Candid Camera Analysis

As Allen Funt explains in his interview with Philip Zimbardo, Candid Camera hinges on five central ideas: the first being the reversal of normal or anticipated procedures. For this keystone, Funt provides the amusing example, “You pull your car into a gas station for a routine tank of gas and a five-man pit crew emerges and acts like it’s an Indy 500 pit stop.” The second idea is the exposing of basic human weaknesses in scenarios where “people try to hide the fact that they don’t understand something”—like the never-ending oil dipstick or the vertically challenged elevator. The third idea the show caters to is granting people the opportunity to fulfill a fantasy. Says Funt in relation to this idea, “We show people talking back to a traffic

cop, or to authority figures, like doctors, who intimidate most of us.

Viewers get a chance to realize the ‘I wish I'd said that’ dream.” The fourth cornerstone of Candid Camera is showing how people deal with surprise—for instance, the appearance of Muhammad Ali in the classroom or a skydiver crashing through the ceiling of an office

building. The fifth and final idea is placing something that makes sense in one setting in a completely inappropriate or bizarre setting—“like a traffic light in the middle of the sidewalk,” says Funt, “or a flashing stoplight at a restaurant counter to signal when people can take a bite of their food”—or, in the case of the episodes that we watched, perhaps a shower inside of an elevator (46).
Though wildly entertaining, Funt’s bizarre scenarios also prove immensely educational, teaching us about human nature and the norms that we (oftentimes, unthinkingly) heed. Through Funt, we can view the camera as a social tool. The Candid Camera segment that highlights children attempting to open a door with one ice cream cone in each hand, for instance, mirrors a video clip that my Developmental Psychology professor might play in lecture, as it poses young minds with a conflict and sees how they proceed in attempting to maneuver around it. Yes, when aired, the segment elicits laughter, but it also provides a fascinating educational foray into the investigation of the human mind.
In his article, Zimbardo states that, “Sociologists...have tried to understand the normal rules of everyday behavior more fully by deliberately violating them.

And experimental social psychologists...have studied how social forces and the pressures of a given situation can change the way we behave, regardless of our personalities and background” (43). Many of the Candid Camera hoaxes highlight the fact that people are not accustomed to deviance from social norms. Thus, when roles are broken or reversed, the results prove laughter inducing. For instance, when the dentist launches into a sales pitch about gold-plated tooth necklaces and framed x-rays, it’s nearly impossible not to laugh at his flustered patient’s protest that, “The way our walls are set up in our house...this—this just won’t go with it.” But underlying this farcical situation is a human truth—the unfailing desire to adhere to normal social constructs. The dentist should be cleaning my teeth, our brains protest, not selling earrings bedazzled with them! Further on in the episode, during the dentist-turned-barber hoax, we encounter another universal crutch: white lies. “Please, don’t make me feel bad!” the patient pleads when the planted dentist becomes emotionally distraught after having slathered him in shaving cream, “You’re doing a good job, you are!” In this case, viewers can chuckle at the awkward situation while at the same time considering just how often they, too, voice such dishonesties in day-to-day

life to avoid uncomfortable (and sometimes hurtful) disclosure.
It is universal truths like these, I believe, that enable Candid Camera hoaxes to sell as entertainment. By capitalizing on human nature, the show allows us to laugh at, marvel, and ponder our universal tendencies. As states Funt, “Candid Camera is not a freak show. We appeal to what is universal in human nature,” (47). What makes the moment of reveal at each segment’s end all the more powerful is the fact that, in that second of unmasking, viewers realize that it could just as easily have been them, in the first place.
Ultimately, however, a show that hinges on hoaxes begs the question: if deception teaches us something critical about human nature, does that make its employment ethical? Does the fact that it is enlightening exempt it from falling under its normally crooked category? Or does the true question of ethics hinge on victim response upon the unveiling of a hoax? As stated in the McCarthy reading, “The common structure of the reveal is an important element of the experiment’s pedagogical program. As Funt pointed out, the reveal is itself a form of social pressure as it asks the victim to accept his or her deception and to be a ‘good sport.’ The reveal also exploits the conventions of the operational aesthetic; unmasking the hoax is a way of affirming the fact that it was mounted not entirely out of cruelty or sadism but rather in the interest of knowledge,” (34). Thus, is Candid Camera’s post-hoax smile on the part of the victim what ethically separates Allen Funt from Stanley Milgram in the public eye?
Finally, I would like to conclude by drawing attention to the Beaut-o-Matic hoax—one that struck me as particularly fascinating for two reasons. Firstly, this hoax was one that operated almost exactly like a magic trick, employing misdirection and a “stunt double” to play with perception and dupe the onlooker. The second facet of this trick that stood out to me, however, was its likely ineffectiveness in modern-day society. In a world abounding with wild technological advances, what is the likelihood that the majority of people today would even bat an eye at a machine like the Beaut-o-Matic? Admitted Funt in his interview with Zimbardo, “It’s harder to deceive people now. They are more knowledgeable about technology, more sophisticated about their rights, more cynical and assertive and, of course, sensitized to the candid camera type of experience,” (47). As Funt’s son, Peter, states in ‘Curses, Fooled Again,’ “...we found that the omnipresence of technology has reached a point where people will now accept almost anything.” And yet, Candid Camera’s influence is alive and present in shows like Impractical Jokers, Disaster Date, Punk’d, and Boiling Point, bringing us to a final crop of questions. Are on-screen victims still being duped, or is the latest batch merely helping to stage the show? Has the age of educational reality TV passed? Are we now solely in it for laughs instead of lessons? Or, do hidden cameras continue to act as enlightening “social lenses,” as they did for Funt?