BUG...THE MOVIE

[professorpan]

you are telling me you have never had the situation arise where you couldn't remeber if a certain story, fact, joke, news story, etc originated from the tv or movie screen or from one of your friends in the flesh? you have never had this experience?

Rarely, if ever.

[overcoming hope]

you are telling me you have never had the situation arise where you couldn't remeber if a certain story, fact, joke, news story, etc originated from the tv or movie screen or from one of your friends in the flesh? you have never had this experience?

Rarely, if ever.

well, even if you have had the experience only once it proves my point, that being your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what you experience in person and what you watch on TV. this has been known for about 40 years.

the author of 'four arguments for the elimination of television' uses this fact as one of the reasons he believes tv is so dangerous.

[philipacentaur]

you are telling me you have never had the situation arise where you couldn't remeber if a certain story, fact, joke, news story, etc originated from the tv or movie screen or from one of your friends in the flesh? you have never had this experience?

Rarely, if ever.

well, even if you have had the experience only once it proves my original point, that being your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what you experience in person and what you watch on TV.

Faulty logic.

[overcoming hope]

you are telling me you have never had the situation arise where you couldn't remeber if a certain story, fact, joke, news story, etc originated from the tv or movie screen or from one of your friends in the flesh? you have never had this experience?

Rarely, if ever.

well, even if you have had the experience only once it proves my original point, that being your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what you experience in person and what you watch on TV.

Faulty logic.

please explain.

[IanEye]

you are telling me you have never had the situation arise where you couldn't remeber if a certain story, fact, joke, news story, etc originated from the tv or movie screen or from one of your friends in the flesh? you have never had this experience?

i guess i am having a problem with the word "originated". do mean the first time I heard the fact/joke?

let's say i have the tv on but i am not really paying primary attention to it because i am listening to my mother, and Rodney Dangerfield on the tv tells a joke

then a week later, a friend of mine tells me the joke and it sounds familiar

something like that?

the idea that my brain is taking in the sound of Dangerfield on the tv and storing it away even though my primary focus is on what my mom is saying?

i think that is possible, but i am not sure that is what you are talking about

[brekin]

overcoming hope wrote:

well, even if you have had the experience only once it proves my original point, that being your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what you experience in person and what you watch on TV.

I think there is some validity to that.

At one time I had a large television that was starting to go out. The top 1/6 of the screen would kind of stretch, making most people look kind of like a cone or tall box head. Not having the money I continued to watch the television, on some level allowing for the aberration.

This went on for at least a couple of months.

Then I was driving home one day and looking through my windshield I noticed a man get out of his car. He had a normal sized head but it leaned a little towards pumpkin shaped. My immediate thought was: "I wonder what he looks like in real life and not t.v."

And then I realized I wasn't watching television.

[philipacentaur]

People occasionally not remembering (or misattributing) sources of information, factual or otherwise, does not prove that the subconscious mind can't distinguish between actual and mediated experience. Yes, the mind is easily confused and susceptible to trickery, but saying one instance of confusion is proof of your point is illogical.

[professorpan]

People occasionally not remembering (or misattributing) sources of information, factual or otherwise, does not prove that the subconscious mind can't distinguish between actual and mediated experience. Yes, the mind is easily confused and susceptible to trickery, but saying one instance of confusion is proof of your point is illogical.

Thanks, Philip.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

.....why do some people always assume that entertainment like this has a sinister motive?

I write fiction, and it often has elements of topics discussed here at RI. In fact, my novel currently under revision has a character who may or may not be suffering from Morgellons. The uncertainty about the diagnosis is key to the buildup of suspense as the character questions his own sanity.

Why am I not surprised?
You've been peddling your 'just benign creativity from wonderful artists' meme about media for quite a while. History contradicts that view.

Am I somehow "discrediting" Morgellons by writing fiction about it? Are some conspiracy topics now verboten for writers?

The Morgellons meme is perfect for amplifying the 'kooky paranoid' meme that is so important to deterring critical thought about dark realities, just like "conspiracy theorist."
That's obvious, isn't it?

Just what we need, more of the 'it's just in your head...or is it?...confuse-a-tainment ala 'X-Files' and 'Twilight Zone.'
Meanwhile, more people are still finding out about assassinations and 9/11 and war psy-ops. Oh, maybe it's all in their heads. It certainly got into JFK's and RFK's and MLK's heads with dramatic results.

Speaking of MLK, the FBI 'bugged' him and now legislation is being pushed allowing the NSA to 'bug' every American.

So there are multiple meanings to the word "bug" and it has a political context quite apart from Morgellon's which perfectly synthesizes with the 'kooky paranoid' meme applied to those of us who don't trust alphabet agencies and total surveillance culture due to their history of using Gestapo social control tactics.

People who write screenplays read the same things we do, folks. Creative writers of dark fiction (myself included) are always soaking up the weird, the scary, and the disturbing and working that material into short stories, novels, and screenplays.

Culture warriors and disinformationists do the same thing.
Since we can't tell what an author's intentions are, we have to examine the product in context, right?

After all, that is the humane thing to do.

Funny how the names of whistleblowers keep ending up in fiction as bad guys or discredited. That's not humane.

This trend of demonizing stories and ascribing sinister motives to the writers/directors is really getting stale.

No, this trend of understanding psy-ops history, tactics, and goals is new.
I can understand your not wanting to be painted with suspicions about Kultur Kampf psy-ops but they are warranted and substantiated in the USA.

So if all your going to do is speak for yourself, that is myopic and rather selfish.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I'm gonna bring up a tv show I had the misfortune to watch in Melbourne.

It was an episode of NCIS about a bloke in Iraq responsible for finding US currency and bringing it out of the country through official channels.

