Midterm Summative Blog

Super Troopers Vs. Highway Patrol Officers

The 2001 film Super Troopers is a prime example of how movies can easily distort an audience's view of the reality of the actions that certain groups of people take in their lives, and the way they carry out their chosen career paths. Super Troopers is a movie about the highway patrol officers that monitor the highways and borders of Vermont. These officers are extremely irresponsible  and put pulling a good prank before actually doing their jobs correctly. In the above video, the two officers have pulled a man over for speeding, and one of the officers has bet the other officer that he can not say 'meow' ten times to the man. The officer takes this challenge and, indeed does say meow ten times. While this scene was very funny for the audience, it was also very unrealistic and gives off the idea that cops may do whatever they wish, seeing as they are authority figures who people often fear or get nervous in the presence of. A real highway patrol officer's duties include traffic control, highway maintenance, accident investigation, law enforcement, and many other important duties. However, in Super Troopers the officers are often either lounging around at the station, or patrolling the highways looking for vulnerable people to pull pranks on. After watching this film, audiences could definitely be under the impression that a highway patrol officer has a very simple job that does not require much effort, when in reality they have many important jobs to do and if they are not done correctly, highways could become a very dangerous place for both the drivers and passengers of vehicles. At the end of the film, two of the officers also disguise themselves as college students in order to make a drug bust at a college party, only to reveal later that they are actually cops. The idea being displayed in this scene is that officers can perform impersonations in order to catch people in the act of crime. This however, is not true and could lead to the distortion of what people believe to be their human rights. This matter could be very serious, and anyone who is not properly educated in what their rights are prior to watching this film could be led to believe the wrong thing, and in result could end up in a serious predicament later on in life.