Here is the review of The Men Who Stare at Goats which I promised last Friday and I will try and not include too many spoilers. There are some spoilers but that is no excuse not to read my blog (pardon the double-negative). I'm not a film reviewer by any stretch of the imagination but I give it three stars. It was very entertaining and, at times, uproariously funny. They did take several liberties with the original story but I expected that from having seen the trailers. For myself, having both read the book and watched the three-hour miniseries already, it was probably a better experience for not having simply absorbed the same story a third time.
All of the names of the characters were changed but for the most part it was not difficult to figure out who was whom in real life. I particularly appreciated that the reporter character based on Jon Ronson was relocated from London, England to my home state of Michigan. I think that between one quarter and one half of one of the three stars I gave the film could be based on that fact alone and the film could have earned another half-star if the character had been based in Spartan Country as opposed to Wolverine Country ... At least I will admit that I am not always objective.
Also there was a disclaimer, sort of, at the beginning of the film which said:
I suppose that could be interpreted as a more optimistic way of saying that "parts of this story have been fictionalized" ... And indeed, much of the story was fiction which is practically an invitation for pseudo-skeptics to "go all da Vinci Code on it" to score some cheap points at the expense of America's fine Infotainment Industry. Which is not entirely fair in this particular case as this is a very important story that needed to be told to as many people as possible.
Of course, I am a skeptic and I would have LOVED nothing more than for the film to have explicitly shown that the military's experiments in PSI research had come to absolutely nothing ...
"For shame on Army Intelligence for the tremendous waste of resources."But I knew that that was not going to happen as Ronson himself had said more than once that the film was made in such a way that it could be enjoyed by both skeptics and believers.
"No wonder they couldn't find WMD in Iraq."
"All of my personal problems are because there are people who believe in the paranormal."
Blah, blah, blah ...
Penn & Teller did do a program a few years back that touched on the US Government's involvement in PSI studies and the disappointing results and it is worth a watch in spite of all the mean things I said about P&T a year ago ...
Penn & Teller Bv11sh1t ep 110 - ESP (contains strong language) -- 28 min 15 sec
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrbtt_110-esp_tec
I don't take any of these statements back I just "have a little bit more time" for skeptics with unusual political agendas since the dam broke and every skeptic with a blog feels free to write about politics now ... Also the recent controversy involving Bill Maher and the skeptic movement make P&T seem downright scholarly by contrast. I also have a little bit more time for skeptics that devote most of their resources to debunking religious claims. Even if they don't always have their facts straight. For the time being, however, I will continue to avoid politics just because I don't really have time to follow both politics and the skeptical movement.
Sorry I got sidetracked ...Back to the film review... You see? That is what happens when you bring in religion and politics, you get sidetracked ... What were we talking about again?
Oh yes, of course, Ronson didn't necessarily set out to debunk remote viewing and the like. It was just sort of assumed that such things were nonsense. Otherwise the story wouldn't have had much humor value.
On a recent interview on the Skeptiko Podcast, Ronson said (and I quote):
"when I was writing 'The Men Who Stare at Goats', I decided that I didn’t want to write a book which tried to prove or disprove the claims. I wanted to write a kind of a study of – almost like a kind of soap opera – of the people involved in these programs."
Don't let the name fool you, Skeptiko host, Alex Tsakiris, is a very enthusiastic champion of paranormal research who is thoroughly unsympathetic to the goals of the Skeptic Movement ... The "KO" at the end of the podcast name stands for "Knock-Out."
At any rate, Ronson's statement makes sense in light of the fact that Ronson is equally popular with both skeptics and believers. In fact, it was a conspiracy theorist/UFOlogist who first introduced me to Ronson's work some years back. This was at a time when I still found "woo woo stuff" to be entertaining.
Ronson had mentioned on his The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Interview that he has "a lot more time" for skeptics and the skeptic movement today than he did when he was working on the book Them: Adventures With Extremists and the miniseries The Secret Rulers of the World due to "some of the tactics" employed by the 9/11 Truth Movement such as this, rather caustic exchange, with: British, former spy, 9/11 & 7/7 Conspiracy Theory Superstar, transvestite and self-proclaimed Messiah David Shayler:
Jon Ronson v David Shayler (contains strong language) -- 6 min 16 sec
I do understand that both believers and skeptics suffer from Confirmation Bias so as a skeptic I take from Ronson's work what serves my needs whereas a believer walks away with a different set of facts extracted from the same material. To be clear, I honestly do not think anyone could read/watch Them/Rulers and come away thinking that the world is actually controlled by Luciferians or Space-Lizards. However, Ronson's work does confirm a good deal more of the conspiracy theorist's story than I would have believed prior to encountering it. For instance, I had been told, by trusted fellow skeptics, that institutions such as Bohemian Grove and The Bilderberg Group simply did not exist. The fact that they did exist would have been a story in and of itself but Ronson chose to dig further and showed clearly that Bohemian Grove was simply a rich-man's summer camp having nothing to do with Satanism or religion at all.
