The Manchurian Candidate (1962 & 2004) mirrors shifting fears—hypnosis in the Cold War, microchips post-9/11—yet risks blurring fiction with reality by grounding mind control in plausible science or vague timelines, like ignoring the Second Iraq War. Spencer Watson critiques its institutional deception framing, comparing it to Gulf War syndrome conspiracy theories, while questioning Dean Stockwell’s minimal role. The episode warns how hyper-realistic storytelling can fuel distrust in government, even when fictional, and argues for clearer suspension of disbelief to avoid normalizing paranoia. [Automatically generated summary]
So now we're back with Truth Under Switches, a podcast that is forgetting its tagline again.
A podcast that is creating and interpreting the language of the information age.
Disinformation age.
We're past past the information age.
I want you to know I got the tagline perfect when I was describing the podcast to someone I met today.
That's really great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's wow.
She's interested.
She's going to watch it.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Cool.
Yeah.
So we are back today.
I'm here.
I'm Spencer, your host, and I'm here again today with Patrick, my co-host for these episodes that we do about movies.
He might also show up for some other stuff.
I don't know.
He's he's kind of a layabout.
So he's usually just doing nothing at his house.
He might, yeah.
That's right.
Just lounging around here.
Yeah, like Kramer.
No discernible job.
No one knows what he does for money.
Who knows?
Although I do know what you do for a job.
I'm not going to say dangerous information.
Let the internet know that stuff.
Yeah.
Right.
So we're back.
We're going to talk again a little bit about the Manchurian candidate.
This will be part two.
There's no more clips.
We went through three clips last time.
This isn't like more clips on a clip show thing.
We have, I have a couple of points about these more generally to talk about.
So I just, and I just couldn't leave it on the side.
So we're going to do it now.
Cool.
Having a two-parter is just kind of like inserting an intermission.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People have like a week to go get a coffee or whatever.
You know, get some popcorn, whatever, you know, however they want to ingest this, you know, as a, as a medium.
Sure.
So what I want to talk about now is that when we look at both of these movies together, like back to back or like compared to each other, I think they tell something like what might we might be talking about, like a like a meta story about how storytelling has changed, right?
Of course, I mean, we, these, these two movies technologically are very, very different, right?
The first one's in black and white for crying out loud.
I don't know when color movies started coming out.
I feel like it was maybe even before 1962, but that might also be like the phenomenon that happened where they took old movies and added color later.
And then you can't tell which one, you know, when they started that.
And some outfits would have like the old gear and not be ready to make that change or maybe say this isn't the movie for it.
But yeah, I don't think there was a switch that was in society where it would have been cheaper to do as a black and white film than a color at the, you know, at the time when it was still some difference to be had.
So if you were making a budget, for example, where you had to pay the lead actor almost half of your entire budget, yeah, you might want to cut some corners and make it a black and white film.
Yeah, especially if he was determined in advance that he was only going to do one take for every scene that he's in and he's in almost every scene.
Then yeah, you might want to just have the ability to not have it in glaring color.
I don't know, in case something isn't perfect.
Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
I don't know what was in the minds of the people who producers and whatnot who made these decisions.
But yeah, I mean, but obviously between the two, we can see these are, as far as the field goes, they're much, much different, right?
The cinematography improved a lot in like 42 years.
And of course, we mentioned briefly yesterday, there was more cuts.
There was more zoomy shots, you know, tracking shots are easier to do in 2004, right?
Like you follow someone down the street while they're talking or whatever, right?
I mean, this thing gives you a feeling that a talking, you know, watching two people talk in a room and not move around doesn't give you.
So yeah, all that, all that is different, right?
And we move this as far as visual storytelling goes, this moves along.
But also it tells us it changes, you know, that the way these stories changed tells us sort of something about, it's almost like the geology of our society in a way.
So we can tell something like both movies are meant to make us feel afraid of things in our world.
And the things that we feel afraid of changed with time, right?
So in 1962, we were more afraid of hypnosis than we were in 2004.
We can easily tell that, right?
In 2004, the big scary thing was not hypnosis.
If they were trying to put that as a plot point, it would have flopped.
So it's microchips, right?
If there would have been a 1980s version of this movie, would have been drugs, like 100%.
Oh, totally.
Yeah.
Totally.
Mind control drugs, right?
That would have been it.
It would have been some kind of designer drug that said, you know, some, you know, they put like crack cocaine and like uppers and like heroin in a tube and they spin it in a centrifuge and somehow, you know, some LSD in there for flavor.
And then it like all comes out and like you give it to like the soldier and then you just control his mind.
That's what it would have been in the 1980s.
Yeah, it's like the delivery method of sneaking it into the person.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You would have just slipped in his drink or whatever.
And that's the thing that would have scared the shit out of people in the 80s as far as this goes.
And you would have had the same plot, essentially same plot points.
It's just the thing that gives you the mind control would have been different.
The MacGuffin, if you will, right?
So what do you think of this, this idea, this changing this, these movies tell us this about how our fears are changing.
That's exactly what I was thinking too, is that it's when you look at something that is meant to be the identical story and theme, you know, as much as possible, those differences are a mirror on what society is finding captivating.
So like you said, you know, certain like hypnosis wouldn't land, but just, yeah, in terms of knowing what is going to resonate with the viewing audience, that also says something about that viewing audience.
