Das Experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel

I saw a rather interesting film the other day on the Independent Film Channel -- Das Experiment ["The Experiment"] -- the feature film debut of German TV director Oliver Hirschbiegel. Made in 2001, it was based on the novel Black Box by Mario Giordano, which in turn was loosely based on the original "Stanford Prison Experiment", a psychological experiment that took place at Stanford University in 1971 under the direction of Prof. Philip Zimbardo, investigating "he power of roles, rules, symbols, group identity and situational validation of behavior that would repulse ordinary individuals":

[The Stanford Prison Experiment] offered the world a videotaped demonstration of how ordinary people ­ middle-class college students ­ can do things they would have never believed they were capable of doing. It seemed to say, as Hannah Arendt said of Adolf Eichmann, that normal people can take ghastly actions.

Details of the experiment are well known. . . . In summary:

On Sunday morning, Aug., 17, 1971, nine young men were "arrested" in their homes by Palo Alto police. At least one of those arrested vividly remembers the shock of having his neighbors come out to watch the commotion as TV cameras recorded his hand-cuffing for the nightly news.

The arrestees were among about 70 young men, mostly college students eager to earn $15 a day for two weeks, who volunteered as subjects for an experiment on prison life that had been advertised in the Palo Alto Times. After interviews and a battery of psychological tests, the two dozen judged to be the most normal, average and healthy were selected to participate, assigned randomly either to be guards or prisoners. Those who would be prisoners were booked at a real jail, then blindfolded and driven to campus where they were led into a makeshift prison in the basement of Jordan Hall.

Those assigned to be guards were given uniforms and instructed that they were not to use violence but that their job was to maintain control of the prison.

From the perspective of the researchers, the experiment became exciting on day two when the prisoners staged a revolt. Once the guards had crushed the rebellion, "they steadily increased their coercive aggression tactics, humiliation and dehumanization of the prisoners," Zimbardo recalls. "The staff had to frequently remind the guards to refrain from such tactics," he said, and the worst instances of abuse occurred in the middle of the night when the guards thought the staff was not watching. The guards' treatment of the prisoners ­ such things as forcing them to clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands and act out degrading scenarios, or urging them to become snitches ­ "resulted in extreme stress reactions that forced us to release five prisoners, one a day, prematurely."

Source: "The Stanford Prison Experiment: Still powerful after all these years", by Kathleen O’Toole.

Das Experiment mimics The Stanford Prison Experiment to some degree. Despite it's heightening of the action and clearly exaggerated ending (nobody was kidnapped, raped, or died at Stanford) it comes across as believable and made for a captivating two hours. However, according to Meredith Alexander (article noted below), the movie's fictional exaggerations were lost on the German audience, and Prof. Zimbardo was the recipient of "hundreds of e-mails from Germans asking how he could have allowed such things to happen." In return, Zimbardo, who was never informed of the movie's production, fought to have distribution of Das Experiment blocked in the United States, and is "negotiating for an American made-for-TV movie" to tell his version of events.

Those who found the movie intriguing might enjoy perusing the official website of The Stanford Prison Experiment. The scandalous incidents of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib have instigated a renewal of interest in The Experiment, and the website has been conveniently updated to address the parallels.

Additional links:

• "Situationist Ethics", by William Saletan, disputing the comparisons btw/ the SPE and Abu Ghraib. Slate May 12, 2004.
• "Thirty years later, Stanford Prison Experiment lives on", by Meredith Alexander. A detailed article on the experient and Zimbardo's reactions to the German film.
• Das Interviews with Star Moritz Bleibtreu and Director Oliver Hirschbiegel (AboutFilm.com).