This just seems more relevant than ever:
Nothing particular in the news that made me post this, just a nagging feeling I have had for a while. Plus, I think everyone should watch this and read about the Milgram experiments.
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Tzal
This is simultaneously annoying and hilarious. I recall a recent speech in which this sort of thing was called Chamberlainesque capitulation.
Of course, there is little on my teevee about this MASSIVE FUCKING SHIFT IN FOREIGN POLICY.
The Moar You Know
I think Milgram is apropos of everything in general.
Societies don’t have fascism imposed on them. They embrace it voluntarily. The US has always had a strong tendency towards embracing authoritarianism, particularly in the twentieth century, but we’ve been pretty lucky so far.
“Do you feel lucky, punk?”
I’m not sure.
Darkness
Is this an open thread? If so, I’d like to say that this is a pretty p*ssyish way for Obama to handle this issue and does not bode well for dealing with the 1000 difficult real issues he’s expected to fix as president. We don’t need more leaders pretending the complicated crap can just be side-stepped, we got plenty of those already.
W.E.B. Adamant
I read about the Milgram experiments as part of one of my classes. What a devastating blow to the notion that we are all, at our core, honorable.
John Cole
Hrmm. I have a hair trigger on stuff like that, too, Darkness, but I liked this yesterday from Obama:
More of that, please
RSA
The full Milgram video is about an hour long. I’ve sometimes shown it to my students in class, and their reaction is always the same: some laughter at first, then a few nervous chuckles, and then silence. It freaks people out to see what we’re (and I do mean “we”–it seems to be part of the human condition) capable of. It’s also worth picking up a book Milgram put together some 20 years later, describing how totally screwed up some of his experimental subjects ended up based on their experience.
Punchy
I’d love to see this experiment repeated, only instead of shocking one guy, the participant gets to choose whom to shock each time: a Christian, a Jew, or a Muslim, regardless of who answered it incorrectly.
I bet the results would be obvious.
David Hunt
Heck, yeah. That’s a display of moral character that makes me proud of Obama. I’ll vote for him anyway, because a vote for McCain is a vote an assault on reason. But it’s been so long since I was able to entertain the idea of voting for a candidate instead of against their worse opponent. The prospect is refreshing.
Darkness
Hm. I don’t know. The double qualifier is a bit weird. Actually any qualifier at all is weird. Muslim-American shouldn’t need any qualifier, the word “American” there is sufficient, or certainly should be. By using the language he did in that quote he is letting the 28%ers’ framing and worldview rule the conversation. He sounds like an 1850’s Englishman discussing the Irish. No transcendence here, that’s for sure.
bootlegger
I spend a week on obedience to authority in my course on social control. The students read an article on this exeperiment but they refuse to believe that people will lose their moral compass when authority demands it. They come up with all kinds of reasons for compliance, “surely they are getting paid”, or “the experimenter scared them into doing it”. Then we watch the video and they see what happens and still many of them refuse to believe their own eyes, most of them insisting they would never do such a thing.
Some interesinting aspects of the Milgram experiemnts:
*Milgram and his colleagues were actually trying to prove that people wouldn’t do things like this. They conceived of this experiment during the Nuremberg trials when the whole world was wondering if Geramn citizens and bureacrats really could have done such horrible things simply because they were ordered to. They originally predicted 2-3 percent would follow orders but in the end more than 2/3 did.
*You can hear the experimenter saying that he takes responsibility, in later experiments they varied this and told the subject that he or she was fully responsible and compliance dropped to almost nothing. One wonders if the telecoms would have complied if they believed they could be held responsible.
*The presence of a single supporter drops compliance to almost zero. One person has trouble resisting but add one more person to the situation and together the two will refuse. Ashe found similar results with his conformity experiment.
Why do you folks think these subjects comply with authority?
matt
There are really endless interesting varitents you could do that would be fascinating.
I wonder how these things would work today though. It seems like there has to be somewhat of an innocence involved. I’m probably not stating that right, blah.
montysano
……except maybe the heartwarming experience of watching a grainy video of weeping 16 year old being interrogated at Gitmo. He was picked up when he was 15; today he is 21. I thought about what type of person could do this to a child.
“But he’s accused of lobbing a grenade”, the wingnuts say. Fine. Let’s prove it true or false; those are the two options. Let’s take “gulag” off the table.
Fucking nauseating.
Evan Vaida
Check out the Zimbardo study.
bootlegger
You can’t get these experiments approved by Institutional Review Boards any more because of the lack of informed consent and the high level anxiety and stress it causes. Milgram and his colleagues did dozens of variations over the years and they are summarized in the book someone mentioned above.
