The Gospel According to Cool Hand Luke
By Tom Reiber
July 14, 2002
Hebrew Bible: Micah 6: 6-8
New Testament: Mark 10: 35-45
irty-one years ago, nine young men, all college volunteers in a social psychology experiment, were arrested at their homes by Palo Alto police officers. They were taken to a mock jail at Stanford University's Psychology Department where they were “strip searched, sprayed for lice and locked up with chains around their ankles.”
You probably remember reading about this either at
the time in the newspaper or since in introductory psych texts. This was the experiment that went on to
reveal how a group of college kids, arbitrarily divided into guards and
prisoners, revealed a shocking readiness on the part of the “guards” to exploit
their prisoners. The guards were given
khaki uniforms and mirrored sunglasses transforming them into representatives
of a system that none of them really understood. A present-day web site summarizes the experiment this way:
“Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment of August
1971 quickly became a classic. Using
realistic methods, Zimbardo and others were able to create a prison atmosphere
that transformed its participants. The
young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how much circumstances can
distort individual personalities—and how anyone, when given complete control
over others, can act like a monster.”1
It's unclear how long the experiment would have gone on
had it not been for Zimbardo's then girlfriend (they later married), Christina
Maslach. She was a doctoral student at
the time and was called in to interview some of the participants. When she got there, five days into the
experiment, she glanced at the television monitors as a group of guards led a
group of prisoners to the bathroom. The
prisoners had bags over their heads. Christina sensed immediately that something was terribly wrong.
“Her
stomach reacted first. She felt queasy
and instinctively turned her head away. Her peers, other academic psychologists, noticed her flinch. ‘What's the matter?' they teased.”
That prompted her to doubt her instincts, thinking to
herself, “…here I am, I'm supposed to be a psychologist, I'm supposed to
understand, and I was having a hard time watching what was happening to these
kids.”
After leaving the prison, reports the Stanford News,
Zimbardo asked his girlfriend and fellow researcher what she thought of the
experiment. She says in retrospect, “I
think he expected some sort of great intellectual discussion about what was
going on. Instead, I started to have
this incredible emotional outburst. I
started to scream, I started to yell, ‘I think it is terrible what you are
doing to those boys!' …We had a fight you wouldn't believe….”
“Zimbardo was upset,” reports the Stanford News, …but
eventually that night, ‘he acknowledged what [his partner] was saying and
realized what had happened to him and to other people in the study. At that point he decided to call the whole
experiment to a halt.”
I wanted to start out by calling this experiment to mind
because of the way it, along with our Gospel reading, sheds light on the human
condition. The Gospel reading with the
disciples fighting over who's going to get to sit on Jesus' right and left in
heaven shows how deeply ingrained a hierarchical mindset is. The Zimbardo experiment reveals how willing
and ready people are to exploit power at the expense of the powerless.
An important feature in all this is the moral blindness
on the part of those doing the exploiting. The guards in the Zimbardo experiment were obviously morally blind to
what they were doing. But even the
researchers failed to grasp the full extent of the injustice. They may have
been interested by what was going on, but they had watched it unfold without
any serious thought of calling a halt to it. It took his girlfriend puncturing the bubble of their denial for them to
stop and say, “Yeah, I guess something is wrong here.”
It's not hard to see how this kind of domination mindset
defined the social world of first century Rome. We've all got a general sense that things were fairly brutal
then, with gladiatorial games, public executions, widespread slavery and the
like. But in keeping with the findings
of the experiment, we're less attuned to the practice of domination in our own
time. But all we have to do is pick up
the newspaper. (Lifting up the Tuesday,
June 25th edition of the New York Times Metro section.) Take the anal rape of Abner Louima, for
example. Or down below on the same
page, “Conspiracy Convictions Restored Against 5 Orange Police Officers” for
beating and pepper spraying a man who had done nothing wrong. In the face of these abuses we can stand
back and be astonished and perplexed, or we can tap into the power of our
religious tradition to illuminate the dark side of human nature.
