“The Hypnotic Eye” (1960) — Part II — The Images

Sev­er­al years ago, I start­ed col­lect­ing any­thing I could find regard­ing the movie “The Hyp­not­ic Eye”. I was suf­fi­cient­ly intrigued about the movie that I want­ed to know every­thing about it, and one way was to get as much para­pher­na­lia about it togeth­er that I could.

I would even­tu­al­ly col­lect two of the pub­lic­i­ty pack­ages, con­sist­ing of news­pa­per arti­cles, infor­ma­tion and ads, one each for both US and British release, which were print­ed on very flim­sy newsprint and so were dif­fi­cult to sur­vive. I also have what I think is a com­plete col­lec­tion of the pub­lic­i­ty stills released for the movie, many com­plete with the descrip­tive text attached to the back. But the biggest addi­tion to the col­lec­tion was a diskette I received from Gil Boyne which con­tained a num­ber of pho­to­graph­ic stills tak­en from when he was on the set of the movie. Many of these images were nev­er used in any pro­mo­tions and most were in col­or, where­as the pub­lic­i­ty stills were all black&white.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““The Hyp­not­ic Eye” (1960) — Part II — The Images”

July 17th, 2011 | Tags: , | Category: Movies, The HiM Collection | Comments are closed

The Authors Behind the Author of “The Hypnotist”

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“The Hyp­no­tist” is prob­a­bly the most preva­lent name for any fic­tion­al book deal­ing with hyp­no­sis: I know of at least 8 or 9 of them, not includ­ing this most recent release. There seems to be a cycle, as there are times I think that a book with this title comes out reg­u­lar­ly, with two reg­u­lar pub­li­ca­tions already this year: it could a reg­u­lar fea­ture of the blog to read and com­ment on them alone. But its rare that the crit­ics take notice of such books, so its worth not­ing when one does.

“The Hyp­no­tist” by Lars Kepler is the most recent book of the name, a Swedish mys­tery nov­el (trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish) where the hyp­no­tist is not the sus­pect or the detec­tive, but in this case an inves­ti­ga­tor (the third most log­i­cal choice) called in to help the young sur­vivor of a series of mur­ders recall infor­ma­tion about the crime. It was a best sel­l­ar in Europe, called the biggest sale of the 2009 Lon­don Book Fair and since received excel­lent reviews in such venues as Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, the Inde­pen­dant (UK), and oth­ers. Some are even call­ing Lars Kepler the next Stieg Lars­son (“The Girl With the Drag­on Tat­too”.)

Except that author Lars Kelper is only a pseu­do­nym for Swedish authors Alexan­der and Alexan­dra Coel­ho Ahn­do­ril. They were inter­viewed in the US Nation­al Pub­lic Radio Morn­ing Edi­tion pro­gram, which can be heard here. They can also be seen in a video interview:

July 16th, 2011 | Tags: , | Category: Fiction | Comments are closed

Principal Under Fire for Hypnotizing Students

A Flori­da high school prin­ci­pal is under fire for hyp­no­tiz­ing sev­er­al of his stu­dents. The actions came to light after one of his stu­dents com­mit­ted sui­cide, although there is no proof of the con­nec­tion between hyp­no­sis and the sui­cide oth­er than cer­tain deroga­to­ry ele­ments of the pub­lic stereo­type of hypnosis.

The prin­ci­pal, Dr. George Ken­ney, from the news reports, is no ama­teur regard­ing hyp­no­sis: he wrote four books on using hyp­no­sis for var­i­ous stu­dent-relat­ed prob­lems includ­ing test anx­i­ety and sports per­for­mance, and on at least two report­ed occa­sions hyp­no­tized stu­dents with their par­ents’ con­sent. Ken­ney’s cre­den­tials seem very legit­i­mate, as he learned hyp­no­sis at the Omni Hyp­no­sis Train­ing Cen­ter in DeLand, Fla.

Still, the con­tro­ver­sy fuels the pub­lic mis­con­cep­tions of hyp­no­sis in a large­ly neg­a­tive way, and thus the sub­ject itself is a vic­tim, as well.

