Some things are hard to accept. Loss is one of them. We don’t like losing in competitions or something we like doing. People of a certain generation have mourned the loss of Blockbuster video stores, arcades, and Saturday morning cartoons. At least we still have our memories of them, right? Well that’s another issue. Memory is extremely faulty and fallible. We do’t want to admit that, which is why we have things like “Shazaam” and the Mandela Effect. They’re both ludicrous.
The ’90s Were an Interesting Time
We bring this up thanks to a recent piece from Vice. They did a pretty good breakdown on why people think that Sinbad was in a movie called “Shazaam.” The film never happened. Vice correctly points out that there was a genie movie called Kazaam starring Shaquille O’Neal. It may be more pleasant to remember a non-existent Sinbad movie than recall Shaq’s acting career. You had to live through that time period to remember when he did that movie and Steel.
Meanwhile, Sinbad was also a ubiquitous presence in the ’90s. He was in The Meteor Man, Houseguest, First Kid, Jingle All the Way, and was doing guest spots in a variety of TV shows too. We recognize Sinbad as an actor. We don’t recognize Shaq as one. And does a movie about a wise-cracking genie sound like something Sinbad would do? Of course it does. That’s part of the reason why this whole “Shazaam” thing got started. Our mind makes associations and connections based on what we know and expect. That’s one of the reasons why we can read misspelled words and not notice the misspelling unless we’re actually looking for it.
Mann Village Theatre, Westwood, CA. 12-07-06
Your Memory is Worse Than You Think
There’s also the problem of memory being terribly unreliable. Ask any attorney what the most unreliable form of evidence is and they’ll tell you it’s eye-witness testimony. We just don’t remember things as acutely as we think we do. Remember how it was mentioned earlier that people don’t like to be wrong? Well we really don’t like to be wrong about something as personal to us as our memory and recollection. To be wrong about what we remember is to bring our own sense of being into question. That’s not easy to accept. That’s where the Mandela Effect comes into play.
Some people have speculated that the Mandela Effect is evidence of parallel realities. That is ridiculously stupid. It’s evidence that some people are so terribly convinced that their memory can’t be wrong that they are literally inventing parallel realities seeping into our own to avoid being wrong. Just because multiple people believe the wrong thing doesn’t make it any better. It’s just affirmation that memory is not concrete. Often times when people talk about their first memories, they don’t actually remember it. They’ll have seen a photo or a movie of that time period and they base their memories on that. It’s the nature of our brains.
Accepting the Truth
So, no. “Shazaam” isn’t a movie that ever existed. Kazaam existed (regrettably), Sinbad existed. Those two things seems like a perfect pairing and our imperfect brains have made that perfect pairing into a reality. For some of us at least. Others of us know full well “Shazaam” never existed. We also know the world is better off because it never did. At least Houseguest had Phil Hartman.
