In light of the bizarre pattern of high budget films of recent decades happening to very accurately predict upcoming future events years in advance (see: Contagion), why don’t we take a look at what clues ‘The Kingsman’ might have had for us – if only we had known what we were looking at.

I’m going to skip over the whole story of the lower-class-boy-makes-good by getting inducted into the expensive suit-and-gadget club and mentored by some fancily dressed older gentlemen.

..and I’ll go straight to the main plotline which revolves around a tech billionaire named Richmond Valentine, who with the aid of one legless assistant is able to boss around intelligence agencies the world over – while dressing like a 12 year old.

Okay so Valentine has been listening to the experts and believes that the world is heating up (ie. climate change) as part of some kind of natural mechanism to purge humanity, which mother nature perceives as a ‘virus’.

You may recall the ‘scientific’ story we have been told about how the human body raises its core temperature (ie. a fever) to help ‘kill’ the ‘virus’ since supposedly the human body is able to withstand that higher temperature, while the ‘virus’ can not. Apologies for all the ‘quotation’ marks, which are unfortunately necessary.

Anyway, so Valentine – who was previously a passionate climate change advocate – has given up trying to raise awareness. Apparently nobody listened. So now he has another plan.

He wants to drastically reduce the world’s population in order to get the earth back into some kind of homeostasis or balance, and thus allow mother nature to ease off from the climate change self-destruct mechanism.

He wants to kill most people, so that a much smaller number of people can survive.

How, exactly? Well, Valentine will give out free SIM cards with free internet to every single person in the entire world.

Once the whole world has accepted his offer – and the time is right – he will activate everyones’ cellphones all at once via the (5G?) cellular network.

This will trigger the transmission of a frequency signal from everyones’ cellphones which affects their brains, turning everybody homicidal. In other words, they become killer zombies who start attacking and murdering anyone they see.

The great part – as Valentine says – is that HE is not killing them, the poor dumb plebs are doing it to themselves.

So while the average Joes are massacring each other, the ultra wealthy elites and cooperative world ‘leaders’ are given access to hide out in an alpine speakeasy slash co-working space.

As a (mandatory) benefit of participating in Valentine’s extermination plan, they have each received an implant chip in their neck – ostensibly an additional safety measure which will protect them, making them immune to this cellular homicide signal.

The catch? Valentine also has remote access to these implants so he (or someone else) can active them and execute these ‘leaders’ at will if they don’t comply with his instructions, or just if he.. you know.. feels like it.

Unfortunately for them, the Kingsmen get into Valentine’s system and activate these chips, which gets things popping off.

Oh and what does Valentine call this momentous event whereby the elites will sit around and watch the plebs kill themselves by voluntarily accepting his free offer? Oh, it’s called V-day. You know, cause his name is Valentine.

That’s all for now.

Anyway, what can we (and governments and media organisations the world over) learn about controlling the minds of the general public from Derren’s 2016 special ‘The Push’?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

The Premise

Derren will attempt to take an unwitting member of the public and in a few short hours manipulate them into doing the unthinkable – killing an innocent man in cold blood.

“Can we be manipulated, through the familiar forces of social pressure to commit murder?”

Derren Brown

Of course the dupe won’t really be killing anyone – in this case Derren will have them push an old man off a building who is actually rigged up with a bungee cord – but from their point of view this is what they will think they are doing.

The Setup

As always, Derren has pre-screened 2,000 people who applied to be on his TV show and has done the usual psychological profiling and compliance testing – just like any good stage hypnotist would do.

We’ve all seen the ‘waiting room’ compliance test where three stooges stand up and sit down repeatedly as a bell is rung, meanwhile test subjects are brought in one at a time to see if they start copying the group behaviour despite it having no apparent purpose.

I don’t know what percentage of the population would comply with this blatant pavlovian conditioning but regardless, Derren excluded anyone who didn’t stand up and sit down on cue. He then filled out his shortlist with several other schmucks who did whatever they were cued to – maybe they figured obedience would help get them on TV.

