TFI Friday: Derren Brown and 'The System'

Derren Brown, misdirection and 'lived experience'.

I’ve always been a big fan of British illusionist Derren Brown. One of his most interesting qualities is what he describes as “being honest about my dishonesty”. In other words, he doesn’t pretend to be genuinely psychic or capable of violating the laws of nature. Because that’s not actually something humans can do.

He’s open about the fact that he’s going to trick you—and he’ll use any tool and technique he can to make that happen. And as a self-professed atheist and sceptic, he’s also done some great work debunking the techniques ‘psychic mediums’ use to con their customers. He doesn’t appear to have a lot of time for those claiming to posses supernatural powers. This expose of a ‘Psychic’ from ‘Derren Brown Investigates’ should be shown to anyone that is thinking about handing over cash to frauds of this kind:

I went to one of his shows many years ago and was lucky enough to have a front row seat. This meant I ended up being his ‘go to guy’ to assist him with a number of tricks. This involved me suggesting some words to him, picking some paper out of a basket and looking up certain entries in a dictionary that he had handed me. It was exciting.

I often think there is a secondary element of misdirection that people don’t always catch when it comes to Derren Brown’s schtick. In almost all of his specials, he dedicates the second half of them to explaining exactly ‘how’ he accomplished the seemingly impossible.

This often relies on Derren outlining the incredible feats of memory, suggestion, mind games, mathematics and surveillance he used to pull it all together. But I suspect this is all a ruse too. Another piece of misdirection—a false yet seemingly plausible explanation to throw you off the scent of the much more likelier and simpler tricks that were used.

For example, before the show I went to began, a wicker basket was placed at the front of the stage. Information playing over the speaker system instructed audience members to write a single word of their choice on a piece of paper, fold it and place it in the basket.

When Derren Brown made his entrance, he retrieved the basket and selected me from the audience to help him with the trick. He handed me a microphone and asked me to take a random piece of paper from the basket. I was told to take a look at the word but not reveal it to him just yet.

Derren spent the next ten minutes attempting to discern the word by using a mixture of ‘reading body language’ and asking seemingly unrelated questions that would somehow transmit this word from my brain to his—including asking me to say the first different word that came in to my head. I’m still rather proud of having said the word “cleft” to Derren Brown in a packed theatre.

Of course, he eventually guessed the word exactly as it was written on the piece of paper. I think the word was “jam”, but I honestly can’t remember. The way he managed this was all incredibly impressive.

But it was all bullshit of course—and that’s half the trick. What had actually happened is one of the oldest tricks in the book. At some point in between people depositing their pieces of paper into the basket and Derren retrieving the basket from the front of the stage, some sleight of hand had taken place to ensure every single piece of paper I could select from had the exact same word written on it. A word Derren knew in advance.

This then allowed him to something he does best: showmanship. He could spend the next ten minutes pretending he was calling on some of the most impressive mental skills known to man in order to guess a word that he seemingly had no way of knowing. While we were witnessing him feign a mental struggle in real-time, we weren’t thinking too hard about the mechanisms of a prop basket that could allow for a common bait and switch.

I’m not convinced there are any truly new magic tricks. I think the strength of a successful illusionist relies on reinventing the classics by adding twists or dressing them up in a more contemporary way. And Derren is unmatched in his ability to do this.

Anyway, I recently had a long chat with my friend Andrew Doyle that you can watch below:

At one point, we discuss the concept of ‘lived experience’ or what is also known as ‘standpoint epistemology’. This is basically the idea that one’s own subjective experience or perception can and should be used to make broader claims about the world in general. Needless to say, we both reject this method of attempting to discern broader truth.

However, Andrew mentioned Derren Brown’s ‘The System’ (2008) as a great example of how we can be deceived into accepting false certainties when we only have one perspective at hand. I initially thought ‘The System’ was something new that I hadn’t seen before, but it turns out it’s just so old I’d forgotten I’d seen it. And it’s well worth watching or watching again if you haven’t seen it.

I suspect many of the explanations ‘revealed’ by Derren here are also beautifully crafted acts of misdirection. You can watch it in full below. Please let me know what you think in the comments.