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Jan. 11, 2026 - Truth Unrestricted
59:01
Unreality On Film - The Manchurian Candidate Pt 1

Send us a text The Manchurian Candidate has long been an idea separated from the film that created the term. The idea that a person could be reshaped and controlled as an assassin has long inspired conspiratorial thinking. So what other ideas from the film inspire these errant notions?

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And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that is, what are we doing here, Patrick?
What is this podcast about?
Well, we're discussing unreality on film.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We are more generally, though, we're creating and interpreting the language of the disinformation age.
And today we are talking about unreality on film, the ways in which things that are not real but are meant to look real, which technically is all of fiction, right?
It's meant to look real, but it isn't real.
But in these specific cases, we're looking at things that are looking like the real life things that are unreal.
And they're kind of like they're vices that could migrate into reality if people aren't careful about how they use them.
Yeah, yeah.
I just did, just as we record this, I released an episode just last night, less than 24 hours ago.
Subjective reality.
Yeah, yeah.
It was, I, uh, I, I really, uh, I already cranked it up on that one.
It was good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I made sure that I got some people's brains humming.
Um, but yeah, how how we look at reality.
I mean, your reality is just your subjective reality is your reality.
I just thought of a new, a new possible byline, truth unrestricted, pressing the gas pedal on your brain.
Okay.
All right.
No, I'll put that on the list.
I'll put that on the list the next time we switch it up.
Okay.
So we are here.
We're going to talk about the Manchurian candidate today.
And actually, the next time we hear that people are going to hear and see us on this podcast, we'll also be talking about the Manchurian candidate because there was so much that it's going to be two episodes.
So yeah, it was two movies also.
So, I mean, that's part of the reason why.
But it's not like we're doing one movie in one episode and the other movie in the other episode because we get a little repetitive.
So both times we're doing both movies.
It's a whole thing.
Cool.
Yeah.
So what did you think of these movies, Patrick, that I made you watch?
Tied you to a chair and propped open your eyelids and made you watch them.
I'm picturing the robot chicken intro.
Is it a take on the Clockwork Orange scene?
Eyes are propped open, little eyedroppers are put in his eyes, so he watches this whole thing.
Yeah.
What I thought of the movies, you know, for me, it was really interesting watching the first version of the movie because I've never watched anything with Frank Sinatra in it.
Yeah.
Right.
And, you know, he's one of these legendary characters of both music and film from back in the day, old blue eyes.
Entertainment in general, right?
Like live shows and the works.
Yeah.
But, you know, it was interesting to watch the aspects of filmography, the cinematography of it, you know, and to kind of compare the older version to the newer version just in terms of, you know, there's more thought going on on that kind of filmography fun by the time we get into the 2000s.
Cinematography, how they use like the camera and the angles and the zooming in on certain things and actor reactions.
Yeah, yeah.
Like they weren't trying to cut everything when they were doing an analog because it was like manual splicing, right?
It was very difficult to do.
So they, yeah, yeah.
I mean, yeah.
It drew an interesting comparison as well, just where we kind of drew some of the cultural lines between, you know, what's acceptable on the screen.
Oh, yeah.
Yo, yeah, yeah.
Good catch.
Yeah yeah, the 1962 version it's got some racism in there yeah, oh yeah yeah, it's got yeah, things that are just not acceptable.
Weren't you know the 2004 version?
Uh, there was a lot of things that just weren't any more acceptable in the 2004 version like, as a society, we just weren't putting that sort of thing in movies, but like yeah yeah, you had uh uh, all kinds of racist stereotypes coming through and this, these were just parts of movies in 1962.
There's a real kind of look backward at that, but I think we would be remiss in not mentioning it for real, because it it's, it's not uh, it's not subtle, it doesn't feel subtle anyway right, it's.
You're immediately thinking about how well it's aged or not.
Well, right?
So yeah yeah, for sure right, I mean, and this, this movie, I mean I, I would prefer to compare it to like.
I mean, we're comparing these two movies to each other.
They're the movie and the remake um but uh, I would almost prefer to compare it to like the Exorcist instead, because that's more what this movie in 1962 was going for.
I, I want to scare the audience with some kind of uh, magical thing that they don't know how it works and it's.
It's meant to show people how, how vulnerable they really are right, and this, that could easily describe both the, the Original Manchurian Candidate, and also the Exorcist equally, like you wouldn't know.
Like, if I just left those descriptions there and then left the two movies there, you wouldn't really know which one I was really talking about, right?
So that's kind of more what they were going for.
They weren't trying to make a political message of any kind not, not really like some.
Some moments in there are kind of like that.
There's moments in there about, you know, that seem to be obvious references to uh um Mccarthy right, Joseph Mccarthy, I mean the, the talk of the communists and the.
The one scene there's a guy, he's a politician, he's uh oh, we should give spoiler warnings.
It 1962 you, you had time to watch this movie.
Yeah uh, I think this entire sub-series is a spoiler warning of sorts.
Yeah right yeah, full spoilers.
Uh, do not watch a show about a show if you haven't watched the show that that show is about.
It's in the title Device For Life.
Yeah, in the title.
Yeah, in 2004 is 22 years ago now it's.
