Fox Network Dollhouse Show - Hip MKULTRA

[barracuda]

Yes: being mind-controlled is the new little black dress.

[brekin]

barracuda wrote:

Yes: being mind-controlled is the new little black dress.

Bingo! That is what has struck me lately. It seems from Alias, to those Bourne movies, to Resident Evil, to Serenity, some black op shadow organization is the new fairy god mother who bestows the "special powers or talents" to the lucky individual who ends up of course"rebelling" because they still have that partition of humanity that wasn't completely wiped.

But it is their programming which makes them special in the first place so there is always the sense that if "they" could get it right we all could have Matrix like abilities and not have the bummer of being a mindless government stooge. I think it makes it more attractive because it is forbidden, for example how many movies, shows, or books have the main character as a normal who spends their time trying to rescue the victims of mind control? I can't think of any off-hand, usually it's the ever so precious damaged ones who are anointed to save everyone else. It's like the ultimate resume builder now for Heroes, "Have you ever been a victim of mind control techniques?"

[Joe Hillshoist]

barracuda wrote:

Yes: being mind-controlled is the new little black dress.

But it is their programming which makes them special in the first place so there is always the sense that if "they" could get it right we all could have Matrix like abilities and not have the bummer of being a mindless government stooge. I think it makes it more attractive because it is forbidden, for example how many movies, shows, or books have the main character as a normal who spends their time trying to rescue the victims of mind control? I can't think of any off-hand, usually it's the ever so precious damaged ones who are anointed to save everyone else. It's like the ultimate resume builder now for Heroes, "Have you ever been a victim of mind control techniques?"

In the stories where "they" get it right "they" are usually reasonably benign, like Kung Fu, the old tv series/movie.

There's nothing special about mind control techniques or the effects of that sort of training. Thats why it works. It takes advantage of processes that are already possible in a human.

I actually hate the way those sort of shows tend to promote the idea that the only way to get these special powers is to submit to some horrible mindwashing process. Thats what I find the most sus thing about them is.

Instead of training hard yourself you have to become a pawn of the dark side to get the skillz.

There's also the idea that MC assassins run amok, turn against their captors and fight injustice for the rest of their lives. Its pretty obvious trhat isn't happening (even if it is, they are losing) so the whole thing must be a croc.

[brekin]

Joe Hillshoist wrote:

I actually hate the way those sort of shows tend to promote the idea that the only way to get these special powers is to submit to some horrible mindwashing process. Thats what I find the most sus thing about them is.

Instead of training hard yourself you have to become a pawn of the dark side to get the skillz.

For some reason this reminded me of getting a college degree.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yeah fair enough too.

Especially these days, college is just like high school V 2.0.

[brekin]

Two more related shows.

My Own Worst Enemy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Own_Wor ... TV_series)
(paste the above link)

My Own Worst Enemy was an American television drama airing on NBC, and Global in Canada. It premiered on October 13, 2008. The series was produced by Universal Media Studios. Jason Smilovic was the executive producer; David Semel was the director and executive producer. It ended on December 15th after 9 episodes. The final episode ended with a cliff-hanger, and the major plot lines ended without resolution.

The series followed the life of American secret agent Edward Albright and his cover alias, Henry Spivey who had no knowledge of his double life. Albright, played by Christian Slater, was implanted with a chip that allowed his handlers to physically switch Albright's personality to that of his alias. However, in the pilot episode, there was a malfunction which caused Albright's personalities to switch at random, revealing his secret life to his alias.

United States of Tara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_United_States_of_Tara

United States of Tara is an upcoming comedy series on the Showtime Network starring Toni Collette. Created by Steven Spielberg and developed by Juno's Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Diablo Cody, the 13-episode series will follow the life of a housewife with dissociative identity disorder. It will premiere on January 18, 2009. The pilot, has been made available for viewing on Showtime's official website. The pilot was written by Diablo Cody and directed by Craig Gillespie.

Concept
In United States of Tara, Tara (Toni Collette) is a wife and mother of teenage children. The family of four, though, is anything but ordinary. Aside from the fact that her quirky, good-hearted son (Keir Gilchrist) has a crush on a boy in his film class and her troubled daughter (Brie Larson) struggles to locate boundaries with men, Tara has her own issues - she isn't always herself. Tara has dissociative identity disorder, meaning that when things get out of hand or beyond the amount of stress she can handle, Tara simply cannot help but alter one of her personalities, a trait that makes this family of misfits all the more bizarre and unattatched. John Corbett stars as Tara's hard-working and committed husband, and Rosemarie DeWitt stars as her lonely sister.