There are actually new experiments with different protocols that test the same mechanisms and they continue to find the same disturbing results.
Darkness
Okay, at the risk of revealing my total ignorance of this… is throwing a grenade at the enemy during a war some kind of special war crime? Doesn’t that make everything done during wartime illegal (i mean, even in the context of war)?
——–
And one more follow-up on the Obama thing and then I’m out of here, sorry to continue OT. Over the brain-stirring, munching resonance of chips and salsa I figured out why I find this so worrisome. I think Obama should be making a special point to do outreach to Muslims in order to gain the upper hand in the conversation. By behaving scared he is handing power to the 28/26%ers, who once they smell that fear, are never, ever going to let up. Blowing them off and pretending they mean nothing is his best strategy. That Obama is not taking this tactic makes me fear he’ll behave more like the current dem congress than the real leader we so badly need. If he’s doing this because he’s turning all Kerry on us and listening to his more risk-averse handlers too much, he needs to stop.
Done. Out of here. You continue to have a great blog. Thanks for your hard work keeping it out there.
Billy K
This is why Democrats rule! We have no authority figures. At least none we fully embrace and respect.
D-Chance.
No, Mr Obama, refusing to have yourself photographed with Muslim-Americans… now THAT is actually an insult.
Something your MUPpets have been derelict in pointing out.
—
And what about THIS jewel?
So 36 hours ago, it’s “offensive”, “outrageous”, “worst example of racism I’ve ever seen in my lifetime outside the Holocaust and Civil Rights battles of the 60s” (to quote an Obama supporter in the Politico comments section), yaddayaddayadda… but one cycle later it’s just “one of those things” that doesn’t personally bother you?
Sell that oil stock… invest in fainting couch manufacturing. Liberals are sending that sector through the roof.
Jake
Jesus. Because of this?
OH NOES!!!
Give me a break.
montysano
D-Chance: let me give you a shocking breaking news flash:
Obama is a politician.
That should help clear things up for you. You’re welcome.
D-Chance.
BTW, if open…
1) Drudge approvingly linked to an article about Wells Fargo exceeding expectations and posting a profit. The link leads with “Good news!”. The link then notes that WF’s profits mostly came from credit card fees. So millions of customers struggling to pay their bills late, if at all, is now good news. What a wonderful country we live in.
2) Heard on KOA last night: Colorado’s largest bank is NOT in financial trouble. They were bought out weeks ago and had a large infusion of cash. They are in good shape. However, ABC News still had them on their list of “possibly insolvent” institutions. So the question is… if we can partially blame Charles Schumer for IndyMac, what responsibility does ABC News hold when they misreport and come close to causing a false run on a bank themselves?
Incertus
Not exactly honest to compare Obama’s reaction to that of one of his supporters, now is it. And I believe that when Obama originally said it was offensive, he hadn’t seen the actual image yet–he’d only had it described to him by a reporter.
matt
Here’s a newer version from some kind of British tv show. http://youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w
Punchy
OT:
This guy’s owning just epic levels of angry
This rant puts TZ’s to shame. Well done.
Should Know Better
Um, I don’t see much of a contradiction in stating that something is offensive but that you don’t feel personally ‘stung’ by it which was the actual question.
Lavocat
NPR played part of that interrogation of the 15-year old the other day.
I had the radio on while my son was in the car. I IMMEDIATELY moved to turn the radio OFF and then I came up short.
I thought to myself, this is horrible – you simply cannot expose your child to this! And then I realized that this is only the tip of the iceberg; that my beloved country is TORTURING children in our names; in my name; in my son’s name!!!!!
I was almost physically sick but I left the radio on. And I told my son that our nation has now sunk to torturing children, all because we have a war criminal as our president.
My son was appalled. And he had a very simple response: “Daddy, this is just wrong – don’t they know that?”
This made me out and out cry. My 8-year old has a clearer sense of right and wrong than these motherfuckers. Thank god for that.
How the fuck did we all get to this point?
How did it come to this?
srv
You either voted for Republicans or lily-livered Democrats who submit to them.
Ricky
At the risk of having no artisitic license to cover me,
given the staunch defense Darkness put forth the other day of the New Yorker, and the degree to which he is quick to accept mischaracterization of Obama’s actions by the press
as making him a “pussy” for not being sufficiently willing to sidetrack his campaign for President into a stauch defense of Muslims, I’d have to say I see exhibitions of weasel like behaivior. Since he says he is gone I won’t make that accusation. Besides, if someone said “Darkness”
and I answered “Weasel” someone might give me 225 volts.
