On Surveillance and the Movies

"Obedience to authority is implicitly deemed the natural state." - Glen Greenwald (2015, p.228)

In science fiction films the threat of government surveillance looms large. On of the better known of them is probably V for Vendetta (2005), not only due to it's origin but also due to the adoption of its iconography by the hacktivist group Anonymous. However, there is a definite inconsistency in the way surveillance is portrayed and how it is actually carried out in modern times. For this we can compare documentaries like CitizenFour (2014) to movies like Equilibrium (2002) and many, many others.

The dystopian view of V for Vendetta and Equilibrium shows us how the public can be controlled through several different means. In Vendetta control is exerted through constant monitoring and oppression of any opinions against the establishment. This includes having cameras placed everywhere and a police force and politicians who work together to remain in control of the British population. In the 1980s while Vendetta was written, England had a conservative government with Tatcher as Prime Minister. Alan Moore used his fears and the political climate as an inspiration. It can be said he was warning us. In the introduction to the graphic novel for V for Vendetta (1990) he states:

"It is now 1988... The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality... I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's mean-spirited and I don't like it anymore."

The similarity with the way the media is portrayed in this comic and the way it is written about in Glen Greenwald's No Place to Hide is glaring. The media, especially in America, shakes hands with politicians and corporations on a daily basis. They even have a party to celebrate, the White House Correspondents Dinner. This in itself is not bad, but the lack of any kind of opposition the main media has to these people is harmful. The point is, Greenwald argues, that the media "is only effective if journalists act adversarially to those who wield political power" (p.210). The reality of being a journalist opposed to those in power can clearly be seen in treatment of Laura Poitras, the director of CitizenFour as well as several other politically charged documentaries. As a supposed adversary to the state, she has been stopped at the American border every time she leaves or enters the country. This has been done without any clear reasons other than her making politically charged films that criticise the establishment.

All of this does not even go into the actual surveillance of regular people. In the articles written by Greenwald, as well as the interviews and revelations in CitizenFour it becomes clear that the use of the internet has intrinsically changed surveillance both due to access but also due to the quantity of data available. The internet is how we get things done, it's how we communicate and it's how we share ourselves with the world. Now there are very few movies that deal with the internet as a surveillance tool, mostly due to the sudden increase of use and the abstract way the internet works in its current form. The way surveillance is depicted in film is mostly through tracking of mobile phones or though microphones and cameras placed around the home. Movies that use this as a premises are for instance The Truman Show (1998), The Lives of Others (2006) and the Bourne franchise (2002-2016). In all of these movies the dissident, the person who goes agains the surveillance, is the hero, but as discussed earlier this is not the case within the real world.

Equilibrium adds another layer to the control exerted on the people. In it people are controlled by making the way the world is with restrictions seem normal. Within the movie, emotions have been eradicated by the government as the source of human suffering. Anyone who continues to be emotional get taken by the police and eradicated. While Greenwald talks about politics, his premiss stays true to this point: 

"There are, broadly speaking, two choices: obedience to institutional authority or radical dissent from it. The first is a sane and valid choice only if the second is crazy and illegitimate. For defenders of the status quo, mere correlation between mental illness and radical opposition to prevailing orthodoxy is insufficient. Radical dissent is evidence, even proof, of a severe personality disorder." (p.227)

Those who do not obey or follow along with the crowd are seen as 'insane' in both movies and the real world. However, in film, the person who turns out the victor is usually this 'insane' dissident of the state. V in Vendetta, Bourne in his movies and Preston in Equilibrium are all a cog in the system before rebelling and being prosecuted for their disobedience. They overthrow the system they were a part of and change the political climate through their actions. The break with those who are surveilling them allows for their power. This can also be said of those who rebel against surveillance in the real world like Snowden. By leaving the country and getting political asylum, he has gained more power (even if this was not his original intent) that he would have if he had stayed. His message became clearer with the threat to his life/freedom that he exposed by being prosecuted by the USA.

The way people deal with surveillance in cinema is radically different from how we deal with it in reality, as the type of surveillance is also not the same. The use of the internet has changed what we are willing to expose about ourselves online and thus what the government and companies have free access to. This however does not take away that films can highlight our compliance with the status quo and can have an impact on how people perceive the surveillance of their personal information. Films like V for Vendetta have inspired and allowed for a movement against the real world surveillance by highlighting it in a fictional narrative. In the same way, CitizenFour has focussed our attention on the real world consequences of speak out against the government's surveillance and what kind of impact this surveillance has on normal people. Being tracked is the norm, being a hero isn't.

(It should be stated that I am of the internet generation. I've used the internet throughout my life and thus have a different view of privacy than people from my father's generation. (In this I can also state that I've had many discussions with my father about the definition and implementation of privacy.) I'm aware that everything I post (including this blog) is public to a certain extend and that anyone with malicious intent can access all my accounts if they wanted to. This is why my point on privacy is that it is extremely limited, namely, privacy is something that you will only have inside your head. Thoughts, as long as they are not spoken, are private; nothing else is. This is not to say that I want everyone to have access to everything I do on the internet or anywhere else, but I am aware that is how the internet works.)

References:

Greenwald, G. (2015) No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA & the Surveillance State. 1st edn. UK: Penguin Random House.

Moore, A. (1990) V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics.

V for Vendetta (2005) Directed by James McTeigue [DVD] UK: Warner.

CitizenFour (2015) Directed by Laura Poitras [DVD] UK: Dogwoof.

Equilibrium (2002) Directed by Kurt Wimmer [DVD] UK: Momentum Pictures

The Truman Show (1998) Directed by Peter Weir [DVD] London: Paramount Home Entertainment. 

The Lives of Others (2006) Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck [DVD] UK: Lions Gate Home Entertainment.

The Bourne Identity (2002) Directed by Doug Liman [DVD] UK: Universal Pictures.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004) Directed by Paul Greengrass [DVD] UK: Universal Pictures.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) Directed by Paul Greengrass [DVD] UK: Universal Pictures.

The Bourne Legacy (2012) Directed by Tony Gilroy [DVD] UK: Universal Pictures.

Jason Bourne (2016) Directed by Paul Greengrass [Film] UK: Universal Pictures.