Hypnosis in Media

Archive for the ‘Cartoons and Anime’ Category

The Ring­mas­ter (and his Cir­cus of Crime): is there ever a group as sor­ry as these crim­i­nals in all of comics? A tru­ly sec­ond-tier vil­lain and his hench­men who prob­a­bly are the joke of the super-vil­lain community.

… inevitably, the Ring­mas­ter and his Cir­cus of Crime end up being defeat­ed by what­ev­er Mar­vel Super-Hero hap­pens to be attend­ing the show.

Which appears to be just about every super-hero. from Dare­dev­il to Spi­der-Man to Howard the Duck: they were even defeat­ed by Pow­er Pack! Still, you have to admire the man’s deter­mi­na­tion (or just plain stu­pid­i­ty) for com­ing back again and again.

But this post isn’t about the char­ac­ter, its real­ly about the mini-bust sculpt­ed by Troy McDe­vitt (seen above) which is the lat­est addi­tion to the col­lec­tion. After all, the char­ac­ter is so icon­ic that it cer­tain­ly deserves a place in the col­lec­tion, espe­cial­ly when I found it at the comics store Fri­day after­noon, on the sale rack. Not that the char­ac­ter was that unpop­u­lar as to have (or not have) a fol­low­ing, it was dam­aged, so I got it for 90% off. The dam­age? One of the Ring­mas­ter’s trade­mark droop­ing mus­tach­es is com­plete­ly bro­ken off. I could some­how find a way to repair it so I’m not that wor­ried: besides, I’m not like­ly to have it out of the box.

A web­site that I will be inves­ti­gat­ing fur­ther is the Sci­ence Fic­tion Ency­clo­pe­dia web­site. An out­growth of the 1995 ency­clo­pe­dia of the same name edit­ed by John Clute and Peter Nichols and pub­lished in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gol­lancz SF Gate­way, this is an attempt to be a com­pre­hen­sive ency­clo­pe­dia of the authors, themes and cul­ture relat­ed to sci­ence fic­tion (and fan­ta­sy as well.) The ency­clo­pe­dia is cur­rent­ly in beta release. 

As expect­ed, one of the top­ics in ques­tion is HYPNOSIS, which lists a num­ber of the ear­ly works involv­ing hyp­no­sis and mes­merism, includ­ing a few I was not aware of, such as “Kalee’s Shrine”  by Grant Allen and May Cotes. The web­site def­i­nite­ly bears fur­ther investigation. 

---

Note: Sev­er­al years ago, I wrote the arti­cle on “Hyp­no­tism” for the sec­ond edi­tion of the Green­wood Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy, which is appar­ent­ly not con­nect­ed with this online version.

Last week, web­site Io9 pub­lished not just one, but two posts deal­ing with mind con­trol themes. How­ev­er, I have to give both posts only a mediocre rating.

People Who Gained Superpowers From Being Brainwashed

Ten indi­vid­u­als from SF lit­er­a­ture, movies, tele­vi­sion, comics, etc, all of whom acquired their pow­ers from being brain­washed. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the his­to­ries of these indi­vid­u­als don’t quite match up with description.

Com­men­tary: Unfor­tu­nate­ly, out of the list giv­en, only a cou­ple actu­al­ly fit this title. The rest were indeed brain­washed (or some­thing sim­i­lar: the arti­cle’s def­i­n­i­tion of brain­wash­ing is over­ly broad) and gained super­pow­ers but those pow­ers were not direct­ly the result of the brain­wash­ing. (I’m tak­ing a more lit­er­al view of the title here than I sus­pect the author does: I still think its misleading.)

The only ones list­ed that actu­al­ly fit the descrip­tion would be Cap­tain Under­pants, an auto­crat­ic ele­men­tary school prin­ci­pal who was hyp­no­tized into becom­ing the super­hero Cap­tain Under­pants when trig­gered; the Mar­vel char­ac­ters Black Wid­ow and Win­ter Sol­dier, both Sovi­et Cold War black ops who were brain­washed into their iden­ti­fies as part of their train­ing; and Riv­er Tam, again, brain­washed as part of her phys­i­cal and psy­chic training.

Most of the oth­ers were brain­washed and giv­en pow­ers at the same time, but being brain­washed was not the cause or source of those pow­ers. Even oth­ers, such as Simon Phoenix (“Demo­li­tion Man”), already had their abil­i­ties before being brain­washed, or Max Gue­vara (“Dark Angel”), who was already being brain­washed before his train­ing (on top of genet­ic tin­ker­ing which occurred before birth.)

And at least one does­n’t even come close to fit­ting the brain­wash­ing theme: the Mar­vel char­ac­ter Cap­tain Uni­verse, the iden­ti­ty tak­en by any­one pos­sessed by the Uni-Pow­er. Although the descrip­tion says that when pos­sessed by the pow­er, they gain hero­ic atti­tudes, but this is more a case of those atti­tudes already present in the per­son selected.

