"You are a prisoner."
The movie The Experiment is based on an experiment based on the Stanford Prison Experiment, an experiment meant to document the affects of the roles of prisoner and guard on the individual. The test was simple; the group of 26 men would be divided into two smaller groups, most of the men would be "prisoners" while a select few would take the role of the "guards". They were given a set of rules that had to be followed or the light would come on and the experiment would end and no one would get paid. The rules were simple, every prisoner must eat everything on their plate, they speak only when spoken too, no outside food or other items, the day begins and ends with roll call, any breaking of the rules must be punished inside of a thirty minute window, and if any violence occurs the experiment will end. At first the experiment went smoothly until the guards felt like they were losing control, and soon the started to raise the level of punishment and got to the point were they no longer treated the prisoners like humans. The experiment escalated into violence and sadism on the side of the guards, the experiment that was schedules for two weeks hardly made it a hand full of days before being scrubbed.
This model prison, lacking the training and professionalism of a regular prison, created a foil to Foucault's panopticon. The Stanford experiment was a constantly monitored prison, monitored both by guards and by the cameras, but it was because of this observation that the guards became so sadistic. They realized that they were being watched and that they had to become the roll of prison guards and see the prisoners as less than them or less human. "Carceral continuity and the fusion of the prison-form make it possible to legalize, or in any case to legitimate disciplinary power, which thus avoids any element of excess or abuse it may entail" (Foucault 1497), except when the guards are told to keep absolute order or they will not be getting paid. Foucault failed to account for the capitalist worship of money, and the almost Nazi like sadistic zeal that can arise when an individual is put "above" another human being. If the system allows for the dehumanization of the incarcerated they will be seen as unruly animals, and as is the case of the movie, the guards will realize they are out numbered and they must rule with fear and strict punishment. The ideal of a constantly watched populace, or at least the illusion of one, is able to facilitate a norm in cultural law and the way the individuals act (I.E. a boy must partake in the manly sport instead of the "feminine" arts because of cultural stigma) but this leads to the violence and the ideal of the "wrong". Criminals are not seen as misguided but as bad, and bad must be punished. If one acts against the norm imposed by the panopticon he must be punished, and if the societal panopticon does not work than the prisoners panopticon must also be flawed.
Foucault. “Discipline and Punish”. ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
