Henry T:
Sorry, I was in a hurry--not willfully brushing aside the issue, just
circumstantially doing so.
I just thought that Evgeni might want to read (if, of course, he has
not already read it), the Virilio texts, since they seem to tie in
with what he seems to be discussing...
What are my thoughts on surveillance? Or on surveillance in film?
Sorry, but will have to brief again (not least, of course, because
*they* are watching and will find out where I am if I am online for
too long)...
Erm, I wonder if Manuel De Landa is correct in War in the Age of
Intelligent Machines... He says that surveillance, espionage, and all
that, is in fact characterised by people who are not very good at
their jobs and who do very little...
He says that surveillance and espionage industries like to shroud
themselves in secrecy, such that no one knows what they do, basically
because they are inefficient and, up to a point, useless.
These agencies then come up with 3 excuses to get governments to be
afraid and to fund them...
1) It is hard to tell when they have succeeded or failed.
2) If they do obviously fail, they say they would have been able to
prevent whatever disaster happened had they had more money...
3) If they fail, it's because the government interpreted incorrectly
the information that they provided...
De Landa says that the KGB was pretty poor as an agency and that its
only great success, the defection of Kim Philby, was on account not of
their good work, but on account of Philby's antipathy to
anti-Communists...
This made me wonder whether The Lives of Others was accurate at all...
Having read Arthur Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and others, it strikes me
that De Landa is probably over-egging it to say that 'they' (if KGB,
Stasi and Communist 'powers' can be conflated at all) were useless at
surveillance... They certainly were efficient at having people
running scared! But from De Landa's POV, internal surveillance is,
from what I understand, a bit pointless - and that all systems of
espionage (inc. CIA) end up turning their attention inwards...
But maybe he does have a point: the successful breeding of paranoia
does not mean that they are watching you. They may have the
infrastructure to watch you, which is scary enough, but they don't
have the manpower to watch us all--unless the machines begin to have
image-content-recognition (and I was pleased to see that Bourne
Ultimatum has a reference to Echelon, the highly questionable and
pretty secret telecoms surveillance institution/machine, which
recogniese keywords in conversations and contexts (apparently!), the
example here being Blackbriar...)
That said, maybe these movies (as part of the milit-indust-cmplex?)
just propagate further myths of surveillance so keep us all scared (of
imminent attacks!)...
[Interestingly: Greengrass, what with United 93 and his 2 Bourne
films, does emerge as interested in surveillance technology, chains of
command, and the dispensing of information through communications
channels/networks...]
This has got me thinking about paranoia and violence in general. Does
this work as an argument:-
So: a film like Bourne, Swordfish, or, indeed United 93, sort of helps
to justify what is inevitable in the UK: the imminent introduction of
obligatory ID cards...
Extended, I got the impression that violence in films in general helps
to justify greater social control, because, every time something
violent happens in real life, the movies are in part blamed (but are
in fact a necessary and valuable scapegoat to justify greater social
control - even if this 'policy' is not conscious or directed by some
'King Pin' somewhere)...
Baudrillard and others (inc. Virilio and Zizek) made a big thing about
the terrorist acts of 11/9/2001 being conflated in the eyes of many
witnesses as being 'like the movies'; to them, this meant that we
could no longer tell reality from the movies.
For me, this reaction of 'it's just like the movies' has a slightly
different implication. It is not that we cannot tell reality from
fiction anymore, but that we are worried that we cannot tell fact from
fiction anymore. In other words, when we see some real violence, we
respond hysterically by saying 'oh my God, my worst nightmare has come
true, I am in a movie!' Maybe this is a coping mechanism
But, I wonder (only wonder, mind you) that this equally suggests that
we are NOT anaesthetised by/over-exposed/indifferent to violence,
since, when we do see it for real, we respond hysterically to it (and
worry that fiction has bled into the real)... So: we not used to
violence and violence is not the norm.
By this rationale, our response to real violence should make us
realise that violence is highly uncommon (whilst, of course, also
being everyday; I am not trying to deny that violence does not exist
ubiquitously and at all times)...
However: rather than reconfirming that violence is uncommon, we are
told that our movie-minded reactions to violence (the very movie-ness
of which belies that violence belongs more to the land of fiction than
reality) justifies greater control... (It is the
espionage/surveillance agency using one of the classic 3 excuses to
justify its existence and get more money outlined above...)
We are made to think that violence is normal in order for oppressive
measures to be instigated; whilst, all along, our reactions tell us
that violence is not normal. It might happen everyday, but it does
not happen everyday to each of us. It is always the exception and not
the rule.
We might be told that this is precisely BECAUSE there are agencies
protecting us, but given that these agencies are run by guys just like
you and me, this sees unlikely.
(Although, it IS worrying that the guys from these agencies willfully
surround themselves with an air of mystery and deliberately confuse
fact and fiction by trying to make out that they are Jason
Bourne-style ubermensch, when they are just flesh and blood. As ever,
the least realistic people get the jobs that probably require greatest
realism! It is not necessarily society itself that is paranoid, but
the people who run it. And what are they paranoid about? That
everyone wants their money and power... Do they? Maybe... But
probably not. Most people feel attached to their homes and would stay
there out of choice, no?)
[Leading to America trying to project itself as a giant 'secret'
society, that is full of rich and fabulously beautiful white people -
with the odd fat and/or coloured exception... It propagates myths
about its own happiness and sense of fulfilment - through movies, no
less! - to try to make others feel like they want to be American,
too... And all that this belies is the country's own insecurity...
Poor America, it just wants to be loved...]
Sorry if that is a rant.
It's not quite what Evegeni or Henry was after, probably, and may
still be full of abbreviations and brushing issues aside, but it gets
close to disclosing my POV on the matter (which, in reality, I of
course prefer to keep secret...)...
Oh My God. I have to fly. An Agent just walked in. It's- Oh, no...
It's Hugo Weaving himself... He's coming straight for me... Where
did that mobile phone come from? What's that? I don't have time for
an explanation? Step out of the window? What? Into that giant TV
studio? Why has everyone stopped to stare at me? Aaaaghhh.....
w
> Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 17:37:10 +0200
> From: "Henry M. Taylor" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: surveillance
> William Brown writes:
> 'pretty standard French anti-American stuff... But engaging
> nonetheless... (And mercifully short!)'
>
>
>
> Sorry, too many abbreviations here. You're brushing this aside a
> little too quickly for my liking. What's your POV on the issue?
>
> H
>
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