Watched Life: The Surveillance State as Seen on CCTV

Abstract

Considering the influence of digital technologies generally, and filmic representations of dystopias specifically, this essay attempts to patrol the border between cinematic depictions of the surveillance societies dreamed up by Philip K. Dick, on the one hand, and the realities of our current law enforcement, social organizations and political institutions on the other hand. As filmmaker Richard Linklater suggests in his 2006 filmic adaptation of Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly, set in Los Angeles “seven years from now,” (which basic arithmetic tells us is the present year of 2013!), we have arrived at an era in which the surveillance architecture at present is teetering dangerously close to (or has arguably surpassed) those of the dystopian science fiction fantasy worlds dreamed up by some of the most imaginative literary minds of the twentieth century. Situated in between the realms of science-fiction fantasy and our present day reality, this essay considers the ways in which popular films like A Scanner Darkly (2006), Minority Report (2002), Gattaca (1997), Blade Runner (1982), The Truman Show (1998), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Enemy of the State (1998), as well as popular TV shows like Law and Order: Criminal Intent, The Wire, and Homeland inform our nation’s surveillance apparatus and how the surveillance apparatus is being represented and reimagined through cinematic techniques and technologies.