Derren Brown – Seance

Finally got a chance to see Derren Brown’s Seance, as TVNZ decided to screen it, over three years after the original UK broadcast. This was the show when psychological magician Brown staged a seance for a dozen students, then revealed at the end that the spirit they had so convincingly contacted was in fact an actress. It caused a minor media blowup in the UK, although nothing like the reaction to the Russian Roulette gag where Brown apparently relied on his ability to manipulate someone to avoid firing a blank round at his own head. (Both are summarised at Derren’s wikipedia page.)
As previously noted in this blog, I love Derren Brown. His mixture of psychological tricks, sleight of hand and misdirection is blinding to watch, and his absolute confidence wins me over every time. Every word he says is calculated to have exactly the right effect, and it’s astonishing because he seems quite happy to improvise, trusting in his command of his material to not put a single foot wrong.
One of the tricks Brown uses a lot is his ability to put susceptible people into a trance-like state of suggestibility, what we commonly refer to as hypnosis. Hypnosis is a deeply weird thing. While everyone agrees that the subjective experience of hypnosis is authentic and dramatic, there is no consensus about what the heck is actually going on. Does it even exist, or is it an elaborate learned performance? Cal had me wondering tonight whether I’d be susceptible – I’ve never tried and don’t ever really wish to. I think I could be, but my fierce analytical interest in all this stuff might mean I’m not. How mysterious.
This little wander through the web also turned up a great quote that seems quite insightful about how we process and understand truth via television:

JAMY: Pointing the camera at the audience.
DERREN: It’s all about reactions. Very interesting, isn’t it? Because people who would not be that interested in watching a magician on television–in a more mainstream light entertainment kind of show, where you might have a fixed camera watching a guy at a table where you see everything so fairly–people will say they don’t believe it because it’s on TV. And yet you watch Blaine’s show, and sometimes you’re seeing the same trick that you’ve seen Copperfield or Paul Daniels or whoever, there are parallels there–and yet you believe in it so much when Blaine does it. And yet the rules are far less stringent. The camera is all over the place sometimes, and yet you believe it more.
JAMY: Because the real question with magic on TV is always credibility, and yet there’s not an absolute black-and-white way to achieve that.
DERREN: No. Apart from stumbling across this idea that it is all about reactions, and that what makes it real is this thing that we all know only exists in the head of the spectator. And suddenly a show comes along that is all about those reactions. It’s a show of people freaking out. And when you watch that, you just buy it, and you believe it, and you’re there, and you’re forced into sharing that reaction, and questioning what you’ve seen, and it’s a really simple and really great idea.

As a final note, it’s worth pointing out that Brown is a magician, and while he denies using confederates, he confirms that many traditional magician cheats are part of his techniques, and not all of it is psychology. The famous gag where Brown hypnotises a guy playing an arcade game then puts him in a real-life mockup of the game, hunting zombies, seems to me an obvious setup. Regardless, Brown is clearly very very good at things like cold reading and suggestion (there’s a great description in his book Pure Effect of how he uses psychological techniques to suggest a particular card to someone). I love him anyways.
(Those with high google-fu may still be able to locate copies of several of Brown’s books online in pdf form. Worth it if you can find them.)