Derren Brown: Fear and Faith, 9pm Ch4&HD, 9th Nov & 16th Nov

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  • Reality SucksReality Sucks Posts: 28,537
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    eggshell wrote: »

    Don't want to fight on this - it was just that you made a very definite statement about Seance which backed up your argument that Derren does not use trickery in every show - Seance being cited by you as an example.

    There's usually some tricks as well as some manipulation, but sometimes, like when he got that fake pastor to visit America, he was behind the scenes just training the guy. I don't know if he taught him magic tricks for that, I really can't remember.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 360
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    He means, obviously, tricking the viewers, not some US religious types.
  • AbewestAbewest Posts: 3,017
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    Was that the one where the ball bounced down the stairs from nowhere? - that freaked me out :eek: Don't know why - just the way it was filmed I guess.

    That's it.
  • Reality SucksReality Sucks Posts: 28,537
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    He means, obviously, tricking the viewers, not some US religious types.

    I'm not sure why people think of psychological experiments as trickery though. The point I'm arguing with eggshell is whether he has any ability to manipulate his subjects or not, never mind the viewers.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 360
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    Depends on what you mean by manipulate - take this last show, if I purposefully talk to you about really positive things, elicit nice warm feelings for 15 minutes - am I manipulating you? Is a conman pretending to be a the meter man so he can rob an old lady manipulative? Loads of people are manipulative, right?
  • Reality SucksReality Sucks Posts: 28,537
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    Depends on what you mean by manipulate - take this last show, if I purposefully talk to you about really positive things, elicit nice warm feelings for 15 minutes - am I manipulating you? Is a conman pretending to be a the meter man so he can rob an old lady manipulative? Loads of people are manipulative, right?

    Yes, they are - people in general are ripe for manipulation because we want to believe in good things. A conman exploits a person's trust. Derren Brown exploits people's trust, in a more benevolent way than a conman, but it is still a manipulation even if the subject is a willing victim.
  • eggshelleggshell Posts: 4,416
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    I'm not sure why people think of psychological experiments as trickery though. The point I'm arguing with eggshell is whether he has any ability to manipulate his subjects or not, never mind the viewers.

    And my answer is he doesn't.

    I think Derren is being disengenuous when he talks about suggestion and psychology. The suggestion and psychology he is using is that which persuades us he isn't doing a magic trick - when he is !!!
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 4,129
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    eggshell wrote: »
    And my answer is he doesn't.

    I think Derren is being disengenuous when he talks about suggestion and psychology. The suggestion and psychology he is using is that which persuades us he isn't doing a magic trick - when he is !!!

    Errr..no it's not he doesn;t deny he uses 'magic' which is a broad term for lots of methods of deception...deception that we agree to happen when we watch a magician to have those moments of 'wow'...which many people lose when they continue to try to work out how tricks are done...I do the odd bit of magic and sometimes wish I knew less...as I know how Brown does at least 70% of his stage show magic...and would prefer to have the 'wow' factor.

    But I also absolutely love card magic where I know subtle slights are being used and never tire of those.
  • eggshelleggshell Posts: 4,416
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    alfster wrote: »
    Errr..no it's not he doesn;t deny he uses 'magic' which is a broad term for lots of methods of deception...deception that we agree to happen when we watch a magician to have those moments of 'wow'...which many people lose when they continue to try to work out how tricks are done...I do the odd bit of magic and sometimes wish I knew less...as I know how Brown does at least 70% of his stage show magic...and would prefer to have the 'wow' factor.

    But I also absolutely love card magic where I know subtle slights are being used and never tire of those.

    I know the feeling !!! There was the trick he did where people randomly selected numbers and letters and impossibly it was the serial number on a £5 note that had been in play for the trick in question.

    I was raving about this to my wife ( and probably boring her to death) when suddenly it clicked and I realised what he'd done - I wish I hadn't ......it was more fun being fooled.
  • starrystarry Posts: 12,434
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    It is fun being fooled and also finding out how it's done sometimes. But hypnotism is just so what, he can control people through a stage trick, so? Now if people are less under his direct control it's more interesting as the power of suggestion and influence is more real life.

    One of the problems with spoof programs in general though is can you feel a real connection with gullible people who are so easily fooled? I was watching some reality spoofs earlier this year like Joe Schmo and it's often hard to feel sympathy for people who are just dull and gullible. When he tries to pull off something really big like Apocalypse he goes into this territory, and I think the viewer is too much on the outside laughing than feeling much of a connection with the protagonist. Better is when for much of the program the viewer themselves is fooled to an extent and so feels more of an affinity with those used in the program. I think his big specials based around one idea work better with an element of that. The Gameshow one and Russian Roulette had an element of fooling the audience. Messiah was different as it was more like a documentary.
  • InspirationInspiration Posts: 62,692
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    starry wrote: »
    Just watched The System, not bad.

