Phillip Zimbardo's Analysis
A war veteran speaks with his closest friend about their days in the military, reliving their long nights on the beach, shooting at the enemies, enjoying themselves while always facing victory, never touching upon the trauma that they endured. They never talk about the faces of young men that they were ordered to execute, nor do they talk about the image in their heads of a little girl, laying in the street dead, her mother next in line for a the similar fate. Both men ask themselves how they came to commit such horrible crimes, neither one grasping onto a logical reason, and their guilt following them to the grave. Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bashir follows Folman himself, a memory-stricken war veteran who struggles to let
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go of his inner-feelings of guilt derived from his involvement in the war-related massacres that occurred under his watch while in Beruit, Lebanon. With innovative research done on conformity by Stanley Milgram, Phillip Zimbardo’s obedience test; the Stanford Prison experiment, and the notion that strong social influences can make people capitulate to cruelty, one sees that a human beings sense of morality is non-existent when in the face of war, often giving into group conformity while losing their identity and their sense of responsibility in the process.
Naturally, we human beings are conformists; adjusting our behavior to coincide with that of a group standard. Social pressure and a desire to be accepted contribute to our continuous efforts to be accepted into a group. With technology making research more simple and widespread, many new theories and experiments surfaced, the most influential being that of American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram’s goal was to discover how human beings respond to commands. He took two people, labeling one the teacher and the other the learner. Milgram told the teacher to ask the learner a question, and the learner, who was strapped to an electrically wired chair, had to respond correctly. If the learner answered a question incorrectly, the teacher was told my Milgram to administer a shock while increasing the voltage each time the learner answered a question incorrectly. After a number of questions, the learner began to yell in pain, with the teacher being ordered by Milgram to continue the experiment until they reach the highest level of voltage. When Milgram asked a group of students whether or not they would continue to apply the shocks even after hearing the learner yell in agonizing pain, most people said they would stop. To Milgram’s surprise, it was concluded that 63 percent of men complied fully during the experiment, administering the last level of electrical shock. Even when the teacher was told that the learner had a slight heart condition, the majority of them still complied[i]. In Waltz with Bashir, many times the Israeli soldiers were ordered to “just shoot,” with no regard for human life. Years after the war, Folman could not fully remember what he had done to contribute to the massacre of hundreds of innocent Palestinians, but through flashbacks and stories from his companions, one sees that Folman was on the ring of soldiers outside of the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beruit, firing flares, aiding Phalangists in their work. The Israelis soldiers were told to do nothing by their leaders and to just follow the orders that they were given. While soldiers were being given orders under war conditions, the majority of them did not refuse to do the action, though inside they did. At the time of the massacres, Folman was fully aware of what he was doing; simply following commands. When Folman was talking to one of his old friends in an earlier scene, his friend said that he regrets that he “wasn’t the hero who saves everyone’s life,” showing his feelings of guilt for not doing anything when he had the chance, even though he telling himself he should. As Hannah Arendt touches upon in the banality of evil, human beings capitulate to cruelty when they give into their surroundings, seeing their actions as normal[ii]. The movie ends with Folman in the center of the screen, listening to the screams and cries of women and children, with his chest showing his shallow breathing. Though he faced many traumatic events throughout the war, the cry of innocence contributed to the most to his loss of memory and the creation of hallucinations and false memories. As we humans conform to a group standard, we change our way of life to continue to adjust to a new group, eventually resulting in the loss of our individually unique identity.
When we human beings conform to a certain group, we change the way in which we act, losing our old identity to make way for our new one.
Another instance in where we lose our sense of identity is in role changing. Phillip Zimbardo illustrates the effects of role changing and how it can shape ones personality[iii]. Zimbardo took a group of college-aged men and split them in half. Half the group was told to be guards. They were given uniforms, Billy clubs, and whistles and were told to enforce the rules. The other half of the group was assigned to the role of prisoners. They were locked behind bars and given jumpsuits. After a few days, the simulation became almost a reality. The guards were cruel and degrading to the prisoners, and as a result the prisoners rioted, succumbed to the guards, or either quit the experiment. Role change also plays an important role in Waltz with Bashir within the soldiers and the way they behave. After conforming to the Phalangists and following orders to set off flares, many of the soldiers felt as if they had taken the role of a killer, installing a feeling of guilt. As a result of the guilt that came with the role change, Folman was haunted by flashbacks and hallucinations, showing killings and other guilt-ridden events in his conscious. In the end of the movie when all Folman hears are yells of the innocent Palestinians, it is not the pain of the Palestinians that the director is focusing on, but on Folman’s shallow breathing, exemplifying his feelings of guilt and shame in response to his role in the massacre. Folman’s dreams about a massacre years after the war were a result of his suppressed memories of Beruit. At the time of the massacre, Folman and many other soldiers believed that their actions were normal in the context that they were in, agreeing to the banality of evil. Even though people change themselves to conform to a group, their old identity will eventually resurface again, with their feeling of guilt resurfacing
as well.
