Human Traffic - Drug Use

Do you think Human Traffic encourages or glorifies drug use?

I think in Human traffic does encourage drug use because during a scene in the club two female characters have an interview where they interact easily and laugh alot showing the fun that the pair are entitled to. Thus the audience can view the amount of fun they have as a group plus the main characters speak about drugs saying quite clearly that they can socialise with strangers easily which they wouldn’t normally do when not under the influence of drugs.

The audience can clearly see how much fun they have by the confidence they share when under the influence and the partying mood showing that they are enjoying themselves. They are however all shown doing the drugs together meaning that for their friend group it is the norm. This i feel is stereotypical to the social class that the group all come from which is working and to the age of the group which is late teens early twenties.

Although the group seem to have a good time, one member of them suffers for paranoia near the end of the film showing what the drugs can do to the group if they are taken for years trying to give the audience a moral story within the media text. This shows that the producers of the film aren't trying to glamorise the use of drugs but are trying to show that they aren't all good as people of their age state.

However the producers of the film never actually show the group taking drugs instead they let the audience assume it. For example one character is seen smoking and due to it not being a straight naturally the audience assume it to contain drugs even though no evidence is given.

The theory behind this is known as the hypodermic syringe model. This theory argues that the audience is doped by what they see on the media and are influenced straight away taking in the ideologies this it can almost hypnotise consumers. The theory supports the movie however i do feel that because the producers don't actually show the use of drugs then the audience wont be as affected by it due to the syringe model stating that they need to see what they would then copy thus they are trying to counter this yet still show the effects of drugs.