TScheisskopf
I vote that D-Chance gets paid by the word to troll leftycommunistislamofacistpinkofifthcolumn blogs and message boards.
Just count the words. Not they they are used effectively, which could well mean he is padding his drivel to make more then $5.60/day.
montysano
i.e: you voted. Sucks hard, doesn’t it?
As to srv’s characterization of “lily-livered Democrats”: yeah, there’s some of that for sure. But the Cheney administration is a serious, formidable criminal enterprise masquerading as uber-patriots. Not an easy thing to fight.
Ricky
Apropos of Nothing while awaiting moderation I ask:
Is this satire ala the New Yorker?
I see an old white guy resisting hurtng another human being but he does so anyway.
Teacher: TORTURE: EVIL, UNACCEPTABLE, INHUMANE, CIA.
Mc Cain: EVIL?
Teacher: 220 volts! CIA
McCain: Ouch. MEAN JOE GREENE?
Teacher: 250 volts. TORTURE?
Mc Cain: CIA?
Teacher: Correct. 270 Electoral Votes.
iluvsummr
Actually, you can, but with difficulty. Here’s an example of a professor at Santa Clara University who got a modified version of Milgram’s experiments through his institution’s IRB. At my school, it wouldn’t happen; our IRB is waaaay more conservative (has lots of physicians who don’t necessarily appreciate social science/psychology research) and anxious about long-term effects of studies like Zimbardo’s and Milgram’s on research subjects’ well-being. We have to go through human subjects training that highlights those two studies, the Tuskegee syphilis study, etc., as what not to do ethically.
srv
15 year old kids in Afghanistan don’t seem to have a problem standing up to it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
There is a painfully simple answer: because a fair chunk of our population simply does not understand right and wrong the way you do.
I know this firsthand, because like you I also have a school-age child, who loves comic books and superheros and stuff, and thinks that the way you tell the good guys from the bad guys is by what color uniform they are wearing. Period, end of story. I’ve tried to explain, about 100+ times in every way that I can think of in language that even a child can understand, that this is in fact wrong, that instead you have to tell the bad guys from the good guys by how they treat other people, not by the color of their tights and capes, and that if you forget this fact then you too are in danger of becoming one of the bad guys, that in fact this is how most of the bad guys get to be the way they are, by going down the wrong path thinking that they are in the right.
I might as well be beating my head against a brick wall in this issue. My otherwise very smart and observant child, who is uncommonly sweet and gentle and shows kindness towards others on a regular basis, JUST DOES NOT GET IT. And almost certainly never will; the idea just simply does not compute at all – I’m know that I’m raising a future GOPer (who I love dearly nonetheless), and there isn’t anything I can do about it.
I think this is because there are different cognitive models for morality which I suspect may be hardwired into the human brain, and the comic-book superhero authoritarian way of seeing right and wrong will always be with us. Offhand from personal experience I’d guess that at least 1/3rd of the population thinks that way. For them, it is all about the color of the uniform, and nothing else matters.
Medicine Man
What is the name of Milgram’s book on those studies at Yale? I wouldn’t mind reading what the conclusions were.
rishathra
The other, related experiment that everyone needs to know about is the Stanford Prison Experiment. It shows that, put into roles with significant expectations and no checks or restrictions, people adopt the roles fully, even when forewarned. Even when the roles include cruelty and dominance games, or submission to those things. It directly predicts what happened at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
Being a big Peter Gabriel fan, I’m often reminded of Milgram, via this song of his (“Milgram’s 37 (We Do What We’re Told)”). Spooky, as it ought to sound.
ATinNM
Milgram merely confirmed a species of bipedal, omnivorous, forward vision pack hunters are hostile to non-pack members, subservient to those higher in the pack hierarchy, vicious, and best avoided.
DFH no.6
D-Chance —
In re: Obama and “The New Yorker” cover.
You’re splitting hairs here. For roughly half of those who even give a shit about the damn magazine cover, it is seen as wrong to some degree. “Failed satire”. “Outrageous”. “Insulting”. Et cetera. Some, being adults, even changed their mind (at least a bit) about it as it was discussed ad nauseam (I believe I saw that very thing happen on this estimable blog).
I myself went from being somewhat unhappy with it (along the lines of “scoring an own goal for the wingnut haters”) to “feh — whether outrageous or insulting or just lame satire, it’s a tempest in a teapot with no lasting effect”. Still, we apparently must continue talking about it for a while, in your case as a way to find fault with Obama’s reaction.