Anyway, Derren chooses his final four targets, then sends them all home having been told that they were not chosen – this way they won’t be suspicious when they are later lured into Derren’s trap.

Several months later, Derren has arranged a controlled venue and a troupe of 70 actors to play out a rehearsed scenario guided by hidden earpieces, working in sync with professional stunt and special effects people. The ‘event’ is a phony fundraising auction for a fake youth charity called PUSH (Project for Urban Social Happiness) attended by high powered VIPs and wealthy benefactors – ie. actors.

Here, Derren will employ a sophisticated pressure-cooker of social compliance, in an attempt to induce a ‘regular joe’ into killing a man in cold blood.

Before we begin…

I would recommend that you watch the show – it’s only 60 minutes and quite entertaining throughout. For those who won’t, and as a convenient reference for the later material, I have included a blow-by-blow of the main events in the accordion below.

Here we go…

I have broken down what I see as the primary methods employed by Derren in coercing this poor man to take actions which contradict his morality and common sense. Some of what I mention are things that Derren acknowledges on the show, and others are my own observations.

Along with each tactic I have included a bonus point for your entertainment, of how governments or media organisations around the world could potentially employ these tactics on an unsuspecting public… for the public good of course. Why not play along and see if you can guess these before opening up the drop-down?

And onto the compliance techniques…

Establish authority

Derren hosts this charity event at an impressive large-scale venue.

He has video clips of UK celebrities (Robbie Williams, Martin Freeman etc) playing on big screens, where they endorse the charity and talk about how important it is.

The rooms are filled with (supposedly) wealthy benefactors who are backing the organisation, which was created to help helpless kids.

How could anyone possibly argue against that?

Subordinate power dynamic

From the moment Chris arrives at the event, the situation is subtly (and not so subtly) arranged to make him feel inferior, and thus more likely to comply with instructions.

The very reason he is there in the first place is to pitch for work – he is not there as a guest, but to produce a fundraising app for the charity. This already puts him in the supplicant position and also such that he ‘owes’ it to his business partner to not screw up the ‘opportunity’.

Chris is deliberately not told that it is a black tie event and so feels under-dressed. He starts off out the back in the kitchen and though he’s given a drink by Tom the charity head (a common sales tactic to create a sense of obligation), it’s clear that Chris is there in a ‘worker’ capacity. He is ‘the help’.

Ratcheting compliance

Derren refers to the ‘foot in the door’ technique – that someone is much more likely to agree to a large request, if you can have them agree to a modest request first.

Once Chris has been induced by Tom to put vegetarian labels on the meat sausage rolls (due to a catering delay), Derren knows that Chris will be more likely to comply with Tom’s subsequent instructions.

Sure enough, these instructions escalate and Chris quickly goes from getting Bernie a drink, to carrying his bag and jacket, and basically becoming an unpaid lackey who can be cued with a simple nod in the lead up to the more extreme orders surrounding Bernie’s ‘death’.

Monkey see monkey do

When Tom is encouraging Chris to comply with further actions, he almost always begins doing the action first and then gets Chris to do it with him. Tom is the one that starts moving the meat sausage rolls onto the vegetarian plate. He initiates picking up the ‘dead body’. He begins lifting it into the crate. And so on…

It’s much easier for Chris to mirror the behaviour that someone else is already doing, especially when they are in a position of perceived authority – once that momentum is built, he can run from there.

Seeing but not saying

The more Chris witnesses something wrong going on, but doesn’t speak up or do anything to stop it, the more he is complicit in (and so invested in) the proceedings. When he sees Bernie eat the mislabelled sausage roll, or has opportunities to tell other people what has occurred with Bernie – but doesn’t – he is aligning himself further with the lie and less likely to question it.

Confusion paralysis

When Chris and Bernie are looking at the brochure, Bernie is outraged to discover that valuable items he donated for the auction have – in some brochures – had reserve prices set far too low.

