder was... Wayne The Unlucky Butcher! And of course he won. And it was clearly rigged. This was absolutely certain as soon as Derren asked the audience to pick a number. Most people will pick 4. (and if it's 1-10 they'll usually pick 7). So after a couple of practice rolls, we had one final roll and the number was 4! Not sure how he did it but Derren would have known the audience would pick 4. Do I care? No. it's a good magic trick. There was presumably some way to ensure that the "unlucky" subject made the highest bid. I'm guessing there were other unlucky subjects they didn't focus on, just to make sure there was a backup.
So, this was manipulative as well, but as a result, the town got a lot of feel-good stuff happening, including a sell-out comedy gig, a small media circus, and a free local legend.
These shows are getting more manipulative.
I quite enjoyed Hero at 30000 feet.
eglantinedreams disagreed there seeing it as manipulative. And it was. I didn't have a that huge problem with that though, since the victim did seem to have a better life as a result. Trick or Treat was a bit mean (also a bit dishonest) but then the victims knew what they were getting into. In The Experiments. Derren uses the public to try out certain "experiments". Cuts for length and spoilerage. If you're reading this on the Facebook feed, or other RSS feed, look away now;
Episode 1: "The Assassin.
Could someone be turned into a killer, Manchurian Candidate style? It was interesting but since we already saw 3 out of 4 people turned into armed robbers in The Heist, didn't really tell us anything new. Turns out that very suggestible people can be made to do so. Seemed rather odd that they felt the need to actually simulate the assassination. Also seems that the subject could have acted the same way if he wasn't under a deep trance. Stage hypnosis works, in part, by choosing people who are most willing to play along. They know they're on stage but trust the hypnotist enough to play along. The subject here knew they're not actually going to make him shoot Stephen Fry. He could easily have been playing along.
Episode 2: "Remote control".
Very disturbing, but for the wrong reasons. It was set up as a gameshow called "Remote Control". They had a victim (who I gather wasn't an actor) and had various actors interact with him according to votes from the audience. The audience were given masks in order to make them "anonymous", then allowed to pick a cruel or a fun thing to happen to the victim and whichever option got most votes. They also had a producer in the guys flat, and he was encouraged to mess with things. So they all picked cruel things to do then at the end he was hit by a car. This was then revealed to have been a stuntman.
Firstly, this was in no way an experiment. If there was a parallel show going on at the same time where the audience weren't masked then it might have been interesting, but all we learned was a majority (not even a vast majority - most of the time this was 60:40-70:30 split so roughly a 2:1 split) chose the cruel option. But the audience wasn't *that* cruel. The audience knew full well this was controlled circumstances. They knew that their victim was going to have some reward at the end so they were just making him work for it. The thing is, Derren Brown's career has been based on manipulating groups of people. We know the show was designed so that people would pick the cruel option. Hell, a lot of the time we didn't even hear the results. We have no idea whether the "suggestions" shouted by the audience were plants but we do know that Derren expected them to tell him to smash the TV (the fact that the producer had goggles and Derren provided a nice new telly proved this).
But the guy being run over served no purpose at all. It was just needlessly cruel to convince an audience that they killed someone. Derren was punishing them for having been manipulated by him. He was being cruel to them for our entertainment.
Episode 3: The Guilt Trip
Manipulate someone into confessing a crime that he hadn't committed. Once again this was highly manipulative. We had a volunteer, who thought he was somewhere to give a talk, get messed with to the extent that he doubts his own memory and believes he may have committed a murder. Honestly, what is this? Beadle's About? Unlike The Heist, the victim here just didn't get anything out of it. Rather unnecessary manipulation in order to prove a point.
Episode 4: The Secret of Luck.
I actually rather liked this one. After 2 episodes of pointless cruelty, this was actually quite positive. We learned that
- If you ask people about something you've just made up they'll believe it to be true.
- You make your own luck.
- Derren Brown cheats at dice.
So, focus was on this statue of a dog, Wayne, an unlucky butcher, and a documentary, where the presenter asked people about the lucky dog. At the start, nobody had ever heard this rumour. At the end, they'd all always known about it. It's interesting that people can fool their own memories like this.
Luck is about taking opportunities. Poor Wayne, completely failed to scratch a winning scratch card (well, neither would I), answer a survey where he could win 20 quid for naming 5 cuts of beef, and didn't spot 50 quid laying on the road. We also had a lucky publican win a free gig at her pub from a famous comedian. This was amusing, but considering how it's all set up by Derren it doesn't really prove anything. Finally Derren confronted Wayne, and Derren explained that he was unlucky because he missed out on opportunities.
Finally the townsfolk were given the chance to prove the dog was lucky by betting money on the roll of a die. Whoever bid the most got to make the bet. And the highest bidder was... Wayne The Unlucky Butcher! And of course he won. And it was clearly rigged. This was absolutely certain as soon as Derren asked the audience to pick a number. Most people will pick 4. (and if it's 1-10 they'll usually pick 7). So after a couple of practice rolls, we had one final roll and the number was 4! Not sure how he did it but Derren would have known the audience would pick 4. Do I care? No. it's a good magic trick. There was presumably some way to ensure that the "unlucky" subject made the highest bid. I'm guessing there were other unlucky subjects they didn't focus on, just to make sure there was a backup.
So, this was manipulative as well, but as a result, the town got a lot of feel-good stuff happening, including a sell-out comedy gig, a small media circus, and a free local legend.