Fox Network Dollhouse Show - Hip MKULTRA

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Fuckin Television!

[<`scuse me, did i say that out loud? >]

Bless you, brother.

[LilyPatToo]

Sorry guys, but while I do diligently read the information here at RI about CIA manipulation of media, I will never choose to give up all entertainment media as a result of that information. I'm an artist and a writer myself and I take deep enjoyment in the best that TV and movies have to offer. Always have, since my father was a movie projectionist who shared his love of cinema with me from the time I was old enough to toddle up the steps to the projection booth where he toiled. When he started running movies, it was at the end of the silent movie era. He taught me to appreciate a finely crafted film and the work that goes into making one.

There's a ton of utter dreck on the airwaves, but there's also wonderful, original, brilliant stuff. If a person is willing to be discerning about what they watch--and, in my case, also knowledgeable enough to be able to spot the "social engineering"--it's possible to enjoy great contemporary writing, directing and acting.

I respect Marmot's and Hugh's personal decisions to abstain from TV, but if I were to do it, in my own case it would amount to no more than a mindless, fear-based avoidance that would make my life poorer. I don't feel the need to toss the baby out with the bath water in order to protect myself from manipulation. I've experienced first-hand, one-on-one, up close and personal just how manipulative the perpetrators of mind control are and it's given me an allergy to that kind of crap.

But that doesn't mean that I'll choose to abstain from movies or TV, it just means that I have to educate myself and to exercise discernment in what I allow myself to watch--remember that no one is being forced to watch the mindless drivel that passes for most TV and movies in the US. I'd sooner have my fingernails pulled out with pliers than watch most of it, to be honest.

And if friends choose instead to reject the entire entertainment industry, well, that's their choice and I will respect it and defend their right to make it. But it's not my choice. Great drama is art and it doesn't just exist on the stage, despite some people's prejudices. It can be found on TV and at the movies...you just can't be lazy or careless about what you let into your mind.

Educating yourself about the ongoing Mockingbird attempts at psy-ops and exercising diligence about your choice of programing allows retention of the baby and avoidance of the MC bathwater. IWO, WORK. If you choose not to do that work, cool. But if I choose to do it and thereby enrich my life, that's way cool too.

LilyPat

[marmot]

Thank you, LilyPat, for that. I appreciate everything you said.

I'm not, personally, a true abstainer. And, Yes, there's lots of great programming on Television. And every once in a while a really good film does get made worth watching. The NCAA men's basketball tournament can only be watched on Television. I've picked brackets and follow every game. If I had cable, I just know I'd get sucked into the Food Network, the Home and Garden channel, Cycling, independent and foreign films, Nature shows, and on and on. Great wholesome programming, much of it.

However, the primary reason I don't turn on my TV (except to watch an occasional DVD movie, or watch basketball or football games) is that it would otherwise suck up a significant measure of my time, giving me back so very little in return. This is my own cost benefit analysis. My life is more productive without getting caught in the wonderful swirl of television.

Forgive me for my 'Fuckin Television' remark. It's not that this spectacular technology - in and of itself - is evil, But it's how television technology has been used to weaponize it's audience that marvels and angers me. See, it's not called 'programming' for nothin..

"With perfect psycho-mimetic skill, they carry out the commands of the TV image." -Marshall McLuhan from Understanding Media

[marmot]

My thinking along the lines of television being a weaponizing weapon (injecting into it's host viral modes of thinking and being, whereby the host enacts the codes and spreads the germs to others) reminded me of this moment in Twelve Monkeys:

[James Cole found a spider and knows he's got to take it with him, let's it crawl over his hand while deciding what to do with it]

Jeffrey Goines: You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules. Take germs, for example.

James Cole: Germs?

Jeffrey Goines: Uh-huh. In the eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person, anyway. Ah! Ah! Along comes this doctor, uh, uh, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. Ah? He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right? See?

[James Cole finally takes the spider into his mouth, Jeffrey Goines is either too deep into his talk or unimpressed by this and continues his talk as if nothing happened]

Jeffrey Goines: Ah! Ah! There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion. You... you... you believe in germs, right?

[LilyPatToo]

What you say is true, marmot--TV/Movies, like almost anything else, can be weaponized. And I definitely understand and applaud your motive of making more time for the things that matter more to you.

One thing that occurred to me after I posted above was that for me, personally, the need to escape my reality, to dissociate safely for a period of time that's limited and distinct, is enormous. It's how I've survived my life this far. I have only to look at the people like myself that I've known and see how many turned instead to alcohol/drugs/sex in order to self-medicate and I realize how lucky I was to have found very early how to escape the pain in books, movies and TV.