Yeah.
I think because the relationship between the storytellers and the audience is a big part of what matters.
Like one thing that I think about when I think of stories is that there's a number of things that the storyteller is going to have to assume that the audience already knows.
Right.
Right.
You know, about cultural behavior, about relationships between people.
You know, if it's, if it's supposed to be odd that a man talks to a woman he doesn't know on the street, then when a man talks to a woman on the street in that way, they assume that the audience will think that's odd.
But since we don't think that's odd, when they do that, if they try that, they would have to do it in a different way, right?
So like they have to understand something about the culture that they're speaking to with this.
And in that way, yeah, the method that they choose to, you know, do the mind control tells us something about what they think the audience is going to feel about this, these magical systems that they have, the hypnosis, or the microchips, or, you know, the imaginary version of this film from the 80s, the mind control drugs, which I think would have been a great, I'm really sad now that they didn't make that movie.
It would have been great to have like 20 years apart each of these films.
Yeah, the 80s version of this.
And it stars like who would it have starred in 1980 or 1982?
I'm thinking it would have been like who was, oh man, I can't, I hate when I can't remember names, but I mean, Mel Gibson.
I don't know.
Mel Gibson would have been a good pick.
Yeah, but like Gene Hackman, Gene Hackman would have been a great pick.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Charles Bronson in there somewhere.
He was big in the 80s, right?
You know, all these things about drugs and stuff.
Even Harrison Ford, you know, he was really good with the thrillers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, well, he was a little busy with Star Wars at the time.
He didn't go after that.
Yeah.
He was a big animal star.
He would, he didn't have time for these art house pictures.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like I said, this, this, this tells us something about what the audience, what they felt the audience was thinking and feeling that and curious about, I think.
Well, sure.
Because like you said, the hypnosis is very well known and documented.
It wouldn't have that novel appeal, right?
So, you know, people, people encountering this microchip idea of control have no familiarity with it because, I mean, A, it's not real, but it's also plausible because we're starting to talk about the machine-human interface by this point.
But it's a new emerging discussion.
Right.
And a thing that might hypothetically be able to happen and therefore on the board for ways that you might, you know, use a mind control device to, you know, subsume a person's free will.
Yeah.
So I like that you laid me up there.
So I'm going to pick up right where you left me there with the idea that, yeah, we did learn a lot about hypnosis through this time.
Brainwashing Origins00:02:59
And actually, we had already begun to study hypnosis quite a bit before the 1962 movie.
But most of those were not good science, unfortunately.
And probably only really taking place in the realm of science.
Well, you know, not entering the public discussion quite as much as the people who are actually trying to drive that research.
Most of the experiments.
To whatever degree that.
Yeah, yeah.
Most of the experiments and most of the experimentation about hypnosis was strictly to do with how can we use this to gain control of people?
How can we use this to, you know, like if we kidnap an enemy soldier, how could we use it to gain control of them so that we could turn them into a spy?
That's the sort of questions they were asking.
And they were seeing soldiers that had experienced extreme abuse in, by this point anyway, Korea, that were coming back and saying very strange things.
And they thought that there was some kind of brainwashing.
Fact, that's where the term brainwashing began was in attempting to understand what was going on with soldiers that were um uh, captured in war in Korea and uh, mistreated and then um, given back.
And they were, you know, they felt that there was some kind of brainwashing happening there.
Actually, it might have been in China, it was, it was one of the two, Korea or in China, I can't remember which exactly, but it came from that region in that time and that's where the term brainwashing came from.
This was a uh, a hypothesis of what was happening to them was that they were brainwashed, that they were wiped clean somehow, or that they were um, you know, traumatized.
But they really what they were was traumatized into uh, believing what their captors were telling them and yeah, and controlled, they're controlled against their will right, like that's the net result.
Well, they felt that they were, because they were saying really positive things about communism um, which?
But who would do that?
Right, the guy must be brainwashed, he must have received some sort of programming, because what normal person would say that, you know, communist?
Yeah, because they also needed to interpret it from an idea that every uh reference to communism being in any way good was necessarily uh um, you know, a product of brainwashing.
You know like, like a way to subvert people's uh will um, which you know.
Regardless of what anyone feels about communism, you don't need to be brainwashed to think communism is a good idea.
Um, i'm not gonna make any statements on that right now.
I I, you know have complicated feelings on the matter, and that's not what this episode is about.
But yeah, it's suffice to say that that, uh um, being a fan of communism is not a sign of mental illness.
It's uh yeah, that's.
Flat Earth Beliefs00:15:45
That's just not the case.
My point of view is actually that communism is a good thing, but you'll never see it applied in a judicious and fair manner.
Right like it's.
It's going to fail because of humans.
Yeah yeah, humans will human it up but yeah, humans will step in and screw it all up.
Yeah yeah, that that sounds about right to me.
Well, from what I learned, communism was actually a psychological uh theory before it gave rise to a government doing a communism episode today.
Sorry sorry, i'm a commie.
I've i've never had the chance to talk about this.
I'll invite you back when we're doing it.
Okay, you'll be on that episode, I swear, thank you.
Thank you, God.
Worse than the Vegans.
I swear my brain is still sudsy from the wash.
Yeah yeah yeah, the brainwashing of the.
