I’ve just been watching a programme on Channel 4 called Derren Brown: Messiah. Derren Brown is a professional charlatan, an extremely clever one of the TV magician, hypnotist, showman and general all round trickster type. He sets out to confront other professional charlatans of the psychic, evangelist, UFO researcher and new-age types.
He’s got a very serious point to make:
Whether we believe in psychic ability, crystal energy, alien abduction, talking to the dead or Christianity, we are rightly or wrongly buying into a very powerful belief system. I’m not interested in attacking anyone’s beliefs but I think as intelligent human beings we should be prepared to question our beliefs — and the people who encourage us to make life decisions based on the information they give us.
And that’s what grabbed my attention and greatly elevated my impression of Derren Brown. Skepticism and critical thinking can’t be promoted enough, and I think it’s fantastic that he is using his considerable talents to promote these ideas. His aim is to test the skepticism of the people he confronts. Each time he carefully explains that as soon as one of them asks him if he’s tricking them he will own up.
The first people he meets are some psychics who teach psychics (to be psychic?) at the Sedona Creative Life Centre in Arizona. He asks one how she deals with the responsibility of giving people advice on important decisions. She answers that if someone is “guided” to her to ask for advice then she must be qualified to give it, which is certainly an interesting outlook.
Brown does the usual image projection test in which a viewer in one room projects an image to a receiver in another room. Scientific tests of this have always come up with no better results than you’d get from guessing, but Brown gets it right every time. How he does this I don’t know. It’s one of his best tricks. At one stage he says, “just let differemt images sail through your mind, don’t go overboard on detail”, and the woman draws a boat. Can saying the words “sail” and “overboard” really induce someone to draw a boat? If so it’s astonishing. But there is obviously more going on, it’s just hard to find out what because Brown’s shows are very cleverly edited, so we don’t get a chance to analyse completely what he’s doing.
Of course, all the psychics are thoroughly convinced. One of them goes so far as to say, “as a person who trains psychics, I would have [my students] watch that film and say ‘this is how you do it.’”
Next up, Brown goes after the Christians. He doesn’t hold back.
I used to be a full on, happy clappy Christian until my mid 20s, and then I started to realise that my belief was just as prone to circular logic and self fulfillment as all the new-age nonsense which bugged me. And then reading the New Testament as a historical document finally rid me of any religeous belief.
.
But the real point he is making is this:
But if I can convert people through non-spiritual methods, how many people are out their doing the same thing in their own way?
He goes to Rhode Island to visit Curt Nordhielm of Restoration House Ministries, whose speciality is evangelising to immigrant communities. Nordheim writes in some ministry blurb, “The huge influx of foreign people groups into this nation can be viewed in two ways. They can be seen as a threat to our way of life — both spiritually or culturally. Or they can be viewed as an opportunity for evangelism.”
What Brown appears to do is quite unbelievable. He invites a bunch of atheists, agnostics and other doubters to come to a meeting, and then apperently converts them instantly. After he gets one girl to switch from talking about how religion was forced on her by her family and she never accepted it, to talking about how she had felt a spirtual inner hug when Brown put his hand near her face, half of the meeting, including Nordhielm, walk out.
But Brown continues on. One guy voices my exact problem with religion:
How could you believe in or worship a higher being [...] that’s supposed to be loving, that’s supposed to be merciful and kind, but [people] talk about free will [...] well it wasn’t a three-year-old’s free will to die of leukemia. And things of that nature. That’s what makes me just not buy it.
Next thing, the same guy is standing up, facing away from Derren Brown, who holds up his hand and pulls at the air. This apparently induces the guy to fall over and then, when asked, start saying how his previous beliefs and opinions were incorrect. It’s all very odd.
It looks like Brown has hypnotised these people, but I don’t believe in hypnotism. I’d say actors were used but a caption at the start of the program claims that no stooges or actors were used in its making. This scene has me wondering on how many levels is Derren Brown a fraud, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because it seems even more unbelievable that the whole sequence was faked. It’s more likely that there’s a very clever trick I don’t understand.
But Brown picked the wrong target in Curt Nordhielm, who is visibly shocked and skeptical about Browns antics. I think if this had been tried with a faith healer like Benny Hinn then the result would have been more convincing.
