The Age of Anxiety

I remember seeing a billboard on the edifice outside the Warner Brothers Studio Lot for the then yet to be released film V for Vendetta. There was a quote above a man in a mask and long coat: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." Researching and questioning the organizations in power is the first step to reclaiming whatever freedom human beings have left in our highly censored and controlled existence, where we are constantly being monitored, studied, and reprimanded.

In the world "we now inhabit, the permeable membrane between fact and fiction, actual and virtual, is in danger of dissolving altogether."[i] Such narrative films as Wag the Dog and The Siege, as well as non-narrative films such as Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, 21 Days to Baghdad, 9/11, and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdock's War on Journalism help to develop a social awareness of what the government is or is not doing behind our backs. Whether they are propaganda for a liberal cause or one-sided arguments does not mean that we should not at least watch and listen to what they have to say.

I do agree with the opinions that news is being filtered and fixed by the large conglomerations secretly and not so secretly running the show. As Ben Bagdikian states, when "twenty-nine largest media systems account for over half of the output of newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies."[ii] It is almost a given that the largest media systems will assert a certain amount of control on what type of material is being shown to the American audience and the World audience.

In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky state that as far as the news is concerned, "Money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public."[iii] I believe this statement is true. There are certain topics in sponsored programs that seriously criticize corporate activities that will not be funded by the large corporate advertisers on television; such as the problem of environmental degradation, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate support of and benefits from Third World tyrannies.[iv] Does all this surveillance and censorship reflect on our own lives? I think everything and everyone is interconnected with each other. With this said, what goes around comes around. If the big corporations are concerned with controlling the media, then this concern for power will obviously bleed over to the life of the everyday citizen. I am an advocate of post-modern theorist Arthur Kroker's belief that "millennial culture is manic-depressive," mood-swinging between "ecstasy and fear, between delirium and anxiety."[v] Just like the women and men in the newsrooms, citizens are strung along by the fear that we are always being watched.

I worked in Barnes & Noble Booksellers in high school. Attached to the ceiling of the store were large dome-like growths scattered throughout the two-level store. I remember having long arguments with my co-worker about whether there were actually cameras inside these pods or not. Since the store was large, with a café, music department, and children's corner, there weren't enough employees on staff to supervise the revolving number of customers visiting daily. It made sense to have the threat of an all-seeing gaze watching over everywhere and everyone. How else was order supposed to be maintained? How easy it would have been to slip a thin paperback under the folds of ones jacket or sweater if the consequence of being reprimanded or punished in some way didn't plague on ones conscience.

I always felt I had to behave myself as an employee and not do something that would give my superiors a reason to fire me. The fear of being seen stealing or doing something unlawful and being caught, disciplined me to remain within the confines of the law.

The idea behind this example of a system of discipline and punishment in Capitalist Society is the crux behind Jeremy Bentham's 18^th century panopticon or Inspection House. The panopticon was a circular building with cells at the periphery and a central viewing tower from which a superintendent would keep the establishment under surveillance. Usually used within a penal institution (although the model fits within many other institutional constructs of society to maintain power, such as school, work, or medical environments), the inmates never knew when they were being looked at by the superintendent in the central viewing tower.[vi] As a result, the inmates never knew when there was a confidential time to plan a prison break, kill their fellow prisoner, or plot an uprising, and their actions were regulated for fear of punishment. The French theorist Michel Foucault states that, "The Panopticon is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle...must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use."[vii]

Michel Foucault uses Jeremy Bentham's 18^th century panopticon or Inspection House as an illustration in how discipline and punishment work in society. In the panopticon "visibility is a trap."[viii] To be seen in society is to be compromised. After all, we act differently when we are being observed. How many times has the urge to dance or sing while walking down a busy public street been suppressed. Why? Some would say common shyness, but there is also a fear involved, as well. The fear of retaliation from society. If we break away from the "norm" we may be judged or shunned as a result. This idea is confirmed in the newsroom when "the anticipation that superiors might disapprove of this or that story is usually enough to discourage a reporter from writing it, or an editor from assigning it...Many of the limitations placed on reporting come not from direct censorship but from self-censorship from journalists...The Anticipatory avoidance makes direct intervention by owners a less frequent necessity."[ix] According to Michael Parenti in Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, "The media's role is to reproduce the conditions of social and class stability, to carry out the monopoly management of image and information, but in such a way as to engineer...an appearance of independence from the corporate class that owns them."[x]

In the United States, after the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center, the Patriot Act was passed which gave the "government unprecedented powers to violate our civil liberties and tap deep into the private lives of innocent Americans."[xi] It is obvious that the Patriot Act was called into action to protect the patriots of the United States of America and detain or capture the non-patriots, the terrorists, the foreigners, and anyone else who posed a threat to the freedoms America cherishes deeply: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Patriot Act proposed an increase in government power in order to search and find terrorists. President Bush in his 2004 State of the Union Address encouraged the renewal of the Patriot Act "which allows federal law enforcement to better share information, to track terrorists, to disrupt their cells, and to seize their assets."[xii] However, at what cost are Americans prepared to compromise their privacy and Constitutional rights to combat terrorism?

