Yo…
I’m going to ask a puzzling question upfront.
Does Curious George have a tail or not?
There’s a group of you who have to think about it. Maybe? And there’s a group of you who are positive this curious monkey does have a tail. As certain as the man’s hat is yellow.
Unfortunately that latter group is wrong. Curiously George does not have a tail.
George’s “tail” is a prime example of The Mandela Effect.
Chuck Klosterman’s 2022 outstanding book The Nineties does a great job of describing the Mandela Effect:
“The erroneous belief that Mandela died in the eighties (as opposed to December of 2013, the month of his actual demise) has spawned an entire category of conspiracy theory now known as the Mandela Effect. First named by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome in 2009, the Mandela Effect is a collective delusion in which large swaths of the populace misremember a catalog of indiscriminate memories in the same way.
Most of the time, the skewed recollections dwell on pop cultural ephemera—the precise spellings of minor consumer products, iconic lines of dialogue that are both famous and incorrect, and the popularity of a children’s movie starring the comedian Sinbad that does not exist.
The most unhinged explanation for this phenomenon involves quantum mechanics and the possibility of alternative realities; the most rational explanation is that most of these memories were generated by people of the early nineties, a period when the obsession with popular culture exponentially increased without the aid of a mechanism that remembered everything automatically.”
Indeed: they named The Effect after Nelson Mandela. In fact, as Chuck and like human history points out Nelson Mandela didn’t die in the 80s. (Despite many people remembering his passing.)
When he writes about “iconic lines of dialogue” two famous examples are “mirror, mirror on the wall,” was never said in Disney’s Snow White and (spoiler alert?) Darth Vader doesn’t say, “Luke, I am your father...” in any Star Wars movie.
It’s super disturbing because we have these cultural shorthands that are…just common fictions. And this isn’t slang where the meaning of a word is constantly evolving: dope for example means stupid person, drugs or that’s fresh depending on the decade you’re using it in.
A dope tangent from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s first episode…
Vivian Banks: “Did you enjoy the trip?”Will: “Oh, yo, the plane ride was stupid! I was looking for first class...”
Phillip Banks: “Excuse me?!”
Will: “No, I was sayin' the plane was dope! So, I was looking for...”
Phillip: “Excuse me?!”
Will: “No. Stupid, dope. Oh. No, that doesn’t mean what you... um, how would he say it? Oh, the flight was really neat, yeah.”
These are collective cultural memories: we all know “mirror, mirror on the wall” and yet…it turns out we don’t.
This is the issue. Memory is unreliable.
44.4 million viewers watched The Cosby Show’s final episode when Theo graduated from New York University. Almost 45 million viewers is an astonishing number…considering the finale aired in the middle of the LA Riots.
For some reason (myself especially!) we don’t link these two seminal events. Here’s crappy footage of a local NBC news team in Los Angeles cutting away from the ruckus sparked by the Rodney King verdict to reluctantly air The Cosby Show’s final episode.
Surreal. And yet again memory is unreliable.
This isn’t a what did you have for breakfast last week kinda thing. (Hopefully it involved bacon…mmm.) We all struggle with those personal and mostly meaningless memories. But almost 45 million people watching a sitcom ending or Curious George or the decade Mandela died in are collective experiences.
Our memories should be better because we all experienced this together. And still memory is unreliable.
Trusting that memory is unreliable naturally creates friction for the disturbing face value acceptance when somebody presents a memory. And I’m not hinting at traumatic events. Rather memory in general. Memories gets hazy. And misinterpreting moments adds emotional complexity to a memory.
There are common moments when you’re trying to share this supa dupa story. This really amazing happening and you can’t remember which of your friends was there with you. Memory is unreliable.
I don’t know that we approach memory with enough skepticism. Not for the memories themselves per se, but rather how we treat and accept them as openly as we do a TED Talk. Memories are accepted as a truth that is factual and infallible because of the common belief that our brains operate like hard drives.
The Mandela Effect refutes the hard drive analogy. That’s a flawed premise. Something doesn’t just happen and we easily recall it the way we pull up a document on a laptop. If there’s one thing we should consider forgetting; it’s that limited hard drive analogy.
Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams, are the duo directors behind the highly anticipated documentary Satan Wants You. They trace Satanic Panic Ground Zero to Victoria, British Columbia a sleepy Canadian city. And the surprising setting of a non-fiction book Michelle Remembers published on November 1, 1980.
What Michelle Smith "remembers" is ritual Satanic abuse...seriously? She visits her psychiatrist, Dr. Lawrence Pazder to deal with depression following a miscarriage. Instead her psychiatrist helps her to uncover repressed memories.
Michelle spends more than 600 hours using hypnosis to help her recover memories (air quotes?) of Satanic ritual abuse that occurred when she was five years old in 1954 and 1955 at the hands of her mother and others. All of whom Michelle said were members of a "satanic cult" (air quotes?) in…Victoria, BC. Seriously?
Those therapy sessions slash recovered memories were transcribed and then published in the book Michelle Remembers. Which quickly became a bestseller igniting a panic about vanishing children.
Here’s the trailer for Satan Wants You which recently has its world premiere at SXSW:
In the trailer you can briefly hear one of the therapy tapes where Michelle Smith recalls her Satanic torture.
Her recovered memories were reported on the news as factual igniting a Satanic panic. Like a nuclear power plant disaster we’re still constantly dealing with the fallout from all this.
