《迷影重重》（Red&Lights）到底反对还是支持超自然力？
昨晚看央视电影频道的周末影院《迷影重重》（Red
Lights）。电影名称的翻译，初以为是目前正在热映的《谍影重重》，据说有电视观众上当的。但为何英文名称叫“红灯”，还是不明白。
最困难的是在电影后半段。前半段主题与叙事相对清晰，M教授在心理学课堂上的自信讲演，利用高超的专业知识揭发江湖骗子灵媒大师，而她手下的年轻物理学家B则还只是小角色。随着30年前顶级灵媒大师S的回归，电影翻转到M教授突然被吓死了，而B的角色重要性上升，直接下大师级的S对决。当然，德尼罗扮演珠S大师完全将B玩于掌股之间，几乎被玩死。但最后的较量中，B的超自然力却发现发挥作用了，搞得S大师都看不懂了，连连追问而不得。观众估计也都被转蒙了，反正到最后恰好也是睡眼朦胧，搞不清结局了。
问题是，M和B都是致力于否定超自然力（或者特异功能的），但S大师（似乎也有作弊）与B的对决中，B又是靠特殊功能胜出。那么，究竟是有还是没有超自然力或特殊功能？
另转一篇英国伦敦大学心理学教授一影评，其中披露多起特异功能被揭穿的案例，包括其中一起与电影中的情节非常相似，连帮助作弊的无线通话内容都是照抄的。
电影海报 2012
How true to life are the psychics and psychologists in Red
by Chris French
In my role as a professional sceptic, I jumped at the chance to
see a preview of Red Lights, the new film starring Robert De Niro
and Sigourney Weaver that goes on general release in the UK on
De Niro plays Simon Silver, a blind psychic who has resurfaced
after many years in obscurity following a period of celebrity some
three decades earlier, which ended with the mysterious death of his
most vocal critic. Weaver plays a psychologist, Margaret Matheson,
who long ago moved from scepticism to cynicism about the
paranormal, having encountered nothing but fakery throughout her
many years of investigation. Her loyal assistant, physicist Tom
Buckley, is played by Cillian Murphy, looking for all the world
like Professor Brian Cox's younger brother.
Although much psychic fraud is exposed, the viewer is never sure
& until the final reel & whether everything is faked or not. But
don't worry, I'm not about to give the ending away.
Much of the inspiration for the film is taken from real life. A
psychic who began his career by "psychically" bending spoons but
then disappeared into obscurity, only to re-emerge decades later &
remind you of anyone?
Another psychic in the film, Leonardo Palladino, uses information
fed to him via a hidden earpiece to convince the audience at his
show that he is obtaining personal details psychically. Matheson
and Buckley expose him by tuning into the radio frequency of his
accomplice's transmitter, leading to his arrest and
imprisonment.
There can be no doubt that this scene is inspired by the
notorious Reverend Peter Popoff, whose identical scam was exposed
in 1986 by James Randi using just such a method. Take a look at
this YouTube clip of Popoff in action. You can hear Popoff's wife
say, "Hello Petey, can you hear me? If you can't, you're in
trouble", a line which the film cheekily includes almost verbatim.
(I wrote about this episode in a previous column when similar
allegations were made about British psychic Sally Morgan.)
In the film, the fake psychic ends up in jail. Although Popoff
went bankrupt, he never went to jail, and now he's back earning
millions of dollars a year by, among other things, selling "blessed
water" to his sick and desperate flock.
Viewers with some knowledge of paranormal research will enjoy
trying to figure out the techniques used by the fake psychics in
Red Lights before the main characters reveal them. I did wonder if
the film did a disservice to parapsychologists by implying that
they are all totally incompetent, like the bumbling Professor
Shackleton, played by Toby Jones. Any parapsychologist worth their
salt would not have been fooled by the techniques used by the fake
psychics in this film.
Having said that, it's true that when the field was in its
infancy parapsychologists were fooled in very similar ways to those
portrayed. For example, in some early investigations of telepathy,
the symbol on a card that was to be telepathically transmitted
could be seen by the "receiver" through the back of the card.
And in 1979, James Randi had two young conjurors turn up at the
newly established McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at
Washington University claiming to have psychic powers. They were
tested for four years by the laboratory staff and appeared to be
able to perform the standard repertoire of psychic feats, including
psychokinesis, telepathy and clairvoyance. The McDonnell
researchers described them as "gifted psychic subjects".
How did they achieve these amazing effects? Easy & they cheated,
using simple conjuring tricks. Randi was accused by
parapsychologists of behaving unethically, but what other means
could have been employed to demonstrate that scientists with no
knowledge of conjuring techniques could be easily fooled?
There are lots of references in the film that will only be
picked up by those in the know. It seems likely that the name
Shackleton is a nod towards Basil Shackleton, one of the star
subjects of the infamous Soal-Goldney studies carried out in the
1940s. For over four decades, these studies were presented as
irrefutable proof of the existence of telepathy & until it was
finally established beyond all reasonable doubt that Soal had faked
The name of the fake psychic Leonardo Palladino is clearly a
reference to the notorious Eusapia Palladino, a very clever Italian
medium back in the Victorian heyday of s&ances. Eusapia, a
middle-aged woman of peasant stock, was often caught cheating and
would openly warn those who wished to investigate her alleged
abilities that she would cheat if they allowed her to do so.
Despite this, many of the learned gentlemen who investigated her
claims were convinced that some of the phenomena she produced
defied any conventional explanation. The underlying assumption here
is clear & no Italian peasant could possibly outwit these eminent
scholars, could they? Therefore the only options left were either
that they would catch her cheating (as they often did) or else the
phenomena were genuinely paranormal. With hindsight, that
assumption should perhaps be questioned.
There are a few aspects of the film that just don't ring true at
all but these can be forgiven in the interests of plot development.
The idea that parapsychological research attracts generous funding
is certain to bring a wry smile to the faces of most
parapsychologists. The notion that "publishing results" is
something that an individual scientist has total control over and
that these results are literally "signed off" at a precise point in
time, at which point they are released upon the world, is nonsense.
Have these people not heard of peer review? And how slow it can be?
And honestly, throwing the leader of a research team against the
wall and threatening him with physical violence is not the right
way to get yourself signed up for a project.
A lot of the lines that Margaret Matheson comes out with, I
could imagine coming out with myself (albeit with a less cynical
tone). But there was one thing she said that I really could not
agree with. At one point, she expresses profound regret at having
doubted, albeit briefly, her belief that paranormal forces do not
exist. Someone should remind her that doubt is at the very heart of
science and proper scepticism. It's good to question your own
beliefs. It is always possible, however unlikely, that new evidence
will be produced that proves your current beliefs wrong.
Did I enjoy the film? Any film that mentions Occam's razor can't
be all bad! Seriously, although the film is flawed in some ways, it
was original and fun and there were a couple of plot twists that I
cannot claim to have seen coming. I would definitely say this is a
film worth seeing. In addition to pure entertainment value, it
serves the useful purpose of making people more aware of some of
the techniques used by fake psychics (although obviously there are
dozens more) and thus, I hope, less likely to fall victim to such
But you'll have to make your own minds up about that ending
Chris French is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths,
University of London, where he heads the Anomalistic Psychology
Research Unit.
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