Fake TV Torture Show Prepares to Shock
Theunis Bates,Contributor

AOL News LONDON (March 17) -- Would you torture a fellow TV game show contestant just to please the audience? A stunning documentary suggests that most people are willing to inflict extreme pain on an innocent person if it keeps a baying crowd happy.

The makers of the French documentary "The Game of Death" -- to be aired in France tonight -- set up a fake game show called "The Xtreme Zone," complete with a beautiful hostess, a rowdy audience and a flashy set. Some 80 potential contestants were asked to put general-knowledge questions to another participant named Jean-Paul, who was played by an actor. If the actor got the answers wrong, the questioner could pull a lever and punish him with electric shocks.

Although the participants didn't know the contestant was a plant, most were willing to give in to the presenter's and audience's loud demands for "punishment!" whenever an incorrect answer was given. According to director Christophe Nick, 64 of the 80 players zapped the actor with what they were told was the maximum 460 volts, even though no cash prize was offered. Sixteen people quit the quiz in disgust.

And while Jean-Paul was out of sight of the contestants, his whimpers and cries of "Let me go!" made it clear he was in pain. At the highest voltage, the actor would fall silent -- suggesting he had either passed out or died.

Program maker Nick said his crew was "amazed" that so many players were willing to go along with the sadistic whims of the host and crowd, albeit often reluctantly. "They are not equipped to disobey," he told Agence France-Presse. "They don't want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don't manage to."

One contestant, Sophie, 46, admitted after filming that she had gone along with what she believed was torture, even though her Jewish grandparents had been persecuted by the Nazis. "Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why [the Nazis] did it," she said. "How could they obey such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself."

Another participant claimed to be "worried about the contestant" but kept on increasing the shocks, saying, "I was afraid to spoil the program."

At the end of filming, all of the participants were told they had taken part in an experiment and were asked if they were willing to appear in the documentary. Only three refused. "Most of them are thrilled to have participated in an experiment that could be useful for something," said Nick. "And some of them are ready to do it all over again."

Other tests have also shown the ease with which people can be persuaded to do terrible deeds. Almost 50 years ago, Stanley Milgram -- a social psychologist at Yale University -- examined whether ordinary citizens could be persuaded to electrically shock an unseen individual. The experiment sought to understand how accomplices in the Holocaust could have submitted to Nazi orders. Milgram discovered that most of the participants were willing to administer near-fatal zaps.

Nick notes that in the wrong hands, television can be just as dangerous as a persuasive dictator. "When it decides to abuse its power, television can do anything to anybody," he said. "It has an absolutely terrifying power."

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I read this elsewhere last night and was horrified.

As sick as it seems, I think this show makes a point. Of the 16 out of 80 who refused to harm another human being despite the prodding the the crowd, I could only pray that in a similar situation I would be counted among them.