Die Welle

Discrimination against some specific ethnic groups is very often seen in Hollywood films. Not only for ethnic groups this discrimination exists but also for any people who are different than the majority. It is more obvious to realize words, attitudes or stereotypes against such groups than looking much deep to understand why people discriminate “others” so violently. We can point out many bad jokes against blacks, Arabs or Jewish people however we rarely focus on why people do this and how we can overcome this situation. In my opinion, Die Welle is a very good movie to investigate the underlying psychological and sociological factors that cause this problem. In the movie, a high school teacher in a disadvantageous part of the city decides to carry out an experimental class about how it would be living in the Nazi Germany. He creates a group with the students of that class, announces himself as the leader and starts to set some uniforms such as calling themselves with a group name, wearing a white shirt, having a symbol and having a special greeting. These factors convince and motivate students to feel as a highly attached group and act collectively rather than individually. In a short time, the group interiorizes this situation very deeply and they start living for the group instead of living in the group. They start to discriminate other students who are not in to that group or reject to be in it. After a while some students feel uncomfortable of this situation and initiate a movement against this group. However Die Welle has already become extremely fanatic and they react this oppose very violently. The control is not anymore in the hand of the teacher and things are going off the rails. Physical violence is now on the stage and the teacher himself even is engrossed in his role as the leader. The movie and also the experiment end up with a final scene in a conference hall where one of a member of Die Welle kills another student as he was not able to hear that “ The Leader” wants to put an end to the group. The movie overall indicates many aspects of in group favoritism and helps us to understand and realize how we got blinded by the groups we think we are involved and how less we are tolerant to “others”.