Reading Comments Week 4 Cache, Surveillance and Societies of Control
Please post your reading comments and questions here.
In the spirit of Peep TV Show and inverse surveillance, please have a look at the “sousveillance” entry on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
January 26th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Some thoughts on Weibel and Zizek:
“Thus we do not see the world but, rather images of the world that the instruments create for our eyes. If the image is the only reality that signifies the sensually experienced reality, and if the reality is no longer available to our natural senses, then it becomes a matter of correctly interpreting the image” (Weibel 50).
In light of the above quote, can interpretation of reality create a homogeneous reality? Where does subjectivity of perception lie in this equation?
Weibel discusses later on in the article that the viewer of TV is now the one controlling the gaze. “The TV viewer is like the warden in a panoptic prison” (Weibel 59).
Is he stating that power has shifted to the masses? But if the reality aspect of Reality TV is staged, then is the spectator still in control? Is it not the illusion of power, just as the airport scanning etc. is the illusion of security? Furthermore, can you separate the notion of security from surveillance? Are the two synonymous? Also another question to consider is security for whom?
Zizek’s article is similar to Weibel’s in the sense that the security aspect of the panopticon has now become the pleasure principle- but he takes it a step further in saying that being watched “is ontological guarantee of [one’s] being” (66).
Because sight is deemed one of the most important senses (now), is this statement simply a product of the time?
January 27th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Weibel:
P.51 - Weibel asserts that “desires cannot be satisfied by reality, they are satisfied through images that function like hallucinations.” Is this claim based on Freud’s pleasure principal, or is Weibel asserting this himself? How does one limit reality to “images that unction like hallucinations” only when pleasure is involved? This seems a bit dubious.
P. 52. Weibel suggests that events have become more socially important in their reproduced form than in their original form–I completely agree with this and was reminded of sports stadiums. Often a large television screen is centered above or around players during a game to give audience close ups and replays of events. I often notice players stopping mesmerized under the screen and watching the play they were just involved in with great pause and pleasure.
Zizek:
P. 66 Could be a copy problem in my book, but did Zizek refer to the “ublime” on the top of the page. Is this some new term I’m unaware of? Can’t find info on it online.
P. 66 Zizek’s re-imagination of the Cartesian adage I think therefore I am seems wholly relevant to today’s “society of the spectacle.” It is no longer “I think therefore I am” but “I’m seen therefore I am.”
Reading these articles reminds me of a number of art installations–one in particular in which a theater troupe performed Othello in front of surveillance cameras on a busy New York intersection and subpoenaed the footage from the city. They later added audio to the images and produced the first cc tv Shakespeare production. It’s an interesting inversion of surveillance; they use it as a cheap way to produce images.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Weibel:
P.51 - Weibel asserts that “desires cannot be satisfied by reality, they are satisfied through images that function like hallucinations.” Is this claim based on Freud’s pleasure principal, or is Weibel asserting this himself? How does one limit reality to “images that unction like hallucinations” only when pleasure is involved? This seems a bit dubious.
P. 52. Weibel suggests that events have become more socially important in their reproduced form than in their original form–I completely agree with this and was reminded of sports stadiums. Often a large television screen is centered above or around players during a game to give audience close ups and replays of events. I often notice players stopping mesmerized under the screen and watching the play they were just involved in with great pause and pleasure.
Zizek:
P. 66 Could be a copy problem in my book, but did Zizek refer to the “ublime” on the top of the page. Is this some new term I’m unaware of? Can’t find info on it online.
P. 66 Zizek’s re-imagination of the Cartesian adage I think therefore I am seems wholly relevant to today’s “society of the spectacle.” It is no longer “I think therefore I am” but “I’m seen therefore I am.”
January 27th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Current form of Sousveillance – Providing representation and surveillance at once.
Yes, I am afraid of being watched, but not by the cameras in our malls, school hallways, banks etc. In fact, I am not sure if I would call the amalgamation of all existing surveillance cameras a present day panopticon. Sousveillance – if I can talk about it not as the camera that hangs around a persons neck and indiscriminately records everything (as described on the recommended wikipedia site)– but as our pocket cameras of various types– then Sousveillance better resembles the panopticon as 1) The possibility of being watched and identified seems much greater through Sousveillance than Surveillance devices. And 2) the fear of construction is more repressive than the fear of being visible.
