Great success this weekend for a TV show using subliminal imagery, emotional manipulation, audience-flattery and deliberately-paced editing to lull the viewer into a sticky situation, whereby they cluelessly watch the box against their own intellectual will.
Full credit to Simon Cowell for hoodwinking the nation and making the auditions-phase crap that he created pass for entertainment in the minds of UK audiences. And commiserations to Derren Brown, who tried an experiment, flagged that it was just an experiment, told the viewer it may well not work, then found himself derided by a viewership with cynicism-radars that might be described as confused – or, at least, pointed in utterly the wrong direction.
Casting an eye over Twitter on Friday night after the Derren Brown hypnosis experiment, you could’ve been forgiven for thinking the mentalist had earlier announced he was going to take over the entire world and every human mind in it. ‘Control The Nation’ was obviously a playful title, but people’s reactions were strangely vituperative. Obviously checking Twitter for public reaction is like checking into Curmudgeonly Sarcasm Central and asking how people are finding this wonderful life, but still – I expected a few people to say it was a brave but doomed attempt.
And doomed it was, because people are automatically defensive when hypnosis is mentioned. Despite the fact it aids people in quitting smoking and can, in some cases, heal the scars of trauma, the ’stage’ element of it tends to worry people. There are a few stories bouncing about regarding mental illness onset by the process and nobody really wants to be made to cluck like a chicken before their peers, so it’s no surprise viewers resisted the light trance the show set out to instill. I watched and was completely open to it, but still I was able to stand come the end, though I did feel far more relaxed than I had been before the show.
I think the problem really lies in the fact that the most effective hypnosis comes about through a collaborative process. If you’re blindly trying to relax a nation that is dismissive of your intentions, where you have no control over the fact they’re probably talking amongst themselves and where you’re unable to react to their body language, then the task isn’t just uphill – it’s vertical. But it’s impressive that Brown even tried, if you ask me, and I enjoyed the show for the oddity that it was.
Far more worrying is the trance brought about by The X Factor as the show reached the end of the auditions phase on Sunday with some of the weirdest emotion-prodding footage they’ve ever put out. The stuff with the autistic guy was bizarre and tasteless – not because it’s wrong to allow someone with the condition to take the stage, but because it’s wrong to milk audience sympathy by exploiting the man’s predicament. I honestly have no idea why The X Factor believes we should offer a standing ovation for a man who can’t sing, simply because his brother died recently, but implies we should all howl with laughter at an overweight girl with crossed eyes who also can’t sing. The simple fact is – neither of them can sing. Why discriminate based on anything other than their voices?
But check Twitter during The X Factor, and there are reams and reams of sardonic, 140-character jibes. And the problem is, they’re not aimed at Cowell, Cole, Walsh or Minogue. They’re aimed at those auditioning. They’re aimed at the factory-workers, shop assistants and catering staff who thought they’d give it a go but hadn’t realised their limits.
People have fallen for The X Factor hook, line and sinker – stuck to their sofas, ignorant toward their own higher intelligence and joining in the prole-kicking because they’re being dictated to by a master hypnotist. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel the world’s upside down.
*end of football comment*
53 Comments
I liked the ones that used to work in Pontins. I think they were called either ‘Pig In Knickers’ or ‘Heinz Beans’. They should join up with those two grotesque fat girls (Fried Bread) and become the supergroup ‘Fried Bread & Baked Beans In Knickers’.
Good morning.
Morning!
Note how they rushed out the final audition shows over the weekend? No doubt that toad Cowell was worried that no audience participation would mean viewers would turn to (the awful) Strictly Off Of The Dance instead.
Sun headline, Saturday morning:
Cowell: The BBC is letting us down.
Who is the ‘us’?
Very well said re X-Factor.
I fail to see the problem with 2 big shows being on at the same time. In the 70’s we had this amazing machine called a “video recorder” enabling one to watch one programme whilst recording another for later perusal. Shurley there must be a 21st century equivalent?
Mornings all!
Nick – The problem is the voting. For some reason people like to waste their money ringing in to these shows, and you can’t do that if you’ve recorded one because the lines are closed.
Also, what’s all the fuss about this new bird on Strictly Dancing? Given the chance, I’d do things to that woman that’d make a whore blush. Things I most certainly would not do to that loud-mouthed old baggage they used to have on there.
I didn’t watch Strictly but I will defend Alesha with my every last breath because, damn it, she’s the very definition of ‘hot stuff’.