John Ashcroft, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), drafted a new and improved legislation even more effective than the Patriot Act called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act: "If adopted, the bill would [among other things] diminish personal privacy by removing important checks on government surveillance authority...and expand on the definition of terrorism in a manner that threatens the constitutionally protected rights of Americans."[xiii] Granted, the American Civil Liberties Union is always concerned about the Civil Liberties of the American People, so any microscopic step to enhance security and diminish personal privacy will be picked up on their radar and send them reeling into paranoia; however, if groups such as ACLU weren't monitoring the government to protect the people's constitutional rights, what could the government get away with?

Computers definitely "confirm the paranoid assumption that everything is connected, that everything is a symbol, fraught with hidden meanings." An example of this are the "computer interfaces whose metaphors are beginning to structure our worldview - The World Wide Web, Microsoft's Windows..."[xiv] Is an Orwellian state on our horizon? In George Orwell's 1984, the Thought Police monitor every aspect of a Party member: "How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness every movement scrutinized."[xv] There are hundreds of newspaper headlines today that are shockingly similar to the world George Orwell describes in his fictional novel. In researching Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punishment, I came across outrageous headlines that mimicked the coming of an Orwellian Age: "UK unveils anti-social behavior law - People forced to undergo drug treatment without conviction of criminal offence", "Watch your tiny surveillance camera! View kids playroom from anywhere!", "Brain implants ok'd for depression", "RFID chipped license plates in UK - Can read speed of 200 mph to enforce road tax...", "Mobile Phone is spying on you", "Snooping industry set to grow", "Prepare to be scanned", "Europol to spy on all emails", "Surveillance cameras to predict behavior"[xvi]...The list is endless.

I think I lean towards Sven Birkerts statement that paranoia is just a "heightened state of awareness."[xvii] The more advanced the society, the more enhanced the system of surveillance. Michel Foucault believes that the "major effect of the Panopticon (is) to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power."[xviii] Today, the architectural apparatus of the viewing tower is replaced by the function of technology: Internet, TV, microchips, scanning systems, etc...The United States is one of the most powerful countries in the world, and its system of surveillance is rooted in technology.

When we go to CVS to refill a prescription, a fuzzy TV monitor greets us as soon as we walk through the sliding doors. When we walk down a hallway in a corporate office there are cameras monitoring our behavior. When we wait on-line at the bank or super-market, when we pass through state or city lines and pay tolls - we are being video-taped or recorded in some way. The cameras are displayed visibly as a threat. It teaches us to behave, or else! The idea that we are never alone disciplines us to conform according to the "norm" for fear of punishment.

In contemporary society, it is important to be aware of the systems of representation and power around us. The longer we keep our eyes closed to what is really going on and blindly follow our governments, the more damaging the results of the media's corporations power over us will be.

[i]Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Grove Press: New York, 1999. 10.

[ii]Edward S. Hernan and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books: New York. 1988; 2002. 4.

[iii] Edward S. Hernan and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books: New York. 1988; 2002. 2.

[iv]Edward S. Hernan and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books: New York. 1988; 2002. 17.

[v]Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Grove Press: New York, 1999. 8.

[vi]Wendy Kirkup and Pat Naldi Discipline

http://www.locusplus.org.uk/naless.html

[vii]Foucault, Michel Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books 1995) 195-228

[ix]Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media. St. Martin's Press: New York, 1986.

[x] Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media. St. Martin's Press: New York, 1986. 32.

[xi]"American Civil Liberties Union: Keep America Safe and Free: Stop the New Patriot Act" http://www.aclu.org/

[xii]President George W. Bush's State of the Union Address: Defending America http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/america/3414361.stm

[xiii] "American Civil Liberties Union: Keep America Safe and Free: Stop the New Patriot Act" http://www.aclu.org/

[xiv]Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media. St. Martin's Press: New York, 1986. 20.

[xv] "Orwell Today: Thought Police & Snitches" http://www.orwelltoday.com/police.shtml

[xvi] "Orwell Today: Thought Police & Snitches" http://www.orwelltoday.com/police.shtml

[xvii]Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Grove Press: New York, 1999.

[xviii]Foucault, Michel Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books 1995) 195-228.