Michael Almereyda
Experimenter

OBEY. The central theme of this film is obedience and how this theme has been explored and analyzed through controversial behavioral experiments in the 1960s and in the years that followed. First, it must be said, before delving into the various issues presented, that the story told in the film 'Experimenter' (2015) is a true one. The American professor and psychologist Stanley Milgram really existed and conducted the experiments and studies that are the subject of this film, which we can certainly define as a biopic and which at times uses the first-person narrative formula of the protagonist, played by the talented Peter Sarsgaard.

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German paramilitary officer and one of the main representatives of the SS, responsible for the extermination of the Jews. He was tried for crimes against humanity in 1961 and subsequently sentenced to death and hanged in 1962 in a prison in Ramla, Israel. He was found by Mossad secret agents in South America, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he lived under a false name (the usual fake ID issued by the municipality of Termeno) and worked as a laborer at a Mercedes factory. His trial is perhaps the most famous of all the trials that followed World War II, concerning the SS hierarchs, not only because of his rank within the Nazi organization but also because of the answers he gave to his accusers. Eichmann indeed did not deny anything he had done and practically none of the charges against him. Still, he declared that he had acted in that way only in fulfillment of his duty, executing the orders given to him.

This was, and surely still is today, the most terrible aspect, the one that can still shock us after years when we talk about what happened in Nazi Germany and concentration camps like Auschwitz. Everyone involved in that great madness that was Hitler's Germany and the extermination of Jews was in some way not forced but followed the masses and in any case executed orders. They made a choice. Oh, naturally, this discussion could extend to other historical situations and even the present history, and if we want, why not, if we refer to our country, Italy, even to the fascist twenty-year period. Although the resistance must be recognized as a historically important reaction, and frankly, I do not underestimate it when we talk about Italy and the country's history. In the sense that if we have done something good, occasionally, it is worth acknowledging. Nevertheless, Italy was fascist for twenty years, and Italians were fascists. Somehow, even if not active supporters of the cause, they were all involved. My grandfather was the son of farmers; he fought in Greece and Albania and was a prisoner in the USA in Virginia. He never spoke about it when the war ended and until the day of his death. My grandmother went to visit him in Brindisi before his departure; she would never venture that far from home in her entire life. He ended up in the United States of America, and when he returned, it is said that he ate a pot full of pasta and beans, sitting alone at the table while the whole neighborhood gathered around because 'they wanted to see.' They wanted to be part of that moment.

But what drives a man to follow orders? Even when these orders clearly go against every moral principle and individual resistance. There is undoubtedly some animal and ancestral component that is part of human nature and is dual, has a dual value, and dual aspects to consider. This component is fear, but it is the fear of what is stronger and thus to preserve one's integrity, but likewise and above all, the fear of ending up isolated. The fear of being alone.

STANLEY MILGRAM. The psychosociologist Stanley Milgram was born in New York, USA, in 1933. He died in 1984. One of the brightest minds of his generation, Milgram was Jewish, and after graduating and obtaining a position at the prestigious Yale University, he began his initial experiments on conditioning and subject behavior in society. However, two things must be specified before proceeding. The first is that he had a long academic career as a scholar, during which he worked on other psycho-social and behavioral studies and those related to the level of adherence to orders given by an authority to an individual (although even these are treated in part in Michael Almereyda's film). The second is that this study was the central core of his research and what made him famous. But more than a real study, perhaps we could call it an 'obsession.' Probably, not that this was a decisive factor, but being Jewish and somehow more directly involved in what happened during World War II, Milgram questioned and wanted to understand at all costs and at a certain point. Even against everything and everyone, how the individual conscience worked at that moment, where orders clashed with its moral dimension and why these, as we will see, often ended up prevailing. His studies were frequently dismissed and opposed over the years. They were the subject of criticism and discussion, only to be reevaluated over time and especially in an anti-totalitarian key that helped to attack the Soviets.

