“The Purge” is a movie created in 2015 based on the concept that all crimes are made legal for twelve hours. Within those twelve hours any actions taken, any people injured or any money stolen is completely legal and the judicial system will do nothing to combat what occurred in that time period. That is the dystopian society that The Purge is placed in. A basic summary of the movie entails a society full of crime and full of prisons this then leads the government to allot twelve hours to legalized crime in hopes of getting these numbers down. During the twelve hours, all crime is legal, all hospitals are closed and it is recommended for people who do not want to be involved to hide within their homes. The movie follows a family that just moved into a gated community and how the purge affects them.
This movie is crazy to me! People get twelve hours to do whatever they want. They can break into banks, hack into government servers to find out all of their secrets, even break into a mall just to get all the stuff they never could afford but what do they do? They go around murdering people who slighted them in the littlest ways. They attack and torture neighbors who let their dogs poop in their yards. They build up an itinerary throughout the year of people they are going to seek revenge on during the purge and it is just a whole bunch of petty actions that you could honestly just yell at someone about and call it a day. In the movie, the family fights with their morals, they let a stranger into the house to save him but the people who were after the stranger demand that the man is released back to them or they are going to kill the whole family. This leads to a moral dilemma, the death of one to save the life of many or should the family fight back the wicked ways of the society they live in to fight for those who have no one to help them?
This dystopian society builds and grows off of people’s fear and anxiety, no one wants to slight someone or even make eye contact with the wrong person in fear of that person attacking you and your loved ones during the purge. The family thought they were safe but with one morally directed decision, they got dragged into something that had nothing to do with them and got attacked by people in masks who did not want to show their faces to their neighbors who they see every day. The movie ends with tv broadcasting how successful the purge was due to the number of murders and even commentates on the number of people who fall into depravity. This movie can be seen as a commentation on what people are holding back just because of the way society will view them, if society deems all those murders as good, then people will let go of their inner inhibitions and just let loose on their carnal desires. This relates to exactly what Thomas Hobbes says about ‘the Jungle’, human’s innate desires are to show off their strength and how much better they are than others, what better way to do that than to commit the one crime most frowned upon but to still be congratulated because you are benefiting society.
