Experiment

Rating: 80%


(https://rg83.wordpress.com)

Also Known As:

Version:

Languages:

Length:

114 minutes: Uncut

Review Format:

DVD

Year:

2000

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Thriller

Director:

Outstanding Performances:

Premiss:

For two weeks, 20 male participants are hired to play prisoners and guards in a prison. The “prisoners” have to follow seemingly mild rules, and the “guards” are told to retain order without using physical violence.

Themes:

Alienation | Christianity | Compassion | Courage | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Erotophobia | Friendship | Gynophobia | Individualism | Loneliness | Materialism | Narcissism | Personal | Political | Political Correctness | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Science | Self-Esteem | Sexism | Sexual Repression | Solipsism | Stereotyping | White culture | White supremacy

Similar to:

Nowt Queer as White Folk

Summary: Behind the thin veneer of Western Civilization lies madness.

Interesting movie about how institutionalized Whites are behind the façade of their civilization which, when dropped, reveals all the emotions they seek to repress in order to give the (false) impression that they are, in fact, civilized.

Where it fails is in this Stanfordesque experiment not making much sense.

There is no use of single- or double-blind testing to ensure an objective analysis of objective results. All the test subjects know they are test subjects, so much of their behavior becomes inexplicable. As with the children in Lord of the Flies, the adults here behave in a non-cooperative manner that cannot serve any real purpose; while also ensuring they are not likely to be paid for their involvement. What is such an experiment designed to prove? We are never told. Worse, are all Whites like this?

The characterization here also fails somewhat because we do not see a full range of personality types, in depth, while time is wasted setting-up the scenario to make it as convincing as possible when, in fact, this time gives us pause to spend much time considering its very plausibility.

The Milgram experiment was a far superior means of determining how bloodthirsty Whites are - and of how bloodthirsty Whites want to prove human nature to be to justify their blood-filled history. The subjects were unaware that they were subjects, so were compelled by their ignorance to face the morality of their life-or-death situation.

Here, no such lack of awareness can ever really take place since the subjects are completely aware that it is nothing more than a psychological game; an experiment. Thus, the drama is a weakened metaphor for Abu Ghraib or Auschwitz - although a good example of what happens when bad people are given a uniform and a police baton

It is as a prison picture that this movie presents a suspenseful and entertaining look at trying to keep order within a regimented system as a form of punishment; suggesting quite clearly that Western prisons possess little, or no, deterrent effect upon convicts - especially when petty rules are enforced in a heavy-handed manner. Here, the predictable physical violence - after the failure of the psychological kind - is inevitable.

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