French 'torture' TV show compared to Nazi atrocities
French 'torture' TV show compared to Nazi atrocities
Wednesday, 17, Mar 2010 03:09
By Richard James.
A French TV show which encourages contestants to torture an actor has been heavily criticised and compared to the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
'Le jeu de la mort' (The Game of Death) sees contestants zap a man with electricity until he cries out for mercy.
The programme's makers claim the show is a psychological experiment to find out whether television can push people to extraordinary lengths they would not normally resort to in everyday life.
Christophe Nick, the maker of the documentary, said they found 81 per cent of participants, who thought they were taking part in a game show and not a psychological experiment, willingly obeyed commands to electrocute the man after being egged on by the show's host and audience.
Speaking to the AFP news agency, he said: "They are not equipped to disobey. They don't want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don't manage to."
The fake show's format saw contestants posing questions to another 'player' - an actor - and zapping him with 460 volts of electricity if he answered incorrectly.
The 'torture' continued until the actor cries "Let me go" and falls silent, seemingly having passed out or died.
The show has since been linked to the manipulation instigated by the Nazis and one contestant questioned afterwards said she had agreed to go along with the torture despite knowing her own grandparents had been persecuted by the Nazis.
"Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why they (the Nazis) did it. How could they obey such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself," the show's makers quoted her as saying.
Another declared: "I was worried about the contestant. At the same time, I was afraid to spoil the programme."
Psychologist Jacques Semelin pointed to the fact the participants were made to sign a contract obliging them to obey the presenter's instructions before going on the show.
"There are elements of manipulation from the start. They are obedient, but it's more than mere obedience - there is the audience, the cameras everywhere."