Anoth­er that does­n’t fit the theme is Neo from the Matrix movies: the arti­cle tries to claim his train­ing in the mar­tial arts through mem­o­ry implants is a form of brain­wash­ing, yet the con­cept also has to include some kind of men­tal con­trol, which is not appar­ent. The arti­cle says that the brain­wash­ing includ­ed indoc­tri­na­tion about reject­ing the real­i­ty of the Matrix but I think that’s just assump­tion on the part of the author.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: Not recommended.

10 Mind Control Clichés

10 clichés that seem­ing­ly every evil mind con­troller has. Well, not every one, but a lot from the comics to have many of them, but there are as many excep­tions to the rules as there are exam­ples. A cou­ple seem to real­ly reach­ing to be includ­ed, and some of the clich­es are also woe­ful­ly incom­plete. For example:

1 ) Mind con­trollers com­pen­sate for a lack of phys­i­cal prowess: when you look at most mind con­trollers, you are struck by their phys­i­cal defor­maties: Pro­fes­sor X is wheel­chair bound, the Pup­pet Mas­ter is dwarfish with an over­sized head, Mes­mero has green skin, Hec­tor Ham­mond has an incred­i­bly enlarged head, etc. Yes, this is a valid cliche, but always for men and only for men, nev­er for women. The cliche for mind con­trol­ling women like the White Queen, Sat­urn Girl or Hyp­no­tia is that they are the oppo­site, excep­tion­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly endowed (in all sens­es of the word.)

2 ) Fin­gers on the fore­head: Pri­mar­i­ly used only by the char­ac­ters with psy­chic abil­i­ties, which is a sig­nif­i­cant but still pro­por­tion­al­ly small group of mind con­trollers. There are about as many (Vam­pirella) who use the “look into my eyes” cliche, oth­ers who use mag­i­cal ges­tures (Man­drake the Magi­cian) and then there’s the ones who use strict­ly mechan­i­cal devices (the Con­troller, Uni­ver­so) who don’t have any kind of ges­tur­ing. (Then again, Uni­ver­so, in his first incar­na­tion, did tend to grand­stand a lot.)

3 ) Psy­chic manip­u­la­tion, mind-warp­ing drugs, hyp­no­sis, and sub­lim­i­nal nudg­ing: Of course, there’s also mechan­i­cal devices (Doc­tor Drakken’s mind con­trol chip or the MKUl­tra machines), alien implants, sor­cery and, of course, don’t for­get the Orbital Mind Con­trol Lasers. (I won­der who’s con­trol­ling them this turn? If I don’t know, then prob­a­bly I’m not cleared for that infor­ma­tion. Fnord.)

4 ) Brain­wash­ing hench­men: While it may be the heroes best way to infil­trate the vil­lain’s head­quar­ters or to avoid cap­ture (“These aren’t the droids you’re look­ing for.”) its bet­ter used by the vil­lain to ensure the loy­al­ty of his underlings.

5 ) It’s poor form to mind con­trol non-vil­lains: Yet even the heroes do it, except they have episodes of angst about it: how many times did Pro­fes­sor X mind-wipe peo­ple who saw the X‑Men, or, in the first movie, men­tal­ly blank an entire mall because one of his stu­dents used his pow­ers with­out per­mis­sion? Then there’s also the famous inci­dent when Zatan­na mag­i­cal­ly erased spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries in a num­ber of Jus­tice League oppo­nents, set­ting off what would be a seri­ous­ly trag­ic event and the near-col­lapse of the League itself, many years later.

6 ) Blank stares: Blank stares are the hall­mark of mind con­trol, but they’re only part of the over­all whole pic­ture of the total blank look of some­one total­ly entranced. How­ev­er, in the Ori­ent, its a lit­tle dif­fer­ent: mind con­trol is shown by a total­ly fea­ture­less iris.

7 ) Mind con­trol­ling hats and hel­mets: Not a very preva­lent cliche here, and one that is almost strict­ly a source of con­trol­ling the one wear­ing the hat: about the only one who makes con­sid­er­able use of the cliche here is the Bat­man vil­lain the Mad Hat­ter; maybe he holds the patent on the design and does­n’t mar­ket it?

8 ) Mind con­trollers are creepy: Its one of the first things any mind con­troller learns, how to keep their pow­ers a secret (even if it takes using their pow­ers to do so.) Such pow­ers also make very good Psy­cho­log­i­cal Dis­ad­van­tages: Deep Secret for heroes to have.

9 ) Every­thing’s more awe­some on the astral plane: The Astral Plane only because the vaca­tion spot of choice for psy­chic bat­tles once Steve Ditko start­ed draw­ing Doc­tor Strange, but even then it is over­rat­ed. Most­ly the bat­tles take place in the mind of one or both of the com­bat­ants, although some­times the bat­tle is between invis­i­ble men­tal projections.

10 ) Mind con­trol bat­tles end with every­one’s brains explod­ing and faces melt­ing: The image here is so 80’s. Nowa­days such bat­tles tend to end with only a bloody nose or bleed­ing from the ears as the only sign of a struggle.

Com­men­tary: In try­ing to vio­late every one of the 10 list­ed clichés, the author actu­al­ly man­aged to cre­ate the most bor­ing mind con­trol­ling char­ac­ter ever seen.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: Only half recommended.