It's uh, statute of limitations is over on that um, but yeah yeah, you have.
Uh, what was I just talking about when I got talking about that?
The comparison between the original mentoring candidate and the exorcist yeah, kind of yeah, the way that that they well they, they weren't making individual like a, a political, they didn't have like like a political message or political theme really uh, except for, like they did have the one character who was uh railing a politician, railing on about communism and about how there are communists in the whatever State Department whatever,
and he keeps in the same interview that he keeps throwing out a different number of communists in the like a one and a half minute span.
I'm not using that clip, we're not talking about it today, but he's just like, and everyone's like, how many, how many were there, how many?
And the number keeps changing, goes up, it goes down, and it's like no one knows how many, and the guy who's saying it doesn't even know how many.
Like, and it's it's almost comical, like they, they in 1962, Joseph Mccarthy and the whole red scare.
Technically the red scare was still happening, but Mccarthyism as a thing was just a few years past being done.
So I think they were obviously aiming for that right uh, but it wasn't like a central part of the movie really um so yeah, I mean they, this was, this is more like a horror movie than like a political thriller, in my opinion, because what they really want is to scare the audience.
So yeah, I mean that's, that's what that looks like.
As far as comparisons to the 2004 version um, I mean, obviously it's, it's much better.
Uh, most of the actors are better in the uh, newer version.
I think um, I have trouble imagining that there are many actors better than Denzel Washington.
Really, I mean, he's just, he's good all the way around, every role, all the time.
Yeah like, and you know, you mentioned Frank Sinatra.
Frank Sinatra was good like, he was legitimately good and fun, fun part about this.
Uh, Frank Sinatra had it written in his contract like he owns this movie.
He uh, he starred in the movie for a large salary, but then also for uh, a percentage of the profits and then also for rights to the movie after a certain number of years it had passed.
So like, after 10 years or whatever, he owned it.
Oh so, he owned the rights to the movie and that was a reason why like, there was I, I don't know what was going on if he wasn't paying attention or he didn't like it or whatever, but it it didn't get shown in a lot of places after he owned it because they needed his rights and he didn't care what anyone thought he was.
Just like, either told him to screw off or didn't answer the phone right, I mean, he was just um.
But it eventually passed to Nancy Sinatra and she eventually agreed to make the, the movie in uh 2004 many, many decades after um.
But he he had it written in his contract also like he was paid like almost twice the.
The budget of the movie is just to pay Frank Sinatra for appearing in the movie um, and he also got all the other things on top of that and in his contract it was stipulated that he was to do only one take for every scene.
He's, He's one Tank, Sinatra.
He was only one take.
He doesn't want to be there all day.
He doesn't want to do.
So, I mean, Denzel Washington was better, but Denzel probably also did more than one take.
Like, so, I mean, it's.
He's the cause of an actor.
Well, Frank Sinatra was just showing up, playing the role, and then going home.
Like he was literally like all those scenes, one take, and that's it.
And he's out.
Sinatra's like the original main character energy, right?
The producer tries to say, oh, no, no, but he's like, nope, take a look at my contract.
Yeah.
Sorry, director.
You had one shot.
And actually, there's, there's one moment in the movie that was a little out of little out of focus.
Like it's, it's, it's hard to notice.
Like if you're watching it, there's one moment I was reading about the, all the, all the trivia on this.
There's one moment that's a little bit fuzzy.
And he, they, they didn't notice at first when they did it.
But then later when they're putting the movie together, the director's like, oh no, it's this, this one scene is, is, is out of focus.
I can't believe.
Oh, I'm, I'm, I, I, I have to reshoot this scene.
And then Sinatra said, no, just use it.
Just use that scene.
Not interested.
I'm not going by.
I'm busy.
There's things to do.
I got a show.
Like, I got, you know, I got Dean Martin to hang out with.
Like, I'm busy.
Like, mob guys to, like, do business with.
I don't have time to go do reshoots.
What the hell is this?
Grade four, you know, class pictures?
No, I don't think so.
Yeah.
But to me, these movies were, they weren't terrible.
I'm not going to say they're terrible, but they were muddled.
Okay.
Like both had plot points that were muddled.
So I'm just going to take a couple minutes and go through them, how muddled they were.
Okay.
So 1962 version.
It's called the Manchurian candidate.
So the candidate is actually a minor character in this film.
And that person was never in Manchuria.
So there has to be a different candidate other than the candidate who's the candidate in the film.
You know, like, so that part, right?
Okay.
So the plot also at many points, it suffers from the need to bend around the need for the star, that's Frank Sinatra, to appear heroic and important.
That's what I found when I watched it is that there were too many moments where it was like, you could have done it in another way that made the story flow better.
But because you have this great big star in Frank Sinatra that needs to look very, very heroic, everything has to happen.
Everything has to happen on him.
Nothing important happens unless it's him doing it, like all of those things.
So it suffered from that, right?
In my opinion.
Marco, which was Frank Sinatra's, Frank Sinatra's character, he could have stopped Shaw, that was the other character who's who's the one being mind controlled.
He could have stopped Shaw from doing the execution at the end of the movie because he's got him in his apartment.
He's talking to him.
He knows that he's got this mind control problem, right?
