Our Common Nature #4
Hi everybody, Mary here.
So, here's the fourth post in the Our Common Nature series, and after having introduced a couple of elementary notions, it's time to actually see the impacts of the theories on reality. So, what about comparing these theories to their applications in movies ?
(I heavily advise you to watch those movies before reading these posts, as they will be filled with spoilers. Beware, then, if you are willing to read those.)
Anyways, here's the first movie we will be discussing about !
As seen in the movie... I, as in Icarus
So, the movie I, as in Icarus, is a French movie made in 1979, by Henri Verneuil, featuring Yves Montand as the leading role of Henri Volney.
The story involves a fictional country, however looking like the United States (with the dollar as a currency, the buildings, etc...). In the beginning, the president Marc Jarry, freshly re-elected, is killed by a headshot while going around in a car (in a JFK-esque way, which also the movie as a conspirationist theory of his assassination).
An investigation is then opened in order to see what caused the murder. One year later, the investigation, opened by the "High Commander of Justice" (sorry if that doesn't translate the concept quite well), Frédéric Heiniger, declares one single shooter, Karl-Erich Daslow. This man, shown as a madman, is accused of the murder, and since he's dead, he can't defend himself.
However, Henri Volney, a "High Attorney", doesn't agree with this accusation. Since the laws (very conveniently) say that if a member of the High Council doesn't agree with its decision, it can re-open the case on their own, Volney starts working and tries to find the truth.
Eventually, he finds out a secret tie between the Secret Services, killed witnesses (eight out of nine, the remaining one being a man called Franck Bellony), and how people don't want him to talk about the truth.
How the government is corrupted, trying to place a dictator in a foreign country and how Marc Jarry was killed by another man called Carlos de Palma, and the symbolic ending with Volney being killed as his ex-wife is explaining to him the Icarus myth (too close to the truth = the sun, you die !!!) isn't the point we'll be discussing today. The point is the psychological experiment introduced in this movie.
Stanley Milgram's experiment is an experiment that shows how blindly people follow orders when given such by an authority they legitimised. Two people are presented in a lab by a scientist, with a simulation on how "punishments can improve, or not, the quality of leaning".
They choose a piece of paper between two, one being the teacher and the other one being the pupil. The pupil then sits on an electric chair and has to learn 30 associations of words and adjectives in one minute. Then, the teacher asks the adjective associated with one of the words. If the pupil answers wrong, the teacher administrates an electric shock. The more mistakes the pupil gets, the higher the shock will be. Starting from 15 volts, it can go up to 450 volts, and ultimately, cause extreme pain for the pupil, if not death.
Crazy isn't it ?
Don't worry. This experiment is fake anyways ! Actually, one of the supposed people is an actor working with the scientist. The two papers are marked "teacher" and the actor is supposed to pretend they got pupil all the time. The electric chair doesn't work. What is analysed here isn't whether the pupil gets the answers right when electrocuted, but how far will the teacher go to follow the authority of the scientist.
Basically, it's a "how far will you torture for me because I'm the authority" test.
Whether in this movie or in reality, the absurdity is clear : you'd NEVER hit someone who hasn't done anything wrong, right ? You'd never electrocute an innocent person.
WRONG.
When first conducted between 1960 and 1963, 62,5% of the teachers went to the maximum level of 450 volts. When asked to explain their behaviour, the only responses were about how they didn't want to hurt anyone in the first place, but the authority and the fact that they were exempt of any responsibility for what they were doing.
Daslow, in the movie, just answered that it was because of the authority that he went up to 405 volts. The, he stopped, but he said that authority is authority and he'd listen to anyone who would have a legitimate authority.
Hence the false shooting made by him. He just listened to the authority, after all.
Don't you think how crazy it is that we can basically torture, or even kill a man, just because we've been given he order to do so ?
Further information can be found in the French documentary called Le Jeu de la Mort (2010). It's a little but different from the original Milgram experiment, but it's still relevant. In this version of the experiment, we are wondering if we could kill in television and stil get away with it. The candidates were introduced with a game called La Zone Xtrême, where the pupil would learn 30 associations of words and adjectives. Unlike the original experiment, the pupil had he choice between four possible answers. The teacher is on a set with a public, and would have the control panel that had been revamped for the occasion. It was introduced as the experiment of a game where, if you went until the end, the teacher would earn 100,000 euros and the pupil 900,000 euros, because of the risks taken. Even if the money was fictitious and the candidates, given nothing but money for the transportation, 81% of the candidates went until the end.
81%. That's WAY too much for people who claim they wouldn't hurt anyone.
Pressure of money (even fictitious ?), the power of the media (15% of the candidates saying that television would never let them hurt anyone for real), the power of the audience that is a supposed "additional" authority to the show host ?