As a
rather dramatic example of the power hierarchy I'd like to tell you about an
annual rodeo that takes place in Louisiana's Angola Prison. You might notice the name of the prison is a
country in Africa. That's because prior
to it being a prison it was a plantation and most of the people enslaved there
had been abducted from Angola. So even
in the prison's name we see a revelation of the world's domination system.2
Daniel Bergner, a journalist who spent a couple of years
at the prison while researching his book, God of the Rodeo, picks up on
the racial dimensions of the prison's domination system.3 “During the late 1960's,” he notes, “after the playing of the
‘Star Spangled Banner,' the emcee would ask everyone to remain standing. The inmate band began ‘Well I wish I was in
the land of cotton…' An old Black inmate climbed onto a wooden platform painted
with a confederate flag. Dressed in a
Confederate soldier's gray uniform and cap, he tap-danced for the crowd” (God
of the Rodeo, pp. 62-63).
We can see how the same kind of moral blindness that kept
people from seeing through to the evils of slavery obscured the cruelty of this
annual ritual. Like being caught in a
time-warp, it's as if you're transported back to the Roman games. One of the wardens actually kicked off the
festivities one year by riding into the arena in “the closest thing he could
find to a chariot,” pulled by two enormous, prize-winning horses that gave him
the appearance of a god. The message
was clear: here comes the emperor.
Once the games get underway the roaring crowd is treated
to events such as “Guts and Glory.” In
this event, a coin is tied between the horns of a raging bull. Convicts are put in the arena in hopes of
grabbing the coin without getting gored. The journalist, Bergner, gets to know one of the men who had won in
previous years, an inmate named Terry. Terry has figured out through trial and error that he can run a tighter
circle than the bull, so his strategy is to do that, while reaching behind to
grab the coin. But this year something
goes wrong. Bergner describes what
happened to Terry,
“He was struck [and] …flew
ten or twelve feet into the air. He
landed …between the horns [and] was vaulted onto his back. He came down once more on the animals
forehead, was propelled upward yet again, floating and spinning, and for
several seconds this went on, seconds I could count—one one-thousand, two
one-thousand, three one-thousand—his body for moments beyond gravity, suspended
midair, flopping and spineless: everything about his existence, the
preservation of his life, utterly beyond his control” (God of the Rodeo,
p. 16).
At least in that event the men are able to take evasive
action. In “Convict Poker,” four men
are seated at a card table, their hands palms down on the table. A bull is released into the arena and the
last man to move wins. The trouble is
bulls are attracted to movement, so it doesn't go after the men initially. Bergner explains that,
that's when “…the clown,
usually a figure of protection, started taunting. …Imitating a bull on the attack, he stooped down, snorting, and
scrap[ing] the dirt with his hands.” When that didn't work, the clown picked up a folding metal chair and
threw it at the bull. “At last the
animal …drove forward to deliver on the promise of its size, on the promise of
those gorgeously sweeping and immaculately pointed horns which slammed, by one
convict's pure good fortune, into the minimal back of his folding chair instead
of into his kidney. [But] The man was
now down, the bull ready to spear or stomp. …At that moment [one of the remaining men] lost his nerve or gained his
sanity, leapt out of his seat, and began sprinting for the fence. The bull caught motion in the corner of its
eye. Fleeing across the arena, [the
man] stayed five feet, two feet, twelve inches ahead of the horns.” Cheating death, he scrambled up the rails of
the fence. “`How did you enjoy the Convict
Poker, ladies and gentlemen?' the MC asked. There was …applause and laughter” (God of the Rodeo, p.
10-11).
I bring
up the prison world because it provides a dramatic window into the world's
domination system. Of course we could
also talk about power hierarchies at work and at home, that operate on more
subtle levels but are nonetheless all about exploitation. But the more urgent question in light of all
this is how we can go about extricating ourselves from the world's system of
exploitation. To explore that question, I'd like to call your attention to
another poker playing convict, Paul Newman's character in the classic film, Cool
Hand Luke.4 Luke is a
troubled war hero who just can't seem to fit back into society after returning
from the war. After touching on the
exploitative dimension of the social order we can anticipate that there might
be something good about Luke's inability to fit into a system.