Yeah, but uh, what I?
Another part that I don't like about both movies in general is that, in their attempts to come up with a reasonable macuffin a, a device that helps us to believe in the plot line that's being laid out for us, in which case, you know, the main macuffin in the 1962 was hypnotism, the main one in 2004, microchips.
Um, what they were doing here, especially with with this hypnotism, is they were making it almost too real, like so, for example, when we go to like this communist garden party where they're demonstrating their control over the soldiers, the man lists off two scientific journal articles and they're actual, real scientific journal articles with that can be really cited.
They're not fake ones.
This isn't like like uh, a fake phone number kind of thing.
It was a like a real phone number, it was a real thing and people could look this up right.
Pause the movie, or they could write it down in the movie theater, however they watched it, and they could look for this and actually find it and see it.
And it reinforced them.
Most people wouldn't read it because most of these times you could go to a library and could find a reference to it as being a thing that was published, but you couldn't like read the article itself usually.
But you would find that it was a real article and it led to more thoughts that this is a real technology that could be used in this way.
Like people would make the jump just off reading the abstract.
Sure.
Everything they've heard about it.
Someone could.
Like, I don't know any specific instances, but someone could, right?
So in this way, they're breaking sort of the fourth wall, this veneer of fakeness by making these references to these studies real references to real studies.
And I thought, okay, well, you know, yeah, okay, we know my hypnosis to get like full control of a person is not real, but still, you know, the idea that it's real is real if you want to really get meta with it, right?
So the idea that it's real is also a danger, you know what I mean?
Because it can lead you to make really poor decisions about all kinds of things.
If you think, if you get an irrational fear that this hypnosis thing, it can really, it can really, you know, like you could, you could make people assassinate people.
Like if you really thought that, yeah, you, so I think personally, in this situation, 1962 version, I think this, this is irresponsible.
And, you know, they probably wouldn't have thought it was irresponsible then.
We didn't have this thought that we have to be careful about how we do fiction and how we do reality.
There was none of that.
Obviously, they were, you know, doing all the racist things.
They were having like white guys play Asian guys and things like that, right?
They were just like, you know, dress them up with all the, you know, put the makeup on them to make them look more Asian and stuff.
And it's like, oh, it just, it just feels, it just feels like you guys are, yeah, I don't know, man.
You couldn't have found a, you know, Chinese guy anywhere.
And I don't know.
You're in LA, right?
There's got to be some.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But it does sort of break this.
And I, as a point, like maybe it's not a point I should try to levy at just this film and say, you know, rah, rah, I don't want you to watch it or anything stupid like that.
But I want to bring the point that maybe we should be more responsible with the way we do our fiction so as to have it not cross over so strongly with reality into leading people to think that fictional things could really be real, if that makes sense.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's not supposed to be a piece of research, but a research would be citing real documents, right?
Like the movie for what it was proposing, you know, which was just pure fiction, could have relied just on the fictional devices.
They could have just said, this is what's happening without, you know, but maybe there was a certain, maybe there was a certain element.
Fictional studies, right?
Like somewhere in there, there could have been a motivation.
I mean, I don't have any way to prove this, but the people making this movie at that time might have been like, this is not only entertainment.
Maybe we think that we're doing our part to raise awareness about the dangers that we might be facing about this stuff.
That's right.
And they're just what conspiracy theorists think.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's they all want to save the world.
I mean, this is why they're not, they're not, there are some who don't really believe in this stuff and they are just doing it to grift, right?
For attention and for, you know, to make money on Substack or whatever, right?
And to have friends.
Well, yeah, okay, sure.
But many of them really legitimately want to save the world.
They think they are saving the world.
And when you think about it, that is a motivation that is incredibly powerful.
It can lead a person to do things you wouldn't normally do if you didn't have that motivation.
But then you're like, well, of course, this is going to be hard.
Or of course I'm going to face this challenge because I'm doing something that is this important.
Right.
And it will, you know, give them a little bit of added fuel.
To, you know, dox people online.
It can lead people to try to find out where people live and follow them around and invade their privacy.
It can lead people.
These are documented things that have really happened to many, many people.
Yeah.
These sorts of things are not good for society and for people.
And they're also not good for the people who believe in the conspiracies.
Like that's that's a part of this that I think sometimes I get a little hard on the people who believe in conspiracy notions, but they're also victims of disinformation.
Absolutely.
Like they are at some point.
If we ever get on the far side of this situation, we as a society, if we're going to deal with this, you know, psychology at some point is going to have to find a way to deal with, you know, large-scale rooms full of patients, essentially.
Like how do you can, you know, how do you help without having one psychologist assigned to each patient or, you know, however many patients a single psychologist could handle?
I don't know, 10, 20, I'm not even sure.
You know what I mean?
But like, how do we have enough psychologists that we can actually deal with dealing with the people who just have breaks in their reality because they really believe things that just are not true?
And these things are like important things, not like things that aren't true, like whether, you know, Venus spins around the sun in the opposite direction or something weird like that, right?
Like important things like who won the election, whether you should start a civil war because you think that someone usurped the election.
Like those are the sorts of things that can lead to full calamity.
And they almost did, and they could still do it.
So yeah, like, how do we, I know that how do we draw the line to say where, where to, I think, I think you've mentioned this before, like there's not such a strong stance taken, for example, against flat earthers because who are they hurting?