    One of his best. The reveal was a revelation to me. I had no idea it was coming and it literally blew my mind. For a while after the show I was questioning my perception of a lot of things in my life. Brilliant stuff. The music was excellent too as were the visuals. This is where I feel his more recent work has been a big let down. Cheap looking graphics and the music has been severely lacking for me.

    I found last weeks episode much better. It helps if you watch without writing on here about it. I found it much more enjoyable.
  • Reality SucksReality Sucks Posts: 28,537
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    One of his best. The reveal was a revelation to me. I had no idea it was coming and it literally blew my mind. For a while after the show I was questioning my perception of a lot of things in my life. Brilliant stuff. The music was excellent too as were the visuals. This is where I feel his more recent work has been a big let down. Cheap looking graphics and the music has been severely lacking for me.

    I found last weeks episode much better. It helps if you watch without writing on here about it. I found it much more enjoyable.

    I agree - though I find the Apocalypse thread a bit addictive. It's better to watch the whole thing first and then have a look on here.
  • pjc229pjc229 Posts: 1,840
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    Theories on how Derren achieved the quasi-religious experience please. She didn't seem to be 'playing along' as previous participants were. I don't buy any of the 'anchoring' with the finger tapping (I believe I am educated in the limits of anchoring), but I think it's possible that inducing very strong, 'nice' feelings for 15 minutes could have some effect, especially if that was suddenly removed. So what happened?

    Not sure at all. I just went back and had a second look which didn't reveal much, although to be honest I didn't really expect it to and I'm not actually that great at working out how tricks are done anyway. One thing I feel is really key is that Natalie is only brought out after everything has been shown, which to me sounds an enormous great alarm that the VT we're shown is massively misrepresentative of what actually happened. It would be very interesting to know actually if she did mention anything in the studio interview which was subsequently cut (any audience members here?) - as TV viewers we're getting it passed through two potential layers of obfuscation. Obviously she'll have now seen the TV show so again it would be interesting to know her take on it all, if, as you say, she wasn't apparently just playing along. Then again, we've always got the fallback of her being "hypnotised" to respond in that way to something that she sees (and it definitely looks like she is looking at something out of shot (and it's weird that she doesn't acknowledge the cameras which would be clearly visible to her), so I'm not inclined to think that hard about it. Suffice to say, I definitely don't think it's this:
    alfster wrote: »
    As for the Faith show...absolutely no need to have dual reality stuff in this one. Everything done and explained was correct...religions use similar techniques to get people to believe...

    ...which is just daft, you seriously think Derren can just talk to you for fifteen minutes and generate that kind of response? All that language and anchoring stuff is a load of pap, at least in the sense that it can't do what we're being shown. Something else is going on. "Embrace" isn't a command which "communicates unconsciously", and him tapping his figures wasn't doing anything to her unconsciously because she noticed him doing it and just thought he was bored (surprised that was left in actually). Anyway, you've been wrong before in proclaiming that you know how things are done, so I think you should exercise a little more caution in future. What's also interesting actually is that supposedly in this instance the selection procedure was about-face - we actually selected somebody not prone to suggestion, since she was the only one not to feel/see anything in the dark crypt. (I completely believe that was due to Derren dicking about with the others out of shot, but I'm just saying for those who like to swallow his explanations that normally he would choose the 'suggestible' person.)
  • jsmith99jsmith99 Posts: 20,382
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    I've just watched a DB show on 4music where he 'persuaded' two cashiers at a dog track to pay him out on losing bets.

    Now, I've only been to a couple of dog meetings in my life, but surely if a dog lost there wouldn't be a 'return' figure for it? So how could the cashiers know what amount to pay?
  • Reality SucksReality Sucks Posts: 28,537
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    jsmith99 wrote: »
    I've just watched a DB show on 4music where he 'persuaded' two cashiers at a dog track to pay him out on losing bets.

    Now, I've only been to a couple of dog meetings in my life, but surely if a dog lost there wouldn't be a 'return' figure for it? So how could the cashiers know what amount to pay?