He's going to do what they tell him to do, you know, like he knows about this and he lets him go anyway.
And he's like, well, I guess I got it.
You know, like it's this weird sense that he's got to do it the right way.
Like Batman can't just, you know, go find the Joker now.
He's got to wait for the Joker to commit a crime or something.
Right.
And it's, and it's this, this weird sense that I think maybe made more sense in 1962, but it's a lot more muddled now, right?
So also muddled, like the method, the method they came up with as a means of activating the control mechanism of the hypnotized person being mind controlled.
It was a little too commonplace.
And they even showed this in the movie where there's a moment where someone in a bar says the words and he sort of becomes temporarily mind controlled.
And the one guy says, I think the one lady says, go take a walk in a lake.
And he goes to the lake to go, you know, walk in the lake kind of thing.
Right.
And it's like this moment where I think they were trying to show how this hypnosis thing isn't foolproof.
But in doing so, they also kind of showed that it was also kind of hokey.
Like it's got this weird vibe.
And I thought that was kind of off.
We never get a real explanation for how Shaw is able to overcome the hypnotic mind control in the final scene.
So he goes and he does what he's supposed to do, except that he shoots the wrong people.
And it's, and by the way, the people he shoots are his own mother and his stepfather.
So it's like, okay, well, in this sense, like he's what, he's able to override the mind control, but then only enough to like shoot them instead.
But that's his mother.
Like, I don't know.
As much as she's the bad person in the movie, like that's still his mom.
Like, I don't know.
I don't, I don't know if I could shoot my mom, even if she was trying to take over the government.
I might turn her in, but I don't know if I could shoot her.
Like, that seems, the whole thing seems a little off.
I don't know.
Yeah.
She also stole his only chance at love.
Well, okay.
Yeah, but he killed that woman.
I don't know.
Yeah, but I mean, he's understanding that her part in it.
I don't know.
So for me, when I watched the first movie, it seemed like it seemed plausible that Ben or Marco, his attempt to deprogram Shaw was when he's saying like, listen, anyone says anything to you about solitaire or whatever it is, he's like, you tell them it's over.
Right.
So I almost thought, like as I was watching it, I thought Shaw was going through the steps because he knew that was what was expected of him, but he was not planning on committing the hit.
But yeah, I mean, he was somewhat robotic as if he was in a trance state.
So it is a really good question you bring up.
How did he defeat the programming?
Or was it just that the programming had eroded to a point that the programming was now not as tight as it once was, right?
Those are all things the audience is left to imagine, right?
Which is like, it leaves it as part of this weird sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Ben pulling out more and more queens, right?
I was just like, oh, fuck, he's a master of this show.
Yeah, he's like, yeah, exactly.
Now what's going to, it's just like, man.
Yeah.
I had to laugh when I watched that.
I was like.
Yeah.
I mean, the idea that he just sort of gets over it or something is a movie trope that's trotted out in many different forms and things like when we watched The Matrix, we didn't talk about it, but the hokiest part of The Matrix is in the first movie when Neo dies and then Trinity is inside the ship and she's telling him all about how she never loved anyone except for him.
And then this is somehow the thing that brings him back to life.
And it's like, you know, this sense that true love finds a way or something and it's okay.
But it also reminded me a lot of the Star Wars episode three thing.
Sorry, also spoilers for Star Wars but the idea that that uh, she died of a broken heart right, like this, this idea has been torn to pieces on the internet forever.
Uh but yeah yeah, that that her heart broke and it killed her like okay, all right, can we, can we agree that people's bodies don't work this way?
Um, I don't know.
Yeah, that left me with this.
A lot of weird parts of this.
It didn't make sense um so right, but then we're gonna fix all those in 2004.
Right, to some degree.
It's tightened up at the very least.
Yeah right right okay, but there's still a couple problems with this movie right so, right off the bat.
Okay, first of all, we're not really using hypnosis anymore, because hypnosis is no longer scary, so we moved on to microchips in the brain.
Okay okay whatever, all right, we're gonna get into that in the other parts that we're gonna cover here.
But um, why do they have microchips in their shoulders when they also have microchips in their brains?
I don't know yeah, why do they need them in their shoulders?
Like you just chip in this guy's brain, like I think like yeah, but just as a plot device.
That was like a sinister commonality between the two of them.
That for both of them to discover about themselves is like i've been tampered with.
It's the first clue that something is really really going on.
Yeah, aside from like, you know you're having dreams.
Well, dreams are dreams, but to find a piece of metal that defies any explanation of what the technology is is like the real.
Okay, now we know sinister actors with a level of sophistication we don't understand are at play and they're using us.
We just don't know how yet, but we must continue the chase to to find out what, what this all means.
Yeah yeah also, he lost that uh first chip out of his shoulder that he pulled out of his shoulder in the sink, in the bathroom sink, and uh, anyone who's done any level of of uh home maintenance knows that you can just take apart the little dippy part that for first in there, you can get that thing.
It's right then.
Just don't keep flushing water through there like.
That's right.
Yeah, you're not a four-year-old.
He had a chance he could have gone to get it right there like, and he's looks like he's like 40 years old.
I think he should know this by now.
I don't know like, although if you look at his mental, he never had to take care of one of those things.
