rdnyscott

I loved this movie for how surprisingly fair it was to both political parties, which is a very refreshing change from Hollywood. Amazingly, this is the most positive portrayal of conservatives in a film released during the past 2 decades, simply because the protagonist is smarter than she seems, yet it still has a "Planet of The Apes" feel when the conservatives are up against the elitist liberals. I don't want this review to be hidden due to spoilers, so I'm keeping details slim, but the movie makers actually did drop enough hints to fully confirm who is a leftist spy and who is not. Further, it's hard to imagine Crystal would so competently navigate Manorgate if she truly had no prior knowledge about it, as she claims. In one scene, Crystal's suspicions are aroused merely because she is questioned about her behavior before she arrived. In wars this bloody, people on both sides likely would lie to eachother if that lie might, for instance, get their opponent to put their gun away, or get their opponent to call somebody who might help them.

The movie reminds me a bit of "The Paper Chase", except that movie seemed to argue that law students SHOULD be degraded, while this movie argues that hard felons at San Quentin should NOT be (though they still seem to agree that college students should be). I had read that this experiment was halted early due to revolts, but my psych textbook never mentioned that prisoners were sleep deprived to do push-ups and jumping jacks. That will cause anyone to revolt and, naturally, doesn't happen in actual prisons. However, anyone who truly is concerned can watch several documentaries about San Quentin on youtube. Considering every prisoner needs a violent act on their resume merely to enter, it should come as no surprise that San Quentin's prisoners don't always cooperate, and it makes little sense to suspect the prison guards are suddenly the ones causing problems.

However, most reviewers managed to review the movie instead of the experiment. I was initially going to criticize the movie, fully suspecting this could not be how the experiment went, but Zimbardo openly admits this is exactly what he did. To Zimbardo's credit, even the Unabomber might have been driven insane by an abusive psychology experiment he participated in at Harvard, so mistreating college kids seemed to be the sport at the time he conducted this experiment. Because Zimbardo argues that people in authority should not be cruel, he is probably not personally a sadist, but he might benefit from spending some time as a prison guard. Sure, you'll yell a lot, but it's because you're scared... too scared to be getting an authority kick. His primary consultant on the study was an armed robber who thinks "monster" describes the guy who wouldn't free him early due to fears he wasn't remorseful enough not to repeat his crimes. Zimbardo should have balanced that feedback with somebody who was paroled early due to good behavior. Did the parolee consider guards to be the bigger threat, or their fellow prisoners? Sadists typically aren't looking to wield their authority in a place where they are likely to get shanked. They prefer elementary schools, judicial benches or, as Zimbardo demonstrates, top colleges, where nobody dares to question them.