I base these two statements on these basic distinctions between Surveillance and Sousveillance:
Surveillance image – taken by machines
- Generally viewed in post-harm situations to identify the culprits
- Looked at after an incident has occurred and once people examining it know what to look for
- Is not freely available to everyone
- Is used to identify activity that can be clearly defined as illegal or suspicious
Sousveillance image– taken as a first person perspective by an individual using a personal camera
- Can be viewed in any context
- Is always available to the person who captured the footage
- Is available for the person to manipulate and construct with and then make their construction available on the internet
- And can be used to identify individuals for social breaches they might have made – social breaches are not clear-cut and change over time.
I don’t mean to undermine the idea of Sousveillance – perhaps it would function differently if everyone was able to wear the type surveillance camera suggested on the website, and perhaps it would rectify the asymmetry that exists between the surveyors and the surveyed. In this blog, I do, however, question Sousveillance’s confidence in humans over machines:
“Thus the argument is that cameras attached to people ought to be less offensive than cameras attached to inanimate objects, because there is at least one responsible party present to operate the camera. This responsible-party argument is analogous to that used for operation of an a motor vehicle, where a responsible driver is present, in contrast to remote or automated operation of a motor vehicle.” –From the Website
Weibel states that: To avoid civil revolt against the future surveillance state, the population is acquainted with, through progressively increasing doses by the entertainment media. He also compares the TV show Big Brother to the panoptic prison, where the gaze of the spectator becomes that of the prison warden. Big Brother functions as an example of the entertainment media that programs us to “enjoy surveillance.”
While Big Brother produces images that formally mimic footage from surveillance cameras, the images captured on the show are ultimately used as images captured from personal cameras – as the images exist on various Internet sites, facebook, youtube etc.
As Big Brother edits together personality for its characters and a narrative for its show from the footage its cameras capture, individuals can create personality and a life for themselves and others using the pictures and videos they upload from their devices. These constructions have grave implications on the lives of people, even when they have authored these constructions – since the meaning and significance of the images can change over time (using past info on Facebook accounts to de-legitimize politicians).
Images from surveillance camera serves no other purpose than monitoring. Sousveillance – with our digital cameras – also functions as a means of representation. What are the implications when the means of representation also begins to function as a means of surveillance (not just for definable offences, but any type of breach throughout time), especially in a society where “the images to which we make reference [the representations themselves) become reality”? (Weibel 210)
January 27th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
How does the image/visibility operate with a Control Society? How does Zizek’s notion of the reversed Panopticon society (in which we feel anxiety at the prospect of *not* being exposed to the Other’s Gaze) fit in with or reaffirm Deleuze’s conception of Control Societies, which are by nature more open — and therefore more conducive to visibility — than Disciplinary Societies? Could this reversed Panopticon society have taken place within a Disciplinary Society?
What does the concept of the Control Society mean for the image and visual culture? Does their role change? Mirzoeff (last week’s readings) said the field needs to provide tactics and strategies for the visual subject in an era of global war. Weibel argues that 9/11 is evidence that visibility no longer equals security. So what type of tactics and strategies *can* aid the visual subject in an era of global war?
“Phantom” has a negative connotation — it means lacking substance — but one could argue that the “phantom world”, as Weibel calls today’s world in which we live by the reproduced image, isn’t all bad. Technological seeing and the proliferation of the image have positive implications, such as scientific progress, and the spread of knowledge. Is there a more objective term that might be more appropriate than “phantom”?
January 27th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Excellent point Sharlene makes about the extreme privileging of vision in modern media and the theory regarding it. I had many problems with Weibel’s piece, but one of the most objectively glaring holes in him deals with exactly that point: on p. 53, he quotes Guy Debord as saying that touch was the privileged human sense “for other epochs,” and claims that “the world” could be “grasped directly” in these past epochs due to the lesser prevalence of “specialized mediations.”
This sort of immediately dubious and seemingly wildly ahistorical claim obviously requires some comment and interrogation, but instead Weibel just lets it pass at face value, and his credibility suffers accordingly. Were all literate people reading Braille throughout the previous millenia of human civilisation? And how would Debord or Weibel then account for the necessary reliance on pictures and verbal oration for the propogation of knowledge necessary knowledge to the illiterate majority? Not a word on these. Debord’s quote has helped him build his argument – helped get him to his equally ludicrous “Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation” (p. 54) – and so is not to be interrogated.
