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Being John Malkovich Shaw
02/27/06
by Shaw

I don't think anyone would want to be me. This includes people from anywhere in the world--rich, poor, sick, healthy--it's not about means, it's about state of mind. However I would say that you might find it interesting to take a look at what things are like inside my brain.

In the interest of entertaining the tons of readers we have I tried to think of something completely outrageous to write about. Well I thought of plenty of outrageous things but none of them can be written down. Inside my brain is a swirling mist of insanity and if I'm sure if I could ever organize it into a driving pellet-rain then it would make me millions of dollars. As this is not the case I thought it might be better for you if you are interested in seeing the world like me to get inside my brain.

The concept of actual brain penetration has been explored in tons of movies and books: Strange Days has that headset thing that forcibly plays someone else's memories in your brain, which was used for good, and later, to horrifying effect as a tool in a rape scene; Johnny Mnemonic centers on the possibility of hard data storage inside the human brain; Harry Potter has the Imperius curse; there are hundreds of movies about psychic crime solvers, ghost hunters, murderers, and all combinations of the above. Unfortunately, all of the above movies pretty much suck, which casts a negative light on the mind control subplots. The most critically lauded among the films I have seen is Being John Malkovich, which also happens to have the best version of the brain penetration concept that I have seen--there is something nice about the fact that you can enter and exit Malkovich's brain at will, and it is unique among all of the other ideas I have seen in that the user is able, with some practice, to control the actual body of John Malkovich in realtime.

While it might seem ridiculous to speculate on the possibility of such a device being invented for real, surely there is also some truth to the idea that technology imitates art--the Spy Museum in DC and countless TV shows on Discover would have you believe that the CIA copied half of their spying equipment from episodes of Get Smart. After Jurassic Park, there was real research on extracting DNA from amber-imprisoned animals. And don't tell me you didn't think it would be awesome to make a killer robot out of liquid metal... surely some guy in a lab thought the same thing. Guaranteed, there is some crackpot in a remote lab somewhere drinking coffee and eating York Peppermint Patties all night trying to make a BJM machine. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I think it would be nice to be able to take a break from my own life for a while. After all, I haven't exactly been making the most of my existence (cf. all of my previous columns)--what better way to do this than to actually have someone else live it for me? For this reason, once the Being John Malkovich technology is perfected, I want to lay claim to having my brain be the first one they try it on.

What follows is an open letter to the world's cinematic technology innovators that I hope will convince them to use me as the guinea pig for this exciting new branch of mind control.

Dear World's Cinematic Technology Innovators,

Recent years have brought exciting new developments to the forefront of cinematic technology research, with plenty of new ideas to keep the movie scientists of the world busy. I understand that big fake space-launch machine from Contact is nearing completion and will be ready to maybe/maybe not send someone to space quite soon. Bill Gates has been sinking money into I, Robot-style robots but having trouble getting them to run Windows without crashing. The hoverboard from Back to the Future, Part II is in final testing in a lab in Nebraska. Several three-breasted woman (a la Total Recall) have been spotted leaving the California governor's mansion. And of course, velveteers and scientists are currently wrapping up the final touches of a real-life Soul Plane.

While you are setting goals for your upcoming research, I hope you will consider the Being John Malkovich machine a high priority. Of course I am sure you have been working hard on the BJMM for quite a while, so it is entirely possible that you have already picked out a person whose mind you would like to enter. Surely this is some celebrity who may not even be a willing participant. While I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of kidnapping someone and forcing them to accept the treatment required to make their brain accessible, I assume you will find things easier if you have a willing member of society who will set their brain to xhost+ for you to do with what you wish. That person is me.

I am a mathematics graduate student at the University of Maryland. I'll forgive you for thinking at the outset that this doesn't look like a good fit for your work, and that no one would want to be inside my head, but I urge to you consider some other factors:

1. Every single day of my life is exactly the same as the last.

The scientific boon is that you will be able to perform a good study of the behavior of the BJMM with many trials. If you picked, say, someone who has an exciting life, you might find different reactions when you plug someone in on skydiving day, someone else in on sex day, and someone else in on relaxation day. In my case, I don't have skydiving, relaxation, or sex: every day is high-stress low-work wasting-time drinking-myself-to-sleep day.

2. I live near a major metropolitan center.

Since I assume you will be constructing this machine to work exactly like the one in the movies, once the entrant is ready to exit my mind, he/she will fall out of the sky into some place near the machine. Obviously it will be quite convenient to have this happen near Washington DC, where I-95, I-66, and I-70 are all a stone's throw away.

3. I am a willing participant.

I can't stress this enough. The last thing I want to have to do is wake up one more day and force myself to get out of bed and go to my office. I would love to have someone else take on these responsibilities for me for a while, leaving my brain free of the burden of my body to contemplate the universe, mathematics, and disgust for humanity. If you were to BJMM into Brad Pitt's head, you might find it difficult to get him to relinquish control of his body--after all, for BP, control of his body = control of the entire breathing female population of the world.

4. No one would notice if I started acting differently.

I understand: you want to keep the whole operation secret. I promise you, anyone that knows me knows I could easily be diagnosed as clinically insane. If I were to develop a sudden penchant for talking in a Kurdish accent or speaking a different language or punching people that I don't know or committing robberies or climbing the walls of tall buildings, no one would be the wiser. The last thing you want is to have someone relatively normal start acting all weird, and then the whole neighborhood is saying, "Hey, you know, Bill's acting weird, I bet he's being controlled by one of those Being John Malkovich machines."

I hope this letter helps make your choice for guinea pig easier, and I wish you luck with your research.

--Shaw

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