Joss Whedon and a very limited list of other creative people working in the entertainment industry have saved my sanity by giving me a way out of the pain and terror--little breaks of an hour or two that let me return to my reality refreshed and able to function pretty well despite C-PTSD and a dissociative disorder. Sanity is precious to me.

And when one of these gifted writers/storytellers also exposes the mostly-asleep public to information about mind control, I'm even more grateful for their work. Dollhouse is far from perfect and so far it hasn't seemed to me to be anywhere near the quality of Buffy or of Firefly, but then I'm 2 episodes behind, too. And in Firefly, and especially in the movie Serenity, Whedon had a main character who was an escapee from a government-run mind control lab--do you realize how unusual that was in American TV?

Millions of people were exposed to information about a deeply covert crime against humanity while they were being entertained. Perhaps that's the only way to get forbidden, discredited information to the masses at this time...

LilyPat

[marmot]

I understand, LilyPat, I believe I do.

Btw, I'm presently working on a novel, a speculative fiction wherein the central character is a programmed multiple. I hope it will be an inspiring escape for many readers.

[LilyPatToo]

WOW.

LilyPat, who's working on a romantic suspense novel about one, even as we speak...er, type

[beeline]

Ok, thanks LilyPat for crystallizing my thoughts regarding TV precisely. I am aware of the 'programming' that's on TV. But I am the one in control. I don't have to watch it.

And I want to be aware of what other 'consumers' are getting out of it. Where their opinions come from. It's really amazing when you meet an otherwise intelligent individual that simply parrots what they've seen on CNN, CNBC, Fox, whatever. It's so obvious.

In that regard, HMW is right. It is 'programming.'

Also I want to read these novels about programmed multiples.

Years ago I had an idea for one about a society of clones. SOK. Society of Kevin. All copies of one guy. No females. I couldn't write it. It was too dark.

Lilypat, I get the feeling that the next four or five Dollhouse episodes are going to be good. Stay tuned!

[marmot]

Jeffrey Goines: There's the television. It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we for, then? We're consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally ill. Fact, Jim, fact - if you don't buy things - toilet paper, new cars, computerized yo-yos, electrically-operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain-implanted headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers...


IF you don't buy the latest state-sponsored, mass-mediated li(n)e then what are you? A broken cog in the machine, a mentally ill commodity for the hospitals to experiment with toward a cure.

Funny thing. Recently I had a friend who asked me to go with her to the psych hospital's emergency room. Just to get into the waiting room we were searched and had to put everything (including our cell phones) in clear plastic bags which were taken from us, we had to get wanded and walk through a metal detector, etc.

But get this: There were a number of apparently mentally and emotionally disturbed individuals waiting to see a doctor. Many seemed to be dealing with some incredible stress. Well, roaring from the monitor above us all was this horribly vapid sit-com, canned laughter and all. It was the type of nausiating programming that doesn't edify, doesn't make you feel good. It's just trash! And here they had this bellowing through the waiting room, and I thought, no wonder were all so sick and crazy, look at the garbage being pumped into our hearts and mind.

They do all they can to keep any weapons from entering the psych hosptial, but they neglect to get rid of the most harmful weapon of all: the Televisions!

on edit: Hospital security even confiscated my pen -- `cause surely it could be used as a weapon.

[beeline]

But marmot, they think they are doing the right thing by keeping a tv on in a psych wing. Keep 'them' placated. Just like they've been kept placated all of their lives.

BTW, the three best summers of my life were in upstate NY--no tv, heck you could barely get NPR on the radio on a clear day.

[justdrew]

finally seen the 1st ep, will give it a chance grudgingly I guess, though it's so damn mainstream ...

the premise is just:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunslinger_Girls
+
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_90

slightly adapted for American TV.
guesses based on ep 1:
It's not clear who the controlling agency is, they're not 'government' or if they do have a government sponsor, they're firewalled with complete deniability and this 'dollhouse' operates with no official sanction. Meaning they get the common criminal treatment if exposed. Likely they are meant to be a fully private operation. Possibly with some political allies/affiliations. Not sure where he's going to take it. The conflict of Echo potentially breaking free probably won't last too long, most likely the crisis will come at the end of season 1. By season two Echo will likely be running the "doll house" having chosen to take it over via a coup rather than attempt to destroy it, using the memory/skill tapes to "do-good" and skipping the memory eraser part so her friends and fellow assets retain an ever expanding array of skills.

I really don't feel sure at all that J.W. is 'trying to do good' with this... or if perhaps that's just what he tells himself. Maybe it's for the good, but I'm skeptical of the mainstreaming of this type of material.

