abuse of authority theme
Vested authority is used by someone to illegitimately pursuit their own private goals.
27 total · 2 choice · 15 major · 10 minor
| Story | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| ahp4x04 | choice | The Adams' were stopped and harassed by a rural police officer. In his monologue, Alfred Hitchcock was accosted by the police. |
| bbf1x16 | choice | Colonel Ari Ben Zayn used his authority to pursue a witch hunt against Sinclair. |
| ahp7x33 | major | Paul abused his authority as department store manager by blackmailing a caught-red-handed shoplifter not into sleeping with him, as the viewer is urged to believe, but rather to play a part in his scheme to make his wife consent to a divorce. |
| ds96x18 | major | Luther Sloan abused his authority as a Starfleet officer to pursue a personal vendetta against Julian |
| ic1976e06 | major | Tiberius and Sejanus persecuted their political opponents by leveling trumped up treason charges. |
| ic1976e07 | major | Tiberius and Sejanus persecuted their political opponents by leveling trumped up treason charges. |
| movie: Ben-Hur (1959) | major | Filled with resentment, Messala jumped on the opportunity to persecute the innocent Ben-Hur and his family gruesomely. He did so both out of anger and out of political convenience because people would see how he treated an old friend, and fear him. |
| movie: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) | major | Central to the story was the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. McMurphy maintained that she "liked a rigged game". The viewer is invited to ponder whether things she did and said where therapeutically appropriate or whether, perhaps, she played sadistic mind games. Notably, Ratched tried to humiliate Billy by invoking his mother, and this directly lead to Billy committing suicide minutes later. |
| movie: The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) | major | One of the main messages of the film was something about Tuxan abusing his authority by the way of using any means to justify his end of exposing a treasonous senator. |
| movie: The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) | major | the secular powers of England sought to disgrace Joan (thus to score a point against France) and pressured pliant members of the Church to excommunicate Joan for that purpose |