August 1, 2002

6:32 AM

Kidnapped for Kicks!"Brock Enright, a 25-year-old artist, has created a business where people pay him thousands of dollars a time to be violently abducted." Brings a new meaning to escapism...
posted by hmgovt (12 comments total)

So what's next? I've heard rumours that Disney are building a replica of Auschwitz for the thousands who want to find out what it was *really* like being a death camp, for a few days at least...
posted by hmgovt at 6:34 AM on August 1, 2002

Brings a new meaning to escapism...

Creepy?
posted by insomnyuk at 6:36 AM on August 1, 2002

I have an actor friend who was paid a tidy sum by a local police department to rob a bank at gunpoint and then run from the SWAT team, for training purposes. He was having a lot of fun until they caught him, threw him down, and put a knee behind his neck while they cuffed him.

I wonder if there's a market for this in Cleveland? I wonder if this guy is looking to expand?
posted by starvingartist at 6:47 AM on August 1, 2002

It reminds me of the Michael Douglas movie, The Game. Just think if they took another page out of the movie plots and made you think, "But what if these aren't the people I hired to abduct me?"
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 7:05 AM on August 1, 2002

Let's not forget the annual Mock Prison Riot. Students act as rioting prisoners...
posted by i_cola at 7:07 AM on August 1, 2002

Dominatrices have been offering this scenario for years. At least, that's what I've read online. I forgot the URL.

Really.
posted by RavinDave at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2002

No ... REALLY.
posted by RavinDave at 7:14 AM on August 1, 2002

Apparently, kidnap fantasy is fairly common among the BDSM community.

Similar services to Brock Enright's are being offered here and on this site from 1998.

I find it interesting that people seem to be coming into this from two angles: performance art (putting people through an extreme experience and see what happens) and commerce (realizing people's fantasies for money.
posted by rjs at 7:48 AM on August 1, 2002

What a load of rubbish. How could this ever measure against a real kidnapping.

Blind fear is one of the main elements of kidnapping and once you've gotten over the initial surprise of having a dark sack thrown over your head and pushed into a blacked out van, you'll suddenly remember/realize that this is what you paid x-amount of dollars for.

At worst you'll be bound up and thrown in a dark room for a couple of days(or hours kidnapping? ha!), where's the fear in that if you know you'll be out when your moneys run out.

If they wanted to experience what a real kidnapping is like, try a drive around some dodge part of Colombia with goverment plates for day. Its always the same, scared to go that one step beyond.
posted by monkeyJuice at 8:13 AM on August 1, 2002

Blind fear is one of the main elements of kidnapping and once you've gotten over the initial surprise of having a dark sack thrown over your head and pushed into a blacked out van, you'll suddenly remember/realize that this is what you paid x-amount of dollars for.

But what if you had scheduled a fake kidnapping and then a real one happened in the interim time? Would you recognize it? I know, only on TV...
posted by insomnyuk at 8:38 AM on August 1, 2002

This smells to me like a spoof. The instigator is an artist and I suspect that the project is to get the media to swallow it whole, which the BBC certainly did this morning.
And do you really believe Jason has gone through it three times?
posted by rolo at 11:13 AM on August 1, 2002

Oh dear god, I went to high school with this Brock (nee Conrad) Enright and now he's everywhere. I agree with Rolo that it's probably a sham, and not a very inventive one. But for all the publicity he gets and I don't, maybe I should have given him that likenote in 1995.
posted by juniper at 4:00 PM on August 1, 2002