When Bernie confronts Tom about this, Tom reminds Bernie that he was the one who set the prices with the auctioneer. First Bernie says he doesn’t remember, then Tom claims there are email records to prove it, and then Bernie starts getting confused about where he left his car.

From Chris’ point of view, what’s going on here?

The point is, that Chris is confused in a stressful situation where he feels partially responsible – he was there when Bernie ‘found’ the information. So what could be going on?

• Maybe there was an honest mistake in printing revisions since there are different versions on different copies.
• Maybe Bernie just forgot that he set the prices and he’s going senile.
• Maybe Tom is taking advantage of Bernie’s senility, is lying to him about the prices and emails and is actually laundering off the valuable items cheaply to his friends.
• Maybe the auctioneer has pulled some sort of scam on his own- but then surely Tom would have to know about it. Or is Tom just finding out now and covering for him?

As you can see, this is all very confusing for Chris and his mind is not able to settle on one solid interpretation of the situation. He is being disoriented by a barrage of conflicting information, which generally tends to result in people just.. giving up. They don’t know what to think so they just default to the ‘safest’ option, ie. the most obvious authority figure. In this case it’s Tom.

And so just as Chris is struggling to wrap his mind about what might be going on, he is blind-sided again with Bernie’s (apparent) death.

It’s almost over…

When Bernie collapses from his ‘heart attack’, Tom immediately sends Chris to the other room to look for pills in Bernie’s jacket – this gives Tom the time to switch the actor for the prosthetic ‘dead’ body.

When Chris returns, Tom is just sitting there beside the ‘dead body’, doing nothing.

Chris reiterates that they should be doing CPR and calling an ambulance, but for obvious reasons Tom can’t have either of those. If Tom refused Chris directly this would force Chris to make a decision and likely take action. In order to defuse this, Tom plays the ‘delay’ game.

• “I know CPR.. I tried.. he’s dead”
• “Just give us a minute”
• “I need some breathing space for a second”

This tactic continues throughout the experiment – whenever Chris wants to call someone or is not happy with the latest task – Tom continues to promise that “this is the last thing we need to do” and “it will all be over soon”. It’s always almost over – by dangling this carrot Chris never reaches a breaking point where he feels decisive enough to take a stand.

Do it for the ‘greater good’

Chris has been primed from the beginning that Bernie is a big benefactor and without him there will be “no childrens’ centers”, and thousands of kids “won’t get their chance”.

Tom claims that if Chris doesn’t help hide Bernie’s body, it will ruin the event. “70 people are about to come into the room” and the auction must go ahead – it’s about the charity, the money, and the kids, he says.

As Derren describes, social compliance is basically following orders “because someone else tells you it’s the right thing to do”.

Positive reinforcement

Chris is regularly rewarded by Tom at key moments with compliments and literal back-patting for his compliance in their corpse-moving conspiracy.

Group pressure

In a room full of strangers, people will do just about anything to fit in.

Derren Brown

When Chris enters the main auction room, it is full of well dressed and (seemingly) wealthy important people. Everyone else is playing along and operating in sync – they are listening to the speaker, laughing and clapping in unison at the appropriate cues.

Anyone who has organised (or even attended) an event realises that this is not a difficult dynamic to establish. People can be herded, and the more people doing something in the presence of others, the more likely other people are to be magnetically attracted to copying that behaviour.

When the auctioneer focuses the group’s attention and expectation on Chris, he has created a magnifier effect on that pressure to comply.

The cattle chute – no turning back

A cattle chute works by having a gentle narrowing corridor such that the cows naturally merge into single file, and then no longer have the space to turn around – other cows are now pushing them from behind, and their only option is to move forwards.

Derren creates this dynamic by guiding Chris into making decisions which become increasingly embarrassing and awkward to ‘undo’, as time goes on.

