Conspiracy Themes In Film

In this essay, we will explore a couple films made in the last decade which were structured over a heavy infrastructure of paranoia and conspiracy themes. Often times, these movies feature one individual who daylights a controlling, malevolent force, often by a government agency or a small group of cunning plotters. Then, the protagonist will attempt, often with success, to destroy or interrupt the opposing conspirators. From the anti-masonic movement at the end of the eighteenth century to the McCarthy witch-hunt in the last century, we see that the conspiracy thinking has infiltrated popular culture. It appears in films since the cold war and continues in today’s hit movies, whether comedy or drama.
Hot Fuzz (2007), a United Kingdom action

Bob Lee Swagger is the unfortunate victim, an expendable pawn, of the conspiracy. At the same time, Swagger and FBI agent Nick Memphis has become conspiracy theorists, bent on discovering the truth and clearing their name. In the beginning, though, Memphis was confident in the FBI’s ability to solve conspiracies and bring justice. He pleads to Swagger, “This is explainable. You can prove it”. But upon Swagger’s rejection, Memphis changes his tone and responds, “This is the 21st century. You can’t go to war with these people [conspirators]” (Shooter, 2007). Memphis echoes Knight’s argument that conspiracy is moderated by agencies, and the self vs. agency paranoid thought has become prevalent in the United States culture. In this case, the paranoia is justified because the protagonists are obviously pursued by U.S. agencies such as a rogue military, a corrupted senator, and FBI investigators. In the final showdown of the movie, Swagger destroys a crucial evidence that exposes the conspiracy in order to save himself and Memphis. He exclaims, “Nobody out here is innocent. This stuff is plutonium. Nobody can touch it without dying…you can it over to the authorities and it’s going to disappear, along with us” (Shooter, 2007). He expresses his distrust of the government operational agencies, and with good reason too. Governmental wrongdoings in the past

In a country where conspiracy theorists allege mass media are controlling facets of the system, it is easy to dismiss their beliefs as wild and incredible. In the day and age of technological advancement and instant knowledge access, we continue to struggle with the mindset that questions the legitimacy of other people’s values, reasoning, and goals. We further examine and scrutinize their method of achieving such goal and judge if it affects us as individuals. Timothy Melley wrote in his essay, we have shifted the paranoia from foreign threat to a domestic threat (Knight, 74). Perhaps it is because we are in a peacetime environment without active enemies against our state and ourselves; we no longer exist in a period of Red Scare, McCarthyism, and political instability. We continue to live in a capitalist state with organizational regulations that maintain our consumerist and democratic values, even if we have been conditioned to turn a blind eye on them. In the current situation of incessant suspicion and incomplete truth, we can only rationalize the doings (whether legitimate or wrong) of agencies for the sake of continuity of life and peace. The difference between paranoia conspiracy theories and psychosis is that conspiracy theories are means for people to rationalize the daily events that occur: to make sense of what’s