And sure
enough, the film functions as a metaphor for the struggle we all face as we
seek to live a life that's in tune with God's deeper purposes in the face of
the world's exploitation. Do we speak
out against it or go along? Early on in the film it's not clear which way Luke
will go. He comes across as an
easygoing drifter, a rebel without a cause. When he wins a poker game by bluffing and earns his nickname,
“Cool Hand” Luke, it's starting to look like he might simply be absorbed into
the prison's culture, playing the game and serving his time.
But the
plot thickens when Luke's mother dies. As a standard practice, they put him in “the box,” an outhouse-size
little building used for solitary confinement. This is an attempt on the part of the prison system to say no
part of the outside world has the power to penetrate the prison world—not even
the primal relationship between mother and child. So they put Luke in the box while his mother's funeral is taking
place.
Not long
after he's let out of the box, Luke escapes, thereby upping the ante in his
poker game with the warden. He's
captured, tortured, and to all outward appearances broken. This is the point in the film where Luke
appears as everyman, once valiantly opposed to injustice, he now seems to have
broken under the weight of it, accepting his lot and giving up the fight. He even becomes the lackey of the warden's
right hand man, a soul-less guard who's never seen without his mirrored
sunglasses.
But one
day when he orders Luke to run over to the truck, Luke sees the keys in the
ignition, jumps in and roars off down the road. The character played by George Kennedy, Dragline, gets caught up
in the excitement of the moment and leaps into the truck along with Luke. As the two of them drive off, we realize
that they didn't break Luke's spirit after all. It only looked that way. All the powers of the prison were brought to bear on this one man, yet
he proved stronger than the system. We
see a Christological motif emerging that gains momentum as the film draws to a
close.
Later
that night after ditching the truck Luke tells Dragline that he wants to split
up, that it'll be better that way. Though this might have been inserted for its realism, you get the
feeling that there's something deeper going on, something about Luke's tendency
to be a loner. As Luke walks off down
the road a storm gathers in the distance. He sees a church and begins to pass on by, but he thinks better of it
and goes in. He calls out to God,
asking if God's there. He seems to
sense something in the silence and says, “Okay,” and he gets down on his knees. He prays, admitting that he's a pretty “hard
case.”
After
the prayer Luke is greeted by a deathly silence and for a moment he thinks God
has forsaken him. Then he hears sirens
outside. Just then Dragline bursts
in. Luke glances up and says to God,
“Is that your answer Old Man? Well I
guess you're a hard case, too.”
You get
the feeling that at that moment Luke is realizing that his destiny, much like
Christ's, has gotten caught up in the suffering of those around him. He's no
longer living only for himself. And if
he takes a stand, it's going to be for everybody.
Dragline
explains that he got caught, but that everything will be alright, so long as
Luke agrees to turn himself in.
Luke
flashes that million dollar smile and quips, “That what they say, huh? I bet
we'll even get our old beds back,” he adds, though you can tell he doesn't
believe it.
“I don't
see why not,” says Dragline. “Just play
it cool, Luke.”
Beneath
their friendly banter, the full meaning of everything that has taken place in
the film is being revealed. It's clear
that, like the disciples in our Gospel text today, Dragline doesn't quite grasp
what's going on. Like the researchers
in the Stanford prison experiment, he's in denial concerning the direction
things are moving. He's laboring under
the illusion that Luke's coolness has something to do with his ability to play
the game, failing to see that what truly defines Luke's character is his
refusal to play along.
In the
critical moment, Luke understands full well what's at stake. He knows that the warden's trump card is the
ability to kill him and that, given how badly Luke has shamed him, he's sure to
use it. But the ace up Luke's sleeve is
that he's not afraid to die. He walks
over to the window, stands in full view of the authorities, and yells out a
message to the warden.