When the auctioneer first meets Chris and ‘mistakes’ him for Bernie – who happens to be lying ‘dead’ in a crate next to him – Chris knows it would be an awkward time to correct him. Making an issue of it could potentially raise more questions about Bernie that Chris doesn’t want to answer at this time – so he lets it go.

Later when the auctioneer introduces Chris to the room as Bernie, this is an even more awkward moment for Chris to correct the mistaken identity, so he stands, nods and smiles instead.

When the auctioneer calls Chris up to the stage to do his (Bernie’s) speech, it’s now extremely difficult for Chris to say no. He has literally just communicated to the room that he is Bernie. Tom hands him the script and Chris goes up and delivers it.

Perhaps there is something ‘scarier’ than public speaking – not giving a speech when the room is telling you to. Will Chris bring the entire event to a crashing halt by saying that he isn’t actually Bernie, knowing that Bernie’s body is lying in a crate in the next room? No, he will not.

Future threats

When Bernie awakens from his temporary and movie-esque ‘lack of consciousness’, he starts shouting and playing his dictaphone recording of Tom telling Chris to kick Bernie’s (seemingly lifeless) body. He is furious about what has happened and is going to go after all of them!

The idea of course is to ratchet up the pressure on Chris – to force him into a corner so he has no option but to take drastic and immediate action.

So while Bernie is conveniently having a ‘cigarette’ on the other side of the roof, the other board members – who have now been told what transpired – are gathering around Chris and telling him that he is going to go to jail for what he has done, and that they will all suffer in various ways also.

Derren wants Chris to feel like he has only one way out of this mess – that everything was ‘fine’ when they thought Bernie was dead, and now everything is a mess. The construction guy will lose his contracts, the board members will lose their livelihoods, and the kids will lose Bernie’s generous donation.

Essentially the idea is that Chris and the others will have their futures’ destroyed.

Fortunately for Chris (and his reputation) he decides not to go ahead with the ‘push’, and he walks down from the roof instead.

The same could not be said for the other three experiment subjects who all decided to comply with the ‘group concensus’, and push an innocent old man off a rooftop in cold blood to protect their reputation.

Derren consoles these pseudo-murderers by reassuring them that statistically most people would do what they did. Right. And most people in the United States might be obese but surely that’s no consolation, is it?

In Conclusion

So, what do you think? Would this elaborate pressure cooker work on you?

Interestingly Chris – the only one who didn’t comply – was also by far the largest physically of the four. He was actually half a head taller than the other men in the final ‘board member squeeze’ session, so it’s possible that underlying physical strength plays some part in peoples’ willingness to go against the grain.

It is all pretty grim, if you think about it.

On the positive side – this ruse was so elaborate and involved, with so many people working in unison just to coerce one victim, that these psychological ploys could never work on a mass scale, right?

Right?

Rock the Vote.. Black Lives Matter.. Climate Cooling.. Climate Warming.. LGBT.. Trans Rights.. Stay home.. Mask up.. Get the shot.. Stand with Ukraine and so on.

Where are the rebels? Where are those bad boys and girls of Hollywood who have their own opinions and don’t follow the trends? Presumably those people are no longer getting calls.

Obviously a bad idea

On 18 March 2020 Gal Gadot (of Wonder Woman fame) posted a montage on her Instagram of her and 24 other celebrities singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” – all from their ‘self quarantine’ and ‘isolation’ locations.

Do you think Gal just had a brainwave and started calling up her famous pals? And these guys were all into it?

Even without watching the video, I think you can imagine the level of cringe involved here. Do you think these a-list writers/directors/actors weren’t aware that what they were doing was a bad idea and highly embarrassing? Would you do it? Probably not, right.. and I’m guessing you’re not an award winning comedian or screenwriter.

So why would they do it then? I put it to you, that they were told to do it. Their managers/agents informed them in no uncertain terms that their career would suffer if they did not participate in this exercise of “stay at home” government propaganda.

You’ll also notice that half of the people are looking like they just got out of bed or their head is half outside the frame. Again, these are not stupid people who can’t operate a phone. I suspect that the ‘brief’ they received was to make this video feel “authentic”.

