Hypnosis in Media

Archive for May, 2012

“Craig Ster­ling, Shar­ron Macready and Richard Bar­rett These are the Champions. 

“Endowed with the qual­i­ties and skills of super­hu­mans — qual­i­ties and skills, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, to the peak of human per­for­mance. Gifts giv­en to them by an unknown race of peo­ple, when their ‘plane crashed near a lost civil­i­sa­tion in Tibet. Now, with their secrets known only to them, they are able to use their fan­tas­tic pow­ers to their best advan­tage as the Cham­pi­ons of law, order and jus­tice. Oper­a­tors of the inter­na­tion­al agency, Nemesis!”

“The Cham­pi­ons” was a British tele­vi­sion (ITC) pro­duc­tion, star­ring three indi­vid­u­als, Craig Stir­ling (Stu­art Damon), Shar­ron Macready (Alexan­dra Baste­do) and Richard Bar­rett (William Gaunt), all of whom work for a NATO law enforce­ment orga­ni­za­tion named Neme­sis (this being the Cold War era) and its head, Tremayne (Antho­ny Nicholls). who was not aware of the pecu­liar abil­i­ties of his three best agents. On their first mis­sion in Com­mu­nist Chi­na, their plane was shot down over Tibet, where they were res­cued by mem­bers of an advanced, hid­den civ­i­liza­tion and returned to full health and beyond. Their treat­ment gave them extra­or­di­nary phys­i­cal and men­tal abil­i­ties: enhanced sens­es, strength and reflex­es, supe­ri­or intel­lect, a lim­it­ed pre­cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty and a psy­chic link between them, among oth­er things they were then unaware of.

Some of the episodes involved ele­ments of hyp­no­sis and mind con­trol, but episode ‘Reply Box No 666’ stands out because of the hyp­no­sis scene involv­ing Macready as the seduc­tive (appro­pri­ate­ly enough, as she did seduce her sub­ject back to her room pri­or to the induc­tion) hyp­no­tist. ⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘Reply Box No 666’ — “The Champions””

In “Maid Sama!” (“Kaichō wa Maid-sama!” or “The Pres­i­dent is a Maid!) stu­dent class pres­i­dent Mis­a­ki Ayuza­wa is the first female class pres­i­dent of Sei­ka High School, quite an achieve­ment as the school used to be male-only but was recent­ly con­vert­ed to a co-ed school. An excep­tion­al stu­dent and ath­lete, she is deter­mined to reform the boys of the school, who are still unac­cus­tomed to the new girl stu­dents, and make the school a bet­ter place for both sexes.

In episodes #14–15, ‘Class 1–7 Soutarou Kanou’ and ‘School Vis­i­ta­tion Asso­ci­a­tion & A Glass­es Rab­bit’, Mis­a­ki is hard at work get­ting the stu­dent coun­cil to help plan and coor­di­nate a suc­cess­ful open house. How­ev­er, fresh­man stu­dent Soutarou Kanou, who is extreme­ly with­drawn and even ter­ri­fied and hate­ful of girls, wants to sab­o­tage Mis­a­ki and the open house, and the best way he knows is through hypnosis.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘Class 1–7 Soutarou Kanou’ — “Maid Sama!””

The “Dia­blo III” game is one of the most antic­i­pat­ed com­put­er games of the recent past. Fif­teen years after the orig­i­nal game, and lat­er, its even­tu­al sequel, Dia­blo III is now in the hands of eager gamers across the world.

And one of the things they will find in this edi­tion of the game is the avail­abil­i­ty of fol­low­ers: hench­men, so to speak, and one of them is an enchantress named Eire­na. An enchantress that is ful­ly capa­ble of hyp­not­ic magic.

Eire­na’s bewitch­ing spells mean doom for your foes – she can force them into a dream­like trance or turn them against one anoth­er, ren­der­ing them eas­i­er to kill.

Eire­na offers ranged sup­port, large­ly spells … to dis­ori­ent her ene­mies and pro­tect her allies. Her illu­sion­ary mag­ic does­n’t deal a tremen­dous amount of dam­age; instead, it focus­es on twist­ing and warp­ing the minds of others.

More­over, her mag­i­cal equip­ment car­ries over the hyp­not­ic imagery

Eire­na’s unique equip­ment – enchant­ment focus­es asso­ci­at­ed with scry­ing and hyp­no­tism, like eyes and mir­rors – recalls the ancient mys­ti­cism of her order, pro­vid­ing her with potent increas­es to her abilities.

While I played Dia­blo and Dia­blo II, I am now firm­ly ensconced in play­ing Guild­Wars where I can actu­al­ly play a char­ac­ter pro­fes­sion that casts hyp­not­ic mag­ic (and also have one as a fol­low­er.) How­ev­er, I may give Dia­blo III a sec­ond look.

More infor­ma­tion on the Enchantress and the game of Dia­blo III in gen­er­al can be found here.

Mind Con­trol in the 30th Cen­tu­ry: a vil­lain­ess with mutant abil­i­ties that forces men to obey her. (And, appar­ent­ly, to fight for her as well.)

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘Miss­ing Per­sons’ — Legion­naires # 66”

A hap­py but belat­ed birth­day in the mem­o­ry of the late Pat Collins, who was born May 7th. Pat was one of the most famous stage hyp­no­tists of her time and appeared on sev­er­al TV pro­grams (includ­ing a “What’s My Line?” appear­ance before she was famous) and had two cable spe­cials. She was also known for help­ing oth­ers with hyp­no­sis, includ­ing sev­er­al major tele­vi­sion and film stars of her period.

Accord­ing to the Face­book page here, the founder of the page is pro­duc­ing a doc­u­men­tary about Pat Collins and I for one am look­ing for­ward to see­ing it.