Can we kill on television and get away with it ?
What are the limits of authority ? What can it make us do ? Apparently, anything. And they'd still get away with it.
Okay, that's it for now ! As usual, please correct my eventual mistakes and inaccuracies and I'll see you very soon with the next post !
And as usual, our last word : KIDNEYS !
The story involves a fictional country, however looking like the United States (with the dollar as a currency, the buildings, etc...). In the beginning, the president Marc Jarry, freshly re-elected, is killed by a headshot while going around in a car (in a JFK-esque way, which also the movie as a conspirationist theory of his assassination).
An investigation is then opened in order to see what caused the murder. One year later, the investigation, opened by the "High Commander of Justice" (sorry if that doesn't translate the concept quite well), Frédéric Heiniger, declares one single shooter, Karl-Erich Daslow. This man, shown as a madman, is accused of the murder, and since he's dead, he can't defend himself.
However, Henri Volney, a "High Attorney", doesn't agree with this accusation. Since the laws (very conveniently) say that if a member of the High Council doesn't agree with its decision, it can re-open the case on their own, Volney starts working and tries to find the truth.
Eventually, he finds out a secret tie between the Secret Services, killed witnesses (eight out of nine, the remaining one being a man called Franck Bellony), and how people don't want him to talk about the truth.
How the government is corrupted, trying to place a dictator in a foreign country and how Marc Jarry was killed by another man called Carlos de Palma, and the symbolic ending with Volney being killed as his ex-wife is explaining to him the Icarus myth (too close to the truth = the sun, you die !!!) isn't the point we'll be discussing today. The point is the psychological experiment introduced in this movie.
Stanley Milgram's experiment is an experiment that shows how blindly people follow orders when given such by an authority they legitimised. Two people are presented in a lab by a scientist, with a simulation on how "punishments can improve, or not, the quality of leaning".
They choose a piece of paper between two, one being the teacher and the other one being the pupil. The pupil then sits on an electric chair and has to learn 30 associations of words and adjectives in one minute. Then, the teacher asks the adjective associated with one of the words. If the pupil answers wrong, the teacher administrates an electric shock. The more mistakes the pupil gets, the higher the shock will be. Starting from 15 volts, it can go up to 450 volts, and ultimately, cause extreme pain for the pupil, if not death.
Crazy isn't it ?
Don't worry. This experiment is fake anyways ! Actually, one of the supposed people is an actor working with the scientist. The two papers are marked "teacher" and the actor is supposed to pretend they got pupil all the time. The electric chair doesn't work. What is analysed here isn't whether the pupil gets the answers right when electrocuted, but how far will the teacher go to follow the authority of the scientist.
Basically, it's a "how far will you torture for me because I'm the authority" test.
Whether in this movie or in reality, the absurdity is clear : you'd NEVER hit someone who hasn't done anything wrong, right ? You'd never electrocute an innocent person.
WRONG.
When first conducted between 1960 and 1963, 62,5% of the teachers went to the maximum level of 450 volts. When asked to explain their behaviour, the only responses were about how they didn't want to hurt anyone in the first place, but the authority and the fact that they were exempt of any responsibility for what they were doing.
Daslow, in the movie, just answered that it was because of the authority that he went up to 405 volts. The, he stopped, but he said that authority is authority and he'd listen to anyone who would have a legitimate authority.
Hence the false shooting made by him. He just listened to the authority, after all.
Don't you think how crazy it is that we can basically torture, or even kill a man, just because we've been given he order to do so ?
Further information can be found in the French documentary called Le Jeu de la Mort (2010). It's a little but different from the original Milgram experiment, but it's still relevant. In this version of the experiment, we are wondering if we could kill in television and stil get away with it. The candidates were introduced with a game called La Zone Xtrême, where the pupil would learn 30 associations of words and adjectives. Unlike the original experiment, the pupil had he choice between four possible answers. The teacher is on a set with a public, and would have the control panel that had been revamped for the occasion. It was introduced as the experiment of a game where, if you went until the end, the teacher would earn 100,000 euros and the pupil 900,000 euros, because of the risks taken. Even if the money was fictitious and the candidates, given nothing but money for the transportation, 81% of the candidates went until the end.
81%. That's WAY too much for people who claim they wouldn't hurt anyone.
Pressure of money (even fictitious ?), the power of the media (15% of the candidates saying that television would never let them hurt anyone for real), the power of the audience that is a supposed "additional" authority to the show host ?
Can we kill on television and get away with it ?
What are the limits of authority ? What can it make us do ? Apparently, anything. And they'd still get away with it.
Okay, that's it for now ! As usual, please correct my eventual mistakes and inaccuracies and I'll see you very soon with the next post !
And as usual, our last word : KIDNEYS !
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