Things pick up when Brown visits Lorraine DiFelice, a publisher of a new-age magazine and organiser of a Vegas convention. He convinces her that a metal box with a switch, battery and bulb, is reading her dreams. She uses it for a week and he then attaches electrodes from it to his head and tells her what she dreamt about. Afterwards you can almost see the dollar signs spinning in her eyes when she talks about letting Brown come on her radio show and publish whatever he wants in her magazine.
As for how he did it, it seems likely Brown used cold reading techniques. He pulls a similar trick on UFO researcher and author Ann Druffel whose medical history he somehow reconstructs, a talent he tells her he had since he was abducted by aliens. Dollar signs spin in her eyes too — she wants his story published in “the most respected publications”. The best part of this section, though, is when Brown is interviewing Druffel. She tells him that abductions usually start when the victim is in a “dream state”. When he suggests that “some people” might say that the whole abduction was a dream, Druffel just looks confused and lets her friend Vince Uhlenkott answer (he mumbles about “grey areas”).
Finally, Derren Brown meets spiritualist medium and teacher Rev Janet Hohavec. He does the standard cold reading talking-to-the-dead trick, and makes a big show of how uncomfortable he is about doing it.
I personally believe, given my knowledge of the psychic industry, that I’m using techniques here used by pretty much any successful medium. But you’re going to watch this knowing that I’m fake. And if that makes you feel uncomfortable, then that is kind of my point.
And it’s a good point, because Brown’s victims get quite upset hearing about their dead loved-ones. At the end a caption states that everyone involved was told the true nature of what happened and agreed to appear in the programme. “Real” mediums (media?) would never admit what they were doing, of course. Our medium thinks Derren Brown has a gift, but (dollar signs), “to move it to another level would be incredible.”
The programme was a facsinating display of Derren Brown’s edge-of-your-seat, how-did-he-do-it? trickery, mixed in with a very serious and important message.
At the start of this post I wrote that the people Derren Brown confronted were Charlatans, but there may be more to it. That they were apparently so willing to believe him means that to a greater or lesser extent they really do believe in what they’re doing.
I can’t think of anything more depressing and pointless than dedicating your life to a falsehood, which is why I think it’s so important to maintain a healthy, active skepticism.
Spot on. Great review and comments.
I also watched this programme and was totally
immersed in it and impressed by it.
How Derren Brown does it i would love to know but I guess that would spoil the whole illusion.
I am fascinated and trust hope that we are not being duped.
If we are so be it – I will feel disappointed.
But Derren is aking us to question our own beliefs and what we see
- so I do doubt the true authenticity of this and other programmes by DB.
But excellent entertainment!!
Paul
Just because you don’t understand his techniques doesn’t mean he’s a fraud. I’m an amateur mentalist and I know/have an idea about how he does what he does. There are a few, of course, things that baffle me as well. And no, he did not use stooges and/or actors. People who don’t understand always accuse him of doing that. I can firmly say that none of the things he showed require stooges.
I can understand why some would like to believe his shows are staged using actors, etc because questioning one mans motives is much easier than questioning their own belief system.
I think what Derren Brown is doing is superb & the show goes to prove how many innocent people are dooped by self serving money makers.
I can understand why some would like to believe his shows are staged using actors, etc because questioning one mans motives is much easier than questioning their own belief system.
I think what Derren Brown is doing is superb & the show goes to prove how many innocent people are dooped by self serving money makers.
Nick – to clarify, I did not mean to accuse DB of using stooges or being a fraud. I merely meant to show why I have doubts and why I’m giving him the *benefit* of the doubt. By “number of levels” I meant: he is fooling the “expert”, he is fooling the convertees, is he fooling us? “Fraud” was a bad choice of words, but of course the “number of levels” could well be 0.
I saw a program recently featuring Derren Brown. He asked 2 advertising guys round to “his office” and asked them to produce a logo for his “company” which was something to do with animals (I forget what exactly).
He had also produced his own logo and placed it in a sealed envelope in the room with the ad guys while he waited outside for a while. On his return they compared logos and the two were very similar.
He then showed the cab journey the ad guys had taken to his office (Derren had arranged the cab beforehandto take a certain route) and pointed out where each influence in the final logo the ad guys did came from (buildings, ad boards etc.).
Certainly very clever and, if taken on faith, shows an astutue grasp of the way the mind absorbs information subconciously.
Whether you believe in hypnosis or not, the use of hypnotic techniques to control suggestability does exist. Derren is known for using these techniques and they do not show what occured while the cameras were off.
