Panopticon
by Relja Penezic, Director
The Cinema Guild, NYC, 2003
VHS/DVD, 37 minutes, color
Sales, $59.95
ISBN: 0-7815-0972-6.
Mike Leggett
University of Technology Sydney
PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007
mike.leggett@uts.edu.au
Described by the producers as an "offbeat
mockumentary" involving the Chairman
of Worldwide Monitor and a performance
by the Surveillance Chamber Music Society
in
"a celebration of Jeremy Bentham,
whose architectural design of the Panopticon
revolutionised systems of penal surveillance
in the 18th Century. By allowing
prison guards to observe inmates without
inmates seeing them, Benthams concept
offered a tremendous boon to surveillance
techniques and psychological control throughout
the 19th and 20th
Centuries."
The Chairman is, of course, an actor who
speaks real slow about some aspects of
Bentham scholarshipFoucault manages
a credit toowhilst the chamber orchestra
provide a contemporary musical backdrop
to his voice intoning in the promised
mocking manner.
The director of this confection meanwhile
runs the distance with the various effects
filters, (the downside of digital video
production generally), as miscellaneous
footage, including the trusty re-animation
shots of the Muybridge subjects, are "blended
with historical photos, spy cameras, surveillance
video and audio sensors" apparently
"to address issues of privacy in
contemporary society."
This has to be recognised praiseworthy
as a topic to consider in the present
climate of governmental and corporate
usage of surveillance in the control of
freedom loving peoples like you and me.
However, the fact that we are to a person
suspects in the hunt for the illusive
but allegedly ever present enemies of
the state, is beyond creative exploration
by the producers and falls short of either
an entertainment or a commentary. Benthams
precocious scholarly contributions to
moral philosophy, jurisprudence, and Utilitarianism
in which he observed that "pain and pleasure
are the sovereign masters governing man's
conduct" may well have unconsciously led
the producers of this tape into a pertinent
area of his work"calculating
quantities of happiness" may have
also entered their equations as it did
his.
Theres little to recommend this
production as a means for understanding
the contribution Bentham made in the several
fields he helped define but, if nothing
else, it may, hopefully, raise some interest
for acquiring a greater understanding
from other sources.
Needless to
say, hes a sexy topic for web publishers
too, though University College London,
which he inspired, may well be a leader
in the field.