I was watching Guerrilla – a documentary about the Symbionese Liberation Army (whatever) and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. It’s really good – some great commentary from former SLA members – I mean, you want to throw stuff at the screen (at least I did) – but it’s really interesting. The Hearst parents standing on their front steps, poor Steve Weed with his horrendous moustache coming out to the mike stand to talk about his “feelings” – the whole thing was really interesting. Then you listen to Patty’s broadcasts – and you listen to them change. By the end, she is obviously reading prepared statements. The first ones are like: “Mom, Dad …” (big long sigh) “I’m fine … really …” Then when the food drive was a bust (or whatever – seemed like a bust) – she comes on and says, in that creepy deadpan voice, “Dad, it sounds like you’ve made a big mess of things …”
Uhm, Patty?
Then you hear the broadcast where she announces she is joining the Siamese Cat Liberation Fuckwads.
Broadcasts keep coming. There’s the battle with the police which ends up with the house burning down, SLA members trapped inside. Then comes the next broadcast and there’s that deadpan voice, flatlining, “My sister Miznoon … her eyes were cold and full of death” – or something like that – and to Patty – that was a compliment!! She was saying how much she MISSED Miznoon, she was saying what was GREAT about Miznoon. (Imagine: “God, I just love my boyfriend so much. He has so many amazing qualities.” “That is so awesome. What are some of his amazing qualities?” “Oh, his eyes are cold and full of death.” “Man, that is so great.”)
I got increasingly annoyed with Patty’s broadcasts. Oh, excuse me. Tania’s broadcasts.
I was in the kitchen washing dishes, listening to one of the broadcasts, emanating from the other room.
Tania’s creepy flat voice, going on and on. She loves Willie. Or Cujo. Or whatever he calls himself. She loves her cold deathly friends. She is taking the fight to the people. She loves her “brothers and sisters in the Symbiotic Liberace Army” – and then she says something about “And the fascist pig media …”
She’d said those words before, but I had finally had it.
I’m rinsing out a glass. I hear her dead voice say the words “and the fascist pig media” – and I promptly shout into the other room, where the movie is playing,
“Oh shut the fuck UP, Tania!!!!”
I have long been fascinated with Patty Hearst and the SLA. What do you think of the brainwashing? Convienient excuse to rob a bank or a real thing?
I have no clue. Ive been obsessed with the thing for years – and I honestly have no idea. i think there might have been a big ol’ rebel in her just waiting for the chance to come out – but honeslty, I can’t make up my mind about that.
Here in St. Paul, about five years ago the FBI arrested a woman who’d been in the SLA, been involved in the bank murder and the plot to bomb the Oakland cops, who’d gotten away and had spent 25 years living “underground” under an assumed name, married to a St. Paul cardiologist.
The incredible part was not just how the event brought so much of that era back (and I do remember the whole thing from when I was a kid); the crazy part was how many people in the Twin Cities were sympathetic to her and her old cause. Her supporters raised a *million* dollars for her defense fund in the Twin Cities. And it wasn’t just the fringe supporting her – we’re talking major-league politicians.
And when she was convicted of conspiracy to kill the cops, and complicity in the woman’s death at the bank, you’d have thought the government had suspended the Constitution.
Nutters, all of ’em.
I remember that arrest, Mitch – they showed footage of their trial – when Michael Boltin (uhm, wait – that can’t be his name – but I think it was) stood up and apologized to the son of Mrs. Opsahl (ack, I’m not getting any of the names right) – but they all were there. Emily and Bill Harris, Kathleen Soliah and this Michael Boltin guy. Emily Harris (the one who said over Mrs. Opsahl’s dead body, “She doesn’t matter. She’s a pig. Her husband’s a doctor”) was crying – she definitely looked sorry, but maybe just sorry at being caught, I don’t know. I have a hard time feeling bad for anyone who would stand over the dead body of an innocent woman and say “She doesn’t matter. She’s a pig.” I did a lot of stupid things in my youth, and I believed some wacky things – but I would never have said about another human being WHOM I HAD JUST KILLED, “She doesn’t matter. She’s a pig.” You can repent all you like, Ms. Harris, but you can do so in jail where you belong. but Kathleen Soliah looked unrepentant. Contemptuous of the entire thing. A true beleiver, that one.
Oh and Mitch – what do YOU think about Hearst’s experience Was she brainwashed? Was she afraid for her life? I haven’t read her book – so I’m not sure – but there’s something about this story that has always fascinated me. I have always felt that there HAD to be more than brainwashing going on … that something in Patty Hearst had been looking for a way out.
But that may just be not understanding how brainwashing really can work. I don’t know.
I don’t know whether Patty was really brainwashed, but I think most of us have something that is looking to get out. For most of us that something is nothing as drastic as in the Hearst case, but something nonetheless. Like in those studies when they give college kids non-alcoholic beer and they still behave drunkenly. Do they really feel drunk, or are they simply providing expected behavior?
I know that is a lightweight question compared to the Hearst case, but my point is that people do strange things under simple peer pressure; I wonder what a concerted effort at brainwashing might cause one to do?