I don't know.
Yeah sorry, what were you saying?
No, I just said like, if you, I remember that scene and he just his mental state was so disordered the way he was like uh, fumbling the knife around in the sink, and I was just like what the hell's going on?
Like the wheels are coming off on this guy.
But that was you know that's.
I mean hey, he wasn't.
He's kind of freely and he has an onlooker who is, why is this guy doing this in my bathroom?
He's a stranger.
And when you imagine that she's not a CIA agent or whatever she is, then then you know you're imagining that she thinks that he's on drugs or something.
Right like yeah, it's a drug that he just, you know, dropped and went down there and he's looking to get it.
You know like, but still, the guy special forces, he should at least understand the whatever joint in the sink he's, he's lived in civilian life for 20 years, since the Iraq War.
Like yeah yeah, I don't know, never had whatever.
Okay, I can let that go, I guess.
Okay yeah, some people don't know that.
But like, we have a scene where Marco Denzel, Washington's character, has electro shock treatments.
Okay right, but it doesn't appear to have stopped him from being controlled later in the story.
So what's the point of the electroshock treatments why?
Why did we, why did the plot have him receive them?
If it didn't change his, his sort of vulnerability to getting mind controlled, like that scene is completely unnecessary unless it does something for him and it appears to do nothing for him, or to him really.
I mean, aside from the pain and discomfort in that moment, he had a day where he didn't remember.
Yeah, he woke up and he was kind of disoriented, like but that yeah, this didn't.
Yeah, I don't understand.
I mean, they're making him do it right, so he's under, he's under some thumbs right, like the military thumbs are saying well, now you have to get this treatment and now you have to do this.
No, that's his friend that did the treatment.
Like he goes to his friend that that knows the you know he.
He takes a second chip to him and he has a second chip and he looks under a microscope.
He's like oh, this is crazy technology.
And then he like, he's like oh well, you know.
And he's like oh, I need this help with this thing.
Like, can you do this for me?
And he's like well okay sure, i'll do it for you.
And then he gives him the electroshock treatments okay, and i'm like oh, but this guy's obviously trying to deprogram him.
He's he's the guy that he opens up to about the fact that he has the chip in his shoulder.
Yeah, see that that wasn't super clear to me when I watched it, like what the purpose was.
So I yeah, it's gotcha totally unnecessary that i'm here to tell you that, that your confusion is justified.
It's totally unnecessary, thank you um yeah, and also why I also don't feel like we needed to cover up Marco's part in the assassination at the end of the film.
I don't know, like uh, is Marco so uh, important?
Like we're talking about the CIA and they want to uncover this or whatever.
They want to show that this is a thing but they don't want to show it's a thing.
They don't want, apparently they don't want anyone to know that anyone could ever be mind controlled, like that.
That whole part, like why didn't they just arrest him and then expose the real, the real plot?
I don't know like well okay, so maybe, maybe you, you had planned on on talking about this, but one thing that kind of stood out to me was the um.
Like in both movies these things are done to these soldiers against their will.
It's where that's coming from.
That differs so greatly in both movies.
In the first movie it's the Russians have captured them and they're using this as a way to attack uh, the U.s government and destabilize them, right.
Whereas in the second movie, the calls coming from inside the house.
It's the, it's his own government doing this to him as part of their you know, their psyops or whatever, whatever you call that, when they're just um, doing crazy to their soldiers, right.
So there, you would need a cover-up in the second movie, otherwise you expose the fact that the CIA or the military or whoever they're just out there team killing their own people and using them up to you know, for nefarious ends.
So, yeah.
Okay.
Well, we'll get into that.
I think that'll come up in part two of these two episodes we're going to do about this.
We'll, we'll see.
So I have, I have a couple clips as I do.
I got they, they, uh, last week when I, or last time we did this, when I did some clips, they noticed and there was, but they, they let me do the clips and have them in there as long as I wasn't making money, which is whatever.
I'm not making money on this.
We have some latitude for now.
Yeah, yeah.
YouTube was like, hey, I noticed that thing you did.
And I will come after you if you step too far out of line.
Yeah.
Money is for other people, not for you, sir.
Okay.
So we have, I picked three aspects of these, of this, these two movies to kind of look at as directly relating to aspects of conspiratorial thinking.
Okay, so the first of these is our old friend decision paranoia.
We talked about in a previous episode, but one of the primary fears that drives conspiracy thinking is the idea that our decisions can be unduly affected by nefarious entities.
As these fears become exaggerated in the conspiratorial mind, they can look like and become complete and total mind control.
The idea, like we mentioned before, the idea that if they can influence any one decision, they could potentially influence all the decisions in some kind of totalizing idea.
So this greatly assists conspiracists in believing that nameless FBI agents are probably working to cover up crimes or to actually commit crimes for political candidates.
Maybe the Secret Service are doing that too.
Thinking of mind control as a storytelling mechanism greatly opens up the field for variations that become plausible as far as explaining how a negative influence can achieve some conspiratorial plan.
So as far as like explanatory glue, mind control is an incredible piece of explanatory glue.
If you're going to talk about things like, you know, the Butler shooting in Pennsylvania in July of 2024, for example, the idea that the person who did this was under mind control greatly assists a lot of ways that you could say, well, you know, of course, this has happened this way.
