Monday, February 17, 2014

Authority Figures

Authority figures are thought to be people who carry out justice. When you think of police officers, teachers, and parents you often think of safety and justice. There are some cases in which authority figures make their personification of justice seem contradictory. For example, Adolf Hitler was an authority figure who convinced his followers to exterminate all Jews. He was setting a type of law for people to follow, yet he was not being ethical. The same goes for parents who abuse their children, teachers who rape their students, and police officers who break the law. These people are all contradicting what they stand up for.

Take, for instance, the movie I Spit On Your Grave. This is a movie about a woman who goes to a small, remote town to get away from people so she could focus on her writing. During her visit there, she encounters a gang of men who assault her. In an attempt to escape from the men, she runs out into the woods, where she runs into some hunters. One hunter, she finds out, is a police officer. He takes her back to her cabin where the men assaulted her and the men, along with the police officer, end up raping her and leaving her out in the woods to die. She trusted the police officer to bring justice to her and to those men but the police officer proved to her to be untrustworthy. In an unfamiliar place, it is easy to trust people who wear uniforms of justice or people who bear titles of justice. However, there are times when this form of judgement proves to be wrong. Although cases like this are probably pretty rare, it is a sad encounter when justice of the law is not administered by those whose job it is to carry out the law, much less be ethical in their practices.