Derren Brown: The Experiments & The End of The World As He Knows It

After a rather long intermission, which I admit went on a tad longer than expected...I'm back! And here to give you another delightful and hopefully insightful helping of our nations favorite goatee-sporting entertainer. Yes, the ever-marvelous master of mind manipulation, the one and only Derren Brown. It's been a truly fascinating trip from his formative years as this budding 'magician' and entertainer with a twist, to this powerhouse of a performer who consistently leaves audiences all over the country completely awestruck and dumbfounded in his wake, myself now included ho yes. I've been there almost since the very beginning, from his earliest television special Russian Roulette way back in 2003 to his Trick of the Mind and Trick or Treat series to the other TV specials that followed and subsequent stage shows. In his own words: "out of love of magic I tried to come up with a form of magic that was a bit more thought-provoking and challenging and would get under your skin a bit." That was certainly very true of his most recent four-part series called The Experiments that hit our TV screens this very month last year which was only recently released on DVD and as you'd expect being the hardcore fan that I am snapped that up right away. The Experiments were essentially a series of ambitious and sociological...well experiments that centered around an unwitting subject be it a single person, a crowd or even an entire town. Derren wanted to further explore the darker side of human nature and behavior which was true of the first three episodes until finishing off with a relatively jolly and more positive finale. In stark contrast to his earlier showman material where he takes center stage and is the focal point of the show, Derren takes more of a back seat here you could say or rather the passenger side as opposed to being in the driving seat. There is more of an emphasis on the subject or subjects which I think is true of his more recent TV stuff. Now without further ado let's delve deeper into The Experiments shall we? Or more specifically the first only in this article.
 

The Assassin
In the first of The Experiments, Derren asks - is it possible to hypnotise someone to carry out an assassination? One such instance is the case of the imprisoned killer of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan who has professed many times that the CIA programmed him to murder the senator. Derren is out to set the record straight and discover whether such claims are remotely plausible. At the start of the episode, Derren demonstrates some basic but still very impressive feats of suggestion and hypnotism such as making someone instantly sleep before collapsing to the ground in quite dramatic fashion. This is known as a snap induction in which he interrupts an automatic process (something we don't even think about) such as the handshake, putting the persons mind into a state of confusion in which he can then directly influence and issue a command like sleep which they submit to and that provides relief from the confusion. He also performs a hypnotic induction on the entire studio audience making them all drift into a state of deep relaxation at the click of his fingers and the words and phrases that he uses. Even though I've seen him demonstrate this sort of linguistic trickery and programming in the past, it still never ceases to impress and amaze me on how much control he can exert merely through suggestion and based on the audiences expectations of what might happen. This is something he can do pretty much better than anyone and executes it in a way that boggles the mind.        

Now, the meat of the programme is to find someone who would be the most susceptible and responsive to his techniques in carrying out the public assassination of a well-known celebrity, though they have no idea of this. He eventually whittles his potential assassin down to four highly responsive individuals and puts them through the classic "acid test" to see if the subjects under hypnosis would involuntarily throw acid into someone else's face. By laying down the command and the hypnotic trigger (a poker-dot handkerchief) he manages to successfully get them all to throw..which is thankfully water upon seeing the handkerchief into the faces of the four members of the audience. So far so good, but then he really puts his two remaining candidates to the test. Through hypnosis and suggestion he completely overrides the sensation of the ice-cold tank, suggesting to them it's a lukewarm feeling almost body temperate as they manage to keep there hands in the freezing cold water for a good two minutes. He then removes the suggestion by merely grabbing the side of the tank and they immediately take there hands out of the tank as you would normally and that cold sensation would come back. This amazed me and it's true what he says about pain being subjective. A similar routine in his early years would involve him cutting off the sensation in the back of person's hand to the extent that they would be willing to put a syringe needle through it without feeling any pain whatsoever.

Here is that routine in his earliest series Mind Control in which he induces the pain of a toothache through suggestion and the infamous needle through the back of hand.

