The Stanford Prison Experiment Coach Carter

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Timo’s Relationship with Coach Carter’s Zimbardo-esque Loss of Liberty To create a basketball team that can provide benefits to the Richmond community, Coach Carter imposes strict and regimented practices limiting the liberties of the players. A star player on the team, Timo Cruz, initially rejects Coach Carter’s sudden aggressive coaching style and loss of individual liberties. Whereas before, Timo was allowed to control the team using his talent as a validation for his power.Coach Carter’s removal of Timo Cruz’s liberties and personal choice is similar to the tendencies described in Philip Zimbardo’s, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” in regards to the guard’s behavior when controlling, dehumanizing and dictating prisoners (Zimbardo 108). …show more content…

A lot of power dynamics between Coach Carter and his players, such as Timo, is reminiscent of the prison guards. To Timo, his success is being the star player of his high school basketball team but is forced to give up his status when he is thrown off the team by Coach Carter. Initially shocked, Timo was forced to leave his high school’s team in favor of being around his cousin, a drug dealing gang-banger in a less affluent area of southern California with the only hope of returning to the team is through physically impossible exercise (Carter). Although Coach Carter’s methods were less extreme to an extent compared to the prison guards, the methods used both mirror one another remarkable well. The prison guards were instructed to, “utilized psychological state of imprisonment… through the usage of solitary confinement… and ‘deindividualization’” which matches Coach Carter’s structure of expulsion from the team and strict regimented control over aspects of life such as dress and grades (Zimbardo 109). Coach Carter imposes strict grades and business dress code to remove the team from their disorderly dressed peers and create an easily identifiable whole. The new coach also enforces a strict academic standard, utilizing the influence of a signed contract to keep the student’s grades up (Carter). Timo, however, rejects these dress codes and academic standards, and is cast into solitary confinement with his only way of release submitting to the punishment dealt by Coach Carter. Zimbardo’s guards were instructed to dehumanize and isolate prisoners to force obedience, Coach Carter replicates this with Timo, forcing him to submit (Zimbardo 111). Timo’s solitary confinement is where Jason Lyle voluntarily embraces Timo as a teammate, disobeying Coach and retaking liberties of choice to decide what is best for the team. Jason

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