Police Brutality In A Few Good Men

The definition of obedient is, “complying or willing to comply with orders or requests; submissive to another's will.” Whose “will” must people be submissive to? Is it ever okay to not comply with a request? In many situations, people are forced to comply with others request, making them obedient. From childhood to adulthood obeying authority is a trait every person is taught to have. They are being forced to respect every other person and their requests. Such as in the film, A Few Good Men, individuals unconsciously perform obedience to higher ranked personnel, although it’s already enforced. Bringing into the light, no one is born obedient. Being obedient is learned. Who must we be obedient to, how can you tell, what makes it okay to obey?

On a more modern aspect of things police brutality shows a big role in taking advantage of the authority they’re given. As we know the police are given a title where they define safety, law, and justice, but who is showing them? We only see what they allow us to see, but what is going on behind the closed door? As an experiment takes place in a jail it is shown that when authority is given to the wrong people things can get chaotic. Guard A of the jail expresses, “ I harass ‘Sarge’ who continues to stubbornly over respond to all commands. I have singled him out for the special abuse both because he begs for it and I simply don't like him (Zimbardo, 115).” Since the guard is unsatisfied with the prisoner, in general, he takes advantage of his ability to boss around the prisoner and punish him. This situation tends to happen quite often. Disliking a person influences the way they are treated because they cause disguise and hate. Now imagine hating someone, but having authority over them. Maybe you give them extra work to do, give them the dirty work, cause them to get in trouble, or even get them hurt. But when the tables are turned and you're in charge of a rebellious prisoner, what then? A prisoner in an experiment shows us what would happen, refusing to watch his efforts become destroyed, by taking action upon authority, “ He grabbed me,

Could it be the title, the uniform, the way they look? Maybe it’s even the name tag. As we look into Stanley Milgram’s experiment it becomes easy to acknowledge what causes the public to listen. After the experiment concludes Milgram notes, “ The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions (Milgram, 87).” Each person obeys an authority because they feel like it is okay to do so with no pressure on themselves. What takes away this pressure? As each experimentee is told to inflict pain upon another human being they consider what makes it okay to do so. For instance, as a child if someone tells you to perform an act and you get in trouble for what you were told to do, a child would say, “They told me to do it.” Here it is the same instance. The experimentees are able to put full responsibility onto the shoulders of the experimental scientists because they were told to commit the action. This made them believe they won't get in trouble for their actions. As the experiment took place Milgram knew what might cause each individual to consider it okay. This way Milgram had one of the experimental scientists express to the experimentee, “The responsibility is mine. Correct. Please go on (Milgram, 83).” Reinforcing that all responsibility will