I have to call bullshit on your hair-splitting criticism. I can see why it would be insulting (Obama’s term on Larry King) to Muslims (as well as African-Americans, with Michelle’s portrayal). NOT because Obama is shown wearing Muslim garb — maybe you could look around the cartoon and notice Osama Bin Laden’s picture over the mantle, an American flag burning underneath in the fireplace, WITH Obama dressed in Muslim garb.
You do see the tie-in, don’t you? If the “satire” falls flat (it does for me), yeah, I can see how that would be insulting to Muslims, and Obama was right to say so.
I’m not saying Obama’s above criticism — he’s not, of course. You’re just wrong on this one, I’m afraid.
Brachiator
Comic books don’t warp people. People warp people.
Oddly enough, I have been meditating on this a bit as friends and I get geeked up in anticipation of “The Dark Knight.” I was a big comic book fiend as a kid, but noted early on that it ain’t the costume, but the person inside, that makes the difference.
The Lone Ranger (one of the purest heroes ever) was often first thought to be a bad guy when he rode into town, because of his mask. And the Batman dons his gear not just because it marks him as a good guy, but as a piece of psychological warfare:
By the way, I don’t know how your kid is, but I pass along the warning of the more thoughtful critics that “The Dark Knight” might not be appropriate for younger fry.
But even in Pixar’s magnificent “WALL-E,” it is clear that even with robots, you can’t tell the good from the bad just by their outerwear or the hardwiring of their program functions, but by the contents of their souls.
That’s the code of the superhero. And it is true for those who choose not to do evil despite authority, society or rigged experiments.
DFH no.6
And yeah, the Milgram experiments. Totally relevant, like “Generation Kill”.
Not the pretty myths we like to tell about ourselves, that’s for sure (the Greeks were a lot better about that).
Too bad reality has such a liberal bias. Otherwise, all the starry-eyed conservative bullshit wouldn’t be so goddamn dangerous.
But it is.
Bootlegger
Interesting. As you note the Milgram protocol is often referred to as a an example of the “bad ‘ol days” before IRB and federal ethical standards. The changes they made to get approval actually mark the contrast between then and now in terms of standards.
Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment is another one that would almsot surely (I won’t say never again) not get IRB aproval.
Also, not surprising that people haven’t changed much in 50 years.
As for the comic books, many of them, particularly in the Marvel universe but in DC as well, portray the grey areas between good and evil. I actually find it a great way to teach these things to my kids.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
A poor choice of language on my part, perhaps. I’m not blaming the comics. Numerous examples in the comics world illustrate precisely the point I’ve been trying to get across (judge morality by actions, not identity). I used them as an example because in most cases they explicitly indicate identify via costume/uniform, which provides a very simplified case of tribalism at work if you choose to interpret them that way.
This mindset (which I think is partially hardwired) is: judge actions by which costume is worn by the actor. I don’t think this comes from comics, they just provide a stage for illustrating this style of morality in the eye of the beholder with particular clarity.
srv
It’s not just capes, it’s everything on the outside. Have your kid(s) watch this, maybe they’ll differentiate between what’s inside and everything external:
A Class Divided
John Cole
Consider this a second defense of comic books. Frederick Wertham was a jackass.
les
I’m not certain of this, so it fits right in to the intertubes, but I think the kid’s alleged grenade toss came in the context of a U.S. attack on a suspected AQ camp in which his father was shot by U.S. soldiers. Therefor he’s a terrorist. QED.
Ricky
Comic books? President Bush read more Comic books than Karl Rove.
Ricky
“the kid’s alleged grenade toss came in the context of a U.S. attack on a suspected AQ camp in which his father was shot by U.S. soldiers. Therefor he’s a terrorist. QED”
Yep. And if’n it wasn’t for the missed fortune that the little bugger’s daddy was a Canadian, we’d have done a Milgram test on his nuts.
If he’d been an infant left behind by in a carseat his Daddy put a faile boobytrap on we’d have just spilt his milk and laffed while libbruls cried over it.
Bootlegger
To what “rigged” experiments do you refer?
jack fate
Hey John. Great, yet depressing post. I recommend watching the debriefing of the “teacher.” The Stanford Prison Experiment also seems incredibly relevant, sadly.
