The Power Of Surveillance

5 Pages 1321 Words

Today’s world is a world of total surveillance. Video cameras, secret shoppers, and thumb print scanners are only the beginning of a long list of devises that are used today to keep society “in check”. In Staples essay, he argues that surveillance has engulfed our cultures and has infiltrated every aspect of society, raising the question, “Who holds ultimate power?”. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher of the 20th century, who uses opposing ideas of the Enlightenment in attempt to prove human worth and identity, has also addressed this question. Foucault states that man is not autonomous by nature, but rather tied into an episteme. His idea on power and knowledge displaces the human subject from the central role of domination. Consequently, arguing that knowledge is no longer the “autonomous intellectual structures that happen to be employed as instruments of power” (Foucault, 219), but rather tied to systems of social control. O’Rourke’s documentary Cannibal Tours, examines the lives of the Iatmul Indians living in Papua New Guinea by filming the interaction between the natives and the western tourists who visit them, ultimetley bluring the boundaries between self and other. The cameraman juxtaposes interviews with the natives about the tourists and vise versa, in attempt for the audience to see both perspectives constructing and expressing their views of the “other”. Because of the panoptic power that the cameraman holds, the views of a presupposing audience are moldable, resulting in a society susceptible to manipulation. Through clever filming techniques, O’Rourke is able to capture the essence of the interactions, many of which closely parallel Foucault’s ideas of surveillance.
Foucault’s concept of the panopticon instills a fear of the unknown into the lives of the watched. First devised by Jeremy Bentham in the 1800’s, its clever mediation of mass control quickly became a popular survei...