I realize this is a very specific instance to keep harping on about, but it really sets the tone for all my problems with Weibel, which I’ll detail at greater length later on…
January 27th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
In the first part of his essay, Weibel goes on and on about “the technical” being used to give human vision access to “invisibility” and “the hidden” (p. 50) employs the fact that the human senses cannot detect all phenomena in the universe as though it were some privileged revelation, rather than elementary school science. Science is not even brought up in this section – “technical seeing” seems almost to be sui generis. Moreover, in this section as well as later he seems to teeter on the edge of making the claim that the use of technology to expand our powers of vision beyond the natural, empirical realm somehow retroactively annuls our empirical experience even of what we can naturally see.
Weibel’s second section, leading up to his Debord moment, is even more exasperating in containing some piously hypocritical moralizing. In the same paragraph as he talks reasonably frankly about his “postmodern world” breeding instilling a new “morphology of voyeurism, exhibitionism, sadism, and masochism” – exemplified in such cultural documents as action thrillers and disaster films – he starts wringing his hands about the shameful, illogical, and inhumane hypnotic repetition involved in 9/11 coverage. Apparently no pictures at all beyond the most cursory of signifiers would have been better. Weibel the German seems woefully out of touch with North American media culture. He often adds throw-away lines saying that panoptic surveillance has become more about amusement than regimentation, but these never really sink in or affect his judgments on Big Brother-style media, which invariably seem either condemnatory or dismissive.
After a third section which is essentially a long gloss on Foucault – handily exemplifying anew the classical criticisms of him – Weibel finally gets into film studies material. Here he is at his most unconvincing; and his maladaption to Hollywood cinema most painfully evident. He cites eight films purporting to exemplify the subconscious fear and insecurity of the American populace of exactly the kind of horror 9/11 would bring, but apparently reads nothing into the extreme chronological concentration of them. Of those that really forcefully cinematically reify the themes he imputes to them, all are concentrated in the three years between 1995 and 1998. In other words, they are products of the time when the vanished Cold War threat and expanding economy of the Clinton years had rendered North American society most complacent and willing to shell out for movie tickets to see apocalyptic scenarios – confident that could never/would never come to pass. I could add Air Force One and True Lies from the same period to Weibel’s list, both of which would never have been made in the form they were after 9/11.
Ultimately, Weibel tries to mount a Marxist high horse, as on p. 59 where he indicts the “sweatshop production” methods of mass media. The final crux of his argument lies in claiming that, in essence, security surveillance makes people less secure because it instils paranoia in some and resentment in others – a cocktail which will lead to terrorism. Against this, Weibel vaguely speaks of the need to “reform the real conditions of inequality and racism” against the “bourgeois utopia” instinct that visibility equals security (p. 63). It’s a classic moment of the angst of modern academic leftism – feeling and knowing that vast social change is necessary, yet not feeling confident that it’s really possible, and being accordingly frustrated when what change ever does take place goes radically against the grain of what you’re envisioning. This becomes most pathetic in Weibel’s last paragraphs, where he careens off into a hysterical anti-Americanism: lambasting Rudy Giuliani and invoking Sayyid Qutb to prove that the US brought 9/11 on itself.
After labouring through Weibel, it was a relief to read the pieces by Zizek and Deleuze. Both were shorter, and far more coherent. After Weibel, it was refreshing to hear Zizek say of 9/11 coverage: “…we wanted to see it again and again, the same shots were repeated ad nauseum, and the uncanny satisfaction we got from it was jouissance at its purest.” The general tone of his essay is more readable and lucid – he seems genially amused by the Big Brother phenomenon and its implications regarding media, his invocation of Hollywood cinema (with The Truman Show) is far more on-target, and his evident familiarity with Lacan seem not to have completely hijacked his sensibilities regarding sex.
