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Game of Death is an adaptation of an infamous experiment conducted by a team led by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. In order to test people's obedience to authority figures, the scientists demanded that subjects administer increasingly strong electric shocks to other participants if they answered questions incorrectly. The people delivering the shocks, however, didn't know that the charges were fake — the volunteers on the other end of the room were actors pretending to suffer agonizing pain. The point was to see how many people would continue following orders to mete out torture. (See the world's most popular TV shows.)
Milgram found that 62.5% of his subjects could be encouraged, browbeaten or intimidated into seeing the test through to its conclusion by delivering scores of shocks of increasing intensity to the maximum of 450 volts. In Game of Death, 81% of contestants went all the way by administering more than 20 shocks up to a maximum of 460 volts. Only 16 of the 80 subjects recruited for the fake game show refused the verbal prodding from the host — and pressure from the audience to keep dishing out the torture like a good sport — though most expressed misgivings or tried to pull out before being convinced otherwise.
Nick says he got the idea for the project after stumbling across an episode of the French version of The Weakest Link. The willingness of the adult contestants to allow the hostess to belittle them — and their own eagerness to backstab fellow participants for their own gain — convinced him that Milgram's findings about the human submission to authority figures were particularly applicable to TV. "Television is a power — we know that, but it remained theoretical," Nick told the daily le Parisien Wednesday. "I asked myself, 'Is it so strong that it can turn us into potential torturers?'" (See the best TV shows of all time.)
The results of Nick's documentary indicate the answer to that is yes — a conclusion reinforced by the program's editors and his sobering voice-overs. Indeed, while most critics have applauded Nick's effort to reveal the manipulative powers of television, some commentators suggest he nonetheless errs by leaving no room to contest the documentary's conclusions. "Its excessive dramatization and commentary that's too often willing to cut corners and blur issues can be irritating," writes Hélène Marzolf, a television critic for the culture magazine Télérama.
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