The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychology study into societal roles and how they affect people. More specifically, it involved a group of volunteers being placed in a fictional prison where they would act as prisoners, while another group acted as the guards tasked with keeping said prisoners in line. There were no rules or guidance as to what the guards could do to exert their power. Because of that, it didn’t take long for them to realize that because there were no consequences for their actions, they could do whatever they wanted to the “prisoners.” As a result, those with the “prisoner” role were abused mentally and sexually by the “guards” to the point where it was no longer a lighthearted experiment.
It’s an infamous experiment that was called off only six days in (despite being planned to run for two weeks) due to the horrific abuse and psychological effects it inflicted on everyone involved. On the YouTube channel “HeroicImaginationTV,” there is a video describing the events that had some of those involved in the experiment talking about their experience – none of those who had volunteered to take part in the experiment took it seriously in the beginning. In fact, those with the role of “guard” felt awkward exerting any force over the “prisoners” as they were all aware that none of it was real; when the prisoners started to revolt, however, the guards realized that they were the ones with the power as deemed by society, and so they enacted harsh punishments in retaliation. Those in the video who had participated in the experiment described it as being hard to believe that they were capable of doing such things; no one expected it to get as bad as it did.
When it comes to the film RoboCop, the main character, Alex, is killed in action and is revived as the titular RoboCop. Most people don’t recognize him – the only one who does who isn’t initially aware of his past life is Lewis, Alex’s partner. Lewis catches on fairly quickly to the fact that RoboCop is Alex, though he’s completely different in both appearance and personality. The only part of Alex’s old body that still remains is his face, which is obscured by RoboCop’s helmet for most of the film. RoboCop struggles with his identity as Alex throughout the movie as his primary objective is to follow the orders of the company that created him and question nothing else, but eventually he goes on to seek more information about his past life anyway. Once he confirms that he did indeed use to be Alex, while he is unable to return to being the person he once was, he accepts his identity and continues to live on, satisfied with his findings.
In the episode The Entire History of You from Black Mirror, the main character, Liam, begins as a simple man attending an evaluation meeting. He later shows up at a party his wife is at, and throughout the night realizes that she may have a deeper relationship with another man at the party that Liam doesn’t recognize. The episode follows Liam’s descent into paranoia and frustration at being unable to get a clear or even consistent answer from his wife, and by the end of the episode even attacks the man he suspects his wife cheated on him with and threatens him with a weapon. Liam by the end of the episode has completely changed from how he was in the beginning, and the episode only took the span of a few nights at most.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a real occurrence involving real people who all completely changed in just a few days under severe stress and trauma. While RoboCop and Black Mirror are fictional pieces of media, they also feature characters that undergo drastic changes due to the situations that surrounded them. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that people can change so quickly, but the Stanford Prison Experiment, with all its horrific abuse, happened in just six days. None of the participants thought it would, or even could, get that bad. Though the films mentioned take a more cyberpunk approach to the concept of character development due to technology and sci-fi settings, the way the characters react to their situations, whether they adapt or not, are still very human.
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“Black Mirror.” Welsh, Brian, director. The Entire History of You, Season 1, episode 3.
HeroicImaginationTV. “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” YouTube, 20 Aug. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0.
Verhoeven, Paul, director. Robocop. Orion, 1987.
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