As for Deleuze, the essay of his – basically an articulate gloss on Foucault – seems simply a logical distillation of most of the posty, po-mo work we’ve been reading hitherto. It’s coherent and rational, and unlike Weibel contains no small, obvious aberrations of the sort that you can immediately pounce on and savage. It’s simply a grandiose, overarching syllogism that invites acceptance since grappling with it and breaking it down would probably take quite a bit of work.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Here is a summary of my part of today’s presentation:
Peter Weibel – Pleasure and the Panoptic Principle
Weibel starts by saying that “[t]he pleasure principle of the voyeur, to see everything and the pleasure principle of the exhibitionist, to show all, have shifted from the fates of private drives to social norms. Voyeurism, exhibitionism, and narcissism are transformed from individual-psychological criteria to social categories” (208). I believe this is basically the thesis of his article. He aims to show how “exhibitionism and voyeurism transform from illegitimate to legitimate pleasures” (208)
Weibel talks about diaphanes, and the invisibility and visibility of objects, using luggage going through the x-ray at the airport as an example. He reminds us that “[t]echnical seeing teaches us that there is a reality that is invisible (to the natural eye) which can be made visible in (technical) images. Visibility and invisibility, the visible and the hidden, form a new equation in the technical world: the hidden can become visible; the visible can contain the invisible” (209-210). In Cache, within the reality the tapes show, the meaning remains hidden to Georges because he does not understand how to interpret the images. Why send the tapes to Georges? Because as Weibel says, “an invisible reality can become visible in images” (210). The suffering that Majid is still going through is invisible to Georges until he sees the tapes and the drawings. Georges guilt, which we cannot possibly perceive, becomes visible to us through the images of his dreams and memories.
Which is more disturbing: seeing the real images of the boy with blood on his mouth and the headless rooster or seeing a child’s simplistic drawing of these things in black and white with red blood for emphasis?
When talking about images and simulations of images like films and drawings, it’s easy to see why Weibel brings in some of Jean Baudrillard’s ideas in page 210. We can see how in Cache images and reality become mixed, and one does not always have to come before the other. Sometimes Georges gets an image that is based on a past reality, like the picture of the rooster or the tape of his childhood home. Other times the image comes first. Georges watches the tape of a first-person view of driving along a street and then going up to an apartment’s front door. Then George makes this image a reality by doing in real life what he saw on the tape.
Weibel summarizes the conception of the panopticon prison on pages 213-214.
“When the event becomes socially more important in its reproduced form than in its original form, then the original must orient itself on its reproduction and the event becomes a mere matrix of its reproduction” (211). Weibel gives the example of the “compulsive repetition” (211) of the 9/11 events, real events carry more weight the more times the recording of the event is shown and watched. Terrorists do not seek to hide their illegal activities in the dark as the Panoptic Principle would predict, they want to perform their activities in the light so that it will be recorded and people will see it. This idea creates a kind of paradox. The more we are watched and images are disseminated the safer we are supposed to feel, but because all events can be seen by everyone, we become even more insecure because we are always watching all the terrible things that happen.
Weibel uses two films as examples of the “transformation of surveillance from punishment to pleasure” (219), Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, in which “the camera becomes a voyeuristic eye … [and] people can enjoy surveillance as a spectacle because seeing is entangled with sexuality and power” (219).
Along with enjoyment, fear is also a part of surveillance. Weibel quotes Hitchcock as saying that “fear … [is] split into two categories – terror and suspense … terror is induced by surprise, suspense by forewarning” (219).
In Cache there are two notable moments of terror, when the rooster suddenly has its head chopped off and when Majid suddenly slits his own throat. There is one poignant moment of suspense when the doorbell rings and Georges very slowly goes to answer it, asks who is there, and looks around the front walkway calling for whoever rang the bell. The menace of the videos and pictures makes us very nervous that someone is going to jump out and attack Georges, and when he closes the door on the new video the discovery of the object is almost as terrorising as if someone had jumped out and attacked him.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Here are a few random points about Cache that would make for interesting discussion:
1) There is no soundtrack for the film. How does this affect the “real-ness” of the characters? How does this affect the terrorizing and suspenseful moments in the film?
2) Weibel talks about the effect of the news as images and about how politicians “act for the reproduced form. They must win as images and not as reality. … Politics becomes a soap opera, rebellion an action thriller” (211). What do we think of the fact that the only thing that Georges and Anne watch on their TV other than the tapes is the news? (The news is playing in the background the whole time Anne is phoning Yves’ house looking for Pierrot)
3) Some interesting quotes from Haneke:
“It’s not important whether Majid is also guilty or not. Because it doesn’t change anything in terms of Georges’ guilt. And I really wanted to leave open the question of who is really ‘guilty’ so to speak. Who did this in order to ‘punish’ Georges? … Even if the other is also guilty, it doesn’t change your own guilt.”
“In theory if you want to judge people, which is not my desire but, of course, the mother is mostly to blame. Because she is the one who sent the boy away to a children’s home.”
