Mar 20 2007
|
|
Penn & Teller - Masters Of Deception
In my part time work in the post-production industry, I often get a chance to see soon-to-be released T.V. shows and films, but most of the time, it’s re-runs. This week, for instance, I saw a couple of old episodes of the Penn & Teller Showtime trainwreck entitled Bullshit! The duo, who have been performing magicians for decades now, somehow felt compelled to bring their philosophical beliefs to the small screen. In 1994, before they began their residence in Las Vegas, I was entertained and fascinated by their stage show. They’re consummate showmen and put on a top-notch act. I even have a copy of their 1989 book Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, and it’s a riot.
Unfortunately, their hero is aging magician James Randi. Randi used to be on the governing board of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), until he made one too many statements about psychics that had nothing to do with investigating their claims, and were beginning to bury CSICOP under a mountain of libel suits. He was given his walking papers by the group many years ago. Taking the sometimes unscientific methods of CSICOP one step further, Penn & Teller (P&T) use their pay-TV pulpit to smear and denigrate those who dare to dabble in the fields of Ufology, cryptozoology, remote viewing, and other arcane areas. To be sure, there are many charlatans, liars, addle-headed believers and worse in these fields of inquiry, and P&T are right to point them out for ridicule.
These magicians have been deceiving people for most of their lives–it’s part of their act and they revel in it. The problem with this attitude is that P&T assume that anyone who is trying to promote or investigate subjects outside the realm of 19th century science is doing the same thing. Like the high-priests of CSICOP, their minds are made up before the study begins. They make a small show of applying the scientific method that they worship, but the program is basically an excuse to laugh at those who are assumed to be less sophisticated and intelligent than the hosts or the viewing audience.
The episode I happened to see this week actually featured our friend Nick Redfern poking around a haunted house with a couple of other “ghost hunters” while Penn Jillette (the member of the duo who speaks) makes fun of just about everything they say. My guess is that if either P or T actually saw a ghost, they would either assume that someone was playing a trick on them, or it would quickly be filed away in their minds as a non-event.
Possibly the most egregious example of their duplicity is the episode that was taped during the 2003 Bay Area UFO Conference for a show on alien abductions. I have been told by those who attended that conclave that the producers of Bullshit! told the organizers that they were there to do a serious program on UFOs for Showtime. Everyone who appeared on camera signed a release with this assumption. Barbara Lamb, a licensed mental-health professional who does hypnotic regressions with supposed abductees was called (if I remember correctly) a “money-grubbing old bitch” in another voice-over by Jillette. Although I disagree with the vast majority of researchers who use regression to uncover possible memories of UFO encounters, referring to Lamb (whom I know as a sincere and caring person) as a “bitch” is probably a bit out of line.
In the shows I’ve seen, the hosts never appear on camera with the subjects of their wrath. Why is this? Are they afraid to engage in a straight debate, (many of which they would probably “win”) or are they more like small boys who leave a flaming paper bag full of dog crap on someone’s doorstep, ring the bell, and run?
The usual modus operandi that the producers (and hosts) of Bullshit! have exhibited is to present the most outlandish and ridiculous proponents of whatever it is they have set their sights, and present it as the whole of the phenomenon being examined. This is why I refer to it as the “Shooting Fish In A Barrel Show.” These people are not educating us, they are dumbing us down, along with many of the paranormal TV programs they rail against. “Paranormal” means “outside of the normal,” and the “normal” has been changing for thousands of years. Why the evolution of thought and science should come to a reverent halt with our generation is beyond me.
Postscript: One thing I found very interesting in their program on ESP was a short clip of remote viewing pioneer Dr. Russell Targ. To my disbelief, he appeared on screen for a few seconds and said something to the effect of “I don’t want to say anything, because you’ll edit my words to make me look bad.”
