Derren Brown: Netflix special (2018)
Push, Sacrifice
Darren Brown calls himself a psychological illusionist. He devises elaborate scams with his team of actors, engineers, stuntmen and others to influence his subjects to willingly perform heinous crimes or sometimes unthinkable sacrifices. He does all these with just suggestions as if the subjects are doing it at their own free will.
In an episode named 'Push', four people are shortlisted from a pool of applicants to help out in a charity event. He used the famous test where applicants stand up at the ring of a bell without any rhyme or reason to pick his choice. This is a classical experiment done by psychologists to illustrate that humans are mere unthinking conformists. To cut the long story short, three out of the four candidates that Brown selected could be coaxed to push a man off the edge of the roof at the order of a person in authority. This result is comparable to the Milgram Experiment in 1963 to illustrate our utter obedience to people in authority. This experiment followed the Eichmann trial in 1961. The world could not fathom how a simple looking civil servant could systemically send prisoners into the gas chamber as if it was a banal thing to do.
In the "Sacrifice' episode, an American man with very fixed negative views on the rise of immigrants in the USA is manipulated, in an elaborate scam that spanned both sides of the Atlantic, to make him take a bullet to protect an illegal Mexican immigrant.
It just goes to illustrate how Man can be manipulated for better or worse. The lessons learnt from these shows are nothing new but may give a new perspective to younger viewers.
The thing often not considered in this type of shows is what happens to the participants after the show. Is knowing that they have dark evil tendencies lurking within them, like pushing a person from the edge of a building going to leave an indelible mark on their future prospect of employment or mental state? Is meddling with the participants' inner crypts of their psyche going to unleash the inner dark thoughts or scar them forever?
Push, Sacrifice
Darren Brown calls himself a psychological illusionist. He devises elaborate scams with his team of actors, engineers, stuntmen and others to influence his subjects to willingly perform heinous crimes or sometimes unthinkable sacrifices. He does all these with just suggestions as if the subjects are doing it at their own free will. In an episode named 'Push', four people are shortlisted from a pool of applicants to help out in a charity event. He used the famous test where applicants stand up at the ring of a bell without any rhyme or reason to pick his choice. This is a classical experiment done by psychologists to illustrate that humans are mere unthinking conformists. To cut the long story short, three out of the four candidates that Brown selected could be coaxed to push a man off the edge of the roof at the order of a person in authority. This result is comparable to the Milgram Experiment in 1963 to illustrate our utter obedience to people in authority. This experiment followed the Eichmann trial in 1961. The world could not fathom how a simple looking civil servant could systemically send prisoners into the gas chamber as if it was a banal thing to do.
In the "Sacrifice' episode, an American man with very fixed negative views on the rise of immigrants in the USA is manipulated, in an elaborate scam that spanned both sides of the Atlantic, to make him take a bullet to protect an illegal Mexican immigrant.
It just goes to illustrate how Man can be manipulated for better or worse. The lessons learnt from these shows are nothing new but may give a new perspective to younger viewers.
The thing often not considered in this type of shows is what happens to the participants after the show. Is knowing that they have dark evil tendencies lurking within them, like pushing a person from the edge of a building going to leave an indelible mark on their future prospect of employment or mental state? Is meddling with the participants' inner crypts of their psyche going to unleash the inner dark thoughts or scar them forever?
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