Mob Mentality, Personal Responsibility, and The Wave
This essay examines mob mentality and personal responsibility through two lenses: Dennis Gansel's 2008 film The Wave, which dramatizes a real 1967 classroom experiment mirroring the conditions that enabled Nazi Germany, and the legal debate surrounding mob mentality defenses raised in the 1992 Reginald Denny beating trial. Drawing on a Harvard Law Review article, the essay argues that while group psychology can explain how individuals commit acts they might otherwise avoid, it cannot legally or morally excuse those acts. The paper concludes that personal responsibility requires individuals to recognize right from wrong and resist prevailing group pressures, regardless of surrounding social conditions.
- Introduction: The Wave and the Holocaust: Film and classroom experiment contextualize Holocaust inquiry
- Mob Mentality and Criminal Law: Denny trial tests mob behavior as criminal defense
- The Free Will Problem in Mob Mentality Defenses: Free will and disability requirements undermine mob defenses
- Personal Responsibility and Moral Accountability: Explanation never equals excuse; personal standards must hold
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay bridges a film analysis and a legal case study, using both to reinforce a single coherent argument about personal responsibility — a move that gives the thesis broader credibility than either source alone would provide.
- The paper clearly distinguishes between explanation and excuse, a nuanced philosophical distinction that elevates the argument beyond a simple moral judgment.
- The discussion of free will as a legal prerequisite to criminal liability grounds an abstract ethical concept in concrete legal doctrine, making the argument accessible and precise.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a counterargument-then-rebuttal structure when analyzing mob mentality defenses. It presents the strongest versions of both possible legal defenses — an ongoing psychological disability and a situational temporary impairment — before systematically identifying the evidentiary and logical weaknesses of each. This technique, sometimes called the "steel man" approach, strengthens the ultimate conclusion by showing the author has genuinely engaged with opposing views.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a brief literary/historical context established by The Wave, then transitions into a focused legal analysis of the Reginald Denny trial and the Harvard Law Review's treatment of mob mentality defenses. The body progresses logically from describing the defense, to examining its free will assumptions, to refuting both variants of that defense. The conclusion returns to the broader moral argument, closing with a definition of personal responsibility that synthesizes the essay's legal and ethical threads.
Introduction: The Wave and the Holocaust
Dennis Gansel's 2008 film The Wave is a dramatization of actual events that took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, in the spring of 1967 (Johnston). The film explores the question of how the Holocaust — the mass extermination of some 10 million Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and people with physical and mental disabilities — was allowed to take place in Germany during the Second World War. At the center of the inquiry is a high school history class in which the teacher establishes a culture based on discipline, community, and action. He calls the movement "the wave" and sets in motion a series of events highly reminiscent of Nazi Germany during the 1930s and early 1940s. While the film offers a reason for the Holocaust — an explanation of how this tragedy was permitted to happen — that explanation is not an excuse.
Mob mentality, or herd mentality, refers to the influence of peers on an individual, leading that person to adopt certain behaviors they would not normally exhibit due to prevailing group conditions or beliefs. A 1995 article in the Harvard Law Review examines aspects of mob mentality defenses in light of the Reginald Denny verdict ("Feasibility and Admissibility of Mob Mentality Defenses"). Denny was a truck driver who was pulled from his vehicle and savagely beaten by four men during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The incident was broadcast live around the nation as it occurred. The defendants' attorneys argued a case for unpremeditated assault, but the subsequent trial ended with the jury hung on all charges except a felony mayhem count against one defendant (Clark).
Mob Mentality and Criminal Law
The Harvard Law Review article notes that traditionally criminal law has treated crimes committed by groups as more blameworthy than those committed by persons acting alone. In fact, the criminal who acts in concert with others has, in many jurisdictions, committed two crimes: the crime itself, plus conspiracy to commit that crime. However, in the Denny trial, the defense argued that the defendants' participation in group criminal behavior should render their actions less blameworthy. The argument was that persons who act as part of a mob get caught up in the excitement of the crowd and therefore do not make real, meaningful choices about how to behave. They should not, the defense contended, be held fully accountable — or accountable at all — for their criminal actions.
This argument raises the possibility of undesirable social norms if group criminality is viewed as a defense rather than an aggravating factor. A successful mob mentality defense would further weaken the principle of personal responsibility ("Feasibility and Admissibility of Mob Mentality Defenses"). The implications extend well beyond any single trial: if belonging to a crowd diminishes individual culpability, the incentive structure of criminal law is fundamentally distorted.
Works Cited
Clark, Robin. "Defense Victory Ends Denny Trial: Jurors Acquitted on One Charge, Deadlocked on the Other. Officials Warned Against a 'White Backlash.'" Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 October 1993. Web. 16 May 2013.
"Feasibility and Admissibility of Mob Mentality Defenses." Harvard Law Review, vol. 108, no. 5, March 1995, pp. 1111–1126. EBSCO. Web. 16 May 2013.
Gansel, Dennis, dir. Die Welle. Constantin Films, 2008. Film.
Haskins, Ron. "The Sequence of Personal Responsibility." The Brookings Institution, July 2009. Web. 16 May 2013.
Johnston, Sheila. "The Wave: The Experiment that Turned a School into a Police State." The Telegraph, 5 September 2008. Web. 16 May 2013.
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