Christensen: French ‘game show’ a chilling remake that tests our boundaries

In “Le jeu de la mort,” or “The Game of Death,” French documentary… In “Le jeu de la mort,” or “The Game of Death,” French documentary filmmakers managed to replicate Stanley Milgram’s famous psychological experiment. Producers told dozens of people that they were taking part in the pilot for a new game show called “Zone Xtreme” and convinced them to administer what appeared to be strong electric shocks to a fellow contestant. The documentary was shot last year and broadcast last week.

Hardly a harmless game show, the documentary is an indication that the glamour of celebrity and pressure of a TV show can alter typical behavior — in this case, it increases the likeliness of participants to inflict physical harm on other participants. It chillingly shows what pains we’ll go to in the name of entertainment and how influential the camera lens can be. Participants received no financial incentive to apply the shocks.

Only 16 out of 69 participants refused to push levers delivering a 460-volt “shock.” People who asked the show’s host to allow them to stop were easily persuaded to continue. It seems the TV camera held enough pervasive power to compromise morality.

In the original experiment, conducted in the 1960’s by Yale researchers, subjects were told they were participating in a memory study. They were instructed to administer electric shocks to someone in a different room if the person gave an incorrect answer to a question. After the “learner” stopped responding, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on him. But with a series of verbal prompts, 65 percent of the participants continued on to administer the final 450-volt shock.

The recent experiment is even more sinister than Milgram’s because it introduces the element of television. The participants knew that they were being observed by hundreds, possibly thousands, of viewers but chose to administer the shocks anyway. It seems this factor alone should have provided more incentive to stop. Taken out of the laboratory setting, the orders were carried out for spectacle, not science.

In the Milgram experiment, the scientists’ white lab coats, assumed intelligence and authority contributed to the participants’ faith that the experiment was for the greater good. The experiment was devised to test whether or not the very many accomplices of the Holocaust may have aided in atrocities largely because of the tremendous power of authority. A television camera’s persuasive power is perhaps more subtle, but it certainly is an influential device.

Milgram attributed the participants’ compliance in his experiment to fulfilling the authority figure’s expectations. In his 1974 book “Obedience to Authority,” Milgram wrote that the participants’ moral concerns shift — in standards of conscience — to considering how well they are performing the mission assigned to them. Similar to a soldier bombing a village in wartime, the participant felt shame or guilt depending on how well he performed the task, disregarding the people he might have harmed.

In this case, it appears the authority figure was entertainment, as well as the cues provided by the host. Fulfilling entertainment’s expectations brings up new moral questions than the traditional examples of wartime behaviors. It suggests that participants could be persuaded torture can be done in good fun — that pain can be inflicted to satisfy an audience’s pressurizing expectations.

One anonymous participant told the international news program “France 24” that he was motivated by the context presented by the show. “The cameras, the atmosphere, being on stage, the subject and the place […] It’s one big package and it affects your personality. The machine definitely has a tight grip.” He pulled the lever in order to give the audience the good show he thought they deserved.

Still, part of me believes that the participants had confidence that the electric shocks were not real. Like America, France has a genre of television programs that play pranks on participants. There’s a French basic equivalent of “Punk’d” called “N’Importe Qui” (“anyone, no matter who”). It’s feasible that the participants were naturally convinced that everything would turn out all right in the end.

When people are in front of television cameras, it’s possible they already suspect a hoax. After all, any lack of faith in the television producers turned out to be justified — they weren’t administering life-threatening shocks. The tortured participant was an actor.

Nevertheless, the Orwellian nature of the experiment and the participants’ compliance in entertaining an unseen audience raises important, unsettling questions about moral culpability. Are people willing to do whatever it takes to put on a spectacle?

Reality shows and game shows have featured participants in some zany and pressing scenarios before  — but in this case we’ve seen a new, low level of moral fiber when people are willing to administer torture in the name of entertainment.

E-mail Caitlyn at cac141@pitt.edu.