NC: Is she the one with the norks? Or is that Jamelia. I forget. But not for long.
Morning all. Legoland was ace.
Fourstar – She’s got a set of tits, yes. And a nice ass. A very talented lady is Alesha, oh yes. Much better than that old crone with her you-wouldn’t-would-you looks and foghorn voice.
Ninnies they are Naps. They deserve these confusing times…
Staying at my in-laws at the weekend, with a tv that reminded me of Time Tunnel, every SKy channel imaginable I ended up watching Carry on Teacher with the young Richard O’ Sullivan (now in the same nursing home as Norman Wisdom!) great film….
I am so cynical about the X factor now. I dislike being manipulated in any way, and the X Factor is so overt I felt sick. There is no reason why someone with Aspergers Syndrome would not be able to sing well, but its a good story so lets milk it for all its worth.
This audience manipulation is exactly when I realised Derren was not going to work. When he started on about intelligent and creative people being open my cynicism went into overdrive.
That and my aversion to hypnotism. My dad is a hypnotherapist and I spent my teenage years worried that I would be in the middle of lying,some fingers would click and I’d wake up in trouble.
If I knew how to hypnotise people, I’d end up in prison.
Coo. Turns out they are both comfortably upholstered. Have you got that bath of beans to hand, NC?
You’re cynical NOW?
What pushed you over the edge?
You’d be able to hypnotise the guards though Naps
You take your filthy hands off my bean bath, Fourstar.
What pushed me over the edge was sub-standard pub singer Deadwife Daniel getting into the final and STAYING THERE last year. I watch now because its a habit I just can’t seem to quit, and I like spotting the overt manipulation if I’m honest. I like feeling superior.
I bought a travel Scrabble on Sunday. In the old days, a travel Scrabble was a magnetic board, magnetic letter blocks and wee little card things with a magnetic strip to fix your letters to. The whole shebang fit in your pocket and cost six quid. Now a travel Scrabble’s the size of a small family hatchback and costs £22.99. That’s what fucking happens when Mattel takes over your Scrabble-making company, the robdog SODS.
“You take your filthy hands off my bean bath”
An early contender for Euphemism of the Week, NC.
What could one play on this????
http://www.simonelvins.com/paper_record.html
Paper Roses?
Payyyypa roses! BEUWANG! Payyyypa roses! BEUWANG! Oh how reeel those roses seemed-ah, ter me-ee.
But they are only, imitation, like your imitation lurve for me…
Surely the finest Mormon brother-sister love song ever recorded.
That paper record player’s rubbish.
In my borough it’s not rubbish, it’s recycling.
I can’t think of any other songs about paper. Can I have “Cone On Eileen” instead?
Napoleon, that Travel Scrabble was probably made at the time that everybody was buying those SUVs. Once the oil prices start going up and people start buying little cars it’ll go back to being it’s normal size. At 22.99.
What about anything by Pulp, pilchard?
Thumps – You might be right. There’s a hell of a lot of oil gone into its construction, judging by the size of the bastard.
Have you ever noticed that you don’t get Foreign Language versions of Scrabble, eh? I think there’s an untapped market there for a French or German version. you know, for people taking them at GCSE.
You can get a Spanish version for sure.
Fourstar – Pulp might be too raw. D:Ream?
I’ve got a binary edition of Sudoku, which is great for very short car journeys.
Nice. Of course, we could go down the boyband route with A1.
Thumps , they do have interbntional version of scrabble. They even have an Esperanto version.
paperback writer?
There was of course that famous free jazz combo, International Business Card.
Motorïgamïhead?
Five leaves left by Nick Drake
Elaine Pa(i)ge…
Jimmy Page…
Book(er T and the MGs)
Prints.
Bad Boys Ink
Color Me BADD?
Nope!
Brother Beyond.
Ben Folds Five.
Darts.
Blockbuster, by Sheet.
Start, by the Jam.
If you twist your ball sack left and then right, is that a ’scrotation’?
You’d need the full 360 degrees for a scrotation. I think you’re describing Twist and Shout (mono remastered).
Well said.
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[...] An interesting hypnosis experiment recently with Derren Brown on TV (Channel 4, UK) also shines a light, in my mind, on the increasing inter-dependencies of TV and Social Media (Twitter and TV). If you’ve been active online or watched TV anytime in the last 6 months you will also have probably come across another instance of this interdependency with the Susan Boyle phenomenon (YouTube and TV in this case). [...]