Also note that he claimed conversion to Christianity but all he got was a claim that a God could exist. That’s hardly a conversion and sounds more like a shock reaction or confusion. Also the dislaimer that people were converted back strongly
suggests hypnotic techniques.
I was interviewed by Derren Brown for the TV Show which aired January 7th. I am not a paid actor. I was duped!!! I slept on a pillow with a wire to a Dream Machine box for five nights, recorded my dreams, and in the interview Derren Brown read my dreams back to me. I was amazed. I don’t know how he did it. But he convinced me the Dream Machine works. Of course, I invited him on my radio program, next metaphysical convention and free workshop cruise. It’s still amazing to me that someone could read back my dreams and he hadn’t seen my dream journal as asked before-hand, I didn’t tell anyone my dreams. I didn’t meet him until the interview and only talked with him after the interview for a few minutes. I didn’t see the TV interview, but he paid me for the interview and I signed a waiver that he could use the interview anyway he would like to. That’s fine. As for my Gambling/Astrology, there’s no way he can debunk it. I do win on the minute. But, if he can weed out frauds and fakes in the metaphysical business and religious fields, power to him. That would be a great service to the rest of us dupes! As
Skepticism is not a very fruitful or clear conduct of thought or questioning.
It is simply as irrational toward open minded logical thinking as that of a blue eyed believer.
Debunking that which does not confirm their own set of ideas and only accepting those which do cater to the pseudo-intellectual ego of the thought-conduct.
Critical mindedness, inquisitive and investigative thought-conduct is however the balanced tool of the mind.
It continues to investigate and question both within and without, not waiting simply for one result to satisfy the ego but keeping this inquisitiveness as a striving, a mark of character. Skepticism does not, it leads the person into a highly satisfied experience of being right and the rest wrong or at best very doubtful.
To spot a “blue eyed believer” is not that difficult, still to spot and understand what a skeptic is about, is considered not as interesting for some reasons. Below here is a link eminently describing how the thought-conduct of a skeptical mind works
The Art of Debunkery
http://members.aol.com/ddrasin/zen.html
“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of
regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”
– Carl Jung
Great site, thanks!
Just testing
My concern is that the skeptic is so narrow minded and irrational. Derren Brown admits to certain ‘intangibles’ in his methods. His cold readings are a process of
‘Getting into the subjects mind’. He says that with practise it becomes intuitive!
What process is he describing…something explained by ‘hard’ science?? No not at all. But something explained by ESP? Yes very likely, yet he may not admit this whereas some magicians do. Truth is hard to find, but being irrational and predjudiced is one way of acertaining that you live in a world or falsehood.
I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find a copy of the show when Derren Brown plays a suggestive advertising gimmick on two advertising professionals?
Article from The Gurdian 2003
The publicity material described him as either brave or foolhardy. But Derren Brown, the illusionist who claimed he was playing Russian roulette on television using a live bullet, was revealed yesterday to be neither.
Brown’s controversial stunt backfired when police on Jersey, where it was filmed, said he had used blank ammunition.
The illusionist, dubbed Britain’s answer to David Blaine, had boasted he was risking his life. In fact it was an elaborate hoax.
Article continues
A spokesman for Brown last night issued a less than robust defence of the stunt, saying only that if the illusionist had used a blank bullet, as the police alleged, and if it had fired as the gun were pointed at his head, then “he would have died anyway”.
THE POINT IS – HE SAID THE AMMUNITION WAS REAL – WHAT ELSE HAS HE LIED ABOUT?????
I’m pretty sure that he said on the show that the rounds were blanks. He wasn’t lying if he said the amunition was ‘real’, since the blank rounds weren’t exactly fake… the amunition can be real, and be blanks at the same time?!?
Comment by Nigel — 6/5/2005 @ 9:47 pm
Cold reading is not a psychic ability.
see:Cold Reading
Comment by Hans — 31/1/2005 @ 11:56 am “>
Daniel Drasin is attempting to debunk debunking, what an absurd pursuit.
Hints:
Science is work, like carpentry. It’s not sophistry.
Psychic’s do not read minds, fortunes etc. The very nature of the term Psychic precludes a real world method. In other words the possiblity of “Magic” aside from what an entertainer does is… bullshit.
Article from The Gurdian 2003
Article continues
Comment by Rob James — 1/9/2005 @ 12:08 pm
Elaborate hoax? When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear, no one cried, “Hoax!”. Why? Because it’s inappropriate. Copperfield is a magician. We all know it’s not real. Even if Copperfield said, “And now I’m going to make The Statue of Liberty vanish into thin air.” Darren Brown is a
magician/mentalist/hypnotist. How he presents his material is often times not how the ends are achieved, ie exactly like Copperfield.
