Surveillance is a common feature of everyday life. But how are we to make sense of or understand what surveillance is, how we should feel about it, and what, if anything, can we do?
Surveillance and Film
is an engaging and accessible book that maps out important themes in how popular culture imagines surveillance by examining key feature films that prominently address the subject. Drawing on dozens of examples from around the world, J. Macgregor Wise analyzes films that focus on those who watch (like
Rear Window
,
Peeping Tom
Disturbia
Gigante
, and
The Lives of Others
), films that focus on those who are watched (like
The Conversation
Caché
Ed TV
), films that feature surveillance societies (like
1984
THX 1138
V for Vendetta
The Handmaid's Tale
The Truman Show
Minority Report
), surveillance procedural films (from
The Naked City
, to Hong Kong's
Eye in the Sky
, The
Infernal Affairs
Trilogy, and the
Overheard
Trilogy of films), and films that interrogate the aesthetics of the surveillance image itself (like
Sliver
Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries)
Der Riese
Look
). Wise uses these films to describe key models of understanding surveillance (like Big Brother, Panopticism, or the Control Society) as well as to raise issues of voyeurism, trust, ethics, technology, visibility, identity, privacy, and control that are essential elements of today's culture of surveillance. The text features questions for further discussion as well as lists of additional films that engage these topics.