Brachiator
I think that both you and your child are mis-reading comics. Or you need a better class of comics to refer to. Often both the good guys and the bad guys have costumes that are not that different. But even here, comics tap into an older convention. The superhero’s costume is chosen or earned, like a knight’s suit of armor. Whether one is noble or a knave is about the person, not the costume.
And again, I note that a recurring riff is that of people who mistake the costumed hero for a bad guy. This was part of the mythos of Spiderman from the very beginning and is also brought forward in the films (Jonah Jameson sells newspapers based on the false notion that Spiderman is a menace).
The under-rated current movie “Hancock” plays with this idea from a different angle. Hancock begins as a drunk with superpowers. A character suggests that he don a costume as a PR move, but the costume is absolutely irrelevant to Hancock’s moral worth as a hero.
In the sly, funny “The Incredibles,” the superheroes are forced to give up their costumes and be like everyone else. But who they are can’t be contained by their adopting a more humdrum existence or the street clothes of every day people.
And of course “Kill Bill, Volume 2” has the ultimate critique on the nature of the superhero:
Even the most humdrum comic book can be more ambiguous, more subversive, than the casual reader often credits. And in this, comics can be as intricate as Greek or Norse myths.
I don’t think that the Milgram experiments were faked, or that their results are invalid. But they are somewhat artificial, and I think that people are actually sometimes more noble, or more horrible, than the experiments, and that people still have not taken in the larger lessons that can be learned from them.
I think I may have recently watched either a report on these experiments or a recreation. I think that the subject “victims” were all male, or that the subject and “victim” were the same gender. I don’t know whether the test was conducted when the subject was male and the “victim” a female, and of course they could not make the “victim” a child.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Brachiator,
I personally don’t disagree with your analysis and am familiar with many of the examples you cite. I think you are misreading my prior comments. I’m citing comics as an instructive example of a mirror you can hold up to gain some insight into the thought process of a reader, by seeing how they interpret what they see and read. Different readers will react to the same characters and stories in different ways, depending on what interpretive framework they bring to bear. Comics are interesting to me in this regard because they often incorporate morality tales of one sort or another, so they provide a window into the moral sense of the reader.
Changing the inputs as you suggest (“need a better class of comics”) isn’t going to shift that dynamic, and suggesting that we are “mis-reading” them misses the whole point I was trying to make: there are people who think differently from you and I (which I speculate is reflective of some fairly significant cognitive differences), looking at the exact same story. Where we may see complexity, ambiguity, and choices being made which have consequences such that those choices define a moral framework for the characters, they see simplistic tribalistic markers which define the moral structure of the story. Same data, different interpretation – not because of what is in the story, but because of what is in the reader. And not just because of age differences, either.
Now you can argue if you like that I’m doing a crappy job as a parent in not more effectively imposing my way of thinking on my child, but that is a different discussion.
hamletta
ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I don’t know how old your kid is, but I wouldn’t worry so much if I were you. Cognitive development is a long process, and the final stages aren’t reached until we’re in our early 20’s.
Being able to spot the wolf in sheep’s clothing is a pretty sophisticated skill. I don’t know how you feel about religion, but “Know them by their fruits” is a pretty good lesson regardless.
Engaging him, asking him questions might help: “Well, yeah, [Villain X] wears a really cool costume, but didn’t he hurt those people? That wasn’t very nice of him, was it?”
Brachiator
I would never in a million years criticize you as a parent. It’s a tough job, and God knows I made my own mistakes. And I am not sure that anyone can ever successfully impose their way of thinking on their children, though I’ve seen people try to do so. At worst, they simply end up bullying a child into satisfying their parental whims.
As an aside, my remark that “you might need a better class of comics” was a riff on a line from “The Dark Knight,” but also a question about what comics you were basing your ruminations on.
I also agree that “different readers will react to the same characters and stories in different ways, depending on what interpretive framework they bring to bear.” But some readings are more reasonable than others. I know people who cannot watch a science fiction movie — especially if it is set in the future or a non-Earth setting — because for them “good” or “real” literature must be based on what they perceive to be historical reality. I had a junior high school teacher who believed that all comic books were worthless trash, and probably ungodly, and she was convinced that anyone who read them could never amount to anything. She was wrong.
I once railed against the junk movies that my stepson’s natural father took him too. The kid was smart enough to challenge me into taking him to see something more “worthy.” I picked “A Chinese Ghost Story,” because I liked some Hong Kong action films, and also because I thought that this had broad humor accessible to a 10 year old, and with a minimum of subtitles so he would not have to do a lot of reading or asking what was going on. My stepson knew that I liked this movie, but I never told him exactly why or that he had to like the film. I told him what I liked about the genre in general and mentioned specific scenes from other films, but I left it up to him to accept it or reject it. The next morning, he excitedly told the story of the film to his mother.
