Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
In Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster hit, The Dark Knight (2008), the roguish caped crusader builds a massive computer system to locate his arch-nemesis, the Joker, using sonar technology. After being called on by Batman to use the system and assist with the pursuit, the deeply moral CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox, reluctantly agrees to help just one time, but threatens to quit immediately afterwards. The film’s subsequent climactic scenes are thus played out in a cityscape under surveillance, both thematically and aesthetically, with Batman’s (anti)heroic exploits only possible through his (temporary) establishment of a virtual “surveillancescape.” Yet there lies a fundamental tension in this film—among many other recent productions—between the undesirability and the inevitability of surveillance; between its “unethical” and “dangerous” nature; and between the deep insecurities over being watched that permeate society and the “beautiful,” voyeuristic nature of the process of watching. Such films reveal that surveillance pervades the very means by which narratives about the subject are formed, and have significant implications for how surveillance is understood in the contemporary world.
Repository Citation
Brown, Adam, and Tony Chalkley. "Beautiful, Unethical, Dangerous': Screening Surveillance and Maintaining Insecurities." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 12, no. 3, 2012, pp. 1–17. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol12/iss3/4