___
Hey LilyPatToo - you've done a lot of SF reading I see from your comments above, the earliest work of this sort of programming I can think of would have been mentioned in John Brunner's Shockwave Rider and Stand on Zannzibar (the REAL first two 'cyberpunk' books IMHO if such a genre must really be named). Heinline's Friday is also directly in the same category, possibly the most explicitly so of any book.
Ever read F. Paul Wilson's An Enemy of the State (1980) or L Neil Smith's North American Confederacy series?

[LilyPatToo]

justdrew, hang in there--the pay-off comes in the pivotal episode I just (finally!) got to watch yesterday--Man on the Street At long last, I felt as if I was watching a Joss Whedon show--fast and clever and no more like Standard American Dreck TV than a cheap rattletrap subcompact car is like a Lamborghini.

And yes, I've been reading SF since I could read, with post-apocalyptic and, lately, cyberpunk being my favorite subgenres. Thanks so much for the heads up about Stand on Zannzibar--that's one I don't think I've read (though it may just be my aging memory failing me--wouldn't be the first time!). And no, I've never heard of the 2 books you name last above...I take it they're relevant?

Re: Joss Whedon's use of this subject (MC) as a framework for his Dollhouse stories--I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, simply based on his track record. And the sympathetic way in which he presented a mind control program survivor in Firefly and Serenity also failed to set off warning bells for me re: exploitation or psy-ops dissemination of disinfo (though I'm fairly sure Hugh and others here would disagree with me). I was left with the impression that he was making a genuine effort to expose the US public to the idea of MC and to make it mercilessly clear that the people who do this are terrifying sociopaths.

OTOH, when I saw the pilot of United States of Tara, it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Being a multiple myself who's been messed with by people who appeared to have knowledge that emanated from MKULTRA-era government mind control programs (and who possibly were actually part of one or more of them), I'm very mistrustful of US media portrayals of victims. But I also constantly question my own (possibly compromised) ability to discern between accurate information and cleverly-spun disinfo.

So when I saw the first episodes' typical prime time TV lameness, I was terribly disappointed and wary myself. And perhaps that's a rational response, if you know anything about mass media disinfo ops. But I strongly encourage you to take into account the difficulties with Fox that Whedon had and the necessity to allow them to really fuck with his story line in order to get the show onto the air at all. If you read the interviews with him, you'll hear him say as much (though much more diplomatically!) and warn real fans to reserve judgement until the episodes that finally present his original ideas for the series.

It's worth the wait, believe me.

LilyPat

[justdrew]

ok, I'll trust your judgment on it, will check it out a bit more...

I just can't rave about Stand on Zanzibar enough. One damn fine book. It's just amazing that it was published in 1968, there's some giveaways, but mostly it's seems like it could be contemporary. Oh and it was just one of the FIVE novels he published that year. Fraking prolific bastard eh? Truth is as much as I admire his work I've only ready about 10% of his output as yet. Nobody puts out that kind of volume anymore. I wonder why?

In SoZ, "A new technology introduced is "eptification" (education for particular tasks), a form of mental programming."

but Shockwave Rider, while being 7 years later, 1975... it's a bit shorter, but every bit as amazing a work, in which he coined the term Worm to describe the computer malware type.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockwave_Rider
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar

Brunner has some other interesting books, The Sheep Look Up,
The Jagged Orbit and The Squares of the City come to mind.

---
Oh and I just mentioned the Wilson and Smith books in passing, they're not especially relevant to the OP in any way, being instead examples of the libertarian branch of SF. but fun, not too preachy and making good arguments without going too far overboard. Smith's books present a kind of libertarian utopia, that wouldn't seem too bad to the typical "socialist" either and Wilson's books is a pleasant little revolutionary text about how to overthrow an oppressive criminal government.

[beeline]

Thanks Drew I'm going to have to check out those books. I esp. love SciFi when it prescient.

[psynapz]

Nobody puts out that kind of volume anymore. I wonder why?

Too many TV channels, too many web sites. Too much information, too many distractions. The ratio has shifted now such that there is an inversely-proportionate relationship between literary output and situational awareness. Case in point: Thomas Friedman.

Nowadays, you have to stop paying comprehensive, ritualized attention to the bullet-train ticker tape of inbound data in order to focus on what you already know long enough to squirt out one book, let alone five. If you were to write five books in one year about anything other than the book-burning-bait of Star Wars meets Dungeons and Dragons at Degrassi Junior High, they would rapidly digress into irrelevance as the four next big things rush past them on their logarithmically meteoric cannon shots over the top of the NYT bestsellers list.