Netflix’s New Stanford Prison Experiment: more full of shit than the toilet that won’t flush

The New Stanford Prison Experiment has arrived on Netflix, and I can only hope it is part of an exciting new trend of using Netflix’s money to redo famous failures:

• The New Hindenburg. Was it the helium catching fire that caused the Hindenburg to catch fire? Who knows, let’s try it again!
• The New Titanic. If the Titanic hit the iceberg but we actually had enough lifeboats and doors for everyone to float on, would the boat still sink? Would Leonardo DiCaprio still have a career?
• The New New Project Runway. Did the first two Freeform seasons alienate the entire fan base and destroy the first prestige reality TV competition’s reputation enough, or is there more we can do?

Yes, at long last, we have the world’s biggest entertainment company to thank for answering a burning question: What happens when you borrow infamous university research as your title and let reality TV cast members pretend to be guards and prisoners in a real jail?

The answer, I can confidently say after watching two episodes, is absolutely nothing surprising. But the title and my righteous indignation about it drew me to watch, and that is all that matters to Netflix.

The New Stanford Prison Experiment wants us to take it seriously—Finally, an ethical version of the world’s most-famous unethical experiment! With artful drone shots of a prison!—but if AI reanimated Gene Wilder started talking to the cast over the jail’s loudspeakers about Everlasting Gobstoppers, it’d be less silly than this show’s concept and execution.

I mentioned Freeform’s Project Runway travesty because it, like The Real Stanford Prison Experiment, is produced by Alfred Street Industries, the production company run by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz. I’ve liked their work since VH1’s Bands on the Run—and of course, Project Runway and Top Chef.

I asked Netflix to interview them; I was told they are not available. I was curious why they made certain decisions—including, yes, doing this in the first place, but mostly about the execution.

The original experiment is popularly known for the way students playing guards became sadistic and those playing prisoners submissive until they revolted. The experiment had to be stopped, and the cultural takeaway is that power corrupts.

But the reality was more complicated. The students playing guards were told to act that way. They had “greater expectations for hostile and oppressive behavior,” one researcher found, while a 2019 study of the archival materials discovered “the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners,” which contributes to its “questionable scientific validity.”

And so what does Netflix’s version do? Gives the guards instructions! “It’s up to you to take control of the pod. Don’t lose the authority. Don’t be disrespected,” someone at the jail tells the guard cast members before they start. “At no point in time should you ever make an inmate feel like you are not in control while you are here. Do I make myself clear?”

In case that isn’t enough encouragement, the producers give the guards challenges, like a blindfolded shiv fight. I am joking about that, but not about the challenges, and not about the absurdity of the way Hollywood keeps trying to make entertainment out of the lives of incarcerated people.

In Netflix’s edition, Alison Wood Brooks tells us that, in the 1971 study, “the line between observation and participation got very blurry,” and so now they’re going to try it with “no interference, no bias, just observation—to try to answer the question that was asked over 50 years ago: Does power corrupt?”

The answer is yes—if we’re talking about the power The New Stanford Prison Experiment’s producers hold over their cast members.

I stopped watching halfway through the second episode, when the cast members playing guards walked into their break room and discovered riot gear. Yes, they had a riot challenge—even though there was not a riot, and even though the cast had no idea how to use any of the gear they were given, like handcuffs.

In the second episode, Brooks describes the production’s interference and tasks as “a series of interventions that test different things to see how people react under different circumstances.”

So in other words, fuck the experiment, we’re gonna fuck with them! And that’s what happens.

Brooks—who is identified on screen as a “behavioral psychologist” but has a Ph.D. in Operations and Information Management—gets to play the role of producers’ mouthpiece. She’s there with two other experts, journalist Trymaine Lee and retired correctional officer Michael Cantrell, but all three are about as effective as Married at First Sight’s matchmakers, probably because they just sit and watch footage and become the production’s narrators.

One of the most interesting developments in the first episode is that the two groups of cast members playing guards take different approaches.