But Stanley Milgram naturally conducts his studies in the USA on subjects from all possible social and cultural classes without discrimination, and in the vast majority of cases, he finds the same reaction: his 'subjects' obey what they are ordered to do. Recognized as an authority that has demonstrated its ability to give them a way to act with total legitimacy, according to the 'law,' these subjects, the 'participants' (let's call them that), blindly execute the orders. The nervous reactions varied, from those who assumed a certain satisfied aspect when carrying out the task assigned to them to those who sweated and bit their lips nervously. Finally, there were those who probably never forgot over time that they had participated in what was supposed to be just an experiment.

What did it consist of? Well, the experiment consisted of what we could call a game for three. Because three are the subjects apparently involved. The first is one of Milgram's collaborators, sitting at a desk, meticulously taking notes; the other two are actually supposed to be two volunteers who are asked to set up a play where one assumes the role of the teacher and the other that of the student. The latter would sit in a separate adjacent room, connected to a device through which the teacher was to give him increasingly strong electric shocks with each error until reaching a voltage of 450.

The 'tricks' in the game—let's call it that—are twofold. First, it obviously doesn't consist of verifying a theoretical effectiveness of electric shocks in relation to learning, as presented by Milgram's collaborators; secondly, the one acting as the student, unknowingly to the other (i.e., the teacher), is always one of Dr. Milgram's collaborators. He is not actually connected to any machine and, let’s say, 'acts' a part: he does not receive any real shock. Still, with each impulse, he would yell in pain and try in every way to show his suffering, eventually imploring the other subject to stop.

Milgram will admit to always having been fascinated and inspired by what are ‘candid cameras’. In practice, the only real subject of the experiment is the teacher, who, urged by his collaborator (who witnesses all that happens), gives questions to the 'student' and every time the latter errs, supposedly sends—at least believes to send—a progressively stronger electric shock.

The experiment, therefore, consists of studying the behavior of the 'teachers' who react differently to the subject's pain screams. They become frightened, tense, grit their teeth, are doubtful, and ask questions. Nonetheless, practically none of them ever stopped without reaching the end of the experiment, at which point they were told the true nature of the test and then asked to fill out a questionnaire.

EXPERIMENTER. Why do people, despite the screams of pain from the interrogated person, who ends up begging them to stop even though they are under no obligation and/or threat, continue with the experiment and see it through to the end? What drives a person to forget or surpass the fact of committing something criminal and atrocious? This is the question Milgram tries to answer through his experiments. A question that, in a way, will appear to remain unresolved. Or not. Perhaps the answer is so obvious yet frightening that he finally struggles to grasp and articulate it fully.

As mentioned, his studies and methods were heavily criticized and considered misleading. Moreover, during the Cold War, even using seemingly Gestapo-like practices, deemed to be used by the Soviet enemy, he challenged the American democratic system at its core, starting from the individuals, from what could be defined as ordinary people, seemingly unsuspecting people ready to commit atrocities if somehow legitimized by the 'system'. Milgram wonders what would have happened if the US government had acted like Nazi Germany. What would happen if one of our governments had the same attitude as Nazi Germany? How would we behave?

The criticisms against him were thus very weak. The examined subjects weren't exposed to any specific pressure. They were merely coldly and detachedly told and reminded that it was all part of the experiment, and when eventually asked 'why,' they seemed incapable of providing a decisive and rational answer and perhaps, even feeling ashamed of themselves, admitted that, given the circumstances, they considered it appropriate and legitimate to do so. How changeable the concept of justice is, depending on instantaneous, sudden, and contingent situations. Human beings are always called to make decisions at any moment of their lives; it's part of their nature; it’s what makes them as such, but how much weighs in these choices each conditioning, and especially what may be conditioning from above, from someone who is or appears as an institution.

Milgram himself, as mentioned, will also conduct other psycho-social experiments aimed at verifying the actions and reactions of individuals and masses under different situations. If a person stops to look up and towards a particular point and accomplices gradually join in, the phenomenon will grow even though there's nothing to see in reality. How do bus passengers react to one of them singing loudly? There are written and unwritten social rules, but what establishes them? These are evidently settled by the community in which we live, and it must be specified in this context that experiments like those conducted by Milgram in the USA and at Yale University in the 1960s, have been repeated multiple times in other parts of the world with the same methods, and until today, with similar results.