An article in the online magazine ei refers to Waltz with Bashir as a “soul-searching and honest account of a journey to face up to guilt and responsibility.”[iv] In the last part of the movie, many people that Folman spoke too said that they either directly knew about or heard from a direct source about the massacres that were going on. Though some did report what they heard, Minister Ariel Sharon did nothing, replying to someone who reported the massacres to hi, by saying, “Thank you for telling me. Have a happy new year’s.” In the present, one of Folman’s friends reflects on the war and how he wishes that he had done something to stop it, exercising his guilty conscious, a conscious that will always haunt him.
Although close friends, something that the two war veterans do not know about each other is that they both experience flashbacks and hallucinations of their horrid war-crimes, not knowing what to believe them or not. Their brain has suppressed the horrific memories that they experienced, only retrieving them when an occasion calls for it. With a feeling of guilt that they do not know where it comes from, the veterans are consistently bothered by their conscious. As in Waltz with Bashir, the veterans look through their past as if it is a movie, not absorbing it as reality. In their mind when they see the corpse of a little girl resembling their granddaughter, that camera quickly shatters and the suppressed memories storm back. While Folman and the two veterans struggles with their guilty conscious and blurred memory, with the help of groundbreaking physiological experiments by Milgram and Zimbardo, and Arendt’s banality of evil, there is hope that something can be done to make soldiers and veterans less capitulate to cruelty under certain circumstances and their guilt-stricken consciousness, bringing morality to come before everything else, even in the face of war.
ENDNOTES CITATION
-----------------------
[i] http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
[ii] http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/
[iii] http://www.prisonexp.org/
[iv] http://electronicintifada.net/content/film-review-waltz-bashir/3547#.Tt9DPmOVpkY
go of his inner-feelings of guilt derived from his involvement in the war-related massacres that occurred under his watch while in Beruit, Lebanon. With innovative research done on conformity by Stanley Milgram, Phillip Zimbardo’s obedience test; the Stanford Prison experiment, and the notion that strong social influences can make people capitulate to cruelty, one sees that a human beings sense of morality is non-existent when in the face of war, often giving into group conformity while losing their identity and their sense of responsibility in the process.
Naturally, we human beings are conformists; adjusting our behavior to coincide with that of a group standard. Social pressure and a desire to be accepted contribute to our continuous efforts to be accepted into a group. With technology making research more simple and widespread, many new theories and experiments surfaced, the most influential being that of American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram’s goal was to discover how human beings respond to commands. He took two people, labeling one the teacher and the other the learner. Milgram told the teacher to ask the learner a question, and the learner, who was strapped to an electrically wired chair, had to respond correctly. If the learner answered a question incorrectly, the teacher was told my Milgram to administer a shock while increasing the voltage each time the learner answered a question incorrectly. After a number of questions, the learner began to yell in pain, with the teacher being ordered by Milgram to continue the experiment until they reach the highest level of voltage. When Milgram asked a group of students whether or not they would continue to apply the shocks even after hearing the learner yell in agonizing pain, most people said they would stop. To Milgram’s surprise, it was concluded that 63 percent of men complied fully during the experiment, administering the last level of electrical shock. Even when the teacher was told that the learner had a slight heart condition, the majority of them still complied[i]. In Waltz with Bashir, many times the Israeli soldiers were ordered to “just shoot,” with no regard for human life. Years after the war, Folman could not fully remember what he had done to contribute to the massacre of hundreds of innocent Palestinians, but through flashbacks and stories from his companions, one sees that Folman was on the ring of soldiers outside of the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beruit, firing flares, aiding Phalangists in their work. The Israelis soldiers were told to do nothing by their leaders and to just follow the orders that they were given. While soldiers were being given orders under war conditions, the majority of them did not refuse to do the action, though inside they did. At the time of the massacres, Folman was fully aware of what he was doing; simply following commands. When Folman was talking to one of his old friends in an earlier scene, his friend said that he regrets that he “wasn’t the hero who saves everyone’s life,” showing his feelings of guilt for not doing anything when he had the chance, even though he telling himself he should. As Hannah Arendt touches upon in the banality of evil, human beings capitulate to cruelty when they give into their surroundings, seeing their actions as normal[ii]. The movie ends with Folman in the center of the screen, listening to the screams and cries of women and children, with his chest showing his shallow breathing. Though he faced many traumatic events throughout the war, the cry of innocence contributed to the most to his loss of memory and the creation of hallucinations and false memories. As we humans conform to a group standard, we change our way of life to continue to adjust to a new group, eventually resulting in the loss of our individually unique identity.