They're just going around believing something that we feel is not true, right?
But it is when you start to get into that realm of like, where does this person's belief, this erroneous belief derived from mis and disinformation begin to impact their life such that they're in danger of either self-harm or in danger of harming others?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I didn't want to get into communism, but I'll definitely get in the flat earth.
Briefly, there are three reasons why we should not be comfortable with flat earthers.
Okay.
Number one, a flat earther's relationship with everyone else around them who does not believe in the flat earth will deteriorate.
They will tend to become more solo.
Like you just said, that's reason number one.
Reason number two is that once they're isolated, especially, but even before that, the sorts of places they would go to get more information about their new belief in the flat earth and all of that will lead them directly to many other breeding grounds.
Many other sources of disinformation.
It's extremely rare for me to find a flat earther who does not also disbelieve the story of the Holocaust.
Oh.
It's extremely rare for me to find that.
If I ask a flat earther what happened to the Jewish population of Poland in World War II, I get all kinds of answers that are not the right answer.
That's just a cross-the-board thing.
And it's very true also for anti-vaxers, like just people who believe in anti-vax stuff.
You ask them that question that's not related to anti-vax, you get all kinds of answers.
Wow.
So reason number three is that even without even without those social effects, let's call those two social effects.
There's a neuroscientific effect that would happen with this flat earth thing is that it's radically different than the reality everyone else shares.
And they have to come up with all sorts of other fake things that help to explain the existence of a flat earth when everyone else around them believes in a spherical earth.
And one of the number one things that you pretty much have to believe is that the government as a whole is, you know, participating in a grand conspiracy to lie to you about the shape of the earth.
Because especially like nations the size of Canada, the US, Russia, China, they could not but notice that they're on a flat earth if they really were as compared to a spherical earth.
They're covering too many time zones.
There's too much distance.
You know, I mean, even things like drawing maps properly, like all of this stuff would be affected by the differences between a flat earth and a spherical earth.
And so in order to believe in a flat earth, you have to believe 100% the government as a whole, like every single one of the people there is lying to you.
And once you have that piece, that sort of side idea that goes with your idea that the earth is flat, that's when all those other conspiracy notions will come in without even having other social connections that will bring them to you.
You'll tend to want to believe all those other things just as rote because we all know the government is just lying to us about the shape of the earth.
So what else are they lying about?
Of course.
They might be lying about anything.
They might be lying about who won the election.
They might be lying about vaccines.
They might be lying about the Holocaust.
They might be lying about everything.
Of course.
And it makes perfect sense because they were lying about the flat earth.
Every government everywhere simultaneously in agreement.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So these, the idea that we should be okay with flat earth belief is not a useful idea.
It's, we need to, we need to move the needle on that, in my opinion, and say, yeah, yeah, that's also a thing that has to, uh, that has to get pushed back against.
And, and surprisingly, among most of the, um, what I call reality denying ideologies, that's the one that most people can't provide any evidence for because they think it's so obvious that the earth is spherical that they shouldn't ever have to, and they don't really look into it.
You know, I mean, you know that time zones exist and you know that, you know, it's sunny here when it's not there.
And, you know, but if you had to prove to someone, you're not in both places, you're not, you know, like, and they have some explanation that some quasi explanation that explains that away.
So it's, it's not something you can show them, but they can show you things that you're not ready for.
This is a thing that happens to people all the time.
They can show you things they're not ready for.
This has happened to famous people.
An NBA guy got too far down a YouTube rabbit hole one time and declared at the end of a game that the earth was flat.
Yeah, like this is this.
Well, even if you do try to use things that are commonly available in terms of experience, like for example, why the sky is blue in the daytime, but turns red shifted because of the amount of atmosphere sunlight goes through.
Well, the flat earthers are going to say, well, no, they're actually just changing the color of the light in the sky.
Yeah, God.
Okay.
At the end of the day with flat earth, it's always that God is the answer at the end of the day.
Oh, really?
I didn't know.
Something like 98% of flat earthers are fundamentalist Christian.
Something like that.
Someone went through it a few years ago and it was just a massive overlap in this.
It's not that all fundamentalist Christians are flat earthers, but that all flat earthers are in that group.
They believe that the earth is young.
Almost all of them believe the earth is young.
Like it's it's a thing.
So yeah, flat earth is a gateway belief to other bad beliefs is really what I'm saying.
Yeah.
And you can't prove it.
So yeah.
Suspension of Disbelief00:10:13
So yeah, that was a nice little tangent.
Let's get back to this.
So about the newer picture, because I said both had a thing that I didn't like about them, the way that they did this and made it too real.
The newer one, I had a greater sense that it was real than the older one, just in general, because, you know, the cinematography was done in such a way to make it real.
It was, it was, you know, I think Denzel Washington is a really great actor.
I think he's very good at what he does.
He's, he makes me believe that he's doing the things that he's doing when he's doing them.
That that is also a factor here.
And I think that it's, it, it seemed to me like something that should feel like if it was a touch more cartoonish or goofy or like there was some elements that were also unrealistic that would help us to also realize this is is not hyper real like this.
I think that would have helped for me.
But I just, I really didn't like that it just felt more real, especially when compared.
