Comment Re:Done in movies... (Score 1) 225
We — the readers and viewers — know (sort of). The policeman doing the illegal deed in fiction knows just as much as the real cops in TFA knew.
It's that "sort of" that makes the difference, however.
Again, movies tend to make it simple. Take something like torture in "24." We're generally forgiving because, hey, we know the bad thing is going to happen. We know that whoever Jack Bauer is torturing is the right person because for the last 3 episodes we saw him scheming with the other bad guys. And, finally, we want to get on with the story and to do that, our hero needs to know this stuff (that we, the audience, already know). Since it's fiction--and we know it's fiction--we know that nobody is really getting hurt so it's no big deal.
Again, real life tends to be more complicated. Yes, the Cops knew that this guy was a drug dealer, but was he really? Depends on how much you trust the police.
Don't get me wrong--there are idiots out there who can't really separate fact from fiction or imagine a real-world scenario based on the movies. I remember when the US Government was talking about torture and a scenario that sounded right out of 24 with the old, "Wouldn't torture be okay then?"
proving most of the society as [...] tools of the manipulators [...]
Well, movies are supposed to manipulate your emotions. That's why they have soundtracks and the like. Fiction does that.