The other day, I listened to a radio interview with Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee. And while I understand that some might look for “simplistic tribalistic markers which define the moral structure of the story,” and might need this as a way into the narrative, I am pretty certain that Lee often intended something more. But it is in trying to answer questions about meaning, not in the conclusion itself, that makes reading comics as rewarding as reading any other type of literature.
Or in considering the ramifications of the Milgram experiments.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
hamletta,
Your thoughts are well put.
I may have exaggerated the “worry” bit too much, since I was really trying to make a point about the variety of thinking in adults, and drifted off into a tangent by using an example of which I have personal knowledge, rather than just arm-waving generalizations (which can become tiresome) but which brought along all sorts of other issues as well. So, no need to be concerned.
In any case, thanks for your kind words of advice, which I appreciate.
As for engaging and questions, in a word: Yes. We do that a lot.
Together we chew over a lot of similar questions like: “If a bad guy stole Spider-Man’s costume and tried to pretend that he was the real Spider-Man, how would you be able to tell that he wasn’t the real one?”, and I try to gently nudge the resulting discussion from “you could tell because he wouldn’t be able to shoot webs” (which is often how it starts) towards “would you be able to tell because the bad guy wouldn’t try to help other people who were in danger, like the real Spider-Man?”, and then from there to more abstract talk about attributes vs. choices, and what is it that really defines who we are?
I recognize that a continual journey lies ahead for both of us, with surprises to be expected. That is part of the fun actually, not knowing what the future holds, and watching someone else discover and develop their own personality over time. I try my best to help with what resources of wisdom and patience and luck I may have, and the result, it is what it is.
Thanks, and good night!
incontrolados
I commented on this very point and linked to three books about it.
I know I didn’t endear myself to anyone here.
I don’t care.
Too little too late.
Scott Horton and Jane Mayer covered this disgrace better today.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Brachiator,
That was really interesting, and deserves a longer response than I can provide tonight, hopefully we can continue the discussion at some point. Not much to disagree with, BTW.
I think via inartful phrasing I may have stepped on your toes (without meaning to) by sounding as if I was implying that comics (or graphic novels if you prefer) are a shallow or disrespected medium. I meant nothing of the sort, so I apologize if that is how my remarks came across.
If anything, I see them (and how readers interact with them) as interesting because of depth, not shallowness. IMHO this is often the case in genres of literature/art which are considered niche or fringe. They can be more interesting and rewarding that the suppossedly “mainstream” stuff.
As for what comics we are talking about, as far as my kids are concerned it is mostly Marvel, DC, and whatever is on mainstream TV and in the movies (including Sci-Fi/Fantasy stuff like Star Wars), with a smattering of old comics from the late 1950’s and 1960’s that I salvaged from my grandparent’s house.
We have some interesting discussions together about different techniques and styles of graphic art and animation (my kids love the old Ray Harryhausen movies for example) and approaches to story telling, with a little bits of cinemaphile stuff thrown in every now and then so they can better appreciate pop-culture references in contemporary books and movies and start to enjoy some of their more subtle aspects.
Right now I’m saving Frank Miller and Art Spiegelman for when they are a bit older.
Phoebe
I thought the same about the Milgrim experiments, and so did the makers of “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” who featured that clip in their movie.
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/ghostsofabughraib/index.html
I also get another pattern-recognition thing here, with criminal prosecutors. I remember interviewing a public defender in Missouri who used to be a prosecutor, and I asked him, “Why does everone in this office joke about how you used to work for the dark side? Weren’t you just working for justice and all of that?” and he got this look on his face he hadn’t had before, this staring off into space, and kept repeating this vague phrase “when the train has left the station”.
It meant: when you believe that you are prosecuting an innocent person, but your bosses have already filed the charges and you have to see it through.
I also have a friend, a former public defender, who was friends with an assistant prosecutor in a small town. This guy used to work for the P.D. but switched to make more money. He was also very religious and strictly moral. They would talk on the phone during the work day, and one time he ended the conversation by saying something like “I have to go now and prosecute some other innocent guy, talk to you later”. He blew his head off with a shotgun eventually. The P.D. investigator, acting completely on his own, went to the house and snatched this guy’s diary and read it [that investigator was not a strictly moral person himself, in case that’s not obvious] and said that the guy had no family troubles or anything – it was all strictly the job.