Like I watched them back to back and it compared to the old one, it feels a lot more real.
So I might have been not doing myself many favors by just doing it that way.
But yeah, I think that I, you know, I think that fictional narratives can be, I mean, they have to be applicable and they have to find some way to grab us emotionally.
Otherwise, we won't watch them.
But I don't think it needs to be real.
Like we compared it to the exorcist in the last episode.
And I think that's an apt comparison here.
Some people believe the Exorcist was real.
A lot of people actually believe the Exorcist was real.
But all of that was wrapped up in, you know, sort of like pseudo-Christian beliefs and this sort of thing, you know, belief in demons or whatever.
And at the end of the day, most of the things that this child was doing were impossible.
They were just impossible.
You can't turn your head around backward.
It's just impossible.
It's just not a thing that's possible.
I'm sorry.
The human body doesn't work that way.
So there were elements of it like that that were fully impossible.
And she's flying around the room sometimes, which is also just impossible.
Like, like, does the demon have the capability of flight?
Why didn't he fly sooner?
Like, no part of that made sense.
It was just like if we're seeing it through the eyes of one of the priests, you could almost tack that up to it being like an unreliable narrator of one of the priests retelling the story later to someone of how crazy it was sort of thing.
And in the retelling the story, it gets embellished, but we see it as an audience through him without it being a retelling.
You could kind of think of it that way, even though there wasn't really a, you know, narration there that would lead us to think that that was kind of the way it was being told.
But because those things were impossible, it was easier for us to think also that, okay, well, that's, you know, I don't know about demons, but that shit never get really going to happen.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like that's.
You know you're watching a movie when you are watching it.
No, it's not really real.
Like it is scary, but it's not really real.
And so these didn't have that.
I mean, the only thing, the only part about the newer movie that had that was probably the microchips, right?
But they're also done in a way that's meant to seem super real.
So it's sort of like it should have found a way to rely more on a on a, what's the phrase I'm looking for, the specific phrase.
The suspension of disbelief.
That's the word.
It should have found more ways to rely on the suspension of disbelief rather than try to make things as just as real and real as possible.
Right.
Because when we're watching The Exorcist, we suspend our disbelief while we watch it.
And then afterward, we go like, that was crazy movie.
I'm going to go do whatever else I'm going to do now because it was just a movie.
I suspended my disbelief.
I was done watching the movie.
I brought my belief back down to the regular level.
I'm back to this.
My escape moment is over and I'm back to this.
But these sort of didn't have that element, that feeling.
And so I think that's my problem with them, is that in being in attempts, in their attempts to be more real, they lead people to think that these things are more real.
And I can't help but think that maybe we should make movies that are just movies, right?
Like Marvel movies are just movies.
Yeah, the things that happen there are crazy, but everyone knows that they're fake.
We watch them.
We suspend our disbelief when we do that.
At least we do if we like them.
And then afterwards, we go out and we go, okay, well, you know, I know I'm never going to build an Ironman suit.
No one else will either.
It's not a real thing.
It just doesn't happen.
Don't walk out with residual fear after a Marvel movie.
We might even walk out with a sense of wonder, but only because of the thing.
Like it's not a thing that we're going to think we're really going to do, not really.
So, yeah, it relied on things that was going to suspend our disbelief, but that we weren't really going to think were really possible.
But if they tried to make the Marvel movies hyper-realistic, then we might get in the same trap where we're like, yeah, okay, but that might really happen, Rome, right?
Like, that could be a lot of people.
People are like frisking themselves looking for chips as they leave the theater.
Or some, yeah, maybe.
Like, I don't think that's just bump.
Oh, no.
People.
But I think that things like this, you know, in my opinion, maybe they have a responsibility to make them fake instead of more real.
I don't know.
What do you think?
I don't know.
That's a that's a really hard responsibility to sell.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I know.
You know, they know that part of the appeal of a movie is it's going to stick with the viewer if it has more like penetration, you know, and the closer that you can get something in the spinning of this tale to resemble whatever the belief set is of the audience, at least in terms of what's possible, right?
The more traction you're going to get with them, which means the more likely they are to talk about the movie afterwards, either as a serious topic about mind control or just this was a good movie.
You should go see it because I had genuine feelings over it, right?
Like it's, I don't know.
I think I actually feel maybe the opposite of you in this regard, where I feel that the responsibility really rests on the audience to be discriminating consumers of entertainment, right?
Like I always want to remind somebody that you paid to watch a Hollywood production, right?
This isn't how you're going to find out the real state of the military-industrial complex or however you want to frame the threat to your existence.
You're not going to find it out because you chanced upon a movie in a movie theater, right?
So before people start walking away thinking, oh, I actually have a takeaway for that in my life, like you have to, you have to draw the line somewhere and say, I am just a consumer of entertainment.
I think.
Well, if it doesn't work out for us, I'll come say I told you so.
Okay.
I'll be here.
Yeah.
Hopefully.
I mean, I hope you'll be there.
I don't know.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
If they don't kick the chip in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Flick your switch on.
Maybe they already did, and that's why you said that.
Yeah.
If someone bites me, I know why.
Yeah.
I'll bite you.
Yeah.
Oh, that's what the chip is.
Dig the chip out of your shoulder.
So I have one more gripe, one more gripe, and it's only about the 2004 version.
