Question D

I liked what the John Wayne character had to say at the end of this film about how sometimes we need to understand why and how human beings can act the way they do. He was referring to tragic incidents that happen every century or so and that this Standford experiment was a way of showing those interesting results. Putting good people in an evil place and seeing how they react. If we look at this in the context of racial oppression I guess the degradation process is something that can be related to how the guards treated the prisoners and how whites treated blacks or other races. This degradation process that is used in many prisons and military schools is a cruel but effective way for the ones in power to stay in power over the oppressed. I found the beginning of this film very interesting with the experiment involving the teacher and the learner. Another situation of putting good people in an evil place/situation but as long as their was a legitimate authority figure near by to take responsibility for the harm that was being caused to the learner, the teacher proceeded on. It was a little frightening to me when they made that comparison of how decent American citizens were as capable of committing acts against their conscious as the Germans had been under the Nazis. I would like to believe that I have the will power to rise above something like this but I guess I don't truly know for sure since I have never been in a similar situation.