Brainwashing  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Mind control is a general term for a number of controversial theories and/or techniques designed to subvert an individual's control of their own thinking, behavior, emotions, or decisions.

In popular culture

Mind control in popular culture

Print media

• In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949 before the popularization of the term "brainwashing"), the fictional totalitarian government of Oceania uses brainwashing-style techniques to erase nonconformist thought and rebellious personalities.
• In the novel Night of the Hawk by Dale Brown, the Soviets capture and brainwash US Air Force Lieutenant David Luger, transforming him into the Russian scientist Ivan Ozerov.
• In the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, the protagonist undergoes a scientific re-education process called the "Ludovico technique" in an attempt to remove his violent tendencies.
• Vernor Vinge speculates on the application of technology to achieve brainwashing in Rainbows End (ISBN 0-312-85684-9), portraying separately the dangers of JITT (Just-in-time training) and the specter of YGBM (You gotta believe me). This picks up on themes of "mindrot" and controlled "Focus" in Vinge's 1999 novel A Deepness in the Sky.
• The communal brainwashing of an entire model community via subliminal messages is a central theme in the 2009 novel "Candor" by Pam Bachorz.

Video media

Brainwashing became a common trope of films, television and games in the late twentieth century. It was a convenient means of introducing changes in the behavior of characters and a device for raising tension and audience uncertainty in the climate of Cold War and outbreaks of terrorism.

• The 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate makes the concept of brainwashing a central theme. Specifically, Communist brainwashers convert a soldier into an assassin through something akin to hypnosis.
• The 1965 film The Ipcress File, a British espionage-film directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Michael Caine, with a screenplay based on Len Deighton's 1962 novel, The IPCRESS File. The story shows top British scientists being brainwashed using the IPCRESS technique (an acronym for "Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS"). When protagonist Harry Palmer is captured, he is subjected to brainwashing through torture and hypnosis.
• Various methods of brainwashing including the use of drugs and hypnosis are portrayed in different episodes of the 1967/8 British television series, The Prisoner.
• The 1974 film The Parallax View includes a brainwashing scene where the main character watches a film in which words are followed by pictures representing that word, such as "mother" followed by a picture of a woman. Over time the images and words become opposites to induce reverse associativity, such as the word "mother" followed by images of destruction.
• The 2001 film Zoolander contains a brainwashing scene where the protagonist, Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), is brainwashed into assassinating the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
• The television show Dollhouse (2009–2010) explores the applications and consequences of direct mind manipulation, namely through the use of computers. This show demonstrates a view of the powers of mental malleability, suggesting that entire personalities can be erased and rewritten on a whim.
• The film Brazil, depicts a fascist government similar to that in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The government controls a totalitarian society subconsciously by manipulation, intending to remain in control of the population.
• The film Marian, Again shows a kidnapper who brainwashes his victims into a new identity.
• Derren Brown's Mind Control on Channel 4
• Mind control in the form of brainwashing is used several times on the show Stargate SG-1 on various characters. It is later used on the show Stargate Universe by the Lucian Alliance to turn Colonel David Telford to their side. His brainwashing lasted for an unknown period of time, but was undetected for nearly all of that period. The brainwashing is responsible for his cruel behavior and presumably much if not all of his actions. Telford's brainwashing is broken when he's suffocated in a vacuum and then revived. Telford immediately recovers from the brainwashing after it's broken and remembers everything he did while under the mind control, allowing him to give advance warning of a coming attack.

See also

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• Crowd manipulation
• Culture of fear
• Love bombing
• Flunitrazepam
• MKULTRA (a covert CIA research program)
• Propaganda, and Propaganda model
• Subliminal messages