At that
instant a shot rings out and Luke is blasted back away from the window, shot
through the neck. Dragline carries Luke
outside. There's an awkward silence as
the police just watch, presumably because they're in shock over the
cold-blooded killing of an unarmed man. The warden breaks it by saying, “Well, go get him.” When they take the wounded Luke from
Dragline, Dragline lunges toward the warden's right hand man, wrestling him to
the ground with his hands clamped around his neck. By the time they get him off, the guard's mirrored sunglasses
have been knocked off. As the cars pull
away, the camera zooms in on a car tire crushing the mirrored sunglasses. That simple detail sums up the film's denouement. They may have killed Luke, just as they
killed Jesus, but the power of the truth wins in the end, if only in the hearts
and minds of those who know the story.
As the
inheritors of this tradition, the challenge for us is to see the ways in which
the world wants us to go along with its domination. The most pressing example of all this today is the saber-rattling
going on in relation to the proposed attack of Iraq. Of course in order for us to go along with that we're supposed to
suspend our view of Iraqi people as human beings. Instead they're all supposed to become like those prisoners in
the Rodeo, sub-human creatures that we're not supposed to care about,
statistics, like the half-million children who have already died as a result of
ten years of sanctions.
Let me
tell you a story that might bring us more in line with what I believe is Jesus'
view that every person is more precious than a sparrow in God's sight
(the implication here is that God cares about sparrows, too!). Many of you know that Bre just returned from
a fact finding trip to Iraq a few weeks ago. For the second time, she watched kids dying in their hospital beds for
lack of basic medicine.
But the
story I want to tell today is from her first trip. When the medical delegation she was on was walking through
Baghdad they came to a busy traffic circle. Apparently Iraqi drivers are a bit like Jersey drivers, ‘cause this
traffic circle was extremely hazardous. As this group of obviously western people tries to figure out what to
do, something very strange happens. The
entire traffic circle comes to a stop. Regular, everyday Iraqis are smiling at them, flashing peace signs and
giving them the thumbs up. These are
the people we're being told we should kill.
What the
Gospel tells us over and over again, is that domination and killing isn't the
only way. Terror isn't born in a
vacuum. It grows in the hatred of the
other. The message of the Gospel tells
us to affirm the dignity of the other, even when it puts us at risk. That's a hard message, one that runs
contrary to the wisdom of the world.
At the
very end of Cool Hand Luke, the chain gang is enjoying a brief break just down
the road form where Luke was shot. You
can actually see the church in the background. Someone asks Dragline what Luke was like as they took him away. Dragline says “He was smiling!”
“Smiling?”
someone asks incredulously.
“Yeah,
smiling,” insists Dragline. “You know,
that smile of his. That Luke smile.”
Can you
imagine the strength it takes to smile under those conditions? Nietzsche thought Christianity was a
religion for wimps. But it takes
courage to take a stand in the world. Like Jesus moving through the Roman world, like Christina Maslach
stumbling into the Stanford Prison experiment, we find ourselves face to face
with a world that has gone awry. How we
respond could well be a defining moment for our species.
As a
culture, we are nearing a crossroads and a storm is brewing. We're walking past a church, all of us
together. Are we gonna glance at it and
pass on by, or are we going inside? That, my friends, is the question. Amen.
1 Quotes
pertaining to the Stanford experiment come from the experiment's homepage: www.prisonexp.org/30years.htm.
2 The term
“domination system” can be traced to the writings of Walter Wink (Engaging
the Powers, The Powers that Be, and most recently, The Human
Being).
3 Bergner,
Daniel. God of the Rodeo: The Quest
for Redemption in Louisiana's Angola Prison (New York:
Ballantine
Books, 1998).
4 The film, Cool
Hand Luke (1967), was based on the Donn Pearce novel by the same name.
After reading the script Newman is said to have remarked, “Give an actor a good
script and he can change the world.”
© 2002 .
All rights reserved
