Int Compliance Film Analysis

For many years, people all over the world have been told to obey authority. From the very beginning of our lives to the very end, we are told to listen and do as we are told, and not to question those who are above us in any way. Those authorities would come in different forms, parents and teachers being some of the very first significant authorities as well as followed by police. But when are we supposed to question those authorities? We are told we are safe as long as we obey, but how do we know? Perhaps we should question them from the very beginning.

Compliance is a movie, released in 2012, that critiques the perception that the general western world population has of authority figures, especially police. In my presentation, I showed the trailer (link here, as well as in the reference page) and explained the plot. The inspiration for the film, according to The Courier-Journal (2005), was drawn from a hoax that took place in the US from 1994 to 2004. People posing as authority figures, usually police officers, would call fast food restaurants (usually McDonald’s) in rural areas and tell the manager of the restaurant that an employee had stolen money from a customer or were suspects of another crime. The caller would then tell the manager to take the employee …show more content…
The critique utilises an authoritarian ideology to make us question what we know and trust about authority. The common sense idea being that if we are in a place with authority (such as police), we are safe, definitely safer than we would be without them. Because this critique is based on a true story, I thought it was important for the execution of the critique to not just be impactful, but to also be ethical. Upon brief research of the incident, it appears that Compliance has done a good job recounting the story, and not embellishing it to make a