Com­men­tary:

First off, while he may have done so for the most inno­cent of rea­sons and pur­pos­es, still the per­cep­tion remains that he may (and I repeat may) have done so on minors espe­cial­ly with­out the per­mis­sion of their par­ents or guardians. In many juris­dic­tions, that is ille­gal and could very well even be termed crim­i­nal assault. That said, accord­ing to the news reports, in the case of the stu­dent who com­mit­ted sui­cide, his par­ents did give the prin­ci­pal per­mis­sion, to help the stu­dent deal with test anx­i­ety. He is under police inves­ti­ga­tion based on a 1961 law that pro­hibits the prac­tice of ther­a­peu­tic hyp­no­sis by lay hyp­no­tists with­out the super­vi­sion of a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al. Ken­ney faces a sec­ond-degree mis­de­meanor pun­ish­able by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted.

Sec­ond­ly, he did so despite the explic­it injunc­tion by the school board against such actions. Why the board made such a move, and that it is report­ed that Dr. Ken­ney lied about such actions, does not bode well for him and the sub­ject of hyp­no­sis in general.

How­ev­er, what I find slight­ly trou­bling is the 50-year old law against lay hyp­no­sis which does not acknowl­edge the present state of hyp­no­sis as it is prac­ticed today. I also have to won­der how often such a law has been applied in recent years.

Ref­er­ences:

July 15th, 2011 | Category: Hypnosis News and Information | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Two Weekends, Two Conventions

The fol­low­ing has noth­ing to do with the over­all sub­ject of the blog yet every­thing to do with the con­tin­u­al main­te­nance of the own­er of the blog.

The past two week­ends were occu­pied with either attend­ing and/or work­ing two wide­ly dif­fer­ent yet strange­ly sim­i­lar con­ven­tions. (And thanks to the Word­Press sched­ul­ing sys­tem, I was able to com­plete my posts ahead of time yet pub­lish them on a reg­u­lar sched­ule.) As some­one who used to attend maybe 6–8 con­ven­tions a year when I could afford them, get­ting to more than two that aren’t local is more than a lit­tle depress­ing. Still, it was good to get out to them, if only to remind myself to have a good time.

CONvergence

CON­ver­gence is a region­al-sized SF con­ven­tion in Min­neapo­lis: I have now attend­ed three, one a cou­ple of years ago when it fea­tured authors Mer­cedes Lack­ey (who I know as Misty Lack­ey from read­ing her fan writ­ing before she went pro­fes­sion­al) and her hus­band Lar­ry Dixon, both of whom rarely do con­ven­tions because of their busy sched­ules and involve­ment with out­side respon­si­bil­i­ties, then the last two because of invi­ta­tions from a very good local friend who let me stay at her place instead of need­ing a hotel room.

This year I went with the pur­pose of hav­ing fun, and fun I did, both at the con­ven­tion and with my friends out­side of the con­ven­tion. Because I love to do pan­els, and despite the late­ness of my request, I was actu­al­ly able to even be on two pan­els, one on the Legion of Super Heroes and one on Bond gad­gets, and the oth­er pan­els I attend­ed it seemed as it I should have been on them, any­way, giv­en how much I con­tributed to them.

What I find inter­est­ing is the very vibrant fan com­mu­ni­ty in the Min­neapo­lis / St Paul Twin Cities area, to the point it can sup­port at least two SF con­ven­tions, an ani­me con­ven­tion and a gam­ing con­ven­tion, as well as a num­ber of reg­u­lar fan com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties. Its a com­mu­ni­ty I could like being a part of.

IkasuCon

Ika­su­Con is a local ani­me that is a trans­plant from Cincin­nati: the con­ven­tion com­mit­tee was dis­ap­point­ed in their local con­ven­tion facil­i­ties and looked around the gen­er­al area for bet­ter facil­i­ties, and when they came here, they found an excel­lent facil­i­ty (and were giv­en cook­ies, too!) Many of the staff still live in the Cincin­nati area, but grad­u­al­ly a num­ber of locals are “infil­trat­ing” the ranks, includ­ing myself as the local mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive, which means that I walked around the con­ven­tion a lot, car­ry­ing my cam­era and tak­ing pic­tures of indi­vid­u­als. I found sev­er­al excel­lent cos­tumes in evi­dence and took a num­ber of pic­tures that I call “mon­ey shots” that are des­tined for my fan­nish dis­play book.

