This movie never happened… but everyone remembers it!

Do you remember that movie from the 90s called Shazaam ? It featured an insatiable genius trying to grant the wishes of two children, and was played by stand-up actor David Adkins, aka Sinbad (Meteor Man, Toy Racer)… doesn’t that tell you anything? So you’re not one of the hundreds of movie buffs who can confirm the existence of this childhood trash… Not Found!

Shared movie memory

Over the past few days, the internet has been on fire about this collective memory being questioned. A memory from a few years ago, but recently Brought to life by The Newstatesman, which features the testimony of a video club employee who is very attached to a cassette he has had the opportunity to watch several times and can’t find anywhere. With the same amazement, hundreds of unrelated Internet users also confirm the existence of this work, which they all summarize in the same way and which they all associate with a similar poster: purple in yellow letters. Some let A Reddit thread to solve the mystery of her disappearance…or lack thereof. Because in addition to Shazaam not being mentioned anywhere, it is first and foremost clearly denied by its so-called main translator, who openly mocked his imaginary audience on Twitter:

“Have you noticed that nobody my age remembers the so-called Sinbad the Genie movie – except you who were kids in the 1990s. Ah, kids!”

Of course, but how can this collective memory be explained? Has the internet confused Shazaam with Kazaam, the 90s comedy in which a genius is played by basketball player Shaquille O’Neal? The poster is purple, the letters are almost yellow… “No!”Protests one of the interested parties. “It’s making me dizzy…I specifically remember watching this movie and I didn’t care for the one with Shaq at all because it was like ‘they copied the original with Sinbad’. J My head is spinning…”

An exemplary case of false memory

The persistence of the testimonies and the accuracy of the associated memory is reminiscent of the famous “Mandela effect”, the name. Fiona Broome A phenomenon in which many people claim to remember events that never happened. A phenomenon that he himself experienced on the death of the so-called Nelson Mandela in 1980 (and not in 2013), as well as many Internet users, because he was convinced of the existence of a parallel reality in which events that do not agree with reality take place. .

According to a researcher interviewed by the Newstatesman, this is quite an example “Social Contagion of Memory” or “Memory Relevance”. Freud’s psychoanalysis already expressed this in relation to the concept of “screen memories”, evidence of a process of repression characteristic of childhood, which involves the production of false memories, the mixing of vivid details and reconstructive elements. Not only could these memories be disguised individually, but they could also be disseminated socially.

To wrap up this story, magical in more ways than one, Sinbad finally played a famous genius—proving the immense power of the Internet in terms of contagious suggestion—but in a 2017 short parody for CollegeHumor Originals: April Fool’s, who claimed to have found the controversial movie! From fiction to reality and vice versa is just one step…

Shazam or Shazam?

But the story doesn’t end there, and with Sinbad we almost got our hands on the real Shazam… We’re talking about Shazam, with one “A” this time, the DC superhero played by Zachary Levi. In a recent video posted on Twitter, the director of both parts of the saga, David F. Sandberg revealed that Sinbad was originally supposed to appear in Shazam! Anger of the Gods. After the famous “Mandela effect”, Sandberg said to herself that the inclusion of the actress in a real-life movie called Shazam “could be good”. Unfortunately, Sinbad had to leave the film due to health problems.

In the same video, David F. Sandberg admits that she asked Shaquille O’Neal to appear in the film instead of Sinbad, just to talk about his role in Kazaam. It didn’t happen again, the basketball player had to withdraw from the project due to lack of time. In the end, none of the stars appeared in the film, but maybe one day the dream will come true: after all, you should never say never…