Hollywood plots validate paranoids by confirming their delusions are real conspiracies

Evidence

The protagonist, played by Mel Gibson, gives every indication early in the fi lm of being delusional to the point of paranoia. He lives in a fortresslike apartment, complete with an escape hatch and self-destructive capability. The rooms are a warren of securely locked spaces; even the refrigerator is padlocked. Surrounded as Gibson is by shadowy, imagined enemies, the viewer is surprised by the gradual realization that indeed, there is a conspiracy, one of whose aims is to destroy this lone eccentric who has stumbled across truths that have been successfully concealed from his supposedly normal fellow citizens. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 217

Categorization

• XREF: The paranoid-seer reversal directly exemplifies how conspiracy films feed real-world believers, foreshadowing the chapter’s later analysis of validation dynamics. — connects to: Conspiracists read mainstream films as secretly encoded Illuminati messages — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 201; Viewers use TV dramas to confirm preexisting suspicions about what is real. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 222; Belief in some conspiracies predicts endorsement of unrelated fictional ones — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 184

Broader Connections

• Viewers use TV dramas to confirm preexisting suspicions about what is real. #corroborates (0.95) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 222
• Belief in some conspiracies predicts endorsement of unrelated fictional ones #corroborates (0.75) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 184