brytnoises

looking at how milgram has been going lately and wondering if my weird-ass take stemming from my weird-ass political views (milgram is about how retributive justice is inherently immoral) was actually like half right in terms of the ultimate message of the series. current thesis statement: milgram is about how the act of passing judgement is inherently immoral.

a complaint i've been hearing from a lot of people is that it currently seems like, with the backstories revealed, it's as if the writers are deliberately trying to make each vote seem like the "wrong" thing to do, and these writing decisions would make more sense if the message that was trying to be conveyed was that it is wrong to pass judgement at all, whether it is to forgive or not to forgive. this theme reverberates through a lot of the characters, whether it's shidou and yuno falling victim to the writers' bioconservatism judging certain kinds of "life" as more worthy than others, kotoko/fuuta/muu judging their victims, haruka's parents judged him, amane judges people through her cult, there's a lot of that sort of judging going on.

and we also judge. why do we judge? we judge because we're told to (and in milgram, too!), we judge because that's the whole premise this shit is based on. we judge, the characters judge, and none of this leads to good outcomes for anyone.

and this kind of ties back to the title of the whole thing- milgram. most people figured this title was referencing the milgram experiment's most famous takeaway (people will do awful shit if an authority figure tells them to), but taking all this together, i think there's another part to the title. what was the horrible act that the milgram experiments original revolved around? judging the performance of another person and punishing them for it.