The Shadow Effect – Special Interactive Edition (DVD Set)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+
Extras: D Main Program: D
Self-help
programs are supposed to be a help, but when they are as heavy-handed and
suspect as The Shadow Effect, you
know NOT to drink the Kool-Aid. Instead
of being a help, some New Age approaches make the grave error of saying no one
is ever responsible for their actions, but some “force” is and in this case, it
is a side of yourself that you are hiding.
That has many problems, the least of which is telling you to give up
your privacy and personal space. But it
gets worse.
This DVD
set has a program for you to totally rip yourself apart and “surrender” to
creator Debbie Ford’s programs and seminars.
However, it is an empty package and when all is taken in, it feels like
a nicely prefabricated way to an “acceptable cult” in which we are all told to
assimilate or “don’t worry, be shallow” and the like. Of course, the biggest red alert is the presence
of the greatest of all New Age hucksters, the evil Deepak Chopra!
I would
not trust this guy to boil water. No one
in the “feel good” industry is more condescending, manipulative or phony that
Chopra or his other opportunist family members, including an early diatribe
here talking about people in the Third World living on $2.00 or $1.00 a
day. This is meant to be illicit appeal
to pity and is the Chopra way. If you
are made to feel guilty, just listen to him and if you do what he says blindly,
people in the third world will have more money?
What does that have to do with your individual problems? Nothing!
It is part of his sly manipulations and distractions, courtesy here of
Ms. Ford, who has him early on in her show.
Nothing like hiring the hatchet man to hook you in.
The
program is manipulative in the tradition of Triumph Of The Will, Birth
Of A Nation or Battleship Potemkin
in changing your life for the worse.
Making people into clones and airheads is more like it. You cannot ever be that desperate to fall for
this. Just turn to your real friends
and/or find new ones and save your money.
Oh, and Mr. Chopra, I am not histrionic and you can…
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is soft and weak, sometimes purposely
soft as if to hypnotize you to “relax” but it is so soft and phony soft that
you keep hoping Frankie Goes To Hollywood brings in The Art Of Noise and starts
buzz-sawing the sets to sawdust. Wonder
if Saturday Night Live will have the
guts to go after this? The Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo is adequate but “quiet” in nature to “soothe” you, even when Ford
gives lectures. Extras include a chopped
up version so let the brainwashing sink further into your brain and make you an
ATM for these people who are here to gut you out and dump you.
Beware!!!
- Nicholas Sheffo
