A Movie, from the Sociological Perspective

Sarah Chesno Sociology 101 November 1, 2012 Extra Credit The movie “Saw:” focuses on a madman who sees himself as a vigilante and takes justice into his own hands by torturing his victims on both a mental and psychological level. The movie opens up to the scene of two men on the outsides of a bloody victim in a dirty bathroom floor. Jigsaw’s plot was to have one man decide who shall live and who shall be the first to see death. The Jigsaw Killer showed acts of deviance by using entrapments, manipulation, and psychological and physical infliction of pain upon his victims.

To elaborate on why the Jigsaw is deviant is because he likes to manipulate almost every detail in his games. He manipulates the environment so the only means to escape are through torturous games testing far beyond the limit a human being can endure. The victims are almost always drugged in some way only to wake up within an environment where Jigsaw pulls all of the strings like a puppet master. As one officer describe Jigsaw in the movie, he “liked to book himself front row seats to his own sick little games. There is one type of social class that constantly shows up in the movie and that is the middle class folks. One of the people, which is a doctor named Dr. Lawrence Gordon. During the movie the audience learned that he had a wife and small child, possibly 5 year. They resided in a house that was mansion side, making him a middle class maybe an upper class family. Another main character that was in the movie was a person named Adam, he lower-mid class.

There was a scene in the movie that showed his apartment. Adam’s apartment was a little run down as from what the camera was showing. There was a mix of different races and ethnicity’s in the movie. Often these victims would wake up trapped in the “games” of a genius engineer. Amanda which is white female who was shown towards the beginning of the movie who woke up contraptions attached to her head which the killer called “the reverse bear trap” or the “the death mask”.

Another victim that went through something similar is when the Asian, who was named Detective Steven Sing had this head blown to little pieces when he was trying to go after the Jigsaw killer to bring him to justice. A little time before that happened the African American named Detective David Tapp who was trying to do the same thing by bringing the killer to justice had his neck sliced, but lived, however later on we see him again losing his life. All races such as Asian, white and African American did lose their life only because they had to play the game and decide who will be the one to go.