And of course, there's no trail.
And of course, there's no realistic parts of this young boy's life that might lead you to think that he wants to, you know, change politics in this way.
It's because he's under mind control.
And of course, the Secret Service are going to assist in this as a as a fake shooting because they're under mind control.
They're just mind control.
Look at them.
They look like drones, don't they?
Don't the Secret Service look like drones?
They're all like the same color suit and the dark glasses and everything.
Expressionless, yeah.
They always look like they're scanning the audience like the Terminator or something.
So, pardon me, what was that?
So we're going to look at uh, one of these clips that uh.
Look at this.
Let's see if there's a q.
Of course, as soon as this or any task is completed, you will already have forgotten that it ever actually took place.
Probe going in now, good.
Excellent releasing implant there.
That wasn't so bad, was it Raymond?
No sir, it's good.
No, no decay, no slippage, everything seems to be in flawless working condition.
So that was a clip from the later of the two movies of the microchip being inserted in the brain.
Very vivid uh, I thought um, this guy who's playing the doctor in this, this uh, Kookie doctor his, he was so perfect he was, he was maybe the best performance to me out of all both movies.
He's so he feels like he is the clinic like.
He feels like like these procedures that he's doing and he's so calmly explaining them as he's drilling holes in a person's head, it's.
It feels like he thinks they're just puppets, and that's that's definitely the impression I get and that obviously, was what they were going for in the film.
These are just puppets, these are toys, these are wind up toys.
They're going to do what you need them to do and and, of course, the imagery with the, the probe, entering the brain and and everything it's.
It's just a picture, it's just an animation, but it is come together and it makes it feel real that someone's is getting this chip in their brain.
Of course, what it's doing when it's there is also like neuroscience, when you really look into it, will tell you there's no single point in the brain you could put a chip that will really allow you to control what's happening.
Yeah yeah, that's not how the brain works, it's you have to put chips.
You, you have to put 10 000 chips in there, and even then you might not have enough.
Right, it would be, you know, the entire.
Just replace the brain with.
We'll talk to Elon Musk and see what they're up to over.
Oh yeah, i'm sure that he's on the case.
Yeah, but this, this provides.
This provides a plausible story.
What, what seems to be a plausible story?
For the idea that well yeah you, you can see it it's, it's this chip, it's chip in the brain, you know and, of course, a lot of people thought that vaccines were going to be chips inside people for this exact thing.
Uh, during the pandemic where I I don't know where they thought the chips were, were they in the syringe?
Like I don't understand, I don't know.
It's weird.
They're just like the explanation was never forthcoming.
It was never a thing where they were going to exactly explain all the details, all the clinical details of exactly how it worked.
They were just, oh, no chips, man.
Microchips yeah microchips uh, pets get them all the time.
Microchips yeah yeah yeah, just liquid born microchips, no less free floating, unassociating nanites in your blood man yeah yeah okay, that's the answer.
You just they get props for creativity, that's for sure, right?
But uh yeah this, this idea that that these technologies will allow someone to completely control all the movements and motions and decisions of another person, that's the fear, that's one of the central fears at the, at the heart of this always, yeah.
Well, I mean, you also look at how pliable Shaw was, you know, like he's conversational with the doctor, while the doctor is opening his brain and the doctor's telling him what he's doing, he gets that creepy smile on his face.
I thought was a nice touch yeah yeah, this creepy, vacant smile.
Like i'm doing good here, aren't I?
You know, his head is held perfectly in place so that the you know probe goes in at the right spot.
Yeah yeah, I don't know it's uh, but that's the way.
That's the way it uh appears to those who are really deep in this.
So uh, the next point here, I have the wrong window open.
I'll close that uh.
The next point is, uh, have you ever heard of a thing that's called psy ops, Patrick?
Oh yeah yeah yeah, psychological ops.
The idea that um in in in warfare, the idea is that you uh portray a falsehood you, you portray something to the enemy that they think is going to be true, and then they're going to make a decision based on thinking it's true and that's going to give you an advantage right, that's, that's generally how this thing started uh, which is like the ruse right the the, the military ruse um, but of course this, this idea now is,
as far as information warfare is that uh, parts of society are fake, parts of our life are fake, and this fakeness is meant to make you think that certain things are real, so that uh, you make different decisions or you're in some way um uh, not taken seriously maybe, or or to discredit you.
I mean, these sorts of things are um, in the atmosphere now as ideas.
So psyops is one of the major things that a lot of conspiratorial people talk about.
So um, and and then, and they come up in this movie, so things like Gulf War Syndrome uh, they become part of the narrative of the second of these films.
Right uh, the film didn't have this, this exact factor?
Um, it didn't.
Uh, it didn't, you know, they hadn't thought of psyops then.
I guess, I don't know well, they didn't mention it or refer to it.
Yeah, not in the film, but I think, as a, as a thing that people in society think about.
They weren't as much of a, of a a factor, and I think if you tried to do that in that film with all the other things that were muddling it, you would just muddle it further and it would be less comprehensible.
Um so yeah, but in the second of these films.
It includes a thing that's called Gulf War syndrome.
