Thinking about Surveillance in the City - Essay Example

Visual Arts and Film Studies   Essay February 2, 2509 words   Thinking about surveillance in the With its anti-utopian orientation and revolutionary theme, V for Vendetta would seem to expose and criticise the oppressive logic surveillance. Indeed, the film is full of visual cues to Foucault’s panopticism, but they appear in a strangely conservative manner. The idea of Panopticon1 is implemented rather than criticised. The locations and the imagery referring to surveillance are not site-specific: in many cases, it is easy to replace London with another city. Like every Panopticon, it is an omnipresent allegory. However, the opposition to the regime bears some distinct historical characteristics, at least superficially. And yet, even this opposition is enacted through panopticism. Paradoxically, being supposed to express their free will, the people appear to be caught in the battlefield of different historical forces: one being totalitarian far-rightist regime, and another looking like revolutionary extremism without any contemporary political agenda behind it. The analysis of the visual texts representing these two forces comes below. Good Old Red Roses There is a complex of imagery in purposely old style: the mask of Guy Fawkes, the red roses, the Houses of Parliament, and the private museums of V and Gordon Deitrich. These visual texts are accompanied with pathetic verbal texts, such as the name “Gallery of Shadows” (fig. 2) or quotations from Shakespeare. Curiously, almost all these attributes do not have merely decorative functions: they are of very rational use. For example, the mask helps to conceal V from the cameras (another instrument of surveillance). It also makes him invisible so that he can observe without being observed, like in Foucault’s prison inspector2. The same applies to the Houses of Parliament: besides their symbolic functions, there is a rational reason to choose them as a target. This reason becomes evident when the viewers observe the flow of protesters from the bird’s eye view (a characteristically panoptical, detaching perspective): the Houses of Parliament stand in the center of the city on the intercross of many ways (the roads, the underground train line, and a river) (see fig. 1). Its uniting role is remarkable also because it corresponds to the role of the main transportation channels during emergencies. Foucault gives an example of a plague-stricken town3. Figure 1. The flows of protesters from the above Museums are one more element. Their functions are reverse to the traditional museums: they are no more public displays of the arranged items of human culture with pedagogical and imperial role but rather the enclaves where the artifacts are cluttered as the dear memories of the past (Mapplethorpe’s photographic art neighboring with Koran). And yet, their perfect organisation still reminds of “an Enlightenment object” needed for “the curation of other objects”4. As such, it establishes the pathetic role of the past, its ideals of love and freedom, “embodies the selection and control of artifactual national past and lessons in how people should access this past”5. V’s home memorial to Valerie Page, a lesbian actress, is covered with red roses: in this context, the flowers are the symbol of love and something lost (Ruth, Valerie’s lover, used to plant roses). However, in another context (the Larkhill camp doctor’s story) the rose clearly symbolises the revenge, being involved in a disciplinary act. But even in this case, this is not just an emotional revenge: the whole trick with the rose for this doctor was designed to put give put her diary in the hands of the investigators. History symbolised by such things is V’s way of violent, revengeful discipline. In this light, the fact that V always uses knives is also significant. Figure 2. V in his Gallery of Shadows ‘Simcity’ The idea of ‘simcity’ is one of E. Soja’s “discouses” of the city, the one that corresponds to the ubiquitous totalitarian surveillance of media and the simulacra dystopias in contemporary cultural studies: it is a Matrix-like simulated mechanical world with its servants6. This is the postmodern dystopia of the city filled with hostile digital presence that resembles Bradbury’s Fahrenhit 451. In V for Vendetta, the control over the citizens is suggested by the cameras, quasi-Nazi symbols, and the screens that report daily lies (fig. 3). It is notable that the broadcasting equipment dominates the actually monitoring equipment: the viewer sees the observers more often than he feels the surveillance upon him or herself. This is one more part of the ‘simcity’ myth: when media presence is so intrusive, people are so fed up with information that asking questions and investigating becomes an unnecessary, even an undesirable and censored activity. Kanzler’s face and gestures were carefully selected to resemble Hitler. When he speaks to the broadest audience, his presence is created by contemporary media equipment, which raises