Derren Brown - Messiah

Derren Brown - Messiah:

"The controversial, award-winning psychological illusionist Derren Brown returns to Channel 4 with a brand new one-off special. In a departure from the formats of Russian Roulette and The Séance, this documentary-styled one-hour film sees Derren in America attempting to raise questions about the validity of certain religious and spiritual belief systems; belief systems that people are encouraged to base their lives upon - such as new-age faiths and mainstream Christianity. Can he get certain authority figures to endorse him as the real thing?...

Q: How would you describe the programme?
Derren Brown: It's a personal journey for me, quite a dark journey. It's a documentary styled show where I go to America and meet some influential people behind certain belief-systems that people are encouraged to base their lives upon. Two targets are new-age beliefs and mainstream Christianity. Using my techniques and showmanship can I get these people who are responsible for the beliefs of hundreds of thousands of people, to endorse me as being the real thing?...

Q: You used to be a Christian. How does that conflict or not conflict with what you do in the show?
DB: Around the same time of me coming out of Christianity I had already started performing. I slowly realized that true belief of any kind - Christians, new-agers, committed cynics - all fall prey to a similar circular, self-fulfilling logic. I saw that although my faith was culturally endorsed, it didn't stand up to any more scrutiny than the wackiest new-age belief.

In the end what it boils down to is if things make us feel good then we believe in them; we take them on board. There's nothing wrong with that. That's kind of what we do as human beings. We're very suggestible around authority figures and if an authority figure tells us things then we tend to believe them and a month later we're coming out with those same opinions as if they were our own. It's absolutely part of what makes us human but equally part of what makes us human is the ability to recognize that as a pattern and question it; and that's what I hope underpins the programme. There will be people out there, who like me, are already very skeptical of the belief systems I question. But I'd be delighted if the show nudged some people into a more questioning frame of mind, if they don't arrive at the same conclusions as me."