    I assume they paid on the winning dog. When Derren asked the cashier at the end which one had won she told him number 4, (I think it was) - he asked her to look at the ticket and asked her what number was on it and she said number 1 and started to look very confused.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 360
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    pjc229 wrote: »
    Not sure at all. I just went back and had a second look which didn't reveal much, although to be honest I didn't really expect it to and I'm not actually that great at working out how tricks are done anyway. One thing I feel is really key is that Natalie is only brought out after everything has been shown, which to me sounds an enormous great alarm that the VT we're shown is massively misrepresentative of what actually happened. It would be very interesting to know actually if she did mention anything in the studio interview which was subsequently cut (any audience members here?) - as TV viewers we're getting it passed through two potential layers of obfuscation. Obviously she'll have now seen the TV show so again it would be interesting to know her take on it all, if, as you say, she wasn't apparently just playing along. Then again, we've always got the fallback of her being "hypnotised" to respond in that way to something that she sees (and it definitely looks like she is looking at something out of shot (and it's weird that she doesn't acknowledge the cameras which would be clearly visible to her), so I'm not inclined to think that hard about it. Suffice to say, I definitely don't think it's this:
    ...which is just daft, you seriously think Derren can just talk to you for fifteen minutes and generate that kind of response? All that language and anchoring stuff is a load of pap, at least in the sense that it can't do what we're being shown. Something else is going on. "Embrace" isn't a command which "communicates unconsciously", and him tapping his figures wasn't doing anything to her unconsciously because she noticed him doing it and just thought he was bored (surprised that was left in actually). Anyway, you've been wrong before in proclaiming that you know how things are done, so I think you should exercise a little more caution in future. What's also interesting actually is that supposedly in this instance the selection procedure was about-face - we actually selected somebody not prone to suggestion, since she was the only one not to feel/see anything in the dark crypt. (I completely believe that was due to Derren dicking about with the others out of shot, but I'm just saying for those who like to swallow his explanations that normally he would choose the 'suggestible' person.)

    Thanks, bits in bold especially of interest... I am leaning to the 'they did it with 50 people and we only saw the most dramatic' and 'there was something she saw we didn't' answers. But this is not to take too much away from Derren, it was the first of this series which didn't insult your intelligence by being completely obvious how he was trying to trick you.
  • jsmith99jsmith99 Posts: 20,382
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    I assume they paid on the winning dog. When Derren asked the cashier at the end which one had won she told him number 4, (I think it was) - he asked her to look at the ticket and asked her what number was on it and she said number 1 and started to look very confused.

    She paid at the price appropriate to the winning dog? That sounds reasonable ... within the context of the trick, I mean.
  • pjc229pjc229 Posts: 1,840
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    Thanks, bits in bold especially of interest... I am leaning to the 'they did it with 50 people and we only saw the most dramatic' and 'there was something she saw we didn't' answers. But this is not to take too much away from Derren, it was the first of this series which didn't insult your intelligence by being completely obvious how he was trying to trick you.

    I'm not sure why you're leaning towards the '50 people' angle, as that suggests that you'd maybe expect around 1 in 50 to behave this way. I think that's bizarre (I can't see why anyone would), but it's something that crops up with just about every trick he does (I even remember seeing it suggested for the lottery prediction ffs!). I assume the reason for this is the precedent of 'The System', even though it's apparent that he doesn't toss the coin for 9 hours, and I would say there's very good reason to believe he didn't actually go through the whole horse-betting rigmarole as claimed (I'll expand on this if you like, but think of the logistics involved and how utterly perfectly it went). So I think you can chalk that off anyway - sure, maybe we redo the trick if it goes badly wrong, but as the actual methodology for something like this, well that just doesn't seem true to me. I don't doubt it probably happens for something like a street magician guessing people's starsigns (which would take up seconds of the show), but not a massive segment like this.

    Something else I noticed last night (and I'm going a bit from memory here as I can't watch the video right now) which I meant to mention as part of the "why was Natalie not allowed to see the VT with everyone else? What would she have realised?" thing - Derren also mentions that "Natalie has no idea what it was all about" which sounded odd - how could she not have known when he pointedly says to her after her 'conversion experience' "what do you think about God now?" Well, interestingly, for a lot of the conversation, we see both Derren and Natalie in shot. Here, when Derren asks about God, we see a close-up of Derren, then Natalie doesn't actually mention God at all in her answer (or actually, at any point, I think). I fairly strongly believe she is not actually answering this question here, she's talking about something else entirely.

    I think, when you said "Theories on how Derren achieved the quasi-religious experience please" you're actually asking slightly the wrong question. The question instead is simply "how did he obtain this footage?" (I don't think this distinction is important to you btw, because I'm sure that's what you meant anyway, but I think it's a key distinction for others to note). A good comparison (and why you're right to describe this as more "Classic Derren" than other recent specials) is the girl killing the kitten. There one might be asked "how did Derren make the girl kill the kitten?" whereas in fact he almost certainly did nothing of the sort. There's a well-written article here which explores instead the slightly different question of "how did he obtain this footage?" which posits a few very plausible theories, and I expect similar trickery is being employed in this case.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 360
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    Briefly, sure maybe not 50 times. I suspect he did, or was going to, keep repeating the process with different people until he got the best, most dramatic reaction he wanted. It would be easily done. This show seemed to have a much smaller budget than the Apocalypse ones - this could be misleading.

    as for
    "why was Natalie not allowed to see the VT with everyone else? What would she have realised?"