suspicion that everything is fabricated (precisely because of the ‘simcity’ myth). By contrast, when he speaks to his subordinates, his presence is full-screen, intrusive, while the latter are concealed with darkness. Thus, Kanzler alone observes everyone individually, like the Panopticon inspector. Figure 3. Kanzler and his subordinate V uses this media surveillance for his own aims. In a way, he reverses the ubiquitousness of the system. Interestingly, the dynamics from which he transmits his message look like those in Nazi camps. Discipline and Punishment The film is full of the metaphors of incarceration. Together with such places as hospitals, prisons, and concentration camps that appear on the screen from time to time, the very structure of the city’s space is panoptic. This space is not organised horizontally. One cannot walk late or use the underground trains in the V for Vendetta London. That is, such important element as the path linking different parts of the city and different individuals, are absent. Instead, the edges suggest the boundaries between individuals and vertical hierarchy7. This is perfectly evident in two scenes when Evey watches from under the bed how the intruders hit someone and throw a black sack upon him/her. The city is showed in two main perspectives: from the above and from the participant viewpoint, in the basement, dark streets, in motion. The former is the prospect of inspectors, such as at the moment when V listens to the “concert” to which he has invited Evey. The second perspective belongs to the imprisoned. According to Foucault, one of the main principles of panopticism is to keep the observed uncertain of whether they are or are not observed at a given moment: Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings8. Furthermore, Panopticon is an investigative institution. It is not a coincidence that the inspector opposes Kanzler: the power of Kanzler is not the source but the consequence of the power of the mechanism that is understood by V and inspector only. In terms of space, panoptic investigation separates the species/people of different categories for scientific observation9. The plague theme is one of the central in the plot of V for Vendetta. Foucault argues that panopticism was a historical necessity, the necessity to govern multitudes of people with less of the resources, and its function is amplification, enhancing productivity10. Kanzler’s rhetorics in the beginning of the film reflect this need to “avoid chaos.” Security cards and video surveillance are also parts of biometrics, something very close to the classification of patients in Larkhill11. In the ages of V for Vendetta, the moments when videotape watching is needed are exceptional – and exceptionally inconvenient: for optimal surveillance, “the suspect’s face” should be “available in a linked database”, so that “the same search could conceivably be executed in a fraction of the time”12. It is troubling that Foucault sees panopticism as the dark side of representative democracy, while in V for Vendetta it is associated mainly with Nazis. This leaves the director with no other options than ending the movie with a revolutionary moment, so that the viewers do not see how the plot is going to end. According to Foucault, the very multitude we see from above suggests the need for another Panopticon: the contemporary demographic thrust and the rise in productivity of contemporary time may well have inspired Foucault’s assumption about the 18th century13. V for Vendetta frequently blames Christianity with its vertical structure of space: th red symbol of the regime has Christian cross as a model and 3 stripes. The emphasis is upon Christian exclusion, not forgiveness. The Person versus the Principle The movie starts from the execution scene commented by a female voice. The sense of this comment is that the gain in human history can never truly compensate the personal loss. The final scene opposes this message, both in its historical setting and its sense: Evey has undergone a personal change as a parallel to the change in the society, and her loss becomes a gain. V’s face is invisible until the film’s end: in a sense, he could be categorized as a ‘leper’ of V for Vendetta world. In panoptical systems, the exiled minorities, ‘lepers’, are excluded from the society and governed in the separate ‘panopticons’, the models of prisons and hospitals14. Thus, the representatives of the minorities such as gay people were thrown to the Larkhill camp to suffer from inhumane experiments. This way, they became standardized parts of one Principle of exclusion separating human beings into categories (“who he is / where he must be; how he is to be characterized; how he is to be recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way, etc.”15). In visual language, this is suggested by the repeated presence of heavy metallic doors and the pit of dead bodies. The principle gives birth to another principle, so the regime encounters V’s violent counteraction. The moment when