The Hypnotizing Effect of Music, Film, and False Information
by Sabrina Dawkins
I walked into the grocery store and “Let the Music Play” by Shannon was playing. I was instantly transported to the skating rink I used to go to as a child. In my mind I was rolling around and around the rink at top speed as the popular ‘80s dance music filled the room, not a care in the world, free to be a child and soak up all the entertainment I could.
But I was disturbed by how carefree the music made me feel. I literally wanted to roll around the rink at top speed again, let the music take me away. I thought about how dangerous the music would be to a person without a strong moral foundation.
The secular music I absorbed as a youth didn’t really warn about the consequences of carefree behavior. As a young adult, I used to look forward to going to parties, clubs, or even riding in the passenger seat of cars with friends, listening to deafening rap music as we sped down the empty streets in the middle of the night. The secular music I’d listen to as I partied covered topics such as sex, homosexuality, getting high, getting drunk in a casual manner, which normalized it for the listener. Consequences weren’t addressed because it would destroy the mood. The singer and/or songwriter wanted to put the listener in a carefree trance for at least the duration of the song, where the music created in the mind of the listener a world of endless carnal pleasures, a world without consequences—a world that doesn’t exist.
I got a taste of that familiar feeling of an unbothered, carefree life listening to the song when I entered the grocery store, the mindset that so many secular songs had put me in when I was younger. In fact, I had unconsciously become addicted to the feeling those types of songs created within me, so I had to get my fix of them frequently. But, of course, as a child and younger adult, I didn’t realize this was the reason I couldn’t go too long without hearing my favorite secular songs. I didn’t realize that the seemingly pleasant fantasy world that I entered whenever I listened to them, the trance I would fall into, was the real reason I couldn’t get enough. All I knew was that I liked the beat and that I felt pleasure while listening to them.
After a while, not only was I listening to music in my spare time but also when the time would’ve been better spent doing more productive things. But the real world just couldn’t compare to the fantasy world.
Any fiction, whether it be song lyrics, movies, novels, even false information or false news, puts a person into a fantasy world, which is at least a light trance state, where reality fades into the background and the constructed, artificial world takes the stage. With fiction movies, you have to enter the fake world in order to fully experience and enjoy the film.
You willingly enter the world created for you by the songwriter or screenwriter in order to be entertained. You are put into a trance in order to suspend disbelief and experience fully the make-believe world. Your guard is down, and the false reality pours into your mind and soul. Unfortunately, since you have identified so strongly with a false reality for even a short period of time, not all of it is removed from your mind when the experience is over. You keep some elements with you, perhaps the best characteristics of the characters you allowed yourself to identify with or the song or movie ending that you enjoyed. And therefore you incorporate some elements of the fiction into your real life, worldview, and thoughts. Maybe you leave the movie believing that the world operates the way the film portrayed it.
So a movie is never just a movie. A song is never just good entertainment. A novel is never just a good read. They can be viruses that get inside and rewrite your mind, causing it to operate based on a fiction. A popular New Age virus is “We are all one.”
My mind virus growing up was that there were no real consequences and I should experience pleasure. After all, the popular secular songs I listened to told me that the carnal life was cool and exciting and that I should enjoy myself on the dance floor of life. I’m just glad that God snapped me out of that trance, because the fiction I was living based on was meant to send me to an early grave. And I would’ve died in my sleep, in that trance, that fictitious world that fed me a false reality while I slept and left my body vulnerable in the real jungle, stumbling around, sleepwalking in the dark, in the thick foliage where predators waited. And with my virtual reality goggles on, I was bound to be easy prey.
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