Derren Brown

[Dredred]

I noted that the young chap who did not go through with the Heist, smiled as he walked past the van - I do think he twigged it. Did anyone else notice that the car playing the music passed him rather too quickly - probably a mistake - I wondered if that was why he resisted the alleged 'conditioning.'

My take on it is that the guy simply didn't have the balls to go through with it. This is the same guy who was dissapointed (in the recreation of the Milgram experiment) when he found out he couldn't administer any higher shocks when he reached 450 volts. Not really a sign of strength of character, IMO.

 

[BPScooter]

This post is entirely devoted to raising the "post count" on this forum, and making its contents (and more importantly, the prior posts on this subject) more easily available; I have attempted to do this by way of my posting the present reply, which you are now reading.

 

[trader08]

Point of view from a bystander

I was introduced to Derren Brown through youtube.com as many of his stuff is available there. I love the debunk stuff he does such as Seance and Messiah in addition to his suggestion/psychology tricks therefore I am definitely a fan.

I've viewed quite a bit of his stuff:

Tricks of the Mind series all 3 seasons
Devil's Picturebook
The Gathering
Seance
Messiah
Lecture
Russian Roulette
The Heist
Inside Your Mind
Something Wicked, This Way Comes

As a person that has some (basic) knowledge in magic (seen Dai Vernons Revelation) I was not interested in his magic tricks (not to suggest they were not well done). The reason I watch him is for his debunking and suggestion/psychology/hypnosis/NLP elements. I was interested in knowing how powerful can these elements really work.

As a viewer I must say I would be annoyed if a trick he does which he suggest to be performed based on suggestion/psychology/hypnosis/NLP turns out to be nothing more than a magic trick.

Some may suggest, but that's what Magicians do, they lie. Which is a very valid statement. I believe there's however a population (me included) that wants to believe his power of suggestion is indeed as he presents it. Even though we inherently feel it's a stretch kinda like the answer by a participant in one episode of "Tricks of the Mind". He asked a participant "What if I told you I can make the sun disappear!" the guy responded, "I would believe you" in a partial accepting way, with skepticism of course.
It's only after the tricks done did the participant looked flabbergasted.

 

[Bob Klase]

Some may suggest, but that's what Magicians do, they lie.

Not really. Good magicians try very hard to avoid lies- it's much better if they can just help you reach the wrong conclusion/assumptions without actually lying. There's at least one well known magician who absolutely never lies (I can't remember who it is, maybe Jerry Andrus).

 

[Sunray Breaker]

Brown states at the beginning of every show, by blatantly saying to his audience that he achieves his results using a combination of "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship."

He's always made it very clear that he has no special powers. The closest he came to deception was in his show Messiah, although he WAS honest about what he did after the fact.

In Messiah, he goes to the states under five different aliases and thouroughly convices:

A preacher that he can convert atheists with a touch
A UFO nut that he can sense someones medical history after an abduction
A Paranormal talk show host that he's created a machine that records dreams
A Psychic Teaching center that he can read whats in his mind and draw it in the other room
A room full of skeptical new yorkers that he could contact the dead.

This is probably one of his more controversial shows, because it touches base on a few sensitive issues about how manipulation and misdirection can have a huge impact on people's lives and the way they percieve reality.

I love Derren Brown and have seen pretty much all of his work.