I really hate that at the end of this movie, we the plot adds in that we're changing, you know, we're modifying pictures and video footage to change it from being Marco entering the convention center and changing it to be some other guy who's essentially now a Patsy.
He's a guy who committed other crimes previously, but now we're setting him up for this crime.
And so that I assume, so that Marco can uh uh retire on a beach somewhere.
I mean we, we cut straight to him being on a beach with the uh attractive woman, uh agent who's uh, you know, talking him through his uh, you know, whatever's going on with his brain.
Um yeah, that's our Hollywood happy ending.
Yeah yeah, the Hollywood happy ending.
And I just I, I feel like this is also irresponsible.
Iraq War Conspiracies00:13:36
Um, because And probably in 2004, they didn't think about this because they weren't yet in a, you know, they were only starting to become be in a world where these things were growing.
Since 9-11, that was the sort of the moment when most of these ideas, conspiracy ideas got like the hypercharge, right?
So we're a couple years past 9-11 at this point.
I mean, his movie comes out in 2004.
It's probably, you know, made in 2003 kind of thing.
There are no references in this movie to the Second Iraq War.
So I found that to be interesting.
The Second Iraq War starts in spring of 2003.
They must have been filming this or whatever in 2003.
So, you know, it must have just happened and they were like, well, I don't know, got this one out of the wire, maybe.
I don't know.
But some people are going to get confused because in 2004, they're constantly referring to the Iraq war, but only to the Iraq war.
They're not calling it the First Iraq War or the 1991 or whatever, Iraq War.
They're not calling it by its operation name, which is kind of what they did for a time after the Second Iraq War.
They just.
So wait, the second war was Desert Storm?
Desert Storm.
And the first one was known as the Gulf War?
Sorry, I need a little history lesson.
No.
No, the first one was Desert Storm.
1991 was Desert Storm.
That was Admiral Norman Schwarzkopf was in charge of that.
And there was, yeah.
But the second one was the one where they actually went in and they deposed and eventually found Hussein in a, you know, hiding in a well.
And yeah.
See, they were referring to the, it was a Gulf War syndrome or something was the reference.
Yeah.
Gulf War syndrome was a thing that happened to soldiers who participated in the first Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm.
And it smelled strongly that it was caused by exposure to nerve gas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, a lot of people say that the nerve gas was was Iraqi nerve gas that he used on U.S. soldiers.
Some people say it was not.
It was U.S. nerve gas and it there was a thing that happened.
I think it was probably Hussein.
It wasn't the soldiers who suffered from this Gulf War or what was it?
Iraq War syndrome.
They they weren't like all from one unit, one platoon or one whatever.
So like the idea that there was like one unit that was, you know, escorting some chemical weapons and then it they exposed that way because it was US things, whatever, it doesn't really track.
There were soldiers from multiple units all over the place.
So it was, and also there were Iraqi soldiers who had it when they found out when they looked into it.
So yeah, it looks like it was put on in a handled very poorly in a way to try to dissuade American troops from doing what they were doing.
And yeah, it was terrible.
So nerve gas is bad.
But yeah, there was also a lot of PTSD that was common among soldiers from every war, mind you.
But this also gets mistaken for this syndrome because sometimes they act similarly, right?
They act kind of off the wall and a little wild and in a way that it's hard to predict.
And so, yeah, to people who don't know, and I also don't really know.
And I only did a little bit of reading on this just for this, just to have some knowledge of it.
But I'm also no expert.
I couldn't tell the difference between someone who had PTSD and Gulf War syndrome because I'm not a doctor.
Sorry, I'm not a doctor.
But yeah, I think that I think that this was irresponsible.
I think that, I mean, this tells us at the end of the movie that the government is lying to us and the good guys are the ones lying and that it's okay.
At the end, that's what I'm saying.
It's not the moral of the story.
There is no real moral of the story other than, I don't know, don't do mind control, I guess.
I don't know.
It doesn't even really give a really bad ending for the billionaires involved.
They look like they have a very bad day.
Yeah.
That kind of shadowy decision-making group just continues to exist.
Only this plan was thwarted.
Right.
So in that way, I think, you know, also with what we mentioned from the last episode where the threat, the bad actors, they go from being, you know, clear-cut enemies of the state to your own state itself.
Right.
The threat coming from within makes that threat vector in the second movie so much more sinister, right?
Because it's easy.
Like you think in the first conflict, like if you're good enough with your guns, you'll shoot the enemy and you'll win.
But then they were overpowered and they had no choice but to succumb.
But in this one, it's a matter of trust, right?
So you're being deceived by your own people who are comforting you up to the point where they then jack into your nervous system and override you with their micro tips and procedures and stuff like that.
So in that way, I could see that walking out of the second movie would leave that kind of residual fear, right?
Because now I'm looking around and thinking, oh, are there other devices of control that the state has placed in my life?
But they thwarted the mind control plot, but the people who thwarted it also are engaged in now a conspiracy to lie to the people about how it really happened, who really murdered the people at the convention.
Who was really responsible?
And yeah, that guy that they set up for it, yeah, he did other crimes.
Like he is actually shown earlier in the movie.
I believe he's the guide that's talking Denzel Washington around where they're going in Iraq, right?
He's their scout or whatever.
And he was in on the plot.