Can’t they say… no?

Did they have a gun to their heads? Some of them look like it, but when it comes to Hollywood, ego and the easy-money-gravy-train mean that no guns are necessary. If there are one or two people that go against whatever the flavour of the month is, they are publicly lambasted and hung out to dry as a warning to anyone who dares deviate from the party line.

Celebrities show up to telethons for the same reason you put on a scarf for Pink Friday and pose in the group photo – because your boss told you to and you don’t want to lose your source of income.

Big movie studios use ‘big casting agents’ who deal with ‘big agents’ to get their ‘big stars’. If your agent tells to show up to X event or else you won’t be considered for Y role, the ‘star’ doesn’t need to be told twice… unless they want their career to be over.

Continued soon…

You may see paparazzi shots of actors and celebrities on yachts and think wow these guys have it all – money, attractive partners, expensive toys, travel, luxury – they can do whatever they want, whenever they want!

While Leo is definitely hanging out in luxurious locales, as far as freedom goes, looks can be deceiving…

The ‘gift’ of fame

When a studio decides to cast a no-name actor in a blockbuster role, they know that they are handing that young person a valuable gift – fame.

Once that actor has the PR machine aimed at them, their life changes immediately and often forever. They are recognised on the street, offered sexual opportunities at random, and now have the ability to monetise their image and identity in ways and for fees that the average joe could barely imagine.

Being handed that kind of fame is essentially like being made into a prince… and from the point of view of the king.. princes are potential liabilities that need to be controlled.

Hollywood Contracts in the ‘Golden Age’

It wasn’t that long ago (1920s-1960s) that Hollywood actors were essentially employees of the big five movie studios.

These actors would be on 4-7 year contracts and paid a fixed salary, during which they were obligated to appear in as many movies as the studio could physically pump out.

These ‘stars’ were contractually bound to all sorts of things:

• they couldn’t work for other studios (unless the studio decided to loan them out)
• they couldn’t refuse a role (!)
• they were forced to take on a stage name
• they had to change their appearances (including plastic surgery)
• they were given false personas and backstories to portray (outside of work)
• they had to maintain strict weight ranges and controlled diets
• they had to cater to the press and perform in staged photo ops (ie. paparazzi)
• they had to participate in fake love lives (’sham dates’) and marriages to promote films
• they were barred from marriage if it was preferred they were single
• there were penalty clauses for getting pregnant
• filming delays due to sick days result in hefty penalties
• they had to use ‘studio assistants’ aka studio spies who would report back
• rumours or scandals could result in contract termination

Do any of these sound familiar?

While these terms and conditions might sound like the rules for sex trafficked girls locked up in a Dubai brothel, from a business point of view they make a lot of sense.

Producing movies is an extremely expensive process and if the actor isn’t available and ready to perform, the machine grinds to a halt while the money hose is on full-blast.

Now supposedly the studios shifted away from the factory model with the advent of television, and actors started to negotiate contracts on a per-project (or multi-picture) basis. This theoretically left the stars with more flexibility and power as they were now operating as ‘free agents’.

But were they?

Consciously, you know that this is Brad Pitt. You know that he is rich and famous, earning millions of dollars pretending to be different characters while reading words someone wrote down for him.. whereas you sit on your couch in the dark eating junk food while you watch him pretend.

Subconsciously, however, it’s a different story.

Depending on what Netflix show you’re binging at the time, you might see Brad’s face more than you do some of your own friends. You might joke with your girlfriend about his current dating life as if he’s a mutual acquaintance and laugh along with a cackling late night host as Brad tells an ‘embarrassing’ personal anecdote from a recent film he worked on.

What’s weird about that? You have a job and funny anecdotes, and so does Brad. He just happens to work in Hollywood and you sell insurance. You’re not so different after all…

Actually, there are some pretty big differences.

