So it all started on Friday night with Derren Brown’s latest one-off show on Channel 4 called ‘The System’ — where he seemingly shows one woman his system for winning at the horse races — and she wins over and over again.
If you did not see it, it is well worth catching up on sometime, because it was intriguing and the outcome and method is far different than you expect… I am not going to go into his method too much because I think it is best watched. However, I am finding myself being more and more questioning with Derren Browns TV shows… Mainly because of my own very high expectation of all he does.
He is brilliant. I love Derren Brown. He delivers all that he does in such a slick way that is so hypnotic. He also has the marvellous law of expectancy going for him, that is, his viewers expect mystery, intrigue and psychological ‘stuff’, he is a great showman and his programmes are great fun. When we expect all that tuff, we tend to gaze dumbfounded at the TV screen thinking ‘wow… how does that happen?’ or thinking that some special psychological force is strong with Derren Brown and he knows how to use the mind like a true jedi knight. We expect that. We want that. And so the hypnotic influence upon us is strong.
This really set the tone for my weekend. You’ll ecall in my last blog entry, I mentioned going to the football to watch my beloved Nottingham Forest play at my hometown of Bournemouth in the league. We were third in the league, we have had a meteoric fall from grace in recent years, yt get higher attendances than all the other teams in our league and have won the European Cup in back to back seasons. Bournemouth are on the verge of administration, third from bottom of the league and can’t seem to string a win together for love nor money… Yet for the second season in a row, they beat us 2-0.
My father-in-law-to-be is a Bournemouth season ticket holder — he told all his friends and family that I was going with my friends and we all planned to meet him after the game for drinks… I jokled about it all week, made cheeky comments and built it up to quite and event… Boy oh boy… The expectation and the way they responded and reacted after their win… I had a hellish time on the pub afterwards… There was so much fun leg-pulling and banter pointed my way… I was getting texts from people I don’t even know basking in Bournemouth’s glory and my team’s defeat!
Crazy stuff. Yet fascinating to step behind it every once in a while to see how the anticipation and expectation influenced the way everyone responded after the event.
Finally, I had a joyous Sunday… Spending money on new things for my new home. Katie and I have very pecific ideas of how we want our new home to be… It is forged in our minds! We laughed out loud at the way we are able to dismiss certain things from a mile off becuase they do not sit well with our expectation of we want things to be.
So indeed, a weekend filled with the hypnotic principle of expectation in many varying guises… Got to tell you all about hypnosis being questionably used in a murder trial in a US state… Coming up tomorrow…