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 12:34 am and is filed under Conferences, Media Appearances, Pop Culture, Reviews, UFOlogists, Wake Up Down There. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
del.icio.us Digg Reddit BlinkList Google Ma.gnolia StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Help
- Related News Stories:
- Fundamentalist Skeptics Not In The Majority »
- Why Should Anyone Be Interested In UFOs? »
- Spielberg To Launch Online Paranormal Community »
- Groundbreaking Research Still Widely Ignored »
- UFOs, The Paranormal, and Multi-Dimensions »
|
March 20th, 2007 at 6:07 am
It’s apt that Penn and Teller’s program was call Bullshit seeing how they’re full of it. I’ve no idea why you labeled them magicians when they are self-professed illusionists and entertainers. Like many celebrities, they think fame gives them some platform to comment on subjects they’ve got no expertise in especially political matters. Debunking hoaxers and fakes is fine but attacking the serious study of the paranormal makes them seem mean spirited and self righteous. I’ve always found them to be stooges for the fundamentalist liberals of the Democratic Party. Their schtickt has become old and now they prefer controversy over inventiveness.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Minus the UFO/Alien episode, the series is funny as Hell! I especialy enjoy the one on Chiropracters. They show one ‘working’ on a practicaly newborn infant and shout out foul language and assorted funny observations such as ‘BABY-CRACKER!’
-Jason Gammon
http://www.BoyintheMachine.blogspot.com
March 20th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Greg…
You obviously awoke from a good night’s sleep with your brain functioning on all eight cylinders (or was that twelve?) and really rolling when you sat down to compose this post because it is a real jewel. Absolutely superb, I gotta tell you! Taking it, and the comment by Crgintx, as a whole,
the case against the annoying Penn & Teller is pretty much a “done deal”. Anything else to be said is just going to be elaboration on what already has been.
Basically, Penn & Teller suck. Their hubris is of elitist know-it-all stripe and is rooted in Scientism (science transformed into autocratic “RELIGION” through the entrenchment of fundementalist-materialist DOGMA, rooted for the most part…as you say…in the 19th century). It is also , as Crgintx points out, “mean spirited and self righteous”. Crgintx says their actions make them “seem” that way , but I disagree with him there. I don’t see any “seem” to it. I say they ARE mean spirited and self righteous, as most far-lefters and far-righters always tend to be.
Penn & Teller, as stage magicians, used to be inventive, funny, and entertaining. They have become, with their un-asked-for philosophical panderings, simply obnoxious. They are just the types who would love to “work over” Marie D. Jones for “daring” to write a book (”PSIence”) that could suggest that anything “paranormal” could be true, and I’m sure they’d be more than happy to “put it to” John Keel as well….and to Robert Anton Wilson.
And RAW wouldn’t have taken to these two AT ALL.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Jason…
The series IS funny, as you say, in its execution…but it sets up “straw man” targets to mow down, and that undertone of smirking, wink-wink know-it-all arrogance is always there. I catch the show from time to time, but don’t go out of my way to take it in at all (not like I do, say, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”, which I consider the most human-friendly show on television. SCREW those two magician donkey orifices!! “Bus Driver!Move that bus!!!”)
March 20th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Jason,
I thought a lot of stuff they covered, and the way they covered it was very funny too. Although it wasn’t “scientific” as such, the show about bottled water was great. For those who didn’t see it, the show set up a “water bar” in L.A. somewhere and told the stooges who came by that they were sampling water from all over the world, when in reality, the fancy bottles and pitchers were all filled from a garden hose in the back of the restaurant. People believed the hype rather than their own senses. Makes you think–which many people don’t.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:24 am
MASTERS OF DECEPTION, INDEED!
Greg, a good few years back, now, on British TV, Randi did an investigation into various alleged paranormal phenomena.
The one on dowsing was an outstanding example of skeptopathic methodology.
One guy, in particular, using a pendulum, was so good he got everything right, no matter what they threw at him - and they hit him with EVERYTHING; even the one I felt he might fail at (if only from mental fatigue after all the other tasks) - using his pendulum and a map to locate a target object - he breezed through.
“Hmm,” said Randi, “Interesting…but now let’s do one last and final test to prove once and for all whether or not there really is anything to this so-called dowsing…”
Thinking they were going to test the pendulum guy again, I couldn’t wait: he looked so cool, calm and collected, I knew there was no way he was going to fail.
But all of a sudden they appeared to wheel on a slightly bemused looking woman, rushed her through a single vaguely defined brief ‘test’ and then, leaving her looking even more bemused than ever, Randi announced not only had she failed her task, but that her failure PROVED categorically, once and for all time, there was no such thing as dowsing.
