MovieChat Forums > The Island (2005) Discussion > The guards laughing about Starkweather's...

The guards laughing about Starkweather's capture.


This was a bit too cheap and cliché of the writing I thought.

All standing around laughing like bloodthirsty a55holes as they watch the replay of a terrified, and innocent man being dragged off to his death.

Sure they're just 'product', but you'd have to be a freakin' psychopath not to feel they are still people, and people with the naivety of children at that. Do the job you're no doubt being paid very well for, but you must be demented to revel in their misery.

...then whoa, differences...

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Indeed, it seems there are dozens or hundredsof people in this movie who are quite happy to kill clones because theyre not 'real' people without a qualm. They even found nurses/doctors who will birth a baby from a happy mum and then instantly kill her without compunction. Not at any stage do any of them say 'wait, this is wrong, perhaps I should say something'. The future is obviously a time when people working for biotech corporations KNOW theyre gonna be killed for helping the clones.

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Ever heard of Hitler's final solution? Stalin's Pogroms? Polpot's Khmer Rouge?

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Context is everything. These people neither live in a brutal totalitarian state or seem to have been brainwashed by years of cultural grooming. You need to understand context and that not everything can be dealt with simplisticly as in 'well germans did it under Hitler ...' . People snitch on othere people for punching cows in an abbatoir these days.

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These people neither live in a brutal totalitarian state or seem to have been brainwashed by years of cultural grooming.
You do realise this film is set in the USA don't you? Ever read Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.

Hitler's regime was considered beneficial to most Germans (until they started losing the war) many of whom turned a blind eye to the Jewish persecution and some who benefited financially from the vacuum left behind. You should really watch Schindler's List.

It's really not that hard to find people like those guards in any society, as history has proven time and again. As for people who are willing to "turn a blind eye" to such atrocities or are unwilling to "rock the boat", there are even more of those!

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They don't have to live in a brutal totalitarian state. It's astonishing how quickly people can turn into monsters. Read Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. It's the story about how absolutely ordinary German policemen were induced to become entirely voluntary accomplices in the Nazi "final solution" in newly conquered Poland -- and these were not kids who had been brainwashed in the Hitler Youth. They were not ideological Nazis. They were ordinary, middle-aged German civil servants who grew to adulthood well before the Nazis ever took power. And they still become monsters, without coercion.

Read about the Stanford Prison Experiment, of 1971. It was a mere two-week experiment run by the psychology department of Stanford University. Citizens who volunteered were chosen at random to be either guards or prisoners. The resulting experiment has been referenced and critiqued as one of the most unethical psychology experiments in history, and it was ended early because it was getting alarmingly out of hand. What is remarkable about it is how, in a mere two weeks, the absolutely ordinary, average people who played the guards became guilty of truly shocking cruelty toward their fellow human beings.

I don't wonder for an instant that a group of guards, kept apart from the clones, given power over them, who can see that they behave almost like children because they are so new to the world and ignorant, develop a sense of superiority, and easily dehumanize the clones, so that they just flat out don't see them as real people. When the clones run from the operating room in terror and get put down, the guards see them like video game characters, nothing more. There is abundant historical precedent for people treating other human beings this way -- not manufactured clones, which we cannot yet create, but real, fellow homo sapiens -- so no, this doesn't strike me as implausible in the slightest degree.

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Even McCord did not give a damn about the clones, he even compared them to burgers. The only one who showed some heart towards them was the agent hired to get the couple back.

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Not giving a damn about them and actually getting pleasure from their pain and anguish are two different things.

Sure, the odd one may get a secret delight from the suffering of others, but to stand around in a group giggling about it, particularly when the clones are innocents...

...then whoa, differences...

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I totally agree with you. All the employees in the facilities seem kind of heartless.

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Just listen to those real life planned parenthood tapes that came out and you'll see there are real life people who look at and peak of actual humans merely as product.

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Why would these guys treat this product any differently than some workers treat our future food in factory farms?

Cows, pigs, chickens are tortured and abused because they aren't seen as beings with souls or feelings. No different. These clones are just being raised for body parts, so they are things, not people.