So it's part of the narrative to explain how it is that it's so easy for people surrounding our protagonist to dismiss his rantings, right?
It becomes a thing that you know about but can dismiss.
And that's the psyop.
So to conspiracists, this is the method for reality inversion, right?
So if Gulf War syndrome exists and we're using it to dismiss people, then Gulf War Syndrome is actually a thing that's meant to do that.
And everyone who's had Gulf War syndrome probably had something else much more important happen to them.
So they just invert that whole thing.
So to them, Gulf War Syndrome isn't actually an epidemic of PTSD and or maybe exposure to chemical weapons, but instead a rumor spread by one of the three-letter agencies or maybe like all of them that you shouldn't believe the insane stories you hear from soldiers who return from places like the Iraq War.
Yeah, yeah.
They're just ill.
They're just, oh, yeah, yeah.
You've heard about this.
It was on Dateline, right?
Like, yeah, you, you heard about this.
This is.
And if you don't know the specificity of it, that's because that's part of the syndrome.
I think it's just an umbrella of problems that just, if you were in the Gulf War.
Yeah, yeah.
Someone saw something weird in the Gulf War.
That was Gulf War syndrome.
It becomes a way to shunt away the evidence.
According to conspiracists, it becomes a way to shunt away the evidence.
Hey, I just, I want to say if anyone's watching the video, I'm not crying.
I think I'm coming down with something.
So my eyes are getting a little weepy.
So I keep, I'm okay.
The audio listeners have no idea what, but I've just been constantly like wiping tears out of my eyes.
But I'm okay.
All right.
All right.
Thanks for the Gulf War syndrome.
Psyops.
Yeah.
Just for my part, I wasn't worried.
Okay, good.
So Patrick's getting really, he's really touched by these psyops.
Really, yeah.
The probe in the brain really got to him.
Yeah.
That's right.
Getting all self-conscious over here.
Yeah.
So let's play the clip here.
All right.
I have it here.
Yeah.
What happened to you after you were captured?
Black helicopters, secret laboratories, mad scientists, mind drugs, shock torture, and Raymond Shaw.
You don't believe any of it, do you?
It's crazy.
It sounds crazy, though.
It sounds what they wanted me to think, too.
It's exactly what they want you to think.
That's what they want you to think, too.
That's exactly what they want you to think.
They want you to think that it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just insanity.
That's it.
That kind of like ties back to the decision paranoia where, like if you can't trust any of your decisions because whatever you're thinking is what they want you to think, they're going to tell you, even if you don't have a chip in your brain, they're going to tell you that the weird, the things you saw that you think are part of a conspiracy, are just you experiencing Gulf War Syndrome and you're crazy.
Yeah yeah, and this again this, this lends explanatory power to conspiracy ideas, because they get this new mechanism that they get to use to to warp the shape of it to fit the thing that they want to be true, which is undoubtedly that the government is out to get them.
Conspiracy theories are also just horror films right they, they just want a big bad enemy, and the only big bad enemy that will really fit is the government.
At the end of the day, it's always the government.
So uh, how am I doing so far?
Am I?
Am I off track with these?
No, I think we're doing good.
We're on track.
I'm not coming up with ideas that don't fit.
I'm not, you tell me if I was, right?
Well, that one doesn't work, man.
Get rid of that one.
Like, why'd you bring that up?
You can always rely on me to have my curiosity present.
So if I don't understand something, I'm going to want to drill into it, right?
I trust your fluency, though, right?
Like, that's what I like about this is that you don't know fluency about these things.
So it's a learning experience.
I'll just keep throwing words at you till it looks like you believe me.
Good, good.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So the third of these is the idea of controlled opposition.
So this is a big deal.
Well, not all conspiracy, not all conspiracists ascribe to this idea, but it is a widely held belief that sometimes the expression that governments are or leaders are selected rather than elected comes up.
And sometimes the idea that the opposing political parties, opposing political parties on two ends of the political spectrum, left and right, are, as they say, two wings of the same bird, in that they're really just working together to bring us all to wherever they want to take us.
So in this case, in the second of these movies, we have Manchurian Global being supposedly not connected to the one politician and not a partisan player because they contribute money to both sides of the aisle.
In this film, this is given as a reason why Eleanor Shaw receiving money from them should not be suspicious.
But to a conspiracist who thinks this way, who looks at this, this becomes sort of a head-nodding.
Of course they do.
Of course they give money to both sides of the aisle.
Of course they do because both parties are in their pocket, right?
Like this is the idea that's come up.
So let's watch the clip.
Major Bennett Marco claims that this man brainwashed you.
In his dreams.
Contrived to have you win the Medal of Honor and has you poised to be the first privately owned and operated Vice President of the United States.
Sir, I've already spoken with Ben Marco, unfortunately.
He's not a well-man.
He's delusional.
Nevertheless, he's pulled from his mad hat some remarkably lucid connections between his dreams of your exploits in Kuwait and this Dr. Noil and the private equity fund Manchurian Global, your mother's primary political benefactor for the past 15 years.
Oh, come on, Tom.
They contribute to half the Senate, both sides of the aisle.
Both sides of the aisle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this exact notion is also given in the older of the two films.
I couldn't find a clip that sort of succinctly showed it in a nice, tidy, you know, 46 seconds like that was.