He was one of the people that set him up for the ambush that led to them getting captured and the incident that allowed them to have them for long enough to put these microchips in.
But as far as we can tell, maybe he committed other murders.
But as far as we can tell, he didn't murder anyone.
He didn't murder these people.
So, yeah, he's a patsy for these crimes, right?
So where are the good guys?
Where are the good guys in this movie?
Is it Marco?
Like, where are we?
At the end, whose hands are clean?
Well, he's the one who committed the murders, but he's also walking hand in hand with the people who covered it up.
So we're accepting that it's a government cover-up.
And at any rate, we're accepting that it's the government that's lying to the people.
And that's exactly what conspiracy theorists walk away from this being sure of because they're sure of that all the time already.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Oh, I absolutely knew the government was lying to me.
It perfectly makes perfect sense.
They're always lying to me.
They're lying to me all the time and lying to me about all the other things that I think they're lying about too, because of course they're lying.
And that's where they sit.
And that's where this movie leads them, you know, with a very clear trail of breadcrumbs right to.
And so, yeah, I think I hate it.
Like, I do.
I think no one should watch it.
I think they did it wrong.
Sorry, but I think they did it wrong.
I think it's, yeah, I mean, it's no one could say that this is the thing that, you know, caused them to believe in conspiracies.
But that's not the point.
The point is that this and many other movies that we've talked about already and we'll talk about in the future leave a sense, a lingering sense of the things that might be happening.
That once you compare your real life experience to those, you think, well, yeah, okay, well, this, this real life experience I'm having, it starts to make sense that those conspiracies I've been hearing about are probably true.
And you get these things that have happened.
Yeah.
You have a structure of control that you've observed in the movie, but it had these certain elements.
And so now you get to play a little bit of plug and play, where you're taking this module out and putting this module from real life in and saying, oh, I could see how this would work.
And now I just kind of play with a few pieces.
And now I've used the same structure that I've witnessed in the movie to try and explain the life that I'm living.
So like in things like The Matrix, you know, I'm sort of willing to give it more of a more of a pass in this way, because to me, they were obviously not going for that.
They were obviously not, you know, yeah, they wrote a movie where there's a powerful conspiracy that's faking all of reality.
Like they do show that, but it is also got all the elements of disbelief that you have to suspend for the movie, like I said earlier, that allow you to just also say, yeah, it was also just a movie, right?
And, but this, this is more real.
And also the end of the movie, the good guys are faking everything and lying to the public.
Yeah, you don't really see the good guys being complicit with the evil actors.
Well, they're not complicit with the evil actors, but they're still also lying to the American people.
The people who think like part of this movie is the idea that, you know, that the opposite sides of the political spectrum are both working together to, you know, co-opt and control the American people or whichever country people.
But in this, both sides are also just lying to the people about what's really happening.
Like they're both engaged in conspiracies.
One is engaged in a conspiracy to mind control people and put their own candidate on the on the in the in the office in the Oval Office.
But the other one is engaged in a conspiracy to bend over backward to let this one guy happen to live the rest of his life without it being in prison.
Like, and it's a lot of extra work and it's a lot of extra, you know, potential trust you lose with the public if it ever gets found out.
And like, I'm the risk of just having him out there and changing his mind.
Yeah.
Like, I'm, you know, I'm sorry that this guy got mind controlled, but like, he pulled the fucking trigger.
Like, just like, don't even have that scene.
You know what I mean?
Like, why is it even there?
Like, it's also not even that necessary for the story you're telling.
Like, you could have had something else.
Like, it's not even really necessary.
So, but it's a real downer when I see that and I go, oh, well, they're, they're basically just as, you know, they're doing it for a noble cause.
I'm supposed to believe that, I guess.
But, you know, the idea that the government is lying to us all the time and it's for our good is what drives almost all conspiracism.
Like, fuck the government, let me decide.
That's, that's the, the credo that they don't ever really say, but they could.
They would nod along when I say it.
They'd be like, yeah, screw that government.
Let me decide what is good or bad for me.
Tell me the truth and let me decide.
That's really the thing that's at the base layer of the thing that drives so much of the conspiratorial thinking is the knowledge that even when you try to say that the conspiracies aren't happening, you do have to acknowledge at some point.
Yeah, the government is lying though.
Like, even I have to admit, the government is lying, though.
They are lying.
All those politicians, they are lying.
They're just not in a conspiracy to do it with the opposing party to, you know what I mean?
Like, they are lying, though.
They're all lying.
They're all liars.
So even in defending reality, I have to admit, those people don't give a shit about reality, right?
None of them do.
Dean Stockwell's Secret Role00:06:32
Not really.
Like, so yeah, like in this movie, it'd be great to be like, yeah, well, at the end, okay, you know, he shot the people that were causing the problem.
And then, and then, you know, you don't even have to show the rest.
Like, you could have just faded to black on that moment, maybe.
Like, you know, yeah, like, I don't, yeah, because even in the ending they had, the billionaires didn't get their comeuppance.
Then a setback.
What?
Is there going to be a part two where they, you know, have a new evil plot?
Like, I don't, you know, maybe, I don't know.
Maybe that was their plan all along.
I don't know.
Dean Stockwell, fun moment.
There's a person that you may or may not have recognized named Dean Stockwell.