After the show went out, Arthur C. Clarke, a self-confessed friend of Randi, denounced what’d happened and stated he knew from personal experience whatever dowsing was, it did indeed have some basis in reality.
But forget Randi’s imfamous pronouncement - the thing about the show that’s stuck with me right up to the present day is this: given the amount of time and testing spent on the successful dowser, was it just a coincidence that the next and final dowser up was the vital conclusive failure?
Did Randi have some sort of fantastic foresight she’d fail, and therefore placed her last?
Or was it really the case the successful dowser on whom so much time and so much testing was spent was actually the REAL final testee, but the show was edited to make it look otherwise?
And that’s where your title, ‘Penn & Teller - Masters of Deception’ comes in very handy.
There’s a magicians’ trick that’s their field’s equivalent of a karaoke standard, which uses some prop or other - it can be a kettle, a teapot, a fancy BOTTLE, a PITCHER, even a plain old ordinary garden HOSE - to ‘miraculously’ decant a variety of different coloured, even different flavoured liquids.
How do we know then that isn’t exactly what they did, merely making it appear as if it was all the same solitary water source?
Remember, Penn & Teller and all the other skeptopaths pounce on the first slightest hint of suspicious concerning anyone they ‘investigate’ and immediately claim it renders void all results, no matter how apparently compelling.
In which case, why should we trust anything said or done by people who out of their own mouths are professional deceivers?
March 20th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Alan,
I don’t disbelieve everything P&T do or say in the same way that I don’t disbelieve everything that Uri Geller does even though he’s been caught in deceptions more than once. To me, things are not often black and white. The thing that makes me upset is the methodolgy you rightly point out–Randi, CSICOP et. al. will perform an “experiment” over and over until they get the result that they want, and then present it as “conclusive proof.”
March 20th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
crgintx,
Penn Jillette is a Libertarian. he gushes about the late Harry Browne at every opportunity. on the website of his short-lived radio show he even listed Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” as recommended reading.
so if anyone is to blame for P&T’s antics it’s the Libertarian Party, and not “the fundamentalist liberals of the Democratic Party”. (talk about scapegoating!)
March 20th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Alan
You might be interested to know that down at the National Archive at Kew, just outside London, there are now-declassified files showing how the British Police Force secretly used dowsers to find dead bodies buried by the rubble from Hitler’s bombs during WW2. I wrote this up in my 2003 book Strange Secrets, to give it a plug!
So, despite what the sceptics might say, the official world has taken a keen interest in the UK in dowsing. I also got hold of US Defense Intelligence Agency files on dowsing too (these from the late 70s).
March 20th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Chaos_engineer and crgintx,
I’ll do you one better: The “blame” (or cause) if any was to be assigned, is when intellectual curiosity is trumped by a pathological need for certainty which is supported and encouraged by those in positions of authority, be they in academia or the media. Knowledge and inquiry should belong to anyone who can use it to help us all.
The fans of Ayn Rand strike me as people who have not grown up and refuse to acknowledge the most basic rights of other people because they might stand in the way of what they WANT. As long as you’re the only one who matters, it makes life so much simpler. The Satanists are even worse in this regard.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Great post. P and T lost me years ago when they began making snide remarks about anything and everything to do with UFOs, Fortean events, etc. — unrelated to anything else. Just thought they were being witty and far more intellectual than any of us.
I’ve never understood the whole Randiesque mindset of “we’re magicians, we know it’s fake” — of course it’s fake, it’s magic! But as you’ve written so well; that has led most of them to assume it’s “all” fake.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
great post Greg!
March 21st, 2007 at 12:32 am
Bill, Mr. X, and regan,
Thanks! Of course I have to keep my comments in the realm of civilized commentary, lest I descend to P&T’s level, although I would dearly love to sometimes. There’s a lot of money waiting for the right kind of unscrupulous dickwads.
March 21st, 2007 at 1:47 am
Chaos Engineer claiming to be Libertarian and being a libertarian are too quite different things. Penn Jillette is a darling of the left no matter what he claims. Burning American flags is his right under the 1st Amendment but it showed me his total lack of taste. Like I said P&T are more interested in controversy than inventiveness.
