Exhibit A:
“The question Milgram sought to answer was very simple. What proportion of normal people would continue administering shocks up to the full lethal voltage? What proportion would act as if to kill an innocent person for no better reason than $4.50 and that they were told to by a psychology professor?” (emphasis added)
…
“Before he released his results, Milgram asked a group of psychiatrists what proportion they thought would administer lethal dosages. What did these ‘experts in people’ think? They thought that only one person in a thousand – a ‘psychotic minority’ of 0.125 per cent – would deliver lethal shocks.” The real proportion was 65 per cent. (from The Ecologist, Vol 33 No 5 – June 2003)
Exhibit B:
“In 1971 researchers at Stanford University created a simulated prison in the basement of the campus psychology building. They randomly assigned 24 students to be either prison guards or prisoners for two weeks.
“Within days the “guards” had become swaggering and sadistic, to the point of placing bags over the prisoners’ heads, forcing them to strip naked and encouraging them to perform sexual acts.” (from The New York Times)
Exhibit C:
No, the point isn’t that humans are fundamentally evil, or even that some humans are; the point is, while it’s crass and horrendous to expect something like the Abu Ghraib torturings to occur, it’s also dangerous to assume that it’s the result of either monstrous people or extraordinary circumstances.
(via the Ecologist: “Would you kill for £3?” by Tom Stafford [June 2003]; NYT: “Simulated Prison in ’71 Showed a Fine Line Between Normal and Monster” by John Schwartz [May 6, 2004]; and Washington Post: “The Iraqi Prisoners Controversy”)
Review: What ‘Heaven’ most feels like is an incomplete, rough draft of a screenplay that’s given full production by a loving cast and crew; the result is stunning scenes that act as a backdrop to poorly drawn characters (acted as well as could possibly be expected by the cast), a questionable plot, and dubious dialogue. It’s watchable, and interesting, but you can’t help but feel that it could have been so much better. The plot is largely transparent—you can see exactly where it’s going—and, more often than not, you get to the destination with much less plot development than you’d expect. The result is like a daydream, everything unfolding in an offhanded, distracted way. Which isn’t by itself a bad thing, but I couldn’t help but feel that there was a much, much better movie lurking below the surface, if only the plot had been fleshed out more, etc., etc., etc. This movie is maybe somewhat original, and there are parts that are actually pretty good, but as a whole it falls far below the level of Tykwer’s ‘Lola Rennt’ and ‘Der Krieger und die Kaiserin.’
