Netflix’s latest reality show is an exercise in cruelty

I was shocked to read that the Stanford Prison Experiment is getting the reality TV treatment next month for Netflix.

And while we’re turning anything into reality TV these days – such as Channel 4’s chaotic idea in Apocalypse, where people are stranded in an abandoned town without food or water – this still feels like a step too far.

The New Stanford Prison Experiment will throw 30 ‘willing’ participants into a real jail and randomly designate them guards or prisoners, in six episodes.

This isn’t a silly game – this is based on a real and controversial experiment by Stanford psych professor Philip Zimbardo in 1971.

If the Stanford Prison Experiment somehow passed you by: Zimbardo rounded up 18 paid male volunteers from the university’s student body, and divided them into ‘oppressors’ and ‘the oppressed’.

The study was suspended after six days because the guards’ behaviour had become cruel, which was subsequently touted by Zimbardo as an indication of humanity’s innate savagery when in positions of authority over others.

This involved stripping the prisoners naked, restricting bathroom access and replacing their names with numbers to dehumanise them.

I wish I was making this up.

The infamous experiment inspired endless debate, documentaries, a film dramatisation and now a new unscripted Netflix show.

Given the experiment’s reputation as a hotbed of psychological torture, it is especially grim that this has been the inspiration for a new reality TV show

But with reality TV’s reputation for psychological torture all of its own, maybe I shouldn’t be too shocked – maybe I’m just disappointed.

Stranger still is the fact that, in the decades since, the experiment has been widely debunked as pseudoscience. 

The guards were coached by Zimbardo to create a psychologically hostile environment, influenced by his evident determination to get the sensational results he got.

Sounds like some reality TV producers to me.

The Netflix press release on The New Stanford Prison Experiment acknowledges ‘serious ethical flaws’ with the experiment, but doesn’t mention how their adaption will avoid those same ethical concerns. 

‘Thrust into a system of power, hierarchy, and control, they’ll discover whether ordinary people inevitably conform to the roles they’re given or whether empathy, morality, and individuality can withstand the forces pushing them in the opposite direction,’ the show synopsis reads.

‘As the pressure builds and the balance of power begins to shift, the central question feels more urgent than ever: does power corrupt?’ What an apt space reality TV is to interrogate such a weighty matter.

The show reads like a disingenuous ploy – not least because society is chock full of examples that power absolutely does. 

It might come as an unsurprising move from Netflix, not least because the streamer has a Willy Wonka reality show in the pipeline, complete with an AI-generated recreation of Gene Wilder’s voice.

But it also presents a depressing trend in reality TV, harkening back to the famously Wild West days of when it first hit our screens. No wonder there are rumours The X Factor might be making a return to screens.

The obvious predecessors are Squid Game: The Challenge and the US’s Beast Games. 

Both took Squid Game’s searing class commentary (one sanctioned, one rip-off) and unironically replicated it to coerce financially precarious people to prostrate themselves for a cash prize.

Now, the Stanford Prison Experiment again draws the opposite conclusion from the grisly material it was based off, saying that they are hoping morality wins with this experiment, instead of seeing who descends into madness.

The only difference, so far, is the absence of a cash prize. The incentive for those ‘willing participants’ will probably be for the other thing: D-list fame. 

This is the chief issue with trying to recreate an infamously brutal scenario. 

The presence of TV cameras alters behaviour, with contestants typically playing up for the lens. That’s acceptable when it’s simulating pretend romance, but less so when you’re tasked with psychological abuse. 

And that’s without any added producerial interference. 

Zimbardo’s pressure on guards to act a certain way is not totally dissimilar to a show producer in the ear of a participant, trying to engineer high drama.

Just as the Stanford Prison Experiment wasn’t a proper scientific study, this reality show also isn’t interested in conducting a searing social experiment. 

That would be a lacklustre viewing experience. Like the 2002 BBC show The Experiment, the first televised attempt of recreating the study.

Zimbardo reacted with concern and argued that the BBC’s simulation lacked psychological reality.

He died in 2024, so won’t be commenting on Netflix’s show, which seems to have different motivations despite a far-from-original premise.

I doubt this new show is going to be anything more than a hyper-camera-aware group, with a few participants possessing moral backbone thrown in for variety, all for our apparent enjoyment. 

I really hope people see this for what it is and not participate in televised cruelty.

The irony is that in its complete absence of scientific rigour, Netflix’s Stanford Prison Experiment might end up being the most faithful recreation of Zimbardo’s study yet.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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