14 March 2017, 12:00
- 13:30pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building, CRASSH
Dr Marcia Holmes (History, Birkbeck)
Discussant: Dr Dan Larsen (History, Cambridge)
This paper argues that the mid-1960s saw
a dramatic shift in how 'brainwashing' was popularly imagined,
reflecting Anglo-American developments in the sciences of mind as well
as shifts in mass media culture. The 1965 British film, The Ipcress File
(dir. Sidney J. Furie, starr. Michael Caine) provides a rich case for
exploring these interconnections between mind control, mind science, and
media, as it exemplifies the era's innovations for depicting
'brainwashing' on screen: the film's protagonist is subjected to
flashing lights and electronic music, pulsating to the 'rhythm of
brainwaves'. This paper describes the making of The Ipcress File's
brainwashing sequence, and shows how its quest for cinematic spectacle
drew on developments in cybernetic science, multimedia design and
modernist architecture (developments that were also influencing the
1960s' psychedelic counterculture). I argue that often interposed
between the disparate endeavours of 1960s mind control, psychological
science, and media was a vision of the human mind as a 'cybernetic
spectator': a subject who not only scrutinizes how media and other
demands on her sensory perception can affect consciousness, but seeks to
consciously participate in this mental conditioning and guide its
effects.
(Dr Holmes's paper will be pre-circulated and may be read in advance. You can receive a copy by emailing lsp33@cam.ac.uk)
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