French polemic over fake .

game-show eledrocutions
SCIENCE: 81 percent of contestants deliver a 'deadly' surge.
By Jamey Keaten The Associated Press

PARIS - A state-run TV channel is stirring controversy with a documentary about a fake game show in which credulous participants obey orders to deliver increasingly powerful electric shocks to a ma,n, who is really an actor, until he appears to die. The producers of "The Game of Death,"broadcast Wednesday night, wanted to examine both what they call TVs mind-numbing power to suspend morality, and the striking human willingness to obey orders. ''Television is a power. We know it, but it's theoretical," producer Christophe Nick told the daily Le Parisien. "I wondered: Is it so important that it can turn us into potential exec cutioners?" In the end, more than four in five "players" gave the maximum jolt. . "People never would have obeyed if they didn't have trust," Nick was quoted as saying in the paper's Wednesday edition. "They told themselves, 'TV knows what it's doing.'" While "Le Jeu de Ill, Mort" (The Game of Death) is mainly an indictment of television's alleged power over society, Nick also takes issue with viewers who let themselves get taken in by today's TVuniverse - such as with talk shows. "People are put on a set, where they speak even about their sexual problems," he told Le Parisien. ''We wait for the admission, the flaw. Faced with exhibitionists, TVviewers have become voyeurs." The experiment was based on the work of late psychologist Stanley Milgram, who carried out a now-classicexperiment at Yale University in the 1960s.It found that most ordinary people - if encouragedby an authoritative-seeming scientist - would administer ostensibly dangerous electric shocks to others. At its root, both Milgram's work and the made-for-TV . experiment broadly replicating

France

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TV host Tania Young, right, directing a player while actor Laurent Le Doyen is seen on a screen for the reality TV show "Executioner TV." State-run television is making headlines about a fake game show based on a 1963 experiment in the United States.

the lab work unearth a question on France-2, dhorts contesmany people worldwide have tants not to bend to his cries of contemplated after 20th-cen- agony. A goading studio auditury genocides like the Holo- ence adds to the pressure. caust: Would I, too, be capable The contestants' identities of following orders to inflict were withheld, but their faces pain - or even kill? were in view during the show. France-2 billed the fake As wrong answers pile up, game show as the subject of a and the voltage increases, sociological and psychological Jean-Paul pleads: "Get me out documentary, and added a of here, please!} don't w~nt to warning~''What we are going_play anymor~" ,and fmally_ to watch is extremely tough. s~ops ans:venng, theJ?- ,falls But it's only television." SIlent despIte the e.lectnc~olts. The newspaper Liberation Contestants grow mc:easmgly had a different take, with the edgy bU~t?ld to contmue, the headline: "Television tests its vast maJonty do. . . " In the final tally, 81 percent lImIts. , "of the contestants turned up the Re;rUlters .found 80 contes- juice to the maximum - said to tants. and SaIdthey would take be potentially deadly _ level, part m a real TV show called according to "L'Experience Zone Xtreme. Each ~as pre- Extreme" (The Extreme Experisented to a man sa~d to?e ence), a book authored by Nick, another contestant ~ m realIty the producer. Only 16 people an actor - whose Job was to among the 80 who took part answer a series of questions backed' out. while str.a~pediJ?-to an electrifiEuropean TV has explored able chaIr m an Isolated boo~h. the limits of morality before. In a game of word assoclaIn the Netherlands in 2007,a tions, the actor. identified as game showtitled the "BigDonor "Jean-Paul" was told that any Show"was branded as tasteless wrong answers would merit and unethical for offering a kidpunishment in the form of elec- neyas top prize. Its aim, to raise tric shocks of 20 to 460 volts, awareness about those awaiting zapped by a console operated for organ transplants, appeared by the contestant. to work: over 12,000people regAsthe wrong answers invari- istered as organ donors after the ably roll in and the voltage broadcast. That was at. least increases, the presenter, a three times the normal average well-known TVweatherwoman - for a month.'