In it he finds a conspiracy of people in the FBI, and possibly other alphabet agencies.

Someone turns up dead (tortured) at his place and the FBI think he's responsible. He gets help from his old mate, the head of NCIS.

It turns out the guy is nuts and hallucinated the whole thing, PTSD from too much war. And he's responsible for the deaths too. (IE subtext of show - conspiracies involving money, Iraq, FBI dodginess etc etcx are not only false beliefs, based on mental illness, the people who believe them are downright dangerous and capable of torture to support their delusions).

Thats at the very end. During the show I was talking to my family about some FBI whistleblowers RI regulars might have heard of etc etc. It was interesting the way the show set up the opportunity to think about various conspiracy related ideas, then cut the legs out from them at the end.

It would have been interesting to have Hugh in the room as all that happened.

Also, something that Pan and Phil might not have thought of, tho I tend to prefer their sceptical attitude in this, (people are nuts in some cases and sometimes those people do gravitate to various conspiracy based world views,) is that people use movies as metaphors to understand, frame, and talk about their experiences and how they interpret the world.

They fill the same role that indigenous stories/mythologies do in that they create a context for culture. I remember watching an interview with the director of Mad Max 3 (beyond Thunderdome). He said that when he got permission off the local blackfellas to film on their land he had to explain himself, his story and what it was all about.

They recognised that it was a western way of creating dreaming stories (ie stories to frame and reference experience by) before he had and said he was welcome to film on their land because of hat, and because of archetypal resonances between Max and certain culture heroes. I saw this interview on tv years ago, but it might be available online.

He basically used that experience to frame the way he saw cinema afterward - as a way westerners access "the dreaming".

On a mundane level this process seems to happen like this.

People experience something, and say/think "Oh thats like that movie..."

I have seen this happen plenty of times.

That doesn't necessarily mean Bugs, or any other show (with the exception of that damned NCIS episode) is deliberately created to portray RIers or anyone else who thinks about non mainstream ideas as nuts.

However one of the effects of a movie like Bugs is that it will portray RIers in that light - at least for some people not inclined to that worldview.

[I reckon this is partly why some people objected to BaPH and Bill Cooper being given credit on another thread, cos lets face it, he did something very similar (to character in Bugs who smokes crack and burns down his hotel room,) when he shuffled off this mortal coil.]

How many times have people here heard "Oh that sounds like that movie .... " in a conversation?

[philipacentaur]

You're welcome, PP and good point, J.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I'm gonna bring up a tv show I had the misfortune to watch in Melbourne.
.....
It turns out the guy is nuts and hallucinated the whole thing, PTSD from too much war. And he's responsible for the deaths too. (IE subtext of show - conspiracies involving money, Iraq, FBI dodginess etc etcx are not only false beliefs, based on mental illness, the people who believe them are downright dangerous and capable of torture to support their delusions).

Lots of this theme coming, too. "Aw, you're just nuts. Trust authority."

.....people use movies as metaphors to understand, frame, and talk about their experiences and how they interpret the world.

Absolutely. All the research and one's own empirical experience support that much of our sensory input, especially visual, tends to influence us by becoming our language and templates for 'how things are.'

They fill the same role that indigenous stories/mythologies do in that they create a context for culture.

Yup.
The oral tradition of the village elders passing on moral instruction is now performed largely by Hollywood in illiterate America and whoever influences Hollywood, which is largely the USG with CIA script writers and CIA-linked honchos greenlighting zillion dollar productions and other spooks coordinating advertising and release schedules for maximum visibility (effectiveness) and profit.

There's got to be a behind-the-scenes industry air-traffic control that coordinates this movie system so that the USG gets what it wants and the economic people get their profit.
And these goals just happen to perfectly coincide! Perfect hiding, too.

I've noticed that even the release dates for DVD rental are thematic. Of course.

Hollywood really is the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in that they CREATE 'false memories' as entertainment that influence the masses as a mild form of hypnosis, especially in the young.

Controlling language and tying it to image-supported definitions is extremely effective.

[professorpan]

Why am I not surprised?
You've been peddling your 'just benign creativity from wonderful artists' meme about media for quite a while. History contradicts that view.

Thank you for enlightening me, commandant Stalin. I will now tailor my artistic vision to your ennobling view of history.

So if all your going to do is speak for yourself, that is myopic and rather selfish.

Ha! That's all you do is talk about yourself. If you spent even five minutes listening to people like ASOF or myself, who actually know real people in the film and tv industries, you'd learn something.

But you won't, so you don't. You'd rather sit in your armchair with your old propaganda manuals and accuse other human beings of being fascist enablers.

That, my friend, is cowardly.

[FourthBase]

People occasionally not remembering (or misattributing) sources of information, factual or otherwise, does not prove that the subconscious mind can't distinguish between actual and mediated experience. Yes, the mind is easily confused and susceptible to trickery, but saying one instance of confusion is proof of your point is illogical.

Being able to tell the difference when pressed does not mean that the mediated, simulated experience doesn't affect you to a significant extent as much as real life does. So you can say, "that's just a movie" or "that's just a TV show", but you're still experiencing it as about (to hazard a guess) [s]10-20%[/s] 5-10% real, no matter how much you acknowledge that it isn't. That's my take.

[FourthBase]

What a post by Joe.

Not only do I hear people say "that's like that movie"...But I sometimes hear and see people mimic movie and TV personalities, and not in a deliberate conscious homage way.

Hollywood really is the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in that they CREATE 'false memories' as entertainment that influence the masses as a mild form of hypnosis, especially in the young.

Controlling language and tying it to image-supported definitions is extremely effective.

As much as Pan and phil and ASoF attempt to give Hugh a reality check...
There is always stuff like that, stuff that rings true.

Do movies not enter our dreams?