The Anger Just Beneath The Surface

In a stunning modern update of the famous Milgram Experiment, a French documentary maker captured a disturbing experiment set up as a reality TV game show where the contestants were encouraged to "torture" an actor who missed quiz show questions.

The fictitious game show had all the trappings of a real TV quiz show, including a beautiful and well-known hostess, and a raucous audience. A group of contestants posed questions to a man sitting inside a box in front of them in an electric chair.

The hostess and a chanting audience urged the players — who had levers in front of them — to send jolts of electricity into the man in the box when he gave an incorrect answer.

Even when the player screamed out in pain for them to stop, 80 percent of the contestants kept zapping him. In reality, the man in the electric chair was an actor who wasn't really being shocked — but the players and the audience did not know that.

The documentary makers say reality television relies increasingly on violent, humiliating and cruel acts to boost ratings. They say they simply wanted to see if we would go so far as to kill someone for entertainment.

Christophe Nick produced the documentary, The Game of Death, with a group of scientists and researchers.

"Most of us think we have free thinking and so we are responsible for our acts," Nick says. "This experience shows that in certain circumstances, a power — the TV in this case — is able to make you do something you don't want to do."

The idea that something deeply rooted in the human psyche makes most of us unable to resist authority is not new. The French documentary was based on an American experiment carried out in the 1960s by psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Milgram had participants delivering what they believed were electric shocks to a man every time he answered a question incorrectly. In that experiment, 60 percent of participants obeyed the sadistic orders until the end.

The French documentary, which was broadcast in France on Wednesday night, included footage of the Milgram experiment.

Sociologist Jean Claude Kaufmann says the French version combines Milgram's use of authority with the power of live television. He says the result in the French experiment — a higher percentage of participants willing to shock the subject — shows that the manipulative power of television further increases people's willingness to obey. 

If you're wondering why Americans so willingly supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and turned a blind eye to the killings we continue to perpetrate there, if you wonder why the Bush administration was obsessed in controlling the media by giving gravitas and access to Fox News, and Fox News in turn relaying the authoritative decrees that the Cheney media shops wanted you to hear, if you wonder why we turned into lemmings after 9/11 and a man like Bush gained a 90% approval rating, if you wonder how this country turned into a bloodthirsty mob over the last ten years...

Keep that phrase in mind.  "The manipulative power of television further increases people's willingness to obey."  Does a pretty good job of explaining how we got here over the last decade, doesn't it?