Derren Brown is returning to Channel 4 next week with his brand new show Pushed to the Edge, and the illusionist has spoken about what viewers can expect in a brand new interview with the network.
Credit: Channel 4
He explains: "It [the show] looks at social compliance and social influence, which is something that can operate at all sorts of levels. It's particularly relevant with our political situation, with people being radicalised into doing bad things, but it can also operate on a private, quiet level socially. When we find ourselves in groups or with charismatic individuals, we might do things we wouldn't ordinarily do. This show takes the idea of social compliance and shows it at a very dramatic level. I'm very interested in how we take ownership of our own stories and our own lives. So this show is a dramatic play on that idea."
The show will explore whether the mechanics of social compliance can be manipulated as far as somebody being told to push someone to their death off a building, and go through with it. All secretly filmed, the person being experimented with will meet a series of actors who help build and build to the ultimate conclusion.
Brown adds that the experience is a good one for the person: "The nature of the whole journey is done in a way to make sure that ultimately it's ultimately a positive thing for them. Within five minutes of the end happening, they were fine. Subjects, over the years and going back across quite a few shows, are always in a very positive place at the end of things.
"We aren't in the business of doing horrible things to people and then laughing at them. This certainly isn't about who's a bad person or a good person. We all have a strong moral sense. The point of this situation that we move them into is what happens when a clear discrepancy is created between what you know is right and what you feel you have to do. That's really what this is about."
Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge is on 12th January at 9pm on Channel 4.
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