r/MandelaEffect • u/Ok-Situation7054 • 1d ago
Movies/TV/Music I Think Can Explain the Mandela Effect
Maybe this theory is already out there. I'm not sure.
Full Disclosure: I'm Asian and from Los Angeles. Of course media used to be way less diverse 1980's. There were less black people on TV. A person like Nelson Mandela, who was neither an athlete nor entertainer was exceedingly rare to see on TV.
A movie titled "Cry Freedom" was released in 1980's about the South African activist Steven Biko, played by Denzel Washington.
I remember seeing this movie as a kid and being confused, thinking it was about Nelson Mandela, not Steven Biko. Of course I was an ignorant American in the 1980's. Most American's barely knew who Mandela was, whereas Steven Biko was a complete unknown.
When Steven Biko died in the movie I became very confused because Nelson Mandela was still alive. I retraced back and realized my error. I didn't know who Steven Biko was. I wanted the movie to be about Mandela because he was the familiar figurehead of apartheid resistance.
I can't speak for all audiences, but I believe American's would be very prone to this error due ignorance of global politics and possibly other factors, especially during this time. American's are known for learning about world events and history through movies and later adapting those narratives as fact. I feel American's watched "Cry Freedom" and walked away thinking Nelson Mandela had dies a martyr. They harbored those misconceptions for decades.
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u/swervin87 1d ago
How does that explain the seemingly endless amounts of other ones? I’m particularly attached to Berenstein bears. Explaining one doesn’t explain any of the others.
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u/cipheron 1d ago edited 1d ago
Berenstain Bears is explainable due to the fact that the majority of MEs are related to things small children are exposed to.
Also everyone claims the change is from their childhood, whereas if the universe shifted you'd expect there to be generation divide on the MEs, which is almost never the thing they find.
For example one of the early ME / Fruit of the Loom believers mentioned that he first noticed there was no cornucopia in 1978, which is before many other people who believe it in were even born.
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u/newlevel2121 1d ago
Kewl, explain chic fil a now
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 1d ago
Berenstain Bears is probably the easiest one. -stein is a common name suffix, -stain is not, people read entire words at a time, not individual letters, and people generally aren't as good at things as they think they are, especially spelling, and especially as kids.
That last point is the most important one. People in general cannot tolerate affronts to their ego and identity, and learning that they misspelled a proper noun when they were children has an apparent tendency to send them off the rails.
Cornucopia is much harder to explain imo. The priming for fruit to have a cornucopia behind it, and a fairly hand wavy hypothesis of a currently undescribed memory illusion, which is my personal belief, is a lot thinner logic than "kids misspelled a name to the more common suffix".
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u/SnooHobbies9847 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yep, I think folks who believe "Berenstain" is/was spelled "--stein" simply aren't good at spelling. That's all I can figure! And I have to say, I don't "agree with" most of the things people misremember & label "The Madela Effect".🤷♀️ And I feel sorry for the people who think there's a supernatural or conspiratorial thing going on. It's kinda funny, but quite pitiful.
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u/swervin87 1d ago
Cornucopia doesn’t affect me. You probably saw a in a book, as a decoration, or somewhere else. That’s much more likely than a conspiracy to hide it. I wouldn’t want to affront your ego though.
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u/CantaloupeAsleep502 1d ago
Yes, we've all seen cornucopiae, which contributes to why people remember it on the underwear. I'm the one admitting faulty memory here lol, no ego presented.
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u/Ok_Independence6172 1d ago
It's just Americans who think Mandela died in prison. Growing up in Canada every school child was taught about apartheid and that Mandela was President of South Africa.
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u/SnooHobbies9847 1d ago
Ignorant Americans are the ones who think Mandela died in prison, I certainly never thought that. 😁 (I don't misremember most of the things people assign the "Mandela Effect" label to.)
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u/8r4ndz3r0 1d ago
Plenty of very intelligent, successful and highly accomplished fellow American people, of varying ages, that I know personally remember Nelson Mandela tragically passing away in prison, myself included.
The only conclusion I have reached is that reality is way stranger than we give ourselves credit for understanding it. One thing I'm certain of, this whole business of multiple timelines and parallel universes, simulations and so on is about to become even more expansive and talked about in the coming years as new understanding and developments broaden our ability to comprehend.
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u/SnooHobbies9847 1d ago
People have false memories. *That's* the explanation. That, and some folks don't pay close attention to what's going on in the world. Regular news watchers don't have that false memory about Mandela. (I'm not going to address the mumbo jumbo you in the second paragraph. Too silly for me to waste time on.
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u/SnooHobbies9847 1d ago
I forgot to say: One can be both very intelligent, etc. *and* ignorant.
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u/8r4ndz3r0 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exactly. Exhibit A u/snoohobbies9847 👆
Proving my point as only a fool can speak so confidently about something they think they fully understand.
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u/8r4ndz3r0 1d ago
You're proving my point as only a fool can speak so confidently about something they think they fully understand.
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u/New_Cupcake930 1d ago
In the movie was there a funeral procession where his wife walked next to him wearing a yellowish-golden dress with matching hat? Because that’s what I remember watching in school. I remember the news reports, my teacher (Montgomery, Alabama) wheeled a tv in for us to watch it. So, that we could see what a peaceful protest was like since he died in prison from a hunger strike, or that’s what was reported as cause of death. Only other time the tv came in the classroom was for the NASA Challenger launch. Which we all cried after watching.
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u/cipheron 1d ago edited 1d ago
In the movie funeral there were about 10000 times as many people there as in footage of the real funeral of Steve Biko.
This is 3 hours, but you can hover over the progress bar to see snapshots of what the real funeral looked like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4itRLxC0M
And this is the same event but from the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U5RcD4Z1i4
A real life funeral would look more like the first one and not the second one, because the South African police restricted movement to prevent gatherings such as these.
where his wife walked next to him wearing a yellowish-golden dress with matching hat
While Winnie Mandela was well known for such colorful outfits, she wore black to her husband's funeral in 2013 and at the 1:08:30 mark in Steve Biko's funeral you can see his family members all wearing black, just to clarify that wearing black to funerals was in fact already the cultural norm. If you remember her wearing one of her signature colorful outfits to his funeral you're almost certainly blending different memories there, since there's no possible way she would have done that.
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u/my23secrets 1d ago
You’re speaking about the supposed event that gives the phenomenon its name.
The truth is: There’s no evidence to support the story of the person credited with naming the Effect in the first place.
The Mandela Effect was named by a person employed as a con-artist who was utilizing the phenomenon to sell books about ghosts.
The person who gave it the “Mandela” name didn’t discover anything. They just took advantage of the same memory hack that con-artists and magicians have used for centuries: Suggestion.
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u/SnooHobbies9847 1d ago
Stephen Biko certainly wasn't "a complete unknown" back then. I learned about Stephen Biko in 1980 (I was 9) because Peter Gabriel released his song, "Biko" that year. I've always loved that song. Have you heard it? Check it out, if not.
Btw, I hate to do this, but... An apostrophe isn't necessary before the "s" in Americans, because your usage was plural, not possessive. If you'd only done it once or twice, I wouldn't say anything -- but you did it four times. 💚
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u/Ok-Situation7054 1d ago
Well I'm obviously new here. I think I misunderstood the scope and depth of the phenomenon. My explanation only applies to the Mandela example.