Now, stories of people believing they've lived in an earlier era have coursed around the ether since oodles of years, and none of them are in any way designed to convince me of the existence of an afterlife, oder of re-incarnation. The purely philosophical approaches used by Buddhism or other Eastern religions appear to me to be much more designed to convince me of reincarnation than these poor misguided fools, and their colourful phantasies...
What takes the biscuit, in my opinion, is that TV is instrumentalising the belief of many misguided souls, and making such a balls-up, and what a fucking awful balls-up it is, of doing so. At least the 'reporter' in this series, a blond-bangled dimwit with a speech impediment (where do they find them, by the way? - does someone turn over stones, while a second holds the net...?), uses leading questions, (as does the hypnotiser, too), suggestive completions, and other tricks, to get the victim to say what they want to hear (or what the plot demands).
One of the questions just asked was: "where are you from?", to which the reply is " Scotland. In the west." which sounds really concrete and all, coming from someone who in the fifteenth century was supposed to have lived there, and is answering the questions out of the persona being interviewed. Sound convincing?
For most of us it probably would be.
But if one stops to think for a while, all sorts of discrepancies occur:
- the concept of Scotland existed in the fifteenth century at about the same level as the concept of Germany, namely - not at all
- ask a person even today where they come from, and the answer is likely to be much more regional than you'd expect - "I'm from Bavaria", or "I'm from Dublin" is much more likely than "I'm from Scotland", especially if the concept of 'Scotland' is still new, or not even yet born.
- Christopher Lambert, in Highlander, gave a much more convincing presentation, and one that I can imagine would be the method used at the times: "My name is Conor McCloud, of the Clan McCloud, of XYZ (wherever it was - can't remember at the moment)...". Any samurai in medieval Japan would have introduced himself roughly as follows: " My name is Hiroda Yamamoto, of the lien of Honto, Lord of the Seven Plains, Lord of ABC" and so on. The point I'm trying to make, should it not have dawned on you yet is: people traditionally identify themselves from the level of family upwards - who's my father, who did he owe his allegiance to, which village/town did he or I live in? and so on and so on.
- these candidates, whether from this TV-programme, or from other sources, are annoyingly all sons or daughters of earls, kings, queens, important personages at the courts of unimaginably important rulers; live in palaces, wear the finest clothes and jewels, were betrothed to princes, lords of the realms and so on and so on and so on....
Where are the swineherds, the makers of leather, the outlaws, the lepers, the scum and the dirt of the face of the earth? I've yet to read a 'born-again' story that deals with the other end of the spectrum, let alone with the middle reaches.
And what of truth, I can almost hear you say - well, I can't quote Scripture on this, but many of the people who claim to have lived fulfilled and exciting lives way back when can be proven to have seen a film about the era, or to have read enough books about the time, or ... or ... or ...
This might explain why it's always the famous or rich or prominent or important people who are/were the first lives of these people - they are more likely to be mentioned in literature or film than the ordinary people.
By the way: if I remember rightly, the lowlands of Scotland weren't peopled by 'knights in shining armour living in castles' as is portrayed in this programme, but were divided up into clan domains, led by clan chiefs or local leaders who didn't actually use armour....
So, RTL - you've got to be kidding, don't you?
Shame on you for this rubbish!
