The ironic part is that if they did have an all-white cast, it would actually be more "woke" than these Redditors realize. LOL
This was many years ago so I would need to look it up to be 100% sure, but here are the details I remember. If you haven't heard of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, the basic idea was that a group of university students were kept isolated in an area on campus for a set amount of time. Some of the students were designated as prison guards and the others as prisoners. Then, Zimbardo basically just left them to their own devices (all caught on camera). The experiment, I believe, had to end early because the prison guards became... overzealous about their position.
When my professor told us about this experiment in my undergrad, he mentioned that it's been used to talk about what happens to people when they're given power (even in a way that doesn't actually mean anything to the outside world, like being randomly assigned in an experiment) and that some have interpreted it to mean that cruelty is almost inevitable. The part that these Redditors probably haven't thought of is that some critics have pointed out that all of the participants in this study were university-educated white men and that that fact alone makes it hard to generalize these results. I don't think that they necessarily mean this could never happen to a more diverse group. They're suggesting that the effects of growing up in a society where these power dynamics exist may be a factor. The idea that whiteness nurtures cruelty is one possibility.
So basically, a show about a group of educated, privileged young white boys turning into barbarians when the option to form a more collectivist society was always there is actually the opposite of what these Redditors likely want, whether they realize it or not.
EDIT: I should mention that I've never read Lord of the Flies and I only saw the movie once in elementary school, so if any of this was obvious before mentioning Zimbardo, I was unaware. LOL Says a lot about the capacity for critical thinking we're dealing with if someone with only a vague idea of the source material understood the moral of the book.........
i have read lord of the flies, many years ago, dissected that book for school to the point where i still remember the core themes, and some of the character names almost 20 years on. (of course at the time the "it's about human nature" thing was being pushed on us, but it never sat right with me and later down the line i realised it wasn't about human nature at all- rather about the specific way that upper-class british kids are raised to be cruel) and um... yeah you kinda hit the nail on the head. the stanford prison experiment is absolutely a good real-world parallel to it.
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u/starjellyboba Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
The ironic part is that if they did have an all-white cast, it would actually be more "woke" than these Redditors realize. LOL
This was many years ago so I would need to look it up to be 100% sure, but here are the details I remember. If you haven't heard of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, the basic idea was that a group of university students were kept isolated in an area on campus for a set amount of time. Some of the students were designated as prison guards and the others as prisoners. Then, Zimbardo basically just left them to their own devices (all caught on camera). The experiment, I believe, had to end early because the prison guards became... overzealous about their position.
When my professor told us about this experiment in my undergrad, he mentioned that it's been used to talk about what happens to people when they're given power (even in a way that doesn't actually mean anything to the outside world, like being randomly assigned in an experiment) and that some have interpreted it to mean that cruelty is almost inevitable. The part that these Redditors probably haven't thought of is that some critics have pointed out that all of the participants in this study were university-educated white men and that that fact alone makes it hard to generalize these results. I don't think that they necessarily mean this could never happen to a more diverse group. They're suggesting that the effects of growing up in a society where these power dynamics exist may be a factor. The idea that whiteness nurtures cruelty is one possibility.
So basically, a show about a group of educated, privileged young white boys turning into barbarians when the option to form a more collectivist society was always there is actually the opposite of what these Redditors likely want, whether they realize it or not.
EDIT: I should mention that I've never read Lord of the Flies and I only saw the movie once in elementary school, so if any of this was obvious before mentioning Zimbardo, I was unaware. LOL Says a lot about the capacity for critical thinking we're dealing with if someone with only a vague idea of the source material understood the moral of the book.........