Saturday, December 12, 2009

IPCRESS File

I was in my local library the other day and found the IPCRESS file on the shelf. Our local librarians seem to feel obliged to buy anything Criterion reissues.

I had fond memories of seeing it on late-night television (I'm too young to have caught the original theatrical release) so I took it out. It's an odd movie to see it now. It once had such a reputation, Harry Palmer was "the thinking man's Bond" according to someone on one of the extras Criterion has included. Well maybe, all it is now is one of those peculiar reminders of how incredibly stupid the "smart" people of any era can be.

The whole movie depends on behaviorism being true, which is a little like having an entire plot built on cold fusion being true. You can't take it seriously. (Oddly, movies based on superstitious beliefs such as reincarnation, Dead Again for example, do work, but a movie based on bogus science is like broken electronics, useless.)

But here's the thing. Once upon a time, the smart people all did believe that behaviorism would work. Some welcomed it, some feared it but all thought it was only a matter of time until scientists worked out the details. Several movies, including A Clockwork Orange, Manchurian Candidate, depending on it as a plot point and all the smart people saw these movies. In the end, behaviorism was a failure pure and simple.

It makes me wonder how today's promising new psychological discoveries will fare. There was no shortage of evidence for behaviorism. Freudianism got even more credence from the smart people even though there was never much evidence for it. Is "psychology" and the belief that it is only a matter of time before we connect the dots, work out the details one of those things that "smart" people perennially fall for?

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