Is Netflix’s ‘The New Stanford Prison Experiment’ for Real?

Foreign Policy · Jordan Hoffman · 2026-10-30 18:15 UTC

The creators of “Is It Cake?” set out to answer the question of whether power corrupts.

The creators of “Is It Cake?” set out to answer the question of whether power corrupts.

I had to chuckle when I got the email. A PR blast announced “Netflix presents The New Stanford Prison Experiment.” Was this an attempt to one-up the satirically dystopian phrases in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest? A “yes, and” to Wallace’s “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment”? Alas, no. And for the streaming service that only became more ubiquitous after the global success of the gleefully sadistic Squid Game, it seemed apt.

The phrase “Stanford prison experiment,” like Lord of the Flies, is pretty much synonymous with violence, anarchy, and the bleakest confirmation of man’s inhumanity to man. Do we really need a “new” one?

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