Revisioning Obedience: Exploring the Role of Milgram's Skills as a Filmmaker in Bringing His Shocking Narrative to Life

Abstract

In his “Obedience to Authority” experiments, Milgram took on the dual roles of scientific investigator and documentary filmmaker. He used photography and film as tools of investigation and dissemination throughout his career. Milgram claimed the documentary Obedience (1965) as audiovisual evidence of his “obedience to authority” paradigm. “Revisioning Milgram” looks behind the scenes at the scripting and authoring of Obedience in order to assess its claims as both art and science. It examines the way in which Milgram constructed a visual narrative to support his preferred findings and some of the tensions that arose when his film was first broadcast. This article considers how we might recover the lost visual narratives of Obedience in order to contribute to contemporary reappraisals of “Obedience to Authority.”