Actors are professional liars

The word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word ‘hypokrite’ which means ‘actor’ or ‘stage player’. It literally translates as “an interpreter from underneath” since ancient Greek actors wore masks and spoke from underneath them.

So put simply, the actor’s job is to pretend, and pretend convincingly enough that you believe and empathise with them. They generate fake tears on demand, shock you with fake rage and endear you with fake vulnerability.

So that’s all fine in the context of a movie or TV show – like a pickpocket-turned-TV-magician they are using their powers of deception for the purposes of our entertainment – but what if the lying was to extend outside of that?

Actors have sponsorship deals

Let me ask you a question – do you think Academy Award Winning A-list actor George Clooney drinks Nespresso pods?

Do you think George is sitting on the set of his latest blockbuster, calling for an assistant to bring him a Lungo Stockholm Fortissio? I doubt it.

So what, is he lying?

Oh no this is different you say, everyone knows that brand deals are just for money and nobody honestly thinks Clooney REALLY drinks Nespresso. It’s understood that this is just some extra cash for George, nobody really buys it anyway, so there’s no harm done.

So what about when he’s on the red carpet telling the interviewer how passionate he is about covid vaccine mandates? Is that the real Clooney? Or is there something else going on?

Actors have PR agents who tell stories about them

Did you know that on the Matrix Reloaded, Keanu Reeves gave each of the members of the stunt team their own Harley Davidson?

You probably did know that, didn’t you? But why would you know something like that? Are you friends with him? Did you go to college together? Or is it possibly because there is a team of professionals who are paid to create and seed stories to the media to make you think Keanu is a nice guy.

I’m not saying that Keanu didn’t give the stunt guys motorbikes, that’s not the point and he probably did. The question is why this is what you have been directed to focus on.

On a totally different note: Did you know that Columbian druglord Pablo Escobar built parks, hospitals, schools, churches and sports stadiums?

Anyone who has done any sort of editing knows that by highlighting certain things and removing other things, you can make a psychopath look like a nice guy and pretty much anyone look like a scumbag.

Actors will live the lie

It’s pretty difficult to work out who these actors really are and how much of their purported backstories are in any way accurate.

Sylvestor Stallone has for decades told the story about how he was a penniless writer and actor who was so desperate that he sold his dog for $40 to a guy outside a 7-11 in order to buy some food, while he was trying to get his ‘Rocky’ script made.

The story goes: despite being a totally destitute non-name aspiring actor who had previously appeared in porn, Sly rejected the studio’s offer to buy his script for $125,000, because that offer was contingent on somebody else being the star. Sly knew this script was his ticket to stardom so it was him as the lead or nothing.

Then the studio offered $250,000, but again Sly stuck to his guns. The studio then upped the offer to a life-changing $350,000 but Sly stood strong.

Finally, the studio caved and Sly was able to star in the film, but they would only offer a measly $35,000 for the script.

Sly accepted. And what was the first thing Sly did with that $35,000? He went back to the 7-11 to try and get his dog back! The problem? The guy now claimed his kids were attached to the dog, and refused to sell it back to Sly for anything less than $15,000.

What to do? Well Sly the underdog with a heart of gold paid the man and was finally reunited with his beloved canine, who he even put in the film!

‘Rocky’ went on to be nominated for 10 Academy awards, winning 3 including best picture and made Stallone a Hollywood A-lister for life.

In case you haven’t worked it out by now, this story is total garbage.

Gabe Sumner, who was head of marketing at United Artists at the time, revealed just this in 2016:

“(the story) was horseshit! But it worked. It promoted the whole underdog concept and kept on going … they ate up the idea that this actor loved his work so much, and was willing to sell it for a nickel and a dime in order to make it, blah, blah, blah. It all became part of the underdog fabric that brought people in. Period. They just totally bought into it.”

Gabe Sumner, Head of Marketing at United Artists during production of ‘Rocky’

What a surprise! The people who tell manufactured stories for a living, also tell manufactured stories to help sell and promote those manufactured stories.