March 21st, 2007 at 5:09 am
I wrote this in 2003…
I’d like to go on record to say that I am personally appalled at “Penn and Teller” and their obtuse ad-hominum attacks on persons associated with the abduction conundrum and ufology in general…
At first blush their hackneyed production is merely uninformed, unbalanced, and unprofessional. Closer examination seems to expose real duplicity, shameless confabulation, and a total lack of -any- ethics.
More consideration strongly suggests libel, dirty-tricks character assassination to facilitate hidden agendas, and the usual mainstream persecution of free-thinking persons for daring to think out of the aggregate social box!
Participants in their program were obviously misled, manipulated, and misinformed with regard to the purpose of their interview and use in the program. Creative editing _was_ used to cant the contrived results into inaccurate and degrading distortions of summative disparity for the persons involved. Outrage!
Persons associated with ufology (and ufology itself) were turned into mouth-breathing dolts or roundly foolish comic foils for a sneering (and very disappointing!) Penn and Teller, who laughed all the way to the predicted bank for their slack jawed and axe-grinding trouble, I’m sure. Only *denial* makes the money the skeptibunky airily attributes to the true-believer.
Ironically, we take a step back to the fundamentalist dark ages with P&T’s aptly titled new Showtime series “Bull Shit”. Verily.
They blithely craft this crude assault on rational sensibility in the name of “knowledge advancement” like -any- good CSICOPian (the show was, oh by the way, -heavily- touted by that skeptical pretender as a “must see”), and this is the root of my appalled disappointment with them.
I’d thought Penn and Teller were hipper than that! I’d thought they were smarter. I’d presumed they had a degree of with-it-ness that, I come to find, is just not there. I used to enjoy their performances. Penn and Teller used to be minor gods in my personal pantheon, even. They used to matter to me. No more.
Now they are merely a two-headed James Randi for the X generation. They are 21st Century CSICOPians. They are ufological Luddites, ironic enemies of human growth and advancement, and two-color debunkers in league with the corrupted mainstream. They no longer count (with -me- at any rate)! They are no longer relevant.
I’d suggest the reader put the portentous “Penn” and tedious “Teller” into rational perspective, gauge the scope and effect of their contribution to documentary television with their “BS” series, and put them in the same class as other 21st Century *reality* shows… but write them off as time, even -more-, foolishly spent.
Truly, Penn and Teller have only demonstrated that they have no “there” there, any where -near- there … SO there! Ignore them for the buzzing of the prevaricating flies they ape, and move on.
March 21st, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I wrote this at steamshovelpress.com many moons ago:
“Penn, Teller and Bullshit”
by Kenn Thomas
Penn Jillette is a lard butt. Teller, of course, is a mime. ‘Nuff said about that. In the comedy pair’s new Showtime program, Bullshit!, Penn and Teller join the humorless and condescending “skeptic” crowd by “debunking” everything they think is false. If turnabout is fair play, then any viewer can feel justified in calling these two names. They freely hurtle such epithets as “bitch” at their victims, whom they often approach without revealing how vicious their attacks will be when aired. Most of the shows end with a simple-minded homily from lard butt about how all these geeks need is love, after thirty minutes of delivering hate and humiliation to them.
One episode attacked last year’s UFO conference in Santa Clara. The first thing the camera focused on in the UFO report was disinfo’s book, “You Are Being Lied To”, a collection of very powerful essays on parapolitcs. P&T admitted that David Icke’s notion of the world as run by shape-shifting reptilians was “the first thing anyone here said that made sense”, and they did not repeat the oft-held criticism of Icke being an anti-Semite. Nevertheless, Icke did commit the crime of being more interesting than Penn & Teller, and so was ridiculed. So too was Roger Leir, the podiatrist who admits to not knowing where some of the weird things come from that he pulls from people’s bodies. The “authority” podiatrist consulted by P&T knew exactly, of course, without ever examining Leir’s patients. The public record of Leir’s practice was offered to viewers; and examination of the other guy’s apparently never happened.
The reliance on banal, ignorant “experts” is, of course, what distinguishes P&T’s work from any truly iconoclastic or thought-provoking presentation of paranormal and parapolitical material. To counterpoint the “bitch” psychotherapist, for instance, they used a rather geeky looking one who quoted conventional explanations about alien abduction and implants as if they were verses from the Bible. At their web site, P&T note “we are people living in the USA trying hard to make sense out of the world. We use the expertise available to us and we try to tell the truth as we see it.”