But I will note that the one side is hypnotizing them to mind control them.
And then in a plot twist near the end, which also seems kind of muddled when you don't know what's going to happen, you know, Murder She Wrote Lady is giving the key words to, you know, do the mind control on her own son because she knows the key words.
She's in on the scam.
They're communist and she's anti-communist and they are working together to do something, get someone elected, some, you know, and it's, it's bringing this idea is that there isn't like different sides working on this.
There's just the two sides that we think of as two sides are just one side.
They're just one side.
And that's the conspiracy notion that comes up is that all of them are in it together as in all the politicians that are only appearing to oppose each other in public.
They don't really oppose each other.
They shake hands and share cigars afterward or whatever.
What a good show they did.
Just like wrestling.
Yeah, yeah.
Two puppets putting on a fight, but they're the same puppeteer.
Right.
I wasn't able to get a like a clip of a scene from the original movie, but I did capture this image.
And I'm going to throw it on here and we're going to describe it for our audio only listeners here.
So here we go.
Yeah.
So why don't you sort of tell me what you see here, Patrick?
I see them raising.
I remember this scene, yeah, where they're raising the two banners of the candidates before they're about to have that convention.
Yeah.
So I've put them on the screen.
I screenshotted it in two places and I put them both on the screen here, right?
And you're right.
The top one is a moment late in the film in the 1962 version where they're getting ready for the convention and they're going to announce the presidential, vice presidential candidates.
And they got one picture of each, one on the left, one on the right.
And they're very large.
And of course, the movie's in black and white.
So they're kind of grayscale or whatever.
But they're very large.
They're taking up the entire left to right of the screen and the upper half of the screen.
Then below that is a screenshot from earlier in the film.
And this is sort of like the communist garden party where they're displaying their hypnotic control over the soldiers.
And to demonstrate that they're communist, they have pictures of two prominent communist leaders from 1962.
You have Joseph Stalin on the left and you have Mao Zedong on the right.
And they are taking up more or less the screen left to right.
They are in the top half of the screen.
They're more or less the same size as the pictures of the two presidential and vice presidential candidates in the other screen.
And to me, this is like a nod to this idea that they're the same.
They're just the same.
They're meant to be the same.
The things that the one are doing are just the same as the thing the other are doing.
The imagery, the ways that they go about it, it's and I thought this was when I caught this, I thought this was kind of clever.
And I thought, you know, maybe it's a coincidence, but I don't know.
These people who made these films, especially in 1962, when film was very difficult to get together and make and cut together, I don't think they put these things in this way by accident.
I think this, whoever the director was, knew what he was doing.
And yeah.
Could be.
But on the other hand, I think that like if they just really wanted to drive home the point that these soldiers are so far into their hypnosis that they're just comfortably sitting in front of like, you know, communist dictators without any problem, right?
Like it's.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't necessarily see that that they're shown on the screen here in roughly the same size, in roughly the same half of the screen, like in the same part of the screen, right?
Same, similar distance apart, showing them side by side.
I mean, in the scene, yeah, you're right.
It might have been to, in part, to show us that they're indoctrinated to the communist ways or whatever.
Well, if the viewer wasn't picking up on the subtext of what the person was talking about, the guy, he's, you know, he's describing what the soldiers but, you know, like back then, I'm sure everybody watching this movie, all the Americans knew those two images of those leaders because part of the propaganda machine.
You do.
I might not have passed that history test, but well, I think a lot of people, when I said the name, for audio only listeners, I'd be interested to see when I mentioned Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, do you have a picture in your mind of who they were?
Like these were prominent people who did use their image as ways of using propaganda in their respective nations, right?
And which was also probably part of what they're going for here, where they're like, yeah, yeah, they did, but also we do it too.
Like don't don't convince yourself, you know, like don't kid yourself to think that we're so much better than them in some way in this way, because, you know, the Americans are doing it too, right?
It's, it's this, it's the same thing, really.
It's yeah.
I see that.
So I caught that.
I thought it went well with the idea of controlled opposition as this, this nod that the filmmakers are, in my opinion, making toward the idea that these are similar sets of people working together for a common goal.
And this is not, you know, this isn't how it works.
You know, like this.
No.
Maybe they sometimes do work together on some things, little bits here and there, pieces of legislation.
Yeah.
But you can't.
There could be points of connection, but how would you be a human living in this world if that was the entire thing was this production on such a grand scale involving so many people?
Yeah, because you still have to let one of them, you know, hold the conch, as they say, right?
Be the one with the actual power.
Like to, there was a lot of controlled opposition rhetoric that was happening around the time of the 2016 election with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump because their families were friendly.
They were friendly.
The Clintons and the Trumps, they knew each other well.
They did dinner together as regularly as people of that ilk have dinner together.
I don't know exactly how often, but you know, like every once in a while, right?
You know, well enough that they were photographed together regularly, right?
So people brought this idea up, this idea of controlled opposition.
What would you know what would convince Hillary to say, yeah, okay, Donald, you can have this one?
Like, who in the right mind thinks Hillary went through all the things she went through to just say, yeah, no what?
You can have it.
You can have this one.
Like, yeah, I, don't think so.