this new principle is born is marked with two parallel scenes in the film when people experience unity with nature’s elements: V with fire and Evey with water. They become part of something larger and not entirely understood; they turn to principles rather than men, though by this moment, their way has been and will be occasionally associated with personal humane sentiments such as love or revenge. They can replace each other: hence, V uses Evey’s identity card and lets Evey operate the underground train. In the latter episode, Evey is not a girl but a part of the crowd for him: V says that he wants to give power to the people. In the end, victory belongs to the principle, not persons. The Essence of Surveillance As a governing mechanism, surveillance is, above all, impersonal. This means that anyone can use it and become the ultimate authority: “we have seen that anyone may come and exercise in the central tower the functions of surveillance, and that, this being the case, he can gain a clear idea of the way in which the surveillance is practiced”16. In V for Vendetta, such moments occur when V addresses the public from the screen; when he tortures Evey; and when he gives Evey the right to pull the switch. The clearest visual representation of this impersonal power is the fake guard encountered by Evey when V lets her free (fig. 4). Figure 4. The faceless power Incarceration, as the researchers argue, is constitutional for Christianity, for there, “the redemption can be earned and granted”17. Being imprisoned becomes an important psychological event in Evey’s life that ultimately helps her. There is one more meaning in it, namely, the erotic one: incarceration in this and many other cases is voyeuristic18. The homosexuality theme, besides showing the fate of the oppressed under the intolerant regime, also contributes to this theme: there is nothing more intimate than the contacts on the lowest level of hierarchy, a hand passing a letter through the hole, Gordon’s monologue in his dark basement. The same reversibility of surveillance occurs when the police start to trace one of the highest officials. When they do not succeed in their surveillance, V does. Ultimately, by dressing himself up, he manages to control even the police. Thus, Panopticon is a faceless machine that governs society and is shown as operated by the officials, the media, V, and, last but not least, the citizens themselves (Evey and others). It is the very principle of governance, and the matter is only who is in control of it. That is why the contrast between live people and immortal principles is so important: to the director, “life” and “freedom” seem to lay in horizontal relations blocked by the vertical organisation of space in the urban Panopticon. Conclusion: Does V for Vendetta Support Panopticism? Many features of the movie are similar to Bentham’s model. The first one is its oppositionalism: light on the TV screens versus darkness on the streets, in Larkhill, in private rooms; the past with old-looking Houses of Parliament, its swords and red roses, its artifacts of the private museums, and the present full of laboratories and new media technologies; male cruelty and female forgiveness. Then, the panoptic power is exercised by different characters: first time, when Evey observes the city from the above, and V’s music (‘a concert’) is ubiquitous, then when V imprisons Evey to eliminate her fear. The actors change – the system does not. When considered in relation to the city, this problem acquires a new dimension: London is never portrayed as a place for peaceful living. Rather, it is the city of struggle between old and new principles. Old architecture and contemporary skyscrapers (ideal surveillance objects) occupy the screen all the time where the viewers do not see live people; the only time when an operating underground train is shown is an exception, the situation is not common. In such circumstances, routines become principal. Furthermore, the motion in this city is blocked by the entire system of curfew hours and other prohibitions. The viewer either feels this surveillance upon him or her or exercises it through looking from the tops of the buildings. Thus, V for Vendetta places its viewers inside the Panopticon. Biblioraphy Brooker, P Modernity and metropolis: writing, film, and urban formations. Palgrave, Hampshire, 2002. Foucault, M Discipline & Punish - The Birth of the Prison. Tr. Sheridan. Vintage, New York, 1977. 1995. Gray, M ‘Urban Surveillance and Panopticism: will we recognize the facial recognition society?’ Surveillance & Society, vol. 1, № 3, pp. 314-330. Lynch, K ‘The city image and its elements’. The city reader. LeGates, R. T. and F. Stout (eds.), 5th ed., Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 478-482. Miller, T ‘Historical citizenship and the Fremantle Prison follies: Frederick Wiseman comes to Western Australia’. The Visual Culture Reader. N. Mirzoeff (ed.), Routledge, London, 2000, pp. 307-323. V for Vendetta, DVD, Warner Brothers, USA, 2005. Read More