(The mime even suggested at the web site that none of P&T’s superior audience ever goes home and tries to do the magic tricks. Now THAT’s bullshit.)
They are alone in this crusade, of course. “We know nothing, but we have experts we consult.” Their experts, of course, better than those that speculate freely and with an open mind. The people out there who want to think for themselves and do for themselves are idiots, according to Penn & Teller. They are just out to make a buck. P&T found one disgruntled conference attendee disappointed because she came to the event for “science” and all she got was anecdotes and experiences, sold in books and tapes. She was going to spend the next day at the theme park across the street. P&T aren’t selling anything, of course, just exposing the bullshit. Viewers should remember that when they pay their bill for premium cable.
Too bad Penn & Teller don’t get it. Too bad they can’t figure a way to laugh with instead of at the UFO crowd, the conspiracy crowd or whatever off-mainstream crowd they plan to slam next.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Al L. and Kenn,
I know this is an old issue, and like Mr. Lehmberg says, we should move on, but seeing the show again brought up the dander anew. Like I said, P&T occasionally have a point that is well-taken, but the basic philosophy and approach is mean-spirited and selfish.
The bathwater in this case is so filthy that the baby is near death anyway.
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
God, but I love this blog!!! This is one of the most fun bashings I’ve been to in a while!!!! Can we do Rosie O’Donnell next?????
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Bill,
I’m not trying to “bash” P&T, just pointing out that they and others of their ilk are agents of the “counter-evolution”!
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Darn ! But, sometimes, the de-evolving could USE a little bashing! Sort of a bit of “retribution” for ill-deeds done to many all around. And besides, sometimes one person’s “bashing” is someone else’s ” pointing out that they and others of their ilk are agents of the ‘counter-evolution’.” heh heh heh
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I’ll be coming down decisively on Rosie’s side. I like a sincere liberal woman who won’t take insentient, convenient, or arbitrary crap. Randi Rhodes is another. They have minor fetishes in my personal pantheon of the respectable. Linda Howe is another. There’s a lot of them actually.
Hey! All have feet of clay, I do too. As do you, eh?
The criticized are done such as is felt necessary to counter their very slick and moneyed, if back-stepping message… which they have every right to spew, I’ve accepted, even as others are provoked to counter spew on their own.
No respect extended to sneering sobs and intellectual cowards, alive _or_ dead.
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:38 am
Sounds reasonable enough. Since Rosie hasn’t attacked the paranormal yet, we’ll give her a pass.
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:49 am
I suspect we’d be rewarded well on that score. I heard her admit years ago on her now defunct afternoon program that she suspected she’d been involved with some kind of abduction scenario.
I _forget_ who it was she was interviewing (…maybe Dr. Jacobs?) but I was watching the program to see the interview and it happened that she reported she might have been abducted… brave lady in my estimation. Everything to lose and nothing to gain in the admission.
She’s no klasskurtxian ™, fer sure… a pass seems abundantly appropriate.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
…On reflection I’m pretty sure it was Whitley Strieber…
March 24th, 2007 at 2:24 am
I know I am five days late to this discussion (typical for me) but the simple matter of fact with Penn & Teller is that they are illusionists and not practicioners of magiks. If they were ever to run into someone or something with real occult power they probably would crap their pants.
Jess
March 24th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Al L & Bill,
O’Donnell knows which side her bread is buttered on. This is why most female talk show hosts not only accept, but sometimes glorify the paranormal–because their audience (mostly women, I would expect) are for the most part very interested in it.
March 24th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Jess,
Do you mean “magick?” I only call them “magicians” in the definition of performing on the stage because they apparently can’t stand it when they are referred to as such.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I don’t know, man. I sense a little more sincerity than just that. Like I said, she testified to a personal involvement, so I suspect real empathy and not mere saccharin sympathy.
March 24th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Alfred,
I didn’t want to imply that she was flippant about it. The decision to say something was probably made before the show and if so, was carefully considered in light of the audience reaction. If it would negatively affect the ratings, she might not have mentioned it at all.