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The First Basket
Meet My Monster
To hear it from Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris, his new documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Standard Operating Procedure (Sony Classics, 4.25 NYC, 5.2 in L.A.), basically says that U.S. soldiers based in Iraq who tortured and humiliated local terrorist suspects weren't that bad. If you grade them on a curve, that is. Because we're all that bad if given half a chance. We're all about as decent and humane as the next guy until circumstances and dark guidance bring out our inner monster
"I made a movie about people like yourself or myself trapped in the middle of this -- people we never would have seen or would have forgotten about, who we just would have assumed are really monsters," Morris told Defamer's Stu VanAirsdale. "And I've brought them back across the line back into humanity. And I think it's an interesting story, and a human story." And a movie that is almost certainly going to die because Joe Average doesn't want to know about this stuff. Who does? Boiled down, isn't this aspect of Standard Operating Procedure repeating the same message as Rod Serling's famous Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"? Our willingness to turn on our neighbor when sufficiently motivated (i.e., scared)? Our capacity for malice and violence and savagery? It'll make for an interesting topic during my Errol sitdown tomorrow (4.10) at the Four Seasons hotel.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on April 9, 2008 at 11:08 AM
comment #1
Rob
says ...
How does it compare to Taxi to the Dark Side, which was pretty straightforward/unfussy but also very powerful?
I'm assuming Morris takes a slightly more stylized, less Frontline-y approach.
Posted by Rob
at April 9, 2008 1:00 PM
comment #2
christian
says ...
I didn't assume they were monsters - -just soldiers being told what to do by the real beasts above them like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and Yoo, all who approved the torture.
Posted by christian
at April 9, 2008 1:09 PM
comment #3
corey3rd
says ...
it's the Stanford Prison experiment - except in a real prison and with real prisoners. They were told to go harsh on them to find the WMDs.
Posted by corey3rd
at April 9, 2008 1:14 PM
comment #4
a1
says ...
Good heads up on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Between that and the Milgram Experiment, there's some solid, if very unpleasant, evidence explaining how the soldiers acted:
"Overall, 65% of the participants gave shocks up to 450 volts (obeyed) and 35% stopped sometime before 450 volts"
(450 volts was a lethal shock)
http://www.holah.karoo.net/milgramstudy.htm
Posted by a1
at April 9, 2008 1:34 PM
comment #5
Arizona Joe
says ...
There is something to be said for an "inner monster" theory, or the dark side of a personality, etc. Psychologists have corroborated this with many experiments.
But why did that happen? Because our troops were undermanned, under-equipped and under-trained. That situation was a direct result of the decadent management of Don Rumsfeld and George Bush.
Many of the rights violations at Ab Ghraib were committed by West Virginia national guard troops. And that's a big story of this war, troops conscripted by a backdoor draft doing jobs they were not supposed to do.
All in all, the Iraq War is the biggest catastrophe in the history of this country. During Vietnam, we still had enough industrial might to finance things foreign and abroad. The Arab oil embargo came when American began winding things down.
Now, oil is over $100 per barrel. China is the world's industrial power. There is an economic crisis we have not seen since the Great Depression. We are at a watershed, probably for the bad. Pissing lives and money away for democracy in Iraq does not make sense, and it never made sense.
Posted by Arizona Joe
at April 9, 2008 2:27 PM
comment #6
Mark
says ...
"I didn't assume they were monsters - -just soldiers being told what to do by the real beasts above them like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and Yoo, all who approved the torture."
I think you're missing the point in that there are no true monsters, excluding Hitler and Michael Vick. If given access to BushCheneyRummy, etc, Errol Morris would be the first filmmaker to sign up to make a movie bringing their humanity to the surface. it's easy to simply say that Bush is bad, but Morris's reality deals strictly in greys.
Posted by Mark
at April 9, 2008 2:51 PM
comment #7
Rich S.
says ...
Interesting that you guys mentioned the Stanford Prison and Milgram Experiments, because when Jeffrey first described the documentary, I thought it sounded a lot like an old William Shatner TV movie on the subject:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075320/
I've always likened Serling's Monsters to what the terrorists are doing to us. Set off a few well-placed bombs and then watch us tear each other apart.
Posted by Rich S.
at April 9, 2008 3:05 PM
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