Plaintive Survival under Panoptical Surveillance: A Reading of Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear.

Aparna Thomas

doi:10.24113/ijellh.v7i1.6285

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore how the powerful gaze of the panoptical power relation through the technological aids of this neocolonial era which forms the ‘Self,’ distorts the identity, privacy and liberty of the lives under this surveillance who becomes the ‘other’. The study is based on the reading of Rituparno Ghosh’s 2007 English–language film The Last Lear. The film which won the National Award of India for the best feature film in English in 2007 is based on a 1985 Bengali play, Ajker Shajahan ( Today’s Shakespeare) written by Utpala Dutt. The film unfolds the story of an aging Shakespearean actor persuaded by a young ambitious director to take up acting again. But the retired actor is unwilling to adjust the new world of cinema and its complex technical tricks. The film also expose how the powerful camera gaze and mobile phones turn as the new colonizer who distorts truth and induce fears in the minds of the people under surveillance. This study is carried out based on the Post-Panoptical theories of Surveillance.

Highlights

In the present era, there is an ever growing presence of ‘watching and being watched’
This paper is a study based on the reading of Rituparno Ghosh’s 2007 English-language film The Last Lear to explore how the powerful gaze of the panoptical power relation through the technological aids induce a culture of fear and an invisible dominance
Without the need of coercion, postulated Bentham, the prisoners would follow the rules of the prisons for the simple fear of being caught in the act of breaking them; and in time their behaviour would become automatic, as if they had voluntarily grown to abide by those rules

Summary

Introduction

There is an ever growing presence of ‘watching and being watched’. This paper is a study based on the reading of Rituparno Ghosh’s 2007 English-language film The Last Lear to explore how the powerful gaze of the panoptical power relation through the technological aids induce a culture of fear and an invisible dominance.

Results

Conclusion