Cyclical Mass Hysteria
Going Batty Together
Like usual, it’s a talk show of some sort, in progress.
Host: Flying saucers do not exist but in our minds. Satan, Devil, Demons, evil spirits and bad karma! Do they exist? Demons do not exist but in our religions.
Immortals, Wandering Jews, Comte de Sainte-Germaine, and Elvis Presley the King. Will they ever stop appearing to civilized human beings?
Host: Worse yet, these flying saucers, demons that don't exist and damned Jews will always be with us. UFO's, the devil, Elvis impersonators and Jew bashing are cyclical. Sharing a symbiotic relationship with any society and its members experiencing this cultural phenomenon. It's called mass hysteria!
Welcome everybody to another episode of TIP, that’s short for Truth Induced Paranoia! This week we're going to talk about mass hysteria. We're going to answer some tough questions, like what causes mass hysteria. Is hysteria itself a genetic predisposition?
With me today, to help answer these questions is Twitch Robins, a professor of sociology at York University, author of a best-selling book, "Oops we're seeing flying saucers again"! A scientific analysis of cyclical mass psychosis.
Host: Well, let’s get right to it teach. Tell us a little about the phenomenon called mass hysteria?
Professor: First of all, mass hysteria has manifested itself in many ways and many times. In the 1930's in Germany. In the 1950's in the American Midwest. In the 1970's in New York and California. In the 1990's the hysteria swept across North America. Now it's taking Mexico by storm. The members of a society who claim to have seen or come in contact with flying saucers, wandering Jews, demons, are in fact an occasion where mass hysteria has filtered into a smaller unit called individual hysteria. Symptomatic to situations where organic or imposed social restructuring sweeps over the society faster than the individual can cope with, resulting in previously mentioned phenomenon.
Host: I'm sorry doctor, one more time for the people at home.
Professor: Too much information and not enough sleep! Case in point, who is this star from the 1990's?
Host: Fox Mulder from the X-files.
Professor: Say that fives time really fast.
Host: Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, is that fives times?
Professor: Say it ten times, really fast, then really slow.
Host: Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder. Fuck Smulder, Fuck Smoulder, oh my god!
Professor: One, Fox Mulder, a perpetually screwed FBI agent. Episodically screwed by the very organization he works for. An international organization so big and so corrupt that only extra-terrestrials with special powers could defeat it. That's why Mulder's “flying saucer” psychosis manifested itself through his fascination for UFO's and aliens! Suppressed desire for emancipation!
Host: Geez, Teach, you had me going there for awhile. But I don't know about...
Professor: Let’s jump back 20 years to the 1970's. There was the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Richard Dreyfuss performs an impromptu duet with visiting aliens in the desert just outside of L.A.
But it was nothing like the dueling banjo scene from the movie, The Deliverance. Around the same time, in another movie, The Exorcist, a teenage girl from California named Linda Blair is possessed by the devil. Richard Burton dressed as a Catholic priest tries to save her but dies during the exorcism.
The priest's attempts and death were in vain. Linda Blair went on to make a sequel because she was still possessed.
And Richard Burton went on to marry Elizabeth Taylor for the third time!
Burger King introduced the Whopper around the time Elvis Presley died!
In the movie And Justice For All, Al Pacino played a New York lawyer. There was a subplot. Al's best friend suffered from narcissism. To demonstrate his ability to manipulate the law, he defended a serial murderer. He won an unbeatable case. Within two hours of being freed, the criminal struck again and killed two women. The next day, Al had to race to the courthouse because his friend had stolen a cart full of dishes. Why? During the night, he was wracked with guilt. By morning, he was mad enough to storm the courthouse seeking justice. His insanity drove him to hurl saucers at anything that moved!
That morning, there were flying saucers at the courthouse because someone had cracked underneath the prevailing order!
Host: I'm with you Teach. I get it now.
Professor: Let’s jump back another 20 years to the 1950's. The Ellis Island immigrants from the 1910's by then had become grandparents. Their children were second generation immigrants.”
Just like their parents, they didn't know what was going on, but at least they spoke English. Everything was awful. Except for the Norman Rockwell people, who were also confused, especially the woman. In the 1940's they were taught to be snappy and frugal.
But during the 1950's, they were taught to stay home and utilize man's latest invention, a freezer.
The second generation immigrants and the Norman Rockwell people spawned the Stand by Me kids, prone to sentiment and nostalgia. They were the ones watching the most television. They were also confused.
Then suddenly aliens were invading the American heartland.
Lorne Greene and Michael Landon fired off a lot of fake ammo during badly choreographed shoot out scenes. Season after season!
The town of Mayberry had a sheriff named pa!
Around this time, Elvis Presley left to fight the Commie threat in Korea.
He missed the grand opening of Burger King!
Around the same time, if people didn't know what Communism was, after McCarthy they did. It was a Big Red, Pinko, Bolshevik, Stalinist, Hollywood Jew writer threat to mankind. Most important, Christian mankind. All from the same box, just flip the dial!
Jump back another 20 years to Germany during the 1930's. Hitler rounded up the Jews, so that took care of Jew bashing. He went after the Commies which was kind of similar to the Jew bashing.
Host: Don't forget Elvis' wife was German!
Professor: For centuries, the German people had been looking for a German way of being. Being German, they were sticklers for details, so they went back to the source. Their search led them to the Himalayas and a very ancient Indian religion. Whatever they found, it must have been terrifying, because they went nuts. They went Nazi!
The SS soon began testing German made flying saucers.”
The Vril Society began covert operations using clairvoyants and soothsayers to contact aliens. To be on the safe side, the Fascist began overt operations to eliminate earthly undesirables.
All this fear and hatred eventually attracted tons of bad karma. By that time SS and Co. were in Brazil. The common folk did not fair so well. One hypothetical German clerk eventually morphed into a bug.
Bad karma, Elvis sightings, killing Commies, and Jew bashing are cyclical. Symptomatic to situations where organic or imposed social restructuring sweeps over the society faster than the individual can cope with. It's called mass hysteria.
Host: Thanks Professor Twitch.
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that was a pleasant stroll through the mile posts in the cultural landscape of the last 30 years... thanks for that!