More finding messages in pop culture: X-Files, Quartermass

[glubglubglub]

the former I'd heard of, the latter I hadn't, but there's a good case made here (stumbled upon by some very random browsing) that the former -- a 1950s era British sci-fi series -- was cannibalized or shamelessly plagiarized to make the major x-files story arc:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.the11thhour.com/archives/091999/features/muldermass1.html">www.the11thhour.com/archi...mass1.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>(of recent note: there's a potential explanation buried in there for some of Jeff's colour-out-of-space post...the Quartermass aliens appear to have had some concept of forced evolution by periodic purges of their then-weakest subraces, so that only the strongest strains of the species survived...)<br><br>I'm generally inclined to chalk up most cases of popular culture echoing conspiratorial themes found elsewhere more to the writers mining the same material for inspiration than to attempts by elites or others to communicate hidden truths through 'art', but the further back historically you go the less certainty I have as to what's stuff the writers could have found by doing a bit of research and what's stuff they'd have to have made up from scratch...there's a fanpage for this series here:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8504/qhome.htm">www.geocities.com/Televis.../qhome.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>but some sort of bizarro-synchronicity bell rang reading the first link, hence the sharing. <p></p><i></i>

[marykmusic]

We don't watch TV here, but do movies... recently my husband talked about the TV show "Dark Angel" and how it had some very interesting mind-control and genetic-modification themes.<br><br>I bought the whole first season, and was it good! But where in the world did they come up with those ideas? A post electro-magnetic pulse world... like that's possible...<br><br>(Tongue firmly in cheek here, barely maintaining my straight face.) --MaryK <p></p><i></i>

[FourthBase]

Hell, the last Harry Potter movie had a mind control theme.<br><br>We really are bombarded with messages disguised as fiction.<br>How natural is it for humanity to spend so much time dramatizing itself?<br>It's not natural. It's a control mechanism. <p></p><i></i>

[israelirealities]

i've noticed this as well, and i thought it was a result of the censorship on the truth re mind control and other conspiracies. For instance, I am also using fiction, short "flash fiction" stories, or fantasy to talk about my experience with mind control government program, because there seems to be no other safe way to do it. Perhaps many writers, including those who were not personally victimized, can still sense what's going on, and this is their way to "raise awareness" ? <br>* * *<br>If I had to imagine myself telling the truth about my life, it would be un-fucking-believable...so, a good way to release my pain, AND express the horror in a positive way, would be via fiction, sci fiction, fantasy, movie script, etc. Its either that or silence. <br> <p></p><i></i>

[starroute]

A tiny number of SF writers have geuninely had inside connections (at least one minor writer of the 60's was ex-CIA), but mostly they just get it by mining the public literature, same as anybody. It's amazing how the need to find an original idea to build an SF story around sharpens the eyes when it comes to far-out stuff.<br><br>What was somewhat crudely called "socio-psychological" science fiction in the 1940's and 1950's was particularly enamored of the idea that sociology and psychology could be turned into exact sciences. Mind control and mental conditioning are as much a staple of early 50's SF as atomic doom.<br><br>Some of those same ideas even go back to the late 19th century, when writers were first playing around with the heretical notion that the mind might not be something spirutual and elusive but might be subject to material forces. There are any number of anti-utopias from roughly 1895-1925 where the citizens are conditioned to be happy, to enjoy doing any job the state assigns them to, and to dutifully fall in love with whomever the eugenic planners designate.<br><br>Science fiction writers -- at least the American ones -- have always been a scruffy, marginal lot, geek misfits without an establishment connection to their name. The old-school Brits maybe less so -- I do see tinfoily suggestions concerning Aldous Huxley and Olaf Stapledon from time to time -- but British writers today seem even more countercultural than the Americans.<br> <p></p><i></i>

[Morgan Wolf]

I recall hearing that the CIA used to pay close attention to the Mission Impossible TV series.<br><br>Speaking of which, I just stumbled upon the following - <br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Journal_Samples/DIPH0145-2096~28~5~446%5C446.pdf" target="top">Mission Impossible:The CIA and the Cult of Covert Action in the Middle East</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>Douglas Little | Diplomatic History: The Journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations | 28:5, 2004 (PDF file)<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>By the end of July the Tudeh party came out openly for Mossadeqh, the Soviet Union sent a new and hopeful ambassador to Teheran, and the Shah, his life in danger, was forced to take refuge....<br><br>But we did not stop trying to retrieve the situation.I conferred daily with officials of the State and Defense departments and the Central Intelligence Agency and saw reports from our representatives on the spot who were working actively with the Shah's supporters....<br><br>Throughout the crisis the United States government had done everything it possibly could to back up the Shah.<br><br>Indeed, reports from observers on the spot in Teheran during the critical days sounded more like a dime novel than historical fact.<br><br>-- Dwight Eisenhower,recalling the successful CIA coup in Iran, 19 August 1953<br><br>Good morning, Mr.Phelps. The man you're looking at is King Selim III of Qamadan, a good friend of the West. Unknown to the world, the king has been imprisoned somewhere for over six months by his younger brother, Prince Samandal. With the king in his power, Samandal now controls the huge oil royalties which are Qamadan's main source of revenue. Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to rescue King Selim and restore him to his throne.<br><br>-- Opening scene from "The Brothers," Mission: Impossible, 14 December 1969<br><br>In August 2003, I had the chance to speak with twenty-five Arab university students who had spent their summer in the United States as part of a "Young Ambassadors" program sponsored by the State Department in an attempt to foster better relations between America and the Muslim world.<br><br>After laying out the historical context for the clash of cultures that culminated in the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, I was stunned to hear several of my listeners insist that the destruction of the World Trade Center had been part of an elaborate CIA plot.<br><br>Just as I was about to dismiss this as the worst sort of paranoid clap-trap popularized by the lunatic fringe, one of the Arabs asked me whether I had ever heard of Mohammed Mossadegh, the Iranian nationalist whom the agency had overthrown almost exactly fifty years earlier. Only then did I truly appreciate what a long shadow the CIA has cast across the Middle East.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Journal_Samples/DIPH0145-2096~28~5~446%5C446.pdf<br>Does life imitates art, or is it the reverse? It's an old philosophy question that can be argued either way.<br><br>Cheers,<br>Morgan <p></p><i></i>