[Project Willow]

Maybe the idea is sinking into mass consciousness, and like the radioactive overgrown bug movies of the 50's, this latest rash of mc themed entertainment is a reflection of deep seated fear.

Be afraid, Joss Whedon, be very afraid, we're here, and we're going to get...

The human race has to deal with the technology eventually, in some way.

[beeline]

Don't forget Zoolander:

Plot
Fashion mogul Jacobim Mugatu (Will Ferrell) is charged by the fashion industry to find a male fashion model who can be brainwashed in order to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia at an upcoming fashion show in order to retain cheap child labor in that country. Mugatu, with help from model agent Maury Ballstein (Jerry Stiller), selects for the task the dimwitted Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), formerly the top male fashion model in the world but displaced by the up-and-coming Hansel (Owen Wilson) at the latest VH1 Fashion Awards. After losing his fellow male models in a "freak gasoline-fight accident," Derek returns home to his father Spencer (Jon Voight) and tries to work alongside him in the coal mines, but is rejected by his family and returns to New York City. Mugatu offers Derek a role in the upcoming "Derelicte" fashion show, and through the guise of a spa treatment, brainwashes Zoolander so that he will attack and kill the Prime Minister when Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" is played.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoolander

On edit: I didn't know this:

The movie's box office was hurt by the fact that it opened two weekends after the September 11, 2001 attacks; it was among the first comedy films after the occurrence to enter theaters. In the trailer for the Oliver Stone movie World Trade Center, a poster for Zoolander can be seen in the background as the shadow of the first plane to hit the WTC passes over New York City.

[epi]

If there's one thing that the Controllers must fear, it's all their broken guinea pigs' programing breaking down as the tampered-with minds age. If that were to happen, then mental health professionals all over the country would begin seeing highly dissociative patients with oddly systematic, rigidly structured systems of personalities.

..........

--it just sounds too much like paranoid schizophrenia to me--

I suspect, LilyPatToo, that IF the programming broke down the mental health professionals would not SEE and interpret the condition in dissociative terms, but something more along the delusive lines of paranoid schizophrenia, or some new spectacular disorder.. The institutional glasses their professional education has equipped them with would conveniently provide them with new lenses in which to understand and deal with the phenomena..

I imagine quite a few must know about it and have read pieces like DC Hammonds Greenbaum speech.

I can't think of any off-hand, usually it's the ever so precious damaged ones who are anointed to save everyone else.

I know I read a reference to this somewhere in a mythological/archetypal context, 'the sacred wound', the wound as the key to self-transformation but I don't remember where or what.

I once participated in an experiment measuring emotional response in conjunction with exposure to subliminal images, but because I actually saw the images, the results were deemed abnormal and discarded and it was explained to me something along the line that my brain probably overcompensated for a psychological vulnerability. My new found ability was just a symptom of dysfunction . But I think the explanation is plausible and also possibly a factor in the slightly paranoid, highly sensitive and unusual pattern matching capabilities I believe I share with the average conspiratorial thinker, if nothing else it is a theory about myself.

MC torture aside, scars, tattoos and violation of integrity has always been used in initiations to create a cultural identity and can be a good thing depending on context.

[Joe Hillshoist]

And the actual process itself...

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Don't forget Zoolander

Spies and assassins (mind-controlled or otherwise) and their recent, specifically comedic, movie obsession with male grooming... What's that all about?

Bond, Bourne, and other "serious" filmic male spies are also obvious obsessive self-groomers, but we never see them actually making sure they look good - they always just do.

Are the filmies trying to make a point about narcissistic personality disorder, and the complete ruthlessness and lack of moral self-awareness that goes with it? Or are they just making films about very goodlooking spies? (Clooney counts, obviously, but I think I might already have ripped off Hugh by juxtaposing those two images, so I won't further invade his territory).

I don't understand the sudden surplus (it really is a surplus) of mind-controlled female spies and assassins on TV nowadays. It might just be an idea who's time has come, and ideas come thick and fast these days. Zamyatin's "WE" came out in 1921 - Huxley's "Brave New World" in '32 - Orwell's "1984" in '49. All essentially the same book, or the same idea, being explored in different ways at different times.