Haneke: “The truth is always hidden.” Interviewer: “Every image hides another”. Haneke: “Yes, but it’s like reality. We never ever know what is truth. There are a thousand truths. It’s a matter of perspective.”
January 29th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Hey all. I am posting a summary of my presentation on Zizek and Deleuze and hope to answer a few questions that I found interesting in the previous posts in the process.
Zizek’s question of what is real relates to Eli’s point about the jumbo-tron at sporting events (as for the ‘ublime’ I am as lost as you). Even the best seats in the house cannot provide the spectator with the close-ups and detail that a camera can, thus after a play is made there is almost an instinctual reaction to look at the screen in order to see if it “really happened” (for example, a play that is so outstanding that you just cannot believe your own eyes—yet we’ll trust the video replay!). I see therefore I am? You bet. There is a duality that exists between subject/actor that exists in events that we consider real (without quotation marks) such as sporting events. This ties into Zizek’s idea that the camera guarantees our being, due to the Reverse Bentham/Orwellian Panoptic society. Since my presentation I have become more open to this idea (this hopefully touches on Sharlene’s post). I originally tried to say that the roles we play are to fluid for a term such as ‘guarantee,’ but now I see that although circumstances and gazes may change, the fantasy that there is an ‘all seeing eye’ watching us does not; thus, this may actually force us to change our role, and not through our awareness of immoral or illegal activities, but for the sheer enjoyment of it—jouissance(I had to throw that in there).
So, on this grand stage of life, we perform ourselves being ourselves under many different imagined gazes and circumstances, each one potentially guaranteeing our being at that moment—moment after moment. We put ourselves on display for some unknown gaze intentionally to impress ourselves of concerning our performance. This relates to Zizek’s question of whether “such a spectacle for the Other’s gaze [talking about sex] is part of the sexual act—what if—since, as Lacan put it, ‘there is no sexual relationship’—it can only be staged for the Other’s gaze?” (66).
This is where I spoke about our awareness when executing an action, becoming performers—whether we play ourselves or mimic others, either way it is acting. I believe we adopt different traits or roles through inadequate feeling or even through adequate ones (insecurity vs. security)—both lead to ‘play’ or compensation in the roles we play. Even if we are not aware of our actions, we could potentially be the model that some other person bases one of their traits on.
This led me to wonder if our belief in reality is strictly cognitive (psychological over physical). As Zizek says, while talking about sex (again), “I do it to myself, while I imagine doing it with or to another … What if, even when I am doing it with a real partner, what ultimately sustains my enjoyment is not the partner as such, but the secret fantasies that I invest in it?” (67). My own question is: can such an event as 9/11 break us from this fantasy work Zizek speaks of, and return us (however grounded) to a ‘stable reality?’ (if there is such thing).
Hopefully answering Kubacki’s question on how the Reverse Panoptic society ties into Deleuze’s Control Society, I think the connection is made between Zizek’s guarantee of being and Deleuze’s dividual: both define humans—guarantee of being through the camera gaze and the dividual through surveillance, passwords, and codes that literally define us and tell us where we can and cannot go. Control Society was brought up in Ananya’s post where she details one of the factors of surveillance as control—mechanical recordings that not everyone has access to and help determine the watcher of the camera who can and cannot go where. As for sousveillance, I see it as an extension of Foucault’s Discipline Society as it can function as a form of self-discipline. People now have two gazes (their eyes and their camera) and pictures of ‘reality’ can still potentially be incriminating, thus, in a way, we are doing the surveillance system’s job for it without awareness that we are doing so (I may be stretching that I bit).
Sharlene asked can we separate security from surveillance. I believe that in Bantham’s Panopticon surveillance was anything but securing to the inmates, and the same holds true in Disciplinary Societies—a great example I think is Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation.” Whereas Deleuze’s article is less equated with self-discipline and more with really not having a choice over whether we are recorded or not and, honestly, not minding this fact. We think that since we are recorded, we are safe. Yet, as I said in class: with ‘freedom’ comes confinement.
One of the reasons for the change from a Discipline Society to a Control Society (aside from capitalism) was that reforms had run their course and a new change/system was needed; what we got was a society guarded by the “new monster” (178) of digital technology. What I also find interesting is when Deleuze points to the fact that even Foucault knew that the Disciplinary society would be short lived because society needs a “functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion” (Discipline and Punish). Foucault called this the “Discipline Mechanism.”
