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“The Departed” and its theories The movies describes a major theme of “The Departed” as one of the oldest in drama—the concept of identity—and how it “affects one’s actions, emotions, self-assurance, and even dreams. ” Many years later, an older Sullivan, now in his mid twenties, (Matt Damon) is finishing his training for the Massachusetts State Police with classmates, including fellow cadet Barrigan (James Badge Dale). In another class are Cadet Brown (Anthony Anderson) and Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio). All four men graduate to become state troopers. Sullivan is a sergeant, and has just passed the state trooper detective test.
He goes in to meet with the calm and collected Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen), and the aggressive and cynical Staff Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) of the Special Investigations Unit. When Sullivan exits, Costigan goes in. The undercover division of the Special Investigations Unit wants to assign Costigan, whose family has long had ties with the Boston underworld, to infiltrate Costello’s crew. For his service, he gets a “bonus”, tax-free payment upon completion of his assignment. To make his assignment believable to everyone, especially Costello, they create a false conviction on Costigan for assault.
He will get a four month jail sentence and afterwards probation with mandatory sessions with a psychiatrist. His police academy record and file are concealed from the public, and even the department itself, and the only ones who can access Costigan’s file are Queenan and Dignam. The main characters in this movie have a father-son relationship is a motif throughout the film. Costello (Nicholson) acts as a father figure to both Sullivan (Damon) and Costigan (DiCaprio) and Queenan (Sheen) acts as Costello’s foil in the role of father-figure presenting both sides of the Irish-American father archetype.
Social identity is a theory formed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner to understand the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. It is composed of three elements: •Categorization: We often put others (and ourselves) into categories. Labeling someone as a Muslim, a Turk, or soccer player are ways of saying other things about these people. •Identification: We also associate with certain groups (our in-groups), which serves to bolster our self-esteem. •Comparison: We compare our groups with other groups, seeing a favorable bias toward the group to which e belong. Sullivan, a working-class Irish-Catholic who desires to rise in the department, even as a mole, and moves into upper-class apartments and considers leaving the state, and Costigan, who comes from an upper-class section of Boston and pretends to be a criminal for the state police. Costigan is out of jail and uses his drug-dealing cousin as a back-handed way of attracting Costello’s attention and fights a man in a bar. He then becomes a member of his crew, pairing up with his right-hand man Mr. French (Ray Winstone).
Costello tells Costigan that he knew, and respected his father and Uncle Jackie, the latter of whom was a bookie and associate of Costello, the former of which worked a the airport and didn’t want to be involved in the underworld. It is therefore these two family connections which really motivate Costello more than anything else to try to assist Costigan in his own questionable way. Meanwhile, Sullivan begins a romantic relationship with criminal psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), who also happens to be the assigned psychotherapist for Costigan as a part of his probation for the fabricated assault conviction.
Although she wants to keep their relationship professional, a romance develops, but Costigan and Sullivan remain oblivious to each other’s identity. Attribution theory is a social psychology theory developed by Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. The theory is concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behavior of others, or themselves (self-attribution), with something else. It explores how individuals “attribute” causes to events and how this cognitive perception affects their motivation.
The theory divides the way people attribute causes to events into two types. •”External” or “situational” attribution assigns causality to an outside factor, such as the weather, •Whereas “internal” or “dispositional” attribution assigns causality to factors within the person, such as their own level of intelligence or other variables that make the individual responsible for the event. Meanwhile, Sullivan is assigned to uncover the mole in SIU (himself). This makes for some tension between Sullivan and Dignam, whose suspicion of Sullivan rises.
Above suspicion, Sullivan focuses instead on finding the police snitch in Costello’s crew. Sullivan orders the SIU to trail Queenan and eventually follows him to a meeting with Costigan on the rooftop of a run-down building on the harbor. Having become insomniac, dependent on Valium and suffering from panic attacks, Costigan explains he wants out, to which Queenan assures him that while it cannot be done overnight, he will get him out of it. Sullivan tells Costello’s men that the snitch is most likely at the building.
As the men approach, Costigan flees, but Queenan stays behind, is confronted by them and was thrown off the building. In the ensuing gunfire, between Costello’s men and the police, the officer who tailed Queenan is wounded and Delahunt, one of Costello’s men is critically wounded. Later on, when the men return to their hideout, Timothy Delahunt (reported later by the local media to be yet another undercover officer, possibly made up by the state police to throw suspicion off of Costigan) reveals to Costigan – just before he succumbs to his wounds – that he knows he’s the mole.
Causality or causation theory denotes a directional relationship between one event (called cause) and another event (called effect) which is the consequence (result) of the first. This informal understanding suffices in everyday usage, however the philosophical analysis of causality or causation has proved exceedingly difficult. The work of philosophers to understand causality, how best to characterize it extends over millennia. In the western philosophical tradition explicit discussion stretches back at least as far as Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy journals.
Though cause and effect are typically related to events, other candidates include processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; which of these comprise the correct causal relate, and how best to characterize the nature of the relationship between them, has as yet no universally accepted answer, and remains under discussion. According to Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality three assumptions described: 1. Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect. 2. “Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect. 3. “Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact. It contains recordings of Sullivan and Costello’s conversations, along with a phone number. Madolyn reveals the recordings to Sullivan and immediately ends her relationship with him. Sullivan calls the phone number and speaks to Costigan, who reveals to Sullivan that Costello kept the recordings as insurance to use as a possible legal immunity if he was arrested. He also reports to Sullivan that Costello’s lawyer came to Bill with the recordings, meaning that Costello trusted Costigan the most of all of his men. They arrange to meet where Queenan died.
Trooper Brown (Anderson) confronts Costigan as he attempts to arrest Sullivan. On the rooftop where Queenan was killed, Costigan confronts and handcuffs Sullivan, intending to arrest him regardless if the charges don’t stick. Trooper Brown appears and tries to talk down Costigan, who, claiming that he has substantial proof that Sullivan is the rat, quickly flees into an elevator, holding his gun to Sullivan’s head. The elevator reaches the bottom floor, and just as Costigan begins to exit, he is shot in the head by Barrigan.
Barrigan starts to uncuff Sullivan but then Trooper Brown arrives and sees Costigan’s body and is caught off guard, allowing Barrigan to shoot him in the head and remove the only witness to Sullivan’s guilt. Barrigan reveals to Sullivan that he is also a mole in the police force and aware of Costello’s informant status. Being that they are the only ones remaining, Barrigan says they need to look out for one another. As the two begin to manipulate the crime scene, Sullivan asks for the gun to clean the fingerprints, and as Barrigan looks away, Sullivan shoots him in the head.
To save himself, he blames everything on Barrigan and recommends Costigan for a posthumous Medal of Merit in a later testimony. At Costigan’s funeral, Madolyn, now pregnant, walks away from Sullivan in silence. Following the funeral, Sullivan returns home to find Dignam waiting there. Dignam shoots him in the head and quickly leaves. As Sullivan’s corpse lies in the apartment doorway, the camera pans out and a lone rat crawls conspicuously across the balcony railing, silhouetted against the gold dome of the Massachusetts State House.
A conspiracy theory usually attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually political, social, pop cultural or historical events), or the concealment of such causes from public knowledge, to a secret, and often deceptive plot by a covert alliance of powerful or influential people or organizations. Many conspiracy theories imply that major events in history have been dominated by conspirators who manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes.
The term “conspiracy theory” may be a neutral descriptor for any conspiracy claim. To conspire means “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end. ” However, conspiracy theory is also used to indicate a narrative genre that includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of grand conspiracies, any of which might have far-reaching social and political implications if true.