The overnight shift is led by Chris Lee, a business coach and CEO. He turns it into summer camp with a “cool culture,” leading the cast playing inmates in a paper airplane challenge. The day shift guard cosplayers are led by Chet Hudson, who says in a pre-interview, “every horse can be broke. If somebody does not want to comply, then at some point you’re going to find their breaking point.”

Are we surprised about which of them acts like a sadistic asshole? I did find it surprising how quickly the night shift quickly undermines the day shift’s decisions and authority, such as returning a microwave that’s been removed as punishment. If we’re going to take The New Stanford Prison Experiment’s word that it’s interested in just seeing what happens, let’s see what happens, right?

Instead, the producers 1) make sure the two shifts have no contact at shift change, as they usually do—so the day shift will discover the microwave sabotage on their own, and 2) force the night shift to interrupt summer camp games by going in with riot gear, handcuff everyone, and lock them away in their cells.

So The New Stanford Prison Experiment is just the worst of reality television: manipulating people for our entertainment, but with the temerity to pretend that’s serious science.

“Why are we doing all this dumbass shit?” one of the cast members playing a prisoner asks. “This is dumb as fuck.” A few quickly use the safe word, “pineapple,” to leave.

One cast member playing a prisoner discovers his toilet won’t flush, because no one told them that the toilets flush just twice an hour. Instead of living with festering feces, he says “get me the fuck out of here” and looks into the camera as he says, “pineapple, pineapple, pineapple, pineapple.” Brooks puts on a serious face and says, “it’s important that the participants can have the freedom to leave at any point.” Yet we hear a producer tell the cast member, “just stand by,” as in, Let’s talk about this! The cast member says, “Nah, I’d rather just go home.”

What drew my attention most was the way some cast members approached their participation. Pete, an elementary school teacher who describes himself as “a guard of fifth-grade children,” tells us “I’m excited to just mix it up” and “pull pranks” to teach his students that “it’s okay to stand up to power.”

Another cast member, Derrick, says he’s participating to teach his kids that “authority’s not always right, authority’s not always on your side, but authority is still authority.”

When Pete becomes hostile to the guard cast, openly ignoring and mocking them—watching their teacher grab his dick and balls as a gesture to the guards should be fun for his students!—it creates conflict: with Derrick, not the guard cast members.

Is Pete’s confidence with defying guards a result of his white privilege? Does Derrick’s annoyance with Pete having anything to do with being a Black man who lives in the United States of America? Is there any interest in exploring this with Netflix viewers? Ha, nope. The closest we get is Derrick telling Pete during an argument, “I can tell you’re very privileged.”

For all its ethical problems and reality TV shenanigans, The Real Stanford Prison Experiment is also very boring, with long stretches of backstory and interviews.

I did appreciate the unintentional comedy, such as when Brooks asks, “I’m really curious to see how the guards interpret the authority they have in that role. In other words, how are they going to use that power? Will they ultimately abuse it?”

What rigorous intellectual inquiry! If only I had Netflix money, I’d do some of my own investigations. Here’s how I’d narrate them:

• I’m really curious to see how my cat interprets the food I put in front of her. How will she use it?

• I’m really curious to see how my clothes will interpret me falling into a pool. Will they get wet?
• I’m really curious how Israel will interpret these bombs the USA is giving them. How are they going to use them? Will they ultimately abuse them, or use them as a peace offering to the Palestinians they haven’t killed yet?

Such mysteries! There is, however, an actual mystery hanging over The New Stanford Prison Experiment, and that is about how the cast perceives all of this.

The author of Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: History of a Lie, Thibault Le Texier, found an interview with a student who participated, who said:

That was a constant issue: I’m hired for a job to be a prisoner. At most jobs you have to obey the rules, but what are the rules if you’re in a mock prison situation? I mean are you allowed to do what normal prisoners do, like talking, swearing, telling the guards to fuck off?

That’s the problem here, too: the cast can’t agree what their jobs are. The cells, the toilets, the food, and the handcuffs may be real, but they know that the context is a Netflix reality TV show produced by the people who brought us Top Chef and Nailed It! By intervening with tasks for the guards, the producers show us they are serious only about ensuring something, anything happens. That’s not an ethical experiment. That’s sad desperation.

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