Covert photo taken of the infamous
"Cremation of Care" ceremony
at Bohemian Grove
which conspiracy theorists claim proves
that the world is ruled
by Satan-worshippers
He also conveyed, very clearly in my opinion, that The Bilderbergers was little more than a globalist-free-market think-tank and not the meeting place of the Illuminati as so many misguided Internet users seem to think. Even if you accept that this group influences the selection of world leaders behind the scenes, which is not at all evident from the information I have seen, they have nothing to do with Freemasonry or the Occult.
Anyway, trying to get back to the film, I mentioned on Friday that I had personally rejected claims made by various celebrities from paranormal circles that the US Government was using psychics to help with various intelligence and law enforcement activities. In my defense, these claims were often made by individuals who I strongly suspected to have been engaged in fraud as a career. It is my opinion that Uri Geller bends spoons with his hands and not his mind as he claims so why should I believe him when he says that the CIA had used him to locate spy cells or whatever?
Abit of Fry and Laurie - Psychic Spoon Bender -- 3 min 21 sec
The fact that hard-nosed army officers are capable of being tricked by what I consider to be tricks of street magic does not in any way confirm to me that there is any validity to parapsychology or paranormal research. After all I seem to recall several theoretical physicists coming forward to claim that they had discovered a new force at work in the Universe after watching Geller bend cutlery in their labratory.
However, it would be disingenuous of me not to note that I do understand why someone who already believes this line of research to be valid would take this as official confirmation of the validity of this research. Sadly, the reaction of believers in the paranormal to this film may have to be a subject for another blog. I think that the debunkers who will come forward first will be those US Citizens who are hypersensitive regarding any criticism of the US Military. So please allow me to get as many of the plot-twists inspired by "poetic licence" that I can out of the way without including any spoilers. The fabulous "surprise ending" is, unfortunately, entirely fiction but it cannot be debunked without revealing it. So just be aware that it never took place historically. And go see the film.
Now, the fact of the matter is that the true story of the First Earth Battalion was not exactly depicted accurately in the film. In fact, it would be fair to say that there never was a true Battalion per say but rather a manual of, admittedly odd, ideas floated by Lt. Col. Jim Channon:
FIRST EARTH BATTALION The Real Story Pt.2 By Jim Channon -- 9 min 51 sec
And these ideas were much more lighthearted than the kinds of dark (but equally silly) paranormal studies, tragically, undertaken in the infamous Project MKULTRA. However, there really was a Project Goat-Lab and Ronson did uncover compelling evidence that special forces units were, once again "staring at goats to try and make their hearts explode" in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Goat Lab - Jon Ronson | ||||
| ||||
I am aware that it is just a movie but I still occasionally encounter individuals who have seen The Matrix and perhaps have heard of The Holographic Principle from String Theory and literally believe our universe to be computer generated. It is always good to err on the side of caution and not to underestimate the power of popular culture in informing public opinion. This is one of the reasons that Creationist films feel the need to spend the first 10 minutes debunking Inherit the Wind before moving on to misrepresenting Darwinian Evolution.
Okay, back to the film, the story of The First Earth Battalion (and they called it something else in the film that I am not quite remembering) as told in the film is reveled via flashbacks during a fictional trip through the deserts of Iraq with the character based on Jon Ronson and a character, very clearly, based on Guy Savelli who is portrayed by George Clooney. In truth, Ronson interviewed Savelli in the comfort of his own home and, so far as I know, no one from Project Goat Lab has been reactivated as the film claims. Ronson did visit Iraq and discovered some very odd things being undertaken by PSYOPS but he was never lost in the desert and PSYOPS' use of, long discredited, Subliminal message techniques was unrelated to the goat staring which was going on at Ft. Bragg back in the United States.
I used to think I had magic powers
but now I know
My blog is just THAT borring
The film also shows the character based on Jim Channon, portrayed by Jeff Bridges receiving a dishonorable discharge following a fictional retelling of the Frank Olson insident which, of course, took place three decades earlier and had nothing whatever to do with The First Earth Battalion or Project Goat Lab. In fact, Jim Channon, while arguably a very odd man (but look who's talking), retired from the military with full honors.
Also, the story about use of the Barney 'I Love You' song in prisoner interrogations in Iraq was broken by Adam Piore in Newsweek and not by Ronson himself as the film suggests. The original story only mentioned that PSYOPS was using the song with no mention of any paranormal research or subliminal messaging in that story ... Although, that was the lead which Ronson used to uncover some of the questionable activities that PSYOPS has been engaged in regarding the paranormal, etc.
It is also not true that Guy Savelli had, in fact, killed a goat with his mind as the goat that dropped over dead was not the one he had been staring at and was probably quite ill prior to the experiment ... Something the film (in)conveniently failed to mention.
All that said, it really is an entertaining film and I hope that it is successful. Also, in the wake of films such as Who Will Survive 2012 and so forth which handle woo woo claims less critically it is also my hope that more skeptics like myself will latch on to The Men Who Stare at Goats as a good example of why the prevalence of these kinds of beliefs in the general public actually can influence public policy and are thus worth "debunking."
I would also like to see a feature film of Ronson's other book Them just because my experience is that once people find out about David Icke and the Lizard-People they are far less likely to take anything that a conspiracy theorist tells them at face value ever again.
Related: The Men Who Stare at Goats in Theaters Today
See Also: Michael Shermer: Staring at Men Who Stare at Goats
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