What I find inter­est­ing here is the very active local ani­me fans, many of whom are ardent cos­tumers. That stands in coun­ter­point to the seem­ing lack of any kind of local orga­nized fan com­mu­ni­ty: as the sec­ond largest city in the state, there should be enough sup­port to have its own SF con­ven­tion and be oth­er­wise active, yet there isn’t the sup­port for an SF con, and the local gam­ing con­ven­tion is slow­ly fad­ing into obliv­ion. That’s why I find the ani­me con­ven­tion so dif­fer­ent that I hope it will be the focus of more local fan­nish activity.

Similarities

The sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two con­ven­tions is the ener­gy that per­me­ates them. Its rather breath­tak­ing for some­one whose been in var­i­ous fan­doms for over 30 years to see the peo­ple there, many of whom are maybe â…“ of my age: Hav­ing watched a num­ber of the fra­ter­nal orga­ni­za­tions my par­ents were a part of start slow­ly fad­ing away, I have been con­cerned the same thing hap­pen­ing with SF fan­dom. These two con­ven­tions remind me that fan­dom is still a thriv­ing cul­ture: Per­haps not thriv­ing in the same areas (ani­me, for instance) than when I start­ed, but thriv­ing nonetheless.

In short, attend­ing both of these ener­getic con­ven­tions was like refu­el­ing: I am a social ani­mal yet I don’t have the resources to get out as much as I would like, so a week­end (or two) like this will have to suffice.

July 14th, 2011 | Category: Personal | Comments are closed

‘No Award’ by Roger Zelazny

When the Secret Ser­vice employs telepaths to pro­tect the Pres­i­dent against assas­si­na­tion, the only way to get an assas­sin close enough is to keep the mind of the assas­sin some­how in sus­pen­sion until the very last moment.

Descrip­tion: In ‘No Award’ by  Roger Zelazny, we see the first-per­son stum­blings of a man caught in a dilem­ma, being present as a Pres­i­den­tial address with lit­tle mem­o­ry of how or why he was there. His mem­o­ry and thoughts are frag­ment­ed, but dis­turb­ing flash­es keep dis­tract­ing him. And then, when he sees his hand pro­duce a gun, he is imme­di­ate­ly at war with him­self, allow­ing the Secret Ser­vice the time to stop him.

What had hap­pened, the man is told, is that a group intend­ing to assas­si­nate the Pres­i­dent used a num­ber of sur­gi­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal tech­niques to sep­a­rate his brain into two dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties, one con­scious that was the ordi­nary mind and one kept in a deep trance state until the prop­er moment and the prop­er trig­ger. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that process could not be reversed, leav­ing the man with only half of a mind, unable to com­mu­ni­cate with the oth­er half except through the most crude of ways.

His­to­ry: This sto­ry is reprint­ed in “The Last Defend­er of Camelot”, and Roger explains the ori­gin of the story:

Bet­ty White of The Evening Post sud­den­ly solicit­ed a 3,500 word sto­ry from me one day, so I did this one quick­ly and she bought it just as quick­ly. Then I asked her why she had want­ed it. She told me that she recent­ly had her tele­vi­sion set on and was occu­pied with some­thing which did not per­mit her to change chan­nels read­i­ly. A show named “Star Trek” came on and whe watched it through and enjoyed it. She had not known much about sci­ence fic­tion, she said, and she resolved to stop by her paper­back book store the fol­low­ing day, buy a sci­ence fic­tion book at ran­dom and read it. It hap­pened to be one of mine. She read it and liked it and decid­ed to ask me for a story.

It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate what nov­el Bet­ty White read. This sto­ry was pub­lished in 1977: at that time, Zelazny had pub­lished the greater por­tion of his nov­el work, includ­ing his award win­ning nov­els “This Immor­tal” and “Lord of Light”, sev­er­al oth­er nom­i­nat­ed works, as well as 4 out of the first 5 Amber novels.

July 13th, 2011 | Tags: , | Category: Fiction | Comments are closed
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