Without going off at too much of a tangent here though, he then selects Chris of the two remaining candidates to lay back in the gelid tank. As you'd expect he sits there quite comfortably, even as his heart rate is slowly dropping due to the cold temperature. Derren has completely suppressed Chris's somatic sensory system almost, or at least parts of it otherwise he wouldn't be able to withstand the freezing temperature for more than a few seconds. It clearly demonstrates how powerful hypnosis and suggestion can be. After clearing the suggestion by placing his hand on the side of the tank as before, Chris quickly leaps out, unaware until that point how much his body temperature has plummeted. He ultimately chooses Chris as his assassin, noting that there is something of a "blank slate" about him. Derren then brings Chris to a gun range under the pretense of how hypnosis can drastically improve your marksmanship, he is unaware that this is actually the first phase of the assassination programming process...a sly one that Derren. While Chris is in a sleep state Derren lays down the triggers, namely a ringtone cue that will send him into this trance-like state. In this state he will become a first-rate shooter through a "marksman mode" which is activated by placing his index finger to his forehead. Remarkably, he scores a good few bulls-eyes with both the rifle and the handgun while in this marksman state compared to when he was popping shots off normally. My mouth was agape at this moment, as was the instructor's.         
It's incredible to think that hypnosis can drastically improve a person's aim, which begs the question of how far hypnosis can really go. Are there any limits as to what you can achieve through it? Its a fascinating thought for sure, and to me hypnosis could essentially provide the key into unlocking our brain's untapped potential, considering how complex the human mind is. Anyway moving on before I stray to far again, so after Derren has set up the marksman mode, the next phase is to induce a state of spontaneous amnesia in Chris. He will essentially forget everything at the sight of the poker-dot design which again serves as the psychological trigger. Derren demonstrates this rather impressively by making Chris look at the poker-dot pattern on a screen which he does for a good two minutes or so. As soon as Derren switches the pattern off he asks Chris how long he was looking at the screen to which he replies,"10 seconds." He also gets Chris to reveal his PIN number in this temporary state of amnesia and is amazed after coming out of the state that Derren got it right even though he told him like seconds ago! With the programming phases now completed, it's time to answer that most important of questions: can you really hypnotise someone to carry out an assassination? The answer is both breathtaking and thought-provoking...

   

On the day of the assassination, Chris is given a case with a loaded gun inside by one of Derren's crew who asks him to mind it for the duration of the show. The show is a special talk taking place at a small venue, the speaker...the one and only Stephen Fry and also Chris's target. Chris sits himself up in the stalls unaware he's being secretly filmed and soon Melchett takes the stage and begins his talk. A woman in a poker-dot dress then enters the stalls and sits in front of Chris. This sets the spontaneous amnesia in motion and seconds later the music que from her phone rings out, this is the same ringtone that enables him to enter that marksman mode. Sure enough, upon hearing the trigger he raises his finger to his forehead and is told by the lady in the dress that his target is Stephen Fry. After an agonizing, nail-biting pause he finally reaches into the case that he had placed on the floor. He takes the handgun out of case which is loaded with what he believes to be three real bullets and stands up with his gun raised, he now has Stephen in his sights and then...BANG! BANG! BANG! Pops poor old Stephen three times in the chest much to the shock of the audience. He casually sits back down as if nothing happened while Stephen lies motionless on the floor, mission accomplished. 

When he later meets Derren and Stephen after the show, Chris has no recall whatsoever of anything unusual happening during the talk when quizzed by Derren. Derren then reveals to Chris that they were actually secretly filming during the entire show and he watches on in bemusement at the footage of him coolly gunning Stephen down. He is then tapped on the knee by Derren and it immediately comes rushing back to him. Chris then starts to remember details and that he believed he was back at the gun range when he carried out the public assassination, never once acknowledging that he was in a venue or theater or that he was firing on a real human being. Stephen was just a "target" to him like those he had punched holes through at the range and this revelation even left Stephen dumbfounded and gobsmacked. This is definitive proof that an individual of a suggestive and responsive sort can be programmed through hypnosis and suggestion to carry out something as heinous as an assassination. A truly compelling and engrossing 50 minutes of television that answers the most significant question while leaving many others open to debate and speculation. 

Apocalypse Tomorrow

Tune in to Channel 4 tomorrow at 9pm as Derren is about to turn one man's world upside down in probably his most thrilling, groundbreaking, ambitious and darkest project to date. He is going to convince one man that it is the end of the world as he knows it. I will be posting my thoughts later that night if I get the chance. This is not to be missed! Make sure you tune in.