“The New Stanford Prison Experiment” ends on a far more hopeful note than Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s original 1971 trial.
The first iteration of the Stanford prison experiment took 24 white male college students (save one Asian American) and paid them $15 a day to participate in a two-week simulated prison environment in order to study the effects of incarceration. Students were randomly assigned to the roles of guards or inmates, with the guards pressured to maintain order by any means necessary. Participants fell into their roles a little too well and, after a prisoner rebellion, increasingly cruel forms of punishment from the guards and a number of students suffering mental breakdowns, the experiment was ended on the sixth day. It’s widely considered one of the most notorious, ethically compromised psychological studies in history.
And so, on Oct. 21, Netflix debuted “The New Stanford Prison Experiment,” a six-episode reality-TV version from executive producers Jane Lipsitz and Dan Cutforth (“Top Chef”) that saw thirty entrants of various racial, geographical and economic backgrounds — including three women — partake in a two-week simulated prison environment, only this time in the decommissioned cell block of an actual working prison. Eight of them were assigned as guards, working in two separate shifts, and the other 22 prisoners. Unlike the 1971 version, the show implemented safeguards to ensure safety, including background checks and psychological testing for all involved; informed consent; medics, psychologists and off-duty guards on call 24/7; a safe word (“pineapple”) if participants ever felt they needed to leave or talk to a therapist and/or producer; and conducted regular interviews with participants throughout. There was also a team of three experts on hand observing the proceedings: Alison Wood Brooks, a behavioral scientist who teaches at Harvard Business School; Trymaine Lee, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; and Michael Cantrell, a former federal corrections officer.
Over the course of the experiment, five people bow out — the first of whom, Larry Foy, a former convict who goes by the nickname “Scary Larry,” gets severely triggered by being in a prison environment again and demands to be removed. “Nobody thought it would affect him in the way that it did, but we knew he could make the decision for himself and relieve himself of the experiment if it became too much, which he in fact did,” Lipsitz explains to Variety. “I think he was surprised by how much it affected him.”
The experiment nearly unravels by day six (again) when two prisoners, Pete and Brandon, are placed in “23 and 1” for conspiring against the guards, meaning they must remain locked in their cell for 23 hours and a day and are given 1 hour a day outside it for showering and recreation. Brandon nearly bails, but decides to stay after an emotional phone call with his mother. “We thought it would end on the same day that the original experiment did,” admits Lipsitz, adding that the Pete and Brandon predicament raises an interesting question for audiences: “Do you see them as ridiculous pains in the ass or antiheroes?”
To complicate matters further, four “phases” were implemented by producers: Transformation, Hierarchy, Role-Reversal and Self-Governance. During the Role-Reversal phase, the most punished inmates — Pete and Brandon among them — are made guards while the most power-obsessed guards, such as Chet Hudson, an oil rigger from Mississippi who put Pete and Brandon in “23 and 1,” and Chris Lee, a 41-year-old startup CEO with a more kumbaya approach, are converted to inmates. Chet, uncomfortable with being power-less, quits after a day; meanwhile, the inmates who’d been fed up with Pete and Brandon for their mischief-making in their previous role begin crowding the duo and come perilously close to attacking them when the three female guards from the other shift intervene to stop it. They’re led by Laura Berens, a CEO and entrepreneur, who emerges as the finest leader of the experiment with her firm-but-fair methods.
“As a woman running the show, it was important to reflect the female experience as well and look at that in terms of power dynamics,” offers Lipsitz. “I think that Laura really emerged as the strongest leader of the whole series when they’d ended their shift and checked on them to see how it was going to go. It was almost motherly concern. They did not want a prison riot.”
As for that hopeful ending, during the final “Self-Governance” phase, all of the rules are thrown out the window and the prisoners are allowed to do as they please. Though some inmates demand to stay and finish the experiment, including Lee, he’s convinced by a fellow prisoner, the Black comedian Mike Paramore, that it would be far more powerful if all the prisoners walked out of the facility together arm-in-arm, suggesting an image of racial unity. And that’s what they do, ending the experiment on the thirteenth day.
“We felt it was really powerful and did not see that coming at all,” says Lipsitz. “I would hesitate to come to any conclusions about race and gender, but I think it holds up a mirror to a lot of those issues and is very revealing,” Cutforth remarks. “It’s something me and Jane are particularly proud of and felt privileged to be able to make the show.”
“One really fascinating thing about it is, there’s a lot of talk about the manosphere and the ‘male loneliness epidemic,’ and having those men together with no phones, alcohol or women, these men from all different backgrounds really bonded in an amazing way,” Lipsitz adds. “There were conversations in there where you could hear that they’d learned from each other and were fascinated by other people’s POVs — people they would have never come across in society except for here. It seemed like a very positive experience for them, and for the women as well.”
Will there be a second season of “The New Stanford Prison Experiment?” Lipsitz and Cutforth hope so.
“I would love to have the opportunity to do it again, for sure,” shares Cutforth. “That prison setting is an incredible petri dish, and I would love to see more things play out there.”
“Obviously, we couldn’t do it the same way,” says Lipstiz. “I think it would be interesting to do it with women and ask some different questions or frame it differently. But we’re really proud of it and hope people watch, debate and think about what it means in modern society. That’s the most you can ask for.”