Arcane Power

Recently, I had the misfortune of watching "Cutting Edge: My Kid is Psychic". For anyone who was lucky enough to miss this horrendous and definately 'non-judgemental' bit of TV hosted by the ever reliable Channel 4, let me break it down for you.

My Kid.

She's Psychic.

Mother of God!

So, for anyone wanting to go a little deeper, the TV show unfolds with a tedious sense of inevitability. It follows two mothers, both of which look like a punk version of characters from The Wicker Man, as they emotionally and psychologically inflict a special brand of torture on their young offspring. Less air-time, but no less infuratingly, it follows two children, a young boy called Oliver who can't be much more than 8, and a girl called Heather, about 15. These are psychic children, the vanguard of humanities next evolutionary step into a species of mind-crushing, force weilding, empathic ninjas with healing powers derived from crystals. More on that later.

Oliver, like the film Mercury Rising, sees dead people. Walking around like regular people, or something. I'm not quite sure, and this is part due to laziness of research, and partically because of the memory loss caused by repeatedly slamming my head off the coffee table while screaming "GET HELP!" like a novice Stockbroker on a particularly bad day.

Now, Oliver displays some definately psychic-related ability. He runs in circles, doesn't concentrate, and is disruptive at school. A medical practitioner diagnosed him with ADHD, and prescribed some Rittalin, but he's all knowing benevolent mother Simone has taken him off the drug. Because it's far easier to believe your child is the next Derren Brown than he has a treatable medical condition. In refusing to acknowledge her child has a minor mental health problem*, she doesn't do herself any favours by adopting a stance that is likely to get herself sectioned.

Maybe that is for the best. She is not only withholding treatment from a child, she is encouraging said child to believe that he is geuinely psychic. Sure, every parent wants their child to be gifted. But there's gifted, and theres gifted.

Oliver would later go on to save the known universe from an evil galactic Empire. Who knew?

 

Heather's mother, Nicola, is more than a little different from Simone. While Oliver's mother adopts the head-in-the-sand defence for mental behaviour, instead chalking it up to psychic and supernatural forces, Nicola is out and out batshit insane. Looking more Mad Max infulenced than the normal Simone, Nicola runs around with magic books and crystals, bringing children together into a sort of X-men academy of psychic kids. Using terms like Indigo and Cystral Children - which sounds like a dystopian future categorization of dangerous mutants - she runs a school where they can attune their powers.

Yeah, that's not normal.

Heather, the child in question, genuinely believes herself to be a psychic healer. Obviously, psychic powers don't fully manifest until sometime during puberty, so it's reassuring to know that these young children can work on their skills and be helped through the process in a New Age version of Waco. Now, if only I had someone to help me through puberty. It must be reassuring to know that the voice changes and rapid hair growth are down to your developing psychic potential. They mocked me when my voice broke, but rest assured, I shall crush their minds.

I'd do a summary, but the show doesn't actually go anywhere. I say it's a show, it's flaunted as a documentary, but it isn't. There is nothing to document, and no academic merit in it. These people have been professionally diagnoised as having an acute case of the fucking crazies. You can't argue with science, I'm afraid. Unless you're psychic, I guess, or just mental. The hour or so of prime video evidence - for when these people go on trial for child abuse - ends with the conclusion that, guess what, some people think their children might be pyschic, and we can't prove that they aren't.

Spooky.

The verdict:

How much rope does it take to hang two people who are deliverately psychologically scarring their offspring? However much it is, this show provides more than enough. I just feel sorry for the kids who will be sorely disappointed when lightning doesn't jump from their fingertips to incinerate those who callously mock their parents. Cutting Edge: My Child is Psychic, takes a bunch of geuinely delusional people to an Al Qaeda extreme. I eagerly await the next episode. Cutting Edge: My Dog is a Necromancer.


*Although I'm skeptical anyway. At 8 I ran in circles and disrupted class, and I turned out fine...

Wibble.