For only £19 you can learn all Derren Brown secrets. Bought the course yesterday and used my mom as a subject. It was dead funny. I was amazed. Check it out. http://www.DerrenBrownExposed.com
Just bought it. Really amazing course! recommended!
“For only £19 you can learn all Derren Brown secrets. Bought the course yesterday and used my mom as a subject. It was dead funny. I was amazed. Check it out. http://www.DerrenBrownExposed.com”
NLP – yeah right. Listen, this stuff will NOT teach any of Derren Brown’s secrets. Derren Brown is a magician -a very good one mind, but still- and if you really want to know his secrets: know that most of his stuff is magic presented in a way which trys to give the viewer/spectator a feeling of realness. Read the following article; i don’t agree with writers argument, but it will give you a better idea . May i also suggest Derren’s book entitled ‘Absolute Magic’.(It does not contain any tricks and is really aimed at magicians, but it will give the intrigued lay man an understanding of how and why he chooses to present and preform his magic.)
Of course he lies… He’s a magician, isn’t he? A trickster. Doesn’t make him a fraud.
It’s not real, -Oh man, some people- don’t confuse his presentation for his methods. And by
the way he’s very skeptical of NLP and other new age crap.
derren brown knows the meaning of live just like everybody knows it but by him muce stronger he beliefs in is one words himself and thats the meaning in man-kind.
The button counting trick on TV I reckon’ was done with scales built into the platforms the buttons were placed on.
1 button = X grams.
Explains why with a quick glance he guessed close the first time but not exact – scale had not settled.
Her guessed more correctly/corrected himself when the platter was placed on a flat surface.
blah blah
ALL SO FAKE>>>> BUT WONDERFUL ENTERTAINMENT
Derren Brown is great,
I especially loved his photo booth stunt when
the student walked into a photo booth in London
to have his photo taken and walked out in
Marrakesh!!!!
A truely brillaint stunt. Loved it.
Sorry to dissapoint those that think actors are never used. Derren says at the start “no actors or stooges are used”. This is correct, in that no professional actors are used. But people paid to take part are used, of this I know for a fact. Why, I can’t say, but I assure you he does. Feel free to check out Ser 1 ep 6 of Trick of the Mind where a woman is in a building causing ‘random people to stop in the street’. All the ones that failed were edited out bar one, which is left for the effect. The woman who stopped was interviewed afterward. One of the worse acting performances ever shown on television. There are many parts of his performance which I can’t explain, and he is undoubably a fine perfomer none the less.
Hello and Hi to Chris Thomson and Lisa
Unfortunately the site http://www.DerrenBrownExposed.com seem to be closed. I hope, that one of you will visit this forum here again and could give me title and author of this book/dvd???
Would be very interested in it! Just ordered the book of Shuttleworth.
Thanks – Ina
When Darren says “reading the New Testament as a historical document finally rid me of any religeous belief” just what in the hell is he trying to say?
The important historical events that Christianity is based upon are so well extablished, not just from the New Testament record, but also from extra-biblical sources that as far as historical accuracy goes they are practically beyond dispute.
So, what is Derren saying? Is he saying that if what is recorded as happening in the New Testament really happened then that is the reason WHY he has a problem with God? That he has a problem with God becoming man and willingly taking on the sin of the entire world so that all who put their trust in His saving work can be saved? Or does he have some other problem that he is not secure enough in the strength of his criticism to reveal.
He says something completely false when he claims “my belief was just as prone to circular logic and self fulfillment as all the new-age nonsense which bugged me.”
This statement is nonsense! Precisely because the Christian faith is based upon concrete historical events where God explicitly reveals Himself to men. New Age belief is not based on ANY historical events where God reveals Himself to man.
Derren should actually defend his criticism of the Christian faith if he is going to make such genericly negative and dubious claims on his show.
Ok…As a Magician myself, and an extreme follower of Derren Brown’s Tricks, I can tell you That he does NOT use stooges or actors of any kind. He is so popular now that if he couldn’t afford the risk of one of them going to the media. As for the button trick. It was not done with scales :p He knows some advanced memory techniques (described in his book, Tricks of the Mind). Anyway, I can bet my life that he does NOT use stooges. Read his books, they are good, and you learn a lot!