A couple of months ago, a friend told me about a book or movie (I can’t remember which) about a society where one day a year, everything is legal. People get all the bad stuff out of their system on that day and for the rest of the year, crime is virtually nonexistent. I think the story was about a family surviving one of those days.
Ring a bell for anyone?
The Purge? (Recent movie about just that–came out a month or two ago IIRC. There’s a thread about it on the Dope.)
That was it! Thanks, Infovore!
Alsous Huxley used a similar concept in Ape and Essence.
There was a Star Trek (original series) episode that used this idea too. I think it was the one with a computer call “Landru” running things.
Before Kirk got to it, of course.
That was The Return of the Archons.
It’s not quite the same situation, though…Landru exercises direct mental control over the people of Beta III, except during Festival. They weren’t good the rest of the year because they were allowed to blow off steam once a year, they were good the rest of the year because they had no other choice. (IIRC, Festival helped Landru maintain control by keeping the negative emotions at a low enough level he could suppress them until the next Festival - but they would have been there, and acted on, if Landru weren’t saying ‘no’.)