Stephen Black wrote:
> On 27 Aug 2003, Christopher D. Green wrote:
>
> > I just saw a movie that I think many of you going to want to have a
> > look at. It is called "The Experiment" -- in German with subtitles --
> > and is a fictionalized account of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment.
>
> I recalled that Zimbardo wasn't too happy with the depiction, and it
> didn't take me long to find where he said it. He complained, for
> example, that "It makes Stanford and me and psychology look bad". As
> for wanting to have a look at it, from the description and Zimbardo's
> comments, it seems to contain sufficient gratuitous violence that I
> will certainly pass it up. See
> http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar02/filmcritic.html
>
It has some violence, but far less that many, many popular US-made films.
Besides, is the proper reaction to something one thinks one won't like to
ignore it, or to experience it and (1) see if one was right, (2) learn enough
about it that one can make a reasoned criticism.
Zimbardo says in the article you cite:
"What's wrong is they are masquerading the movie as a documentary of a
real-life experiment with real people at Stanford University,"
Well, he's simply wrong about this (not to mention overly-touchy). There is no
pretense to being a documentary. It does say it was "inspired" by the prison
experiment at the beginning (in the non-US version -- Stanford had the words
removed from the US release), but that's hardly a claim to strong
verisimilitude. No doubt, some people will assume that it is true in every
detail, but they are simply foolish and should be educated about the
difference between documentaries and fictional films loosely based on real
events. Are we supposed to suppress everything that takes some artistic
license in order to explore a broader issue ("Camelot," say?)? It might have
been nice if there had been a disclaimer at the end saying that no one was
actually killed or injured in the real experiment, but I hardly think that is
decisive. In any case, apparently unbeknownst to Zimbardo, the movie is based
on the plot of a novel of the same name.
Regards,
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M3J 1P3
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164
fax: 416-736-5814
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
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