Prac­ti­cal­ly every­one in this show has some kind of men­tal hangup, and that’s the focus of the series.

For the three main char­ac­ters, they all have full-grown psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders that con­flict and coop­er­ate at the same time. The male lead Tarou is a masochist, but only when women do the dam­age; Mio is a sadist and, in clas­sic ani­me style, is self-con­scious about her flat breasts; and Arashiko of the abun­dant breasts can­not stand being touched or even being around men and will even attack them if they get too close. There­fore, Tarou is in ecsta­sy when Mio or Arashiko hit him, and they do, a lot, as Mio gets inor­di­nate plea­sure from doing so where­as Arashiko does so when flus­tered or by acci­dent and is imme­di­ate­ly sorry.

Its also the run­ning joke, that Mio is always try­ing to find ways to ‘cure’ Tarou’s masochism (includ­ing an can­dle-lit exor­cism) that always wind up rein­forc­ing his masochism instead of cur­ing it. Of course, one of those ways involves hypnosis.

The rest of the cast all have their hangups as well: Tarou’s moth­er and teen-aged sis­ter are extreme­ly over­ly affec­tion­ate toward him (both want to mar­ry him) and even com­pete with each oth­er (and his girl­friends) for his affec­tions; Tarou’s friend Tat­su­kichi is a cross-dress­er (and quite good at it) and seems to have an alter­nate per­son­al­i­ty emerge when dress­ing as a woman; Noa, a senior, although her appear­ance is still that of a younger girl, is a genius who nev­er had a child­hood as she had to study all the time, and who always refers to her­self in third-per­son; Noa’s assis­tant Yuki­no­jō is a major loli­con (fan of pre­pu­bes­cent girls) and joined the Inven­tor’s Club to be clos­er to Noa; and school nurse Michiru knows all about every­one’s hangups, pos­sess­es an appar­ent­ly unlim­it­ed sup­ply of cos­play cos­tumes and loves to take pic­tures of the stu­dents in them.

Need­less to say, the entire series is NSFW.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““MM!””

Video ID not provided: Please check your shortcode.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033956/]

Descrip­tion: Sin­is­ter hyp­no­tist Pro­fes­sor I. Stare (Hyp­no­tist “10¢ a Trance”) is prac­tic­ing his hyp­no­tism on a gold­fish but the gold­fish isn’t coop­er­at­ing. Instead, he fumes, he wants a human sub­ject. Going to the phone book, he picks a name at ran­dom and dials Olive Oyl, whom he entrances with a ges­ture (and light­ing bolts com­ing out of his fin­gers through the tele­phone toward Olive) and gives her a sim­ple com­mand: “Come to me!” Entranced, Olive march­es out, arms out­stretched like a sleep­walk­er, and nar­row­ly avoids any num­ber of dan­gers on the way and has to be con­tin­u­ous­ly res­cued by Pop­eye. Final­ly frus­trat­ed with all of the obsta­cles he faced, Pop­eye pulls out his can of spinach and trans­forms into Super-Pop­eye (com­plete with “S” from the spinach can on his chest) and puts an end to the sin­is­ter hyp­no­tist’s plot, but at the expense of Olive’s anger: once she is awak­ened from her trance, she has no mem­o­ry of what hap­pened, know­ing only that Pop­eye slapped her. The beat­ing he takes from an indig­nant Olive is worse than any­thing he ever takes from his old ene­my Blu­to, espe­cial­ly because he refus­es to defend himself.

His­to­ry: ‘Nix on Hyp­notricks’ was the 101^st Pop­eye car­toon released by Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios. It came at a time of grow­ing dis­sent between the Fleis­ch­er broth­ers and the Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios was bought by Para­mount Stu­dios. All of the Fleis­ch­er Pop­eye car­toons have been released through Warn­er Home Video’s Pop­eye the Sailor DVD box set series: this episode can be found on Pop­eye the Sailor: 1941–1943, Vol­ume 3.

Com­men­tary: This car­toon was one of my very first exam­ples of hyp­no­sis in the media that I can remem­ber. The image of Olive, entranced and sleep­walk­ing, stayed with me for decades and I only recent­ly dis­cov­ered a copy on YouTube. It is a very stereo­typ­i­cal view of hyp­no­sis, not sur­pris­ing giv­en that it was released in 1941. You have the stereo­typ­i­cal swa­mi (tur­ban, mus­tache and pointy beard) using hyp­not­ic ges­tures and light­ning bolts from his hands that hyp­no­tize, the blank stare of his hyp­no­tized vic­tim who pro­ceeds to walk in the hyp­no­tized / sleep­walk­er pose with her arms firm­ly out­stretched before her: all it needs is a few “Yes, master“s thrown in to have the com­plete set.

Triv­ia:

• This was the sec­ond Pop­eye car­toon involv­ing hyp­no­sis: the first was the 1935 car­toon ‘The Hyp-Nut-Tist’ with Blu­to as a smarmy swa­mi stage hyp­no­tist. This B&W episode would be remade in col­or as ‘The Balmy Swa­mi’.
• The Super­man motif is because the Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios were also pro­duc­ing the excel­lent “Super­man” car­toons at the same time.