When we human beings conform to a certain group, we change the way in which we act, losing our old identity to make way for our new one.
Another instance in where we lose our sense of identity is in role changing. Phillip Zimbardo illustrates the effects of role changing and how it can shape ones personality[iii]. Zimbardo took a group of college-aged men and split them in half. Half the group was told to be guards. They were given uniforms, Billy clubs, and whistles and were told to enforce the rules. The other half of the group was assigned to the role of prisoners. They were locked behind bars and given jumpsuits. After a few days, the simulation became almost a reality. The guards were cruel and degrading to the prisoners, and as a result the prisoners rioted, succumbed to the guards, or either quit the experiment. Role change also plays an important role in Waltz with Bashir within the soldiers and the way they behave. After conforming to the Phalangists and following orders to set off flares, many of the soldiers felt as if they had taken the role of a killer, installing a feeling of guilt. As a result of the guilt that came with the role change, Folman was haunted by flashbacks and hallucinations, showing killings and other guilt-ridden events in his conscious. In the end of the movie when all Folman hears are yells of the innocent Palestinians, it is not the pain of the Palestinians that the director is focusing on, but on Folman’s shallow breathing, exemplifying his feelings of guilt and shame in response to his role in the massacre. Folman’s dreams about a massacre years after the war were a result of his suppressed memories of Beruit. At the time of the massacre, Folman and many other soldiers believed that their actions were normal in the context that they were in, agreeing to the banality of evil. Even though people change themselves to conform to a group, their old identity will eventually resurface again, with their feeling of guilt resurfacing
as well.
An article in the online magazine ei refers to Waltz with Bashir as a “soul-searching and honest account of a journey to face up to guilt and responsibility.”[iv] In the last part of the movie, many people that Folman spoke too said that they either directly knew about or heard from a direct source about the massacres that were going on. Though some did report what they heard, Minister Ariel Sharon did nothing, replying to someone who reported the massacres to hi, by saying, “Thank you for telling me. Have a happy new year’s.” In the present, one of Folman’s friends reflects on the war and how he wishes that he had done something to stop it, exercising his guilty conscious, a conscious that will always haunt him.
Although close friends, something that the two war veterans do not know about each other is that they both experience flashbacks and hallucinations of their horrid war-crimes, not knowing what to believe them or not. Their brain has suppressed the horrific memories that they experienced, only retrieving them when an occasion calls for it. With a feeling of guilt that they do not know where it comes from, the veterans are consistently bothered by their conscious. As in Waltz with Bashir, the veterans look through their past as if it is a movie, not absorbing it as reality. In their mind when they see the corpse of a little girl resembling their granddaughter, that camera quickly shatters and the suppressed memories storm back. While Folman and the two veterans struggles with their guilty conscious and blurred memory, with the help of groundbreaking physiological experiments by Milgram and Zimbardo, and Arendt’s banality of evil, there is hope that something can be done to make soldiers and veterans less capitulate to cruelty under certain circumstances and their guilt-stricken consciousness, bringing morality to come before everything else, even in the face of war.
ENDNOTES CITATION
-----------------------
[i] http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
[ii] http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/
[iii] http://www.prisonexp.org/
[iv] http://electronicintifada.net/content/film-review-waltz-bashir/3547#.Tt9DPmOVpkY