When we choose to blindly accept something at face value that’s simply not wise. And that’s what happened with Michelle Remembers in 1980. It was sensational and filled with lurid details that made it "feel" like malicious Satanists were all around us harming our babies.
Now glossing over the part where a French-speaking Virgin Mary heals Michelle (a French speaking Virgin Mary is such a Canadian hallucination!) from her injuries and all the abuses she suffered so there are no scars. There are no wounds; she’s not bleeding or has any broken bones or anything like that so there’s no physical evidence. Fine, put that aside.
I still struggle to understand how anyone in the 80s can fully believe this happened. I’m not at all calling Michelle Smith a liar. I’m saying the story that she is presenting doesn’t add up. Her memories should be completely investigated by the authorities and then vetted by journalists before it goes viral (which wasn’t a thing in the 80s; man I miss those days so much!) or becomes news.
Memory is unreliable. When Michelle Remembers, a book knowingly based on her recovered repressed memories, was published, people should have met it with skepticism. Instead it was openly embraced.
Skepticism is always healthier than acceptance because skepticism fans the flames of curiosity. You want to ask questions, you want to understand. Skepticism is not a rejection. You ask questions in school because you want to grasp the material and sometimes what the teacher is saying doesn’t make sense. So you ask. It’s not that you’re rejecting calculus or physics. It’s that you are curious and you want to learn more but first you need to understand.
The idea that Satanists are all around us sacrificing and eating babies is on the surface terrifying…for adults/parents. And yet I grew up in the 80s and the Satanic Panics often made me laugh. They were wildly illogical. Even as a kid. They just didn’t make any sense.
You spin a record backwards and then what you somehow summon Satan? Is that how it works? Based on what? Who discovered this? Or if you play Dungeons & Dragons you open up a portal to hell? How do you close this portal?
KISS stands for Knights In Satan’s Service. Come on man: I dig KISS. I get it; they look scary but if we’re being honest they’re just your garden variety horny rock and roll band. Who rule!!
I remember (heh) when Marilyn Manson first began touring in the mid-90s. There was so much reckless talk about him sacrificing animals on stage and handing out drugs to kids and all this over the top fear and panic. Church lady types, PTA groups, concerned citizens all went to DEFCON 1.
And yet again, not only was there a glaring absence of evidence but worse none of the rumours were logical. (I get there’s no such thing as logical fear.)
I go to lots of concerts. Every concert has security. There are undercover police officers at concerts. Police don’t treat U2 and Coldplay concerts the same way that they treat Marilyn Manson or Insane Clown Posse concerts. There’s a heightened awareness for darker elements at particular concerts. It’s not like a fist fight is going to break out at a Coldplay show (“I’ll Fix You good!”).
So logically if Marilyn Manson was doing a long tour that means there was undercover police officers and visible cops, plus general security at all of these shows. If he was sacrificing animals on stage they would have arrested him. Yet I’m supposed to just assume that show after show he wasn’t arrested and that all the cops looked the other way while he gutted Fido? We’re not going to apply any logic?? We’re fully committed to panicking as a legit response?
After Marilyn Manson the next major “Won’t someone think of the children?!” panic was Harry Potter charged with witchcraft. Come on, man.
Aren’t you tired of all this nonsense?
In tracing Satanic Panics Satan Wants You offers the type of candid conversations with rational experts that we didn’t have in the 80s or even 90s. Insights flow from a Wiccan police detective, an FBI agent from Mindhunter (yes the same department as the dope Fincher TV show), a memory expert offers her analysis and even somebody from the misunderstood world of the Church of Satan speaks.
That’s so refreshing.
This documentary challenges preconceptions especially about memory, it exposes the roots of a moral panic that has been used to harm and destroy so many lives often needlessly and leaves you with a frustrated understanding of the human experience.
Much like The Mandela Effect is unsettling.
You can read about Sean Horlor of the filmmaker’s experiences growing up in Victoria, BC at the height of the panic on Substack. Some great writing. As long as you accept that his memory is unreliable.
I reference his Substack in the attached My Summer Lair interview; I talk to both filmmakers. The conversation is fun; though I wish we had more time to get into some of the malicious aspect of these harmful panics.
Like come on…aren’t you tired of all this rubbish?
We go through these panic cycles of trying to protect the children and trying to look after the children. Never realizing how condescending that it is because children are much more stronger and much more creative and have much more imagination than we do.
We’ve been adults for so long we forget what it’s like to be a child.
Part of growing up and concluding childhood is understanding that our world is a scary place. It’s not always the monster under your bed that should be feared.
We have a world filled with drug addiction, alcoholism, abusive relationships. There are genuine monsters in this world and part of being an adult is knowing how to navigate and deal with these monsters.
It is dark and disturbing but it is something that is necessary. It would be nice to bubble wrap your child and send them off into the world safely. So that their feelings and their physical well-being are constantly protected. But it’s simply doesn’t work that way.
Crying wolf as often as these panics do doesn’t help. It’s a persistent ugly distraction.
We should protect children…but the thing is…if you look under their bed and in their closets and there are no monsters then maybe…there really are no monsters.
Typically I’d conclude with An Ember To Remember but this My Pal Sammy dispatch is dense. So ironically I’m skipping that.
To Hell With These Satanic Panics…
Sammy Younan
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
Satan Wants You to Question Your Memories: Even If The Devil Is In The Details...