I mean, if it was Donald Trump being there and she won, you'd have a better case, but like, yeah, it's like the people that believe that have just never ever gone through anything in their life where they parted company with someone, you know, had a difference of opinion where it's just like, well, we're not going to get along anymore, right?
Yeah.
Like, it's if you see, if you see that happening, why, why wouldn't that be, why wouldn't that actually just be the case, right?
Like, yeah, they got along once upon a time, but Donald Trump wanted something.
Yeah.
Right.
And saw a way.
Hillary Clinton was in his way to get it.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so yeah, these, these ideas are faulty at their core, but people are viewing, you know, real media that can lead them to the idea that they're real.
I mean, a major gripe I have about the progression of these.
Actually, you know what?
That'll be in part two.
Okay.
That'll be in part two.
I have a major gripe about the progression of these, but that's all going to come up in part two of this two episodes we're going to do about this.
It's too big for the time left in part one.
Yeah, no, I don't want to, I don't want to get into it.
We're almost an hour in.
So yeah.
With that, I think we'll do the things we're going to do here.
So yeah, there won't be another movie next because we're going to do Mentoring Candidate next.
But I will say that I we might discuss it, but I want the next movie to be Dark City.
Okay.
When we did it at all.
Really?
Oh, that'll be fun.
That'll be fun.
Dark City is a great movie.
It's one of those gems.
It's a movie everyone should really see.
But that was dystopian.
It is.
Yeah, that's the dystopian sci-fi.
That's the heart of the target right there.
But yeah, the next of these on-film episodes will be the second half of the mentoring candidate.
And maybe I'll change my mind about Dark City being next.
I don't know.
I'm also thinking about Elysium.
I don't know.
Okay.
But yeah.
Please send us your comments and your complaints and your concerns too.
But, you know, comments, comments.
What's the email for that?
Truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
And if you're in the in crowd that knows me on Facebook, you can just tag me on Facebook or, you know, send me an instant message on Facebook or whatever.
And on Twitter, Spencer G. Watson.
On Blue Sky, I'm Spencer Watson, but I have trouble with Blue Sky.
It's just not good enough.
Sorry.
As an app?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, it's, I mean, Twitter, I can follow people and I have a timeline and I can stop.
Like I might only have a couple minutes and I might look at a couple and scroll through and I can see that I'm whatever, 10 hours behind or whatever.
And then I can just stop there and just close it and then come back hours later and then start exactly where I left off and just keep scrolling up.
Right.
Right.
And I get everything in the order it was left for me.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
But I like that too about it.
Blue Sky doesn't have that capability.
So I always have to start at the most recent thing.
Oh, I start scrolling down in the reverse order from where they were.
And I'm like, or I have to like scroll really quickly to the last moment I could read.
And I'm like, well, okay, that's annoying.
And also sometimes it's a whole day before I get back.
So it's like, okay, well, like, especially if you're following a bunch of people.
Like, yeah, I know, yeah.
You have to go and find each person and get where you were in their timeline.
Well, I mean, like my timeline is all of them in the order that they posted, right?
Yeah.
Except that it doesn't start from where I left off.
It starts always from the freshest.
And it's like, okay, whatever.
Facebook does the same thing.
Okay, whatever.
But also, I kind of hate that about Facebook too.
So screw you, Facebook.
Do better.
Yeah.
I mean, it has a couple of other problems.
It won't let you do group chats.
There's no audio spaces.
I mean, it has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to really compete with Twitter.
It can get there, I think, but it's just not there yet.
But I mean, I go there once in a while and I check out a couple of things, but I spend more time on Twitter.
It also is strong for the science community.
Yeah.
A lot of the science communities on blue sky.
For the groups and everything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can get, yeah.
But, and there's, there's, it's easier to control people who are trying to troll you.
So for that, but I'm interested in studying the crazies, right?
Oh, then you need Twitter.
They're all on Twitter.
That's it's a Petri dish.
I'm a biologist and that's a Petri dish.
And I am looking through my microscope at the specimens in the Petri dish.
That's so yeah.
You're wiping your keyboard afterwards, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm protected by the microscope.
I'm not in the Petri dish.
That would be disgusting.
Yeah, but I need every once in a while.
I need to take a swab of something and then I test it in some other way.
Like I need to, it's, I need lab stuff.
I need samples to test.
Otherwise, I'm not doing anything.
Yeah.
I don't learn anything about what these crazy people are doing or saying.
Yeah.
And they're free to do and say what they want there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They make full use of that.
So yeah, you can find me on Twitter.
You can DM me on Twitter.
You can follow me on Twitter.
All of those things.
This podcast is also on YouTube.
You can go there and you can follow me on YouTube.
What is my YouTube handle?
I think it's just Spencer Watson.
Spencer Watson.
Yeah.
I got there before the other Spencer Watsons.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you have to pull off that Spencer Watson 2351?
No, I stupidly didn't go to Twitter right away.
So I had to be Spencer G. Watson.
Ah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But whatever.
Cool.
And if there's any other Spencer Watsons who happen to listen to this, what the fuck are you doing with your life, man?
Get a grip.
Come on, man.
Come off it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So with that, we'll sign off.
All right.
Cheerio.
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