THE NEW WORLD. I previously mentioned my grandparents and briefly referenced their involvement in World War II events. A brief 'biographical' note I use merely in a instrumental way. In actuality, I never knew my grandfather, who died many years before I was born and when my father was just a boy, but frankly, I am sure he had no idea what he was really doing when departing for the war; he didn't know what he was stepping into, and perhaps didn't even conceive he could somehow oppose it; maybe he didn't even know Greece and Albania existed. This perhaps partially justifies him, partially not, but certainly, there wasn't a certain awareness then that we assume should exist today, more than seventy years after the end of World War II.

But the subjects of Milgram’s experiment instead could have been educated men who had studied. We are talking about regular people in the USA in the 1960s—New York City. Yet the film, which, I imagine, doesn't offer a dishonest reproduction of facts, doesn't report a single positive example except for an engineer who worked in electronics, and who, at one point, refused to proceed, and only because he was aware and had personally experienced how dangerous those shocks were.

As mentioned, furthermore, this experiment was repeated other times. In France, they turned it into a TV show just last decade. It was a television success, but the results were the same. In fact, people seemed to follow the TV show with great interest and supported enthusiastically whom performed the role of the 'teacher’.

Perhaps, then, it is not very useful to question the circumstances and why, in particular, the individual’s choice should focus instead on how communities function, which must be based on common sense and moral rules that always put respect and protection of others in the first place. I think of the Cucchi case and, or something equally distant (not even that far) in space as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An unresolved theme and a decayed situation where everyone feels aligned with one side rather than another, but where in view of what are real acts of terror, primarily, the violence of institutions leaves an impression. In fact, the theme might be even more currently relevant as Europe seems to be at the center of what is a large-scale terrorist attack. While this calls for security measures, there’s no doubt that this should also be considered in terms of law enforcement and intelligence agencies' approach.

But where should a change process regarding the attitude and genuine concern for others start from? I thought of something. That is, if we administered the famous questionnaire, if we sought to make the experiment’s protagonists aware beforehand, maybe things wouldn’t change at all. I realize my thought is negative, but, you see, these people acted in a particular way merely because they were told to. The free will, bless it, always holds only up to a certain point. When you are part of a community and always are unless you're Robinson Crusoe or Napoleon at Saint Helena, you act also and especially because of it. You have to. Belonging to it requires it; it's a requisite. You can’t operate outside society, but belonging to a society certainly requires rules, but these must be respectful of the individual, otherwise, we reach the point where social becomes anti-social.

Maybe demanding a strong choice from a single person would be too much and, in any case, what would it serve? The cited example of the engineer is glaring: he refused to carry on with the experiment, but we talk about a single case among hundreds. Perhaps it isn’t even a cultural issue, nor does modernity matter. We find such symptoms and behaviors in the animal world, and, if we look at human history, these behaviors have always been part of the structure of mankind. Perhaps we can't talk about degeneration in this sense but of what is a lack of education and still a lack of awareness. As if man were still devoid of true and authentic self and other awareness.

It's senseless to make such a discourse speaking of a single case and individual. Theoretically, for such cases, indeed, there should be a law that in a democratic system primarily strives to reeducate and, if possible, reintegrate the subject into society: to return him. Nazi Germany was a frightened country where every single subject deemed it necessary for self-preservation to cling to the next, and in doing so, they decided to obey any orders beyond all moral principle. I don’t believe a perfect model of society exists, but if it is not the institutions that 'can be trusted' (and distrust in institutions is a constant today in Italy and the Western world) it means the quality leap must come from the individual and this process must include trust. Trust understood as respect for oneself and others, which is not exactly 'turn the other cheek,' but neither 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.' The time of talion laws is supposed to be past and distant in time.