He's a famous actor, was once famous actor, was the second half of Quantum Leap with Scott Bakula.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I watched that show with you in the 80s and 90s.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Dean Stockwell is in this movie.
I didn't notice that.
No.
Yeah.
He's in a couple scenes.
He's in the scene.
There's a, like two-thirds of the way through the movie, there's a scene where they're having a meeting in the park of the woman senator who's the mother of the Manchurian candidate and a few of the billionaires.
And she's talking to one of the billionaires and he's in the background.
He's wearing a hat and he's walking back and forth.
He's pacing.
He's nervous and he's like, the one guy's giving her shit.
Like, you didn't have the authority to like, you know, send him to go kill anyone.
And she's like, I don't have time for meetings and all this stuff.
I have to make executive decisions.
I don't have time for all, you know, we're not ruling this by, you know, committee here, you know, and all this stuff.
And he's in the background and he says Ellie, because her name is Eleanor.
He says the word Ellie in that scene, but that's his only line.
It's not even a line.
It's one word.
And it's so faint.
Like, I had to rewind it several times to listen and be sure it was his voice saying it.
And that's his only, you know, he's also at the very end when all the billionaires are all sad and they're in their moment and they're listening to the news and it's all you know really bad for them.
He's like sitting on it, I think it's on a couch and he's kind of hunched over and he's got his hat on still and he's dressing, you know, and he's, and he's like, you know, sad billionaire face or whatever.
But and he's, he, he's a named actor in this movie.
He's in the opening credits.
He's one of the names that come up with, you know, and you're like, dude, how'd they cut you out of this movie?
Like, yeah, makes you wonder if there's deleted scenes that have him playing a more prominent role.
You know, more lines for him because he didn't sign up for this movie to have no lines.
Dean Stockwell, you kidding?
Of course.
He had one of the most distinctive voices, too, right?
Like, oh, yeah, yeah.
You'd recognize him right away.
But he has this very faint Ellie, like he's trying to, you know, talk to her about something or appease her or whatever.
Like it's, you know, but that's his only line and that's it.
Man, did they did he piss someone off in the production?
Like, did they realize he wasn't really necessary and like cut his lines?
Because they're probably still paying him enough.
Like, I don't know.
Probably not paying him any less just because they cut him out of the movie.
Like, I don't know.
Yeah.
I was just like, where's my man, Dean Stockwell, man?
Like, come on, Quantum Leap.
Quantum Leap Forever.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What a great show.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I liked him too.
What else was he in Barrely Hills Cop 2?
He played a pretty decent role.
Yeah.
He was like one of the underlings, I think.
He had fairly late in his career, and I think he died not too long after this.
He had a partial role in a few episodes of a really, really amazing TV show I watched that I loved called Battlestar Galactica.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
2004 to 2007 kind of timeframe.
Oh, I did not know there was a it's like a yeah, it's a reboot, it's a reimagining, okay?
So like a reboot, taking off from where they left off previously, right?
Or starting again, okay.
But this isn't a remake, like they change characters really significantly.
Like the most significant one that a lot of people complain about, but I think they're stupid for complaining about because it was amazing, was a character named Starbuck was the name.
So this was a man pilot in the original, but this was a female pilot in the reimagining.
And so this gender swap then allowed them to do so many other things with how they were having everything go, like on the character development and everything else.
Because she was the reimagining with Edward James almost, or was that the original?
Edward James.
Oh, okay.
I only ever saw the reimagining.
Oh, you didn't.
Oh, the original was like 1978 and it was super weird.
I had no idea.
I didn't even know there was a previous one.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's the one.
That's the one then.
Yeah.
But Dean Stockwell is in that for, I don't know, three or four episodes or something.
That was a fantastic series.
Really, really great.
One of the best ever, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Again, we're off topic.
Again, we're off topic.
God.
Oh, we're talking movies.
We're talking movies.
That was a TV show.
Whatever.
Visual entertainment.
Sorry, sorry, everyone.
Sorry.
I know it's a TV show.
Don't come for me.
Yeah.
This is what it took to get people to write in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Get something wrong.
Guaranteed.
Someone's going to see in the comments.
Yeah.
I know that that's not a movie, right?
That's a TV show.
Next, we are definitely going to do Dark City.
Okay.
Dark City is next.
And I accept your terms.
I was talking about Elysium before, but I'm also kind of looking at my list.
I'm also thinking about the network or not the network.
Just network.
It's not no, the, just network.
Oh, is that?
That's like an old movie.
It's, it's old.
It's from 1976.
Yeah, it's, it's old.
I'm mad as hell.
Yeah, that's that, that's the phrase from that.
I'm mad as hell.
Dark City Next00:00:56
I'm not going to take it anymore.
It's a great movie, but so, but we're definitely doing Dark City next.
And I'm thinking about that one after that.
But, you know, I might still change my mind.
We'll see.
Yeah.
So for anyone who's going to watch in advance and pay attention that way, Dark City Next.
So yeah, if anyone wants to tell us about what we got wrong about the things we said or what they like about what we're doing or anything that they think we missed or anything like that, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
You can find me on Twitter at Spencer G. Watson on Blue Sky at Spencer Watson.
And if you already know me on Facebook, then you know me on Facebook and there's no need to go through that because you know where to find me.