The Man Who Shocked The World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
There’s nothing that isn’t fascinating about The Milgram Experiment, therefore there’s nothing that isn’t fascinating about its creator, Stanley Milgram. Hence, Dr. Thomas Blass’ recent straightforward biography, while not exactly a thrilling beach read, is indeed quite fascinating. All of its damning conclusions are on display. “The Banality of Evil” as Hannah Arendt put it — or Auschwitz in New Haven, if you want to go that route.
The minutiae of every step of Milgram’s long march to his post-doctoral degree is a bit tedious in the specifics, but I love a world where a dude like this can get through life without having a day job. Basically, Milgram spent his life pushing people’s buttons to see what made them tick. He’d send his grad students on the subway to see how many of them would give up their seat for no real reason other than just asking. He’d leave “dropped letters” to places like Planned Parenthood in notably conservative areas to see how many passersby would assist in getting them in the mailbox. (He also spend many years on a series of experiments that seem kinda pointless to me — proving that people are more familiar with busier parts of town than others. . .or something.) He’d also take psylocibin and see how it affected his appreciation of Gaugin.
His famous experiment on Obedience is the thing that made him, though. So much there was a TV film starring William Shatner about it!!! Alas, the one dumb thing Milgram did was nix Peter Gabriel’s request to allow a song cycle on “Obedience” featuring audio clips for sound beds and test images for the album cover. Oh, man, would that have been cool! Instead all we get is the album-filler track “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)” from So.
A Scottish art group re-enacted “The Milgram Experiment” recently. They dug up some early 60s looking glasses, haircuts and furniture and really went to town. I must admit, the kitsch factor of a bearded prof. straight out of The Twilight Zone or early Cronenberg really turns me on. I think a remake of that Shatner flick might be in order.
[...] In a case of bizzare synchronicity “Das Experiment” worked its way up my Netflix Queue and arrived just as I finished reading Thomas Blass’ bio of Stanley Milgram. Milgram and his historic experiment on obedience were a direct influence on Philip Zimbardo and his notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “Das Experiment” is a fictionalized version of the events of Stanford. Whereas Zimbardo had the sense to pull the plug after a few days, “Das Experiment” sees the premise through to its conceivable, tragic (and cinematic!) conclusion. “Das Experiment” is certainly a voyeruristic joyride — and the production design is absolutely fabulous! — but I must charge Hirschbiegel with sacrificing psychological insight for the sake of action-adventure sequences. Put bluntly, we never get a chance to learn what “The Experiment” wants. The compliant prisoners are motivated by a paycheck, and the guards’ transformation from average Joe to bullying bastards, while we may fool ourselves into thinking this far-fetched, has precedence from Stanford all the way to Abu Ghraib. I just wish I knew more about these omnipitent tinkerers who set the scenario up. What are they looking for? What are they learning? What, by extension, is the lesson of this film, other than “sometimes people are dicks”? The biggest problem with the film, though, is the dopey love story, so obviously tacked on to please some financial exec. How the hell did that get past script stage? [...]
Pingback by Jordan Hoffman Dot Com » Das Experiment (2001), Oliver Hirschbiegel, B+ — March 8, 2007 @ 11:52 am
[...] A disturbing and fascinating short documentary that, in an alternative universe, would be at the center of a major debate concerning aesthetics vs. ethics. We hear and see the journal entries and photos of a grunt soldier at his mundane tasks. He complains about the food, gripes about the weather, commits the occasional crime against humanity. Between his expressions of blind/bland patriotism and his yearnings for left behind love there are summary executions, annoying train cargoes en route to “special treatment,” pesky prisoners that are easier to shoot than process. Boy, the coffee in the army sucks, but it’s good to know that we’re fighting for the Fatherland — can’t wait ’til I’m done here and can go back. The diaries of “Gerhard M.” could be exhibit A in defending the theories of Stanley Milgram. [...]
Pingback by Jordan Hoffman Dot Com » Amateur Photographer (2007), Irina Gedrovich, B+ — March 26, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
[...] Malick’s film, to me, is about the war between man and nature. Changes to the physical world around him, yes, but also man’s innate nature to want to do good and pressures forcing him to do otherwse. Stanley Milgram would have had a field day with this movie. A righteous, perhaps overly sensitive man refuses to send men to a futile death, but changes his mind when he’s confronted with the prospect of: getting yelled at. These are the powerful decisions in the human world – Malick contrasts this with the vines, birds and beasts of the jungle. Which system is “right”? [...]
Pingback by Jordan Hoffman Dot Com » The Thin Red Line (1998), Terrence Malick, A — November 4, 2007 @ 11:03 am