Sunday, 23rd October 2011
“Just when you thought Derren Brown couldn’t get any more sinister, audacious or daring, comes The Assassin, the first in a series of ‘Experiments’, in which the trickster tries to convince his audience that it is possible to hypnotise someone into killing another person.”
Along the video, “we are reminded at frequent intervals that Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Robert F. Kennedy dead in 1968, had no recollection of the event and claimed to have been hypnotised by the CIA.”
“Chris, the most ‘susceptible’ audience member […] is trained into recognising a ringtone as an audio cue to point a gun at his unsuspecting victim, who will be holding a talk in a large theatre when the ‘assassination’ will take place. In the final quarter, arguably one of the biggest highlights of the show, we learn that the (in actual fact, suspecting) ‘victim’ is to be Stephen Fry, who takes pleasure in loading himself with squibs before taking to the stage.”
“The climactic assassination is filmed using hidden cameras so as not to distract Chris from the ‘real’ shooting, which he has no idea he is even a part of.”
“The cynics among us will also assume it is all just careful editing and camera trickery rather than actual hypnosis; however the constant references to Sirhan Sirhan do make the viewer wonder if it is really all possible, and Brown’s explanations of each mind trick prove that it is worryingly simple to influence another person’s actions.”
Read more: Derren Brown: The Assassin
View video: Derren Brown: The Assassin with Stephen Fry | The Experiments | FULL EPISODE
Related: Brit actor Stephen Fry killed by hypno-programmed assassin
[UPROXX]
OCTOBER 27, 2012
“If you’ve ever seen “The Manchurian Candidate” (either the original or the remake), the premise seems like pure cinema. Under hypnosis, an otherwise upstanding citizen becomes an assassin, killing while in a trance before forgetting the murder ever happened. But is it possible in real life? In “Brainwashed” (Oct. 28, 9:00 p.m. ET on Discovery), researchers decide to find out.”
“Using Tom Silver, a hypnotist with over 28 years of experience who has put people under on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” “The Doctors,” “The Ricki Lake Show,” the show put a group of volunteers through a series of increasingly difficult tests to see if any one of them might emerge as a potential killer. And the goal isn’t just theory and conjecture — the show created a scenario in which a hypnotized person would be given a real gun (filled with blanks) and a mark to shoot at close range, fake blood splatter and all.”
Read more: ‘Brainwashed’ tries to create a real-life ‘Manchurian Candidate’ assassin
View video: BRAINWASHED TO KILL SOMEONE HYPNOTIST TOM SILVER PROVES IT CAN BE DONE
[TheTVDB]
May 31, 2011
“Mentalist Keith Barry turns his attentions to the cold war. The CIA spent millions of dollars studying mind control in order to defeat Soviet spies. But did they ever succeed? In a series of mind experiments, Keith attempts mass hypnosis, programs ordinary people to be spies and even creates a sleeper agent.”
Read more: Deception with Keith Barry: Black Ops
View video (no English version, assassination experiment starts at 29:55): Discovery Channel – Keith Barry trükkjei – Hipnózis 2011-11-07
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