Through the Dystopian Looking Glass

“Needs of the society or the needs of the individual? They should be the same" (The Circle, 2017).

Promptly answered and religiously held up by most utopian structuralists, this idea is at the crux of most dystopian dramas aimed at unveiling microcosmic and experimental surveillance societies. Dystopias function as interesting thought exercises where one can, hypothetically, gauge the consequences of extreme control and absolute anarchy- even as these are the very binaries that ultimately lead to only a partial comprehension of the larger picture. Nevertheless, it can be quite interesting to explore ‘idea prompts’ that they inevitably leave in their wake.

George Orwell in his pioneering work ‘1984’ left giant footsteps in dystopian fiction that many others have consequently walked in, reproducing the elements of the ‘Big Brother’ concept with minor aesthetic adjustments. The Orwellian surveillance society is controlled by a privileged elite that uses its monitoring facilities to indoctrinate and discipline its masses, not quite unlike Bentham’s Panopticon (McMullan, 2015). An almost ghost-like, invisible entity outside the surveillance ambit constituted the ‘eye’ that was watching. Clearly betraying strains of anti-authoritarianism and anti-governmentality, the villain of such dramas was almost always the Machiavellian State.

The ‘surveillance gaze’ has since then been through discursive changes and now manifests itself through that of the scientist, the capitalist and finally, and quite surprisingly, that of the masses. ‘Eugenic scientist’ tropes are quite freely explored through the Divergent and Maze Runner series, revealing the tendency of justifying surveillance under the garb of ‘scientific observation’. Here, the surveillance society is a lab experiment where carefully controlled variables are used to produce hypothesized results in attempts to manufacture an ‘ideal society’. Surveillance here does not follow the Bentham model as the actors within the field have no knowledge of being watched and controlled, it is an expression of the fantasy of wanting to ‘play God’. An analogy of puppets seems most apt where the performer hides behind the curtain giving off the impression that the figures on stage move of their own volition. In such frames, the primary conflict that is created to arouse the narrative is that of freedom v/s determinism and agency v/s structure. The execution of such a conflict, however, is so simplistic that it represents nothing more than a glorification of rebellion within unbelievably rigid structures.

‘The Circle’, a conceptually imaginative surveillance society drama fixes the monitoring gaze at the ruling elite. It is almost an exercise in reverse where the privileged elite are now held under a scrutinizing public gaze for the sake of transparency. Senators are expected to wear cameras and ‘go transparent’ to facilitate a true ‘democracy’. Surveillance, now set within a democratic space has a changed connotation of justice and accountability- merely through a reversal of the gaze. The privacy of public figures at the service of society is considered secondary to the utilitarian gains of a more efficient bureaucratic system. This moral bias partly derives from the Marxist themes of caricatured bourgeois dominance and doublespeak, painting a rather unidimensional picture of a class that ‘deserves’ to be monitored owing to its unscrupulous, corrupt ways. The villain of such a narrative is the profit mongering capitalist acting here as a medium- creating and selling the technology that brings more knowledge into the public domain. This knowledge then is fed into the system to generate more data that can be capitalized. In the words of Magnussen from BBC’s Sherlock, “Knowing is Owning.”

In a social world that claims to be technologically enabled to blur boundaries, the idea of surveillance can prove to be useful as well as potentially destructive. Most utilitarian schemes that justify such regimes state the case of efficiency and administration. If everyone was permitted to do everything they wished to do, the society would erupt in chaos. The ‘Erudite’ intellectual elite within the Divergent universe would subscribe to a similar Durkheimian claim that humans are inherently hedonistic creatures who require order and control to be inducted into civilization (Ritzer, 2010). Circle-ers, on the other hand, would believe that knowledge was a fundamental right and that privacy was an outmoded concept held on to by dishonest and selfish individuals. While the validity of the first relies on the wisdom of the ‘chosen few’, the second subscribe to the wisdom of the crowd.

The idea of valuing absolute transparency might seem absurd but consider this when everyone knows everything, power would be dispersed throughout the social space and would hardly mean anything as the idea of leverage and secrets would be rendered obsolete. Knowledge classified beyond the boundaries of private and public would dramatically change the ways in which authorship is envisioned- the locus at which it is concentrated would dissolve. What constitutes privacy also constitutes ownership. The ownership of knowledge would become questionable if all of it was to be accessible to everyone.

Conversely, it may be argued that while data might be freely shared in an ‘open society’ (as opposed to a surveillance society that establishes a clear demarcation between the observer and the observed), the ways in which it is interpreted may be subject to the views of the majority. One is reminded of Alexander de Tocqueville’s warning against the ‘Tyranny of the majority’ in a democracy. A democracy is safe, so long as the majority remains a shifting condition, whence it becomes constant, it overrides the voice of a substantial yet relatively smaller part of the population.

So, how does one truly come to a conclusion on such a complex question? It is probably by stepping off the intellectual path of absolutes and binaries. The exploration of the extremes portrayed by dystopian themed fiction opens the discussion to a dialectic synthesis, where binaries can be resolved through a process of conceptual wrestling. While the entire exercise may seem futile to some, as Lewis Carrol aptly puts it, “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?” (Carroll, 1871).

Written by - 

Shruti Krishnan

References

Carroll, L. (1871). Through the Looking Glass. Macmillan.

Dashner, J. (2009). The Maze Runner. Delacorte Press.

Eggers, D. (2017). The Circle: Alfred Knopf Publications.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. Pantheon Books.

McMullan, T. (2015, July 23). What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/panopticon-digital-surveillance-jeremy-bentham

Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker & Warburg.
Ritzer, G. (2010). Classical sociological theory. McGraw hill Education.

Roth, V. (2016). Divergent. London: HarperCollins.