Postmodern citizenship, panoptic model

[roxane]

Hi I'm a Dutch student on New Media and Digital Culture. I'm working on a project about new citizenship (discussing right, politics & ideology, inclusion & exclusion, the public sphere, and panopticism & subjectivation).

I'm doing a project now on (post)modern citizenship and analyzing a few films on their panoptic models and public/private issues. One of the films I chose is THX-1138.

I know the place of the world in THX according to GL is in the 1970's but his visions still interest me. The fact that everyone is being watched (is the operator being watched, what is her name anyway?).

I have some questions to ask here, I hope you don't mind? I find the film very interesting as it holds so many subtle clues (merging philosophy, anthropology and modernistic thought, as well as the references occuring between GL's films, not just the name THX but also the themes, the escapes, the cops in THX figuring as early stormtroopers, etc).


My main points of interest are:
>> the inclusion and exclusion question (I like the earlier analyzed dichotomy of Freedom/Danger combined with Security/Submission) as THX tries to find his own freedom because he is no longer a part of the collective whole, the functioning society. As well as calling civillians 'drones' maybe they have become more like cyborgs. They are programmed and computerized, they are not allowed to be an individual. If such a thing happens, they will be removed from society and basically left to die. It seems there is no other form of exclusion than death.
>> To what extent can the world of THX be seen as a panopticon where the few 'guards' monitor the many 'civillians/prisoners'. To what extent can we call such decisions made by the operators, and the court process be assigned to power-structures and -flows? Is there power or is there just the system? The prosecutor, does she speak her own mind? She seems to deem any irregularity pollution of society. (Personally that sounds like a very Christian mindset, perhaps this could be related to the earlier question of OMM's function).
>> And finally: what is citizenship in the world of THX? (yeah it's a short one but I've posted enough to publish a book here, sorry!)

P.S.
I wish I had found this forum earlier because I enjoy movie discussions that go deeper than average, and THX truly lends itself to that. Secondly, because my deadline is somewhere tomorrow *gasp*.

[roxane]

Another thought occured: as the cops chase THX and SEN, they are still commanded by the operators of the system: humans. Maybe in this model it is evident that humanity will conquer technology, or at least remain superior?

I'm also curious to your analysis of THX constructing (fathering) those cops, as well as the construction (...fathering?) of new civillians (the relocation of civillian SEN in that tiny bottle...). What part as a civillian does THX perform there?

And if love is the ultimate crime, how come there were rows of jars with foetuses? Does society rely on their members breaking the law in order to keep functioning? As with all those corpses with their "insides removed"? Or has society finally understood that without procreation eventually the market will die:

"Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy."

There *are* children, as one of the first scenes evidently shows, with that cop guiding the child to the elevator (technology fathering/mothering humans?).

Consumerism seems approved of. I'm not sure what to think of the communism/capitalism idea so far, they seem mixed. Property is a strange issue in the film because your location is not your property and your mind is numbed. The option of buying is promoted but I never see money or stores. What is property? Standardized just like consumption? The communism/capitalism polarisation has become one. There is no difference between rich and poor (except for the shelldwellers, were those once human?), and yet your free space is invaded, your property is being controlled and your mind belongs to society.

[russ]

the more I study the films lucus himself was watching at the time,I can see thatTHX 1138 it seems to have taken most of the ideas of the movie Alphaville (1965), which in turn took the ideas from the book 1984 by H.G. Wells written in 1938.

[Julien Dupire]

About the panoptic, I can advise you Michel Foucault' "Surveiller et punir, naissance de la prison" (Discipline and Punish, the birth of the prison) (I hope it exists in Dutch).