    I agree, that raises a few questions.
  • pjc229pjc229 Posts: 1,840
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    Briefly, sure maybe not 50 times. I suspect he did, or was going to, keep repeating the process with different people until he got the best, most dramatic reaction he wanted. It would be easily done.
    Okay, but then this is probably a given for any trick, isn't it? In that if it doesn't go well for whatever reason, it just gets binned and we go again with someone else. Therefore I'm not sure what the relevance is of even mentioning it as it would apply to everything, card tricks, mind-reading, hypnosis, whatever. I think it's only worth considering as an important part of the mechanics behind the trick when we have a fairly concrete idea that something could happen by chance, yet he seems to have defied the odds in getting it to happen first-time. (And even then I'd probably doubt it for such an important segment as this.)

    (I'm probably coming across as very pedantic, but hopefully you see what I'm saying!)
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 360
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    Not really - a card trick is just going to work, the reaction is important but not make or break.
    In this last show, Natalie's wide-eyed, crying reaction is where all the power of the trick lies, so it's one where I think using a number of subjects then picking the best would be a good idea.

    Hypnosis, or the way we have seen it in this series - yes, possibly the groups Derren mentioned but didn't show us featured even LESS convincing playing along, which is why they didn't make the cut. Using a bunch of subjects and showing the best would be very handy for Derren, so I am going to assume he uses it whenever he can get away with it. Which he could in the way this last show was set-up, less so in others.. where an audience sees everything, or budget constraints make it seem unlikely - I doubt he could have done Steve's Apocalypse Experience 20 times with different people, whereas Natalie's 15 minute chat was easy and cheap to do many times with different subjects.

    And the question again - where did the budget go on this show? Did it genuinely cost less than the previous expensive-looking ones, or was money spent on things we weren't told about?
  • pjc229pjc229 Posts: 1,840
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    Yeah, I think actually we probably agree even if it appears otherwise! I don't doubt he could do the set-up again with other people, but equally I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised to know that he didn't. For me, regardless of whether he did or didn't do it multiple times, it doesn't really go any way to explaining how we came to see what we did - that is, it's not something I'd expect to happen "by chance" if you did it with enough people.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 360
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    And I know what you mean - the trick probably relied on something we didn't see, that would've worked on most people. But what was it? Lets say it was an inflatable Jesus(!) - surely Natalie, unless she was paid off or heavily edited, would have mentioned that. Maybe she did, and it was heavily edited.
  • pjc229pjc229 Posts: 1,840
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    And I know what you mean - the trick probably relied on something we didn't see, that would've worked on most people. But what was it? Lets say it was an inflatable Jesus(!) - surely Natalie, unless she was paid off or heavily edited, would have mentioned that. Maybe she did, and it was heavily edited.

    I know you were just being flippant, but I don't think anything like "inflatable Jesus" cuts it either. If I take her reaction as genuine (i.e. not staged or "hypnotised" to have that particular 'emotional outburst' - ugh I hate writing that as if hypnotism is "real") then I'm baffled as to what she can have been shown, it must be deeply personal. However, the more I think about it (again, mainly from memory, will check the video later) nothing religious enters their conversation, so whatever she has seen will not be religion-related. In particular I'm sure that the answer we supposedly see to the question "what do you think of God now?" is actually the answer to another question altogether, I'm sure she never mentions God or religion at any point. This is why Natalie is, as Derren himself tells us, "unaware what the point of it all has been", whereas if it had all played out as shown, it would have been very obvious to her. I don't think she has any reason to connect whatever happened to religion, and this is why she wasn't shown the 'manipulated' version of events that we were prior to the studio interview. Again, I would love to know her take on it having seen it now - if I'm right in thinking she has been duped (i.e. not complicit in the same way Apocalypse Steve was) then she may have something to say. Or, seeing as she came from the pool of Derren fans to begin with, she may simply be happy being used as part of the trick. Unfortunately for us, it's probably the latter.
  • atgatg Posts: 4,260
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    eggshell wrote: »
    I know the feeling !!! There was the trick he did where people randomly selected numbers and letters and impossibly it was the serial number on a £5 note that had been in play for the trick in question.

    I was raving about this to my wife ( and probably boring her to death) when suddenly it clicked and I realised what he'd done - I wish I hadn't ......it was more fun being fooled.
    Well go on then, spill the beans (but use spoilers).
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