But all reflecting the same reality which helped inspire them, and which they were written to disrupt, but which persisted both in spite of them and because of them.

Not sure where I'm going with this... Things are definitely speeding up, though. If Marx was right, and history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, we are going to start seeing the masks changing quicker and quicker until no one knows what to laugh at or condemn anymore. We're already seeing it. Actually, it's what this whole board is about, in my view.

I feel I'm plagiarising somebody here, but I don't know who (except possibly Hugh). Anyway, I'll shut up now.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

United States of Tara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_United_States_of_Tara

Allegations mostly from nationalists, later emerged that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had been informed of the abuse at the home for years previously, but had not moved to prevent it because the manager of the home, William McGrath, was also the leader of an obscure loyalist paramilitary group, called Tara, and was being blackmailed by MI5 into providing intelligence on other loyalist groups. The tabloid press then linked the home with a whole series of Establishment figures without any evidence being provided.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kincora_boy%27s_home

Evidence was, of course, provided, or they wouldn't have held a lengthy and expensive inquiry. But evidence is never enough.

Tara means a lot of things, though. Especially in Ireland.

The Hill of Tara... according to tradition, was the seat of Árd Rí na hÉireann, or the High King of Ireland. Current scholarship based on the research conducted by the Discovery Programme, indicates that Tara was not a true seat of Kingship, but a sacral site associated with Indo-European Kingship rituals...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Tara

The Mound Of The Hostages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_of_the_Hostages

Means things elsewhere, too: "The film opens on a large cotton plantation called Tara in rural Georgia in 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War where Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) is flirting with the two Tarleton twins Brent (Fred Crane) and Stuart (George Reeves)..."

It is also just a name, though (the name of a Buffy character too, come to think of it) so I should shut up again.

[jingofever]

I don't understand the sudden surplus (it really is a surplus) of mind-controlled female spies and assassins on TV nowadays. It might just be an idea who's time has come, and ideas come thick and fast these days. Zamyatin's "WE" came out in 1921 - Huxley's "Brave New World" in '32 - Orwell's "1984" in '49. All essentially the same book, or the same idea, being explored in different ways at different times.

There is an important distinction between 1984 and Brave New World.

Edit: We sounds a lot like THX 1138.

[mentalgongfu2]

Jingo, the book cited in your link, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, is a must read for any student of media and mediated reality.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Edit: We sounds a lot like THX 1138.

Back to Lucas again, and his hilarious misunderstanding of Republicanism, which just gets funnier year on year. Knights Of The Old Republic? Whatever you say, George. http://www.bioware.com/games/knights_old_republic/


Let's have Kings of the Social Democracy next - or Military Rulers of the Absolutely Free Realm.

It's a great game, though, I must admit - if you choose the dark side you can commit genocide against a whole fictional race, and destroy a few planets into the bargain. It is a real work of art, seriously, in my view. But it's not going to help anybody, and was never meant to. And the title is silly.

You're right about the difference between 1984 and Brave New World. But it really is two sides of the same coin, or the same globe.

They got the torture, we got the pleasure, for the most part (though everybody gets both, to varying degrees).

Let's imagine that Orwell was the laureate for the future of the Third and Second Worlds - "Picture a boot, stamping on a human face - forever!"

That works. It's accurate, though it leaves out the majority experience - simply scraping by, day by day, trying to avoid the boot. The boot, and it's meaning, are ever-present in their lives, though, so it works as a summation.

The Huxley thing will be, by necessity, but for reason I know not, more offensive - but I think it's equally true.

Imagine Huxley, channeling Orwell, as laureate of the First World - "Picture a cock, wanking in a woman's face - forever!"

They got torture, we got porn. And now that the unending pleasures have finally begun to numb us out, what are they giving us? Torture porn. 24 hour snuff movies.

And it's not on Film24, like SAW XXIII or Final Destination: The Gazillionth Death.

It's on the News, for all to see, and people I know well who cried like babies watching Watership Down just can't see it!

This is kind of a long-winded and stupid way of saying that Alice is not wrong to post the pictures which she does (and will regardless, to her credit).

No comment on the terminology, because I don't know enough. But I know murder when I see it, and some people don't.