Then Deleuze gives the main reason why he thinks the control age has come about, and that is through Capitalism. Both examples he gives concerning the differences between Disciplinary Society factory workers and Control Society business people are based on wages and value. Deleuze states that “discipline was always related to molded currencies containing gold as a numerical standard, whereas control is based on floating exchange rates, modulations depending on a code setting sample percentage for various currencies” (180). In either way, he states that the end result for Control Society, is, well, results (and an infinite process of them as well—my rant about academics may sound familiar now). The old power structures are no longer separate and escapable; rather business, training, military service, schooling, church, and Ron Howard all exist under business. I said it before and I’ll say it again, “A man is no longer a man confined but a man in debt” (181). And, personally, I believe this debt and forward thinking in society is the cause of much mental health issues.
Capitalism has moved from production to meta-production, selling services and buying various ways of selling those services in order to make debt the new form of punishment (Sovereign Society), or discipline (Disciplinary Society). Not only does this occur in First World Nations, but it is a case of Universal Modulation. We all owe each other money and we cannot pay it because of our debt (talk about bringing us back to reality…).
Also, finally, I just wanted to ask everyone what model society they saw in “Cache”? I’ll be waiting!
January 31st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Wanted to respond to a couple of the points Lisa raised about Caché – one being the lack of soundtrack. Definitely it is a choice to not manipulate emotions via music. The film and discussion reminded me of a filmmaker I worked with who did a lot of “social issue” documentaries, and his strategy was always to avoid expressing outrage within the formal aspects of filmmaking, so that the viewer would be allowed to feel the outrage themselves, to own it as their own. This seems relevant to Haneke’s work and the evocations of liberal guilt without pronounced direction of emotions via music or close ups or cardboard characters (the simple strokes of Blood Diamond come to mind as a point of contrast).
But what I noticed more than the absence of music in this viewing, was the deliberate ambivalences in the script – for example, Georges defence that he was only 6 years old at the time, is really quite reasonable, allowing the viewer to sympathize momentarily with his logic (if not with his continued defiance of any empathy for Majid and the fallout of his behaviour). Haneke’s reasoning that finally it is the mother who is ultimately responsible follows this line – if one is looking for blame, it is perhaps elsewhere in a minor character or in the vicissitudes of history, but nonetheless, we are disappointed with Georges that he does not respond better to the situation.
Also on a more general note – I found the readings to be a quite stimulating companion for considering the film (having seen the film before a couple of times, I was already aware of the story of enormous stress derived from being watched, mysteriously, anonymously or aggressively). Whatever disagreements I had with the authors, I nonetheless appreciated the more general consideration of the plethora of means of surveillance and sousveillance that are part of current urban life.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:21 am
I just wanted to go back to the scene where the Algier man killed himself. In thinking about it within the context of the film, with repsect to the idea of being terrorized, I can’t but feel as though that action/re-action feeds into the fear of terrorism itself.
Terrorism is all about the fact that violence and or death can happen at any moment. There doesn’t need to be a reason, it just happens out fo the blue and I can’t help but feel that is what Haneke was presenting in this scene. Especially if we consider the context. White man screws over colonized other, other kills self in order to scar white man.
In addition, as Weibel mentioned with respect to acts of terrorism, they are all about being seen. The Algierian man made sure the protagonist was there and present in order to see him kill himself, in order to shock him. It was a performance to be consumed. It was meant to be seen.
Besides that cinematically the special effect was really cool, I can’t but wonder if what shocks us about this image is that, in the world that we now live in, this is no longer fantasy or film, but possiblity in actuality.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
“In addition, as Weibel mentioned with respect to acts of terrorism, they are all about being seen. The Algierian man made sure the protagonist was there and present in order to see him kill himself, in order to shock him. It was a performance to be consumed. It was meant to be seen.”
That’s an interesting idea connecting the film and readings… how would it have differed if George had only seen the videotape of Majid’s suicide (just like how most of us only experienced 9/11 as an image)?
I take exception to Weibel’s contention that there is necessarily a proportional relationship between increased security measures and the real lack of security. An event like 9/11 might have been designed to exploit our panoptic society, but it hasn’t necessarily made us less secure. In reality, the number of casualties of something like 9/11 pales in comparison to the millions murdered in relative obscurity this past decade throughout Africa. A little security in Dafur might save a dramatic number of lives.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Well said Michael!