Eric – I wonder that, too. I wonder about the general susceptability of the human mind. I know that peer pressure is a real thing – I mean, there have been studies about LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training) – with organizations like Est or the Sterling Institute of Relationships – many others – and how these groups are VERY specific in how they set up their “seminars’ and that a large part of it is the knowledge that people in groups behave differently than people alone. There will be a “pressure” (unspoken, invisible) to go along with the “training” – to say “yes” to it – People talk about coming out of some of these weekends and basically “snapping out of it” – like: wait, was that just ME in there??
I’ve written about this shit before and there’s always some know-it-all who breezes in and tells me why I’m wrong, why I’m thinking about it wrong, and why it’s all soooooooo very simple. I call bullshit on such a kneejerk response.
There’s a reason why torture works, sleep deprivation, being cut off from family, never being allowed to be alone – all of this stuff is EXTREMELY effective (not on 100% of people – and the 1 or 2 % who remain impervious to stuff like this ALSO need to be studied).
But in the case of Patty Hearst, I really don’t know. Her voice, in her broadcasts, sounded rehearsed, and dead. She did not sound under duress. But perhaps a Stockholm Syndrome type situation developed … Not sure.
Stockholm syndrome was the first thing I thought of. I wonder what personality variables would go into studying what makes people relatively more or less vulnerable or resistant to brainwashing. It’d be a little creepy to learn that maybe sociopaths are most resistant to brainwashing, because who cares less what other people think (and caring what other people think would seem to be part of vulnerability) than a sociopath? Caveat: I am the furthest thing from a mental health professional…although I’ve been told I should be in close proximity to a team of experts at all times. ;-)
In other news, “Shut the fuck UP, Tania!!!!” is destined to enter the lexicon next to “Don’t even TRY, CHiPs!”
It also makes me wonder at how quickly the fragile rules of our society break down in the face of catastrophe. How long would we follow rules and obey laws if food, water, or light and power were not readily available? This makes me think of Lord of the Flies, which I haven’t read in years.
I’m remembering a quote in some movie that I can’t put my finger on about how a single person can be intelligent and thoughtful, but that people in groups are just a panicky herd. Wait, is it Men in Black? Ha, I thought I was recalling some more serious film. But that line had the ring of truth to it.
Ken –
//be a little creepy to learn that maybe sociopaths are most resistant to brainwashing, because who cares less what other people think //
That’s very interesting … have there been studies about this, I wonder???
Eric – there’s actually a couple of really profound moments in Men in Black!! hahaha
This exchange, for me, has the ring of absolute truth – and I have thrown it back in friends faces when they try to tell me, “Better to have loved and lost … blah blah blah puke”:
“It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved it all.”
“Try it.”
I believe that anyone who says to someone who aches with loss “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (without at LEAST contemplating the words) is full of shit.
I’m with Tommy Lee Jones. Try it. TRY it and THEN you tell me it’s “better”.
Uhm …
bitter much, Sheila?
Possibly my favorite exchange in the whole flick. I liked how they made Will Smith the foil for a lot of Tommy Lee’s best lines:
“OK, I know I’m new, but don’t y’all be giving me a stupid nickname… I don’t want to be called ‘Sport’ or ‘Junior’ or ‘Rookie.'”
(instantly) “OK, Slick.”
It helps when you’re, you know, TOMMY LEE JONES and can really stick the delivery.
BTW, I’m shocked that we’re in a brainwashing/movie thread without yet mentioning The Manchurian Candidate (Lansbury, Sinatra, and Harvey, of course). After that movie I didn’t know my own name for three days.
I recently re-watched the interviews Diane Sawyer did with 2 of the Manson women – this was 12 years ago, but they’re on YouTube (God bless YouTube). And at one point, Diane said to Patricia Krenwinkle, something along the lines of, “You stabbed Abigail Folger this many times … and I guess … what I want to ask is …” Totally baffled pause – and then Sawyer said, “Who are you???”
Now that might sound trite – but to me, that’s what’s interesting and compelling and also very important about these cases.
So often when I write shit like this (and I’ll stop whining about it in a minute) – someone will show up and bark, “She’s a murderer. Who CARES why she did it? Who CARES why she is that way?”
Well, I fucking care – and I think you’re a moron to NOT care. This does not mean I excuse her actions, or that she shouldn’t be punished, and I am so tired of that insistent (and conscious, I might addd) misinterpretation.
I think it is THE question to ask … “Who are you?”
Leslie van Houten said something along the lines of, “If you were there … you don’t know what YOU would have done …” Basically saying that everyone is susceptible.
But she’s wrong. Linda Kasabian was there – she was there the night of the murders – and she wouldn’t go thru with it. She said to Charley later, “I just can’t kill anybody.”
So Leslie van Houten is full of shit, as far as I am concerned. There was something in Leslie van Houten (or something lacking in her) that made her able to stab Rosemary laBianca – and there was something in Linda Kasabian, as messed up as she was, to draw the line and say, “No. I will not, and cannot do that.”
What is the difference?
Maybe the question is “WHAT are you?”
Ken- Get a LIFE, Wachovia!!
Good design!
[url=http://kusafwju.com/nekp/wgnf.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://isnqjkcm.com/gkyr/drrt.html]Cool site[/url]
Well done!
My homepage | Please visit
Well done!
http://kusafwju.com/nekp/wgnf.html | http://lkuvvqcp.com/zbul/kuzq.html