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A
GERMAN FILM EXPOSES CLOSET NAZIS, THANKS TO YALE & STANFORD
EXPERIMENTERS
 Why
did so many ordinary Germans support Hitler and the Nazi persecution
of the Jews? For some researchers, the explanation is rooted
in personality factors resulting from childhood socialization.
Social psychologist Kurt Lewin, in contrast, theorized that
political and social forces impinging upon people override
socialization differences. In the 1960s, Yale psychologist
Stanley Milgram tested Lewin's theory, finding that experimental
subjects blindly followed instructions from a professor to
inflict what they thought was a severe electric shock on subjects
in another room (though no such electric shock actually occurred).
In 1971, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo set up an experiment
in which some subjects were prison guards, others were prisoners,
again to see whether situational factors would prevail over
socialization factors in accounting for aggressive behavior;
although he planned a two-week study, the experiment was called
off in six days due to extreme stress on the part of many
subjects. Aware of the experiment, Mario Giordano wrote a
novel, Black Box, as an extreme fictionalization
of the Stanford experiment. The film Das Experiment,
directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, brings the novel and the
experiment to the screen. The protagonist in the film is Tarek
Fahd (played by Moritz Bleibtreu), a taxidriver and former
journalist who signs up for the experiment not only to earn
the advertised 4,000 DM but also to write a news feature for
80,000 DM. Indeed, nearly all experimental volunteers are
attracted by the apparent easy money. Professor Klaus Thon
(played by Edgar Selge), principal researcher (and the film's
mad scientist) on the project, has research assistants to
maintain twenty-four hour closed-circuit surveillance. When
the experiment begins, eight subjects are chosen to be guards,
the remaining twelve are prisoners. The guards announce certain
rules, and the experiment appears at first to be a joke. The
first "misconduct" occurs when a lactose-intolerant
prisoner refuses to drink milk, despite the rule that food
at meals must be fully consumed. After some reflection, the
guards decide that the appropriate punishment is to do push-ups,
but Tarek quickly assumes leadership of the prisoners, urging
them all to do push-ups.
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The second control issue occurs when Tarek deliberately violates
rules, and a prison riot seems imminent. At this point, one
guard, Berus (played by Justus von Dohnànyi) assumes
leadership, orders the prisoners to strip, and handcuffs Tarek
to bars in a cell. Eager to assert his authority, Barus then
taunts Tarek, who obliges with misconduct, and punishments
escalate each day. Verbal humiliation does not satisfy Berus,
who moves on to restraints, and later beatings. By the fourth
day, two prisoners are hospitalized, and one is allowed to
leave the experiment. Next, the guards overpower the academics
to take full control. Berus places Tarek into a small black
box that is completely dark inside, while tape is placed over
the mouths of all other prisoners. One prisoner goes berserk,
so guards tie him up to a chair, beat him, and leave him to
die. Tarek, using a screwdriver that he somehow smuggled into
his prison garments, manages to open the black box, one of
his cellmates immobilizes a guard, Tarek gets keys from the
guard, the prisoners are released from their cells, and they
follow an escape route. The guards, led by Berus, then rush
to stop the escape. When they meet, Tarek and his cellmate,
a well-trained pilot, fight back successfully, and the ordeal
ends. Throughout the experiment, Tarek maintains his sanity
by recalling Dora (played by Maren Eggert), a woman whose
car ran into his taxi just before the experiment began whom
he took home to recover from the shock, whereupon they had
sex, and she visits him in prison. The prisoner who died,
however, had no friend on the outside. To relieve the tension
of the film, the ending features the two lovers sitting on
the beach at Zandvoort, Netherlands. Kurt Lewin's theory receives
strong support in the film, which raises the question whether
there is something inherent in human nature about the ability
of strong leaders to dominate others, with fatal consequences
for those who are weak, though the film gives little background
information about the experimenters or the guards. Personality
strength, in turn, appears to be a function of the strength
of one's friendships; the alienated will go berserk in a tense
situation, even with the support of prison buddies. Das
Experiment, thus, raises fundamental questions
about the dysfunctionality of the contemporary penal system,
in which survival requires prisoners to become more hardened,
thus promoting even more crime when prisoners are released.
Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Das
Experiment three awards--raising consciousness
for the need for greater democracy, for the need to improve
human rights, and for the imperative of finding peaceful methods
for resolving conflicts.
MH
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