You're always going to have psychopaths that enjoy salting snails and setting kittens on fire and drowning puppies. There will always be psychopaths that are attracted to certain jobs. If they're not sick when they're hired, they become desensitized in time.

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I'm sorry, you're so completely wrong here, that scene is probably the most accurate in the entire film. This is exactly how they'd behave.

Yes, comparing this to Hitler's regime is a bit cliché, but it's also a damn good analogy. Because Germany, Austria etc. were filled with perfectly normal people who started to see Jews and other people as animals, and stopped caring about them. They honestly didn't think of them as human beings, with very little "brain washing" required.

It might be a wicked sense of defense mechanism. When you start to see other humans as non-humans, without risk to you or your "kind", people behave in the most sadistic of ways. The guards saw that man as a bag of meat ("He isn't human! He was created here! We can do what we want with him!") and behaved accordingly; it was funny to them, seeing the doomed inmate trying to escape his inevitable death. They can kill anyone with no consequences.

You can check out these links for further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment - Stanford prison experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse - Abu Grahib

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There are a couple of comparisons to the Nazi thing here and I can't agree. The Jews were thoroughly demonised by the Nazis, in this movie the clones are plainly innocents. Big difference.

As I've said previously you can expect the odd nut-bag to take pleasure in their suffering but to stand around in a group and relish it is just too cartoon-bad-guys cliché.


...then whoa, differences...

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They're "innocents" that daily/weekly are getting killed. The guards and everyone on the outside knows it, they have to rationalise that somehow, it is OK.
By not seeing them as "real people", they develop a sick sense of humour about the whole process, which is happening every day (or close to it), and make up their own moral for what's right and wrong. I assume this is exactly how it'd play out.
If they have a problem with it, they'd be sick to their stomach every day and ultimately quit this job. For sure.

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Not having a problem with these people being product and being euthanized for the benefit of their 'owners' is one thing, gleeful enjoyment of their pain and anguish is quite another.


...then whoa, differences...

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They laugh at their pain as a coping mechanism, to distance themselves from the islanders. I'd understand it if it was cows, but they're killing something eerily similar to themselves here.

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Come on, the way it's depicted in the movie you're drawing a long bow by suggesting it's just their way of coping. They're depicted as soulless cartoon bad guys (which is my issue with the scene) and I seriously doubt the film makers were expecting any kind of subtle interpretation of their inner feelings and coping mechanisms.


...then whoa, differences...

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Well, I feel like the first half of the film sets you up to question their world, and actually probes us with some moral issues. I have love/hate relationship with it because I find that first half to be so good, compared with the garbage that is the rest of this film.
This is by far the most civil discussion I've had with anyone on IMDb, by the way, cheers. :)

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lol Thanks. I concur there are some rude arrogant arses here who I can only imagine are compensating for their impotence as functioning humans in the real world.

Agreed on the second half too, the story really didn't benefit by turning into that.


...then whoa, differences...

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Look how many times you see a group of kids/teens/adults watching someone get beat up, raped, etc. and they are seen laughing and taping it. It is sad to see anyone revel when another human being is suffering.

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Agreed. But if you look past the surface. Who knows. Those in charge must be very aware that it'll be a natural temptation for workers to relate to the "product." So it's really not unreasonable to think that the bosses might have demands on how the workers speak to each other regarding the "products." Really not unreasonable. Heck in the world as we know it you're not "supposed" to talk to coworkers about how much you earn. So the bosses might do that as a way to control the atmosphere and attitude. Creates sort of a dilemma. Those guards, perhaps none of them are really that callous. But they each think the others are, and they better do the same so they don't stick out.

Also, we don't know their backgrounds. These could all be hardened criminals or former military or something that hardens you. Or they're in a spot where they can't say no. Really, all sorts of reasons they might put up a front.

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Every job has its own unique sources of humour, as bad as it seems.

Imagine what goes on in a funeral place.

It reminded me of the chicken factory workers video'd kicking live chickens up against the wall of the factory and laughing.

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