Foucault, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451

The Fear of Foucault



A world in which someone is always watching you. It’s a bit of a creepy idea on the surface, when we think of ourselves being constantly watched. We feel as though we are being analyzed, and controlled. It’s no wonder that much of our literature focuses on the idea of the people or the government spying on the population. Many comparisons are made between Panopticism and Orwell’s 1984, but I believe that these are erroneous comparisons. This misconception is what gives Panopticism that “creepy” edge. There is a fundamental difference between Michel Foucault’s Panopticism and George Orwell’s novel 1984, which is often missed and causes people to fear that that Panopticism will result in that world, when actually the ideas of Panopticism is far more likely to result in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

In Orwell’s 1984, the people do watch each other. Like in Foucault’s imaginary prison, the common people all watch each other and are able to report on each other. They are also able to see how things are run. Everyone is in control:
“Furthermore, the arrangement of this machine is such that its enclosed nature does not preclude a permanent presence from the outside: we have seen that anyone may come and exercise in the central tower the functions of surveillance, and that, this being the case, he can gain a clear idea of the way in which the surveillance is practised” (Foucault).



Yet there is not the true transparency which I believe was present in Foucault’s world. No one is watching the watchers in 1984. No one knows what is going on, no one knows what the Inner Party is doing. In Foucault’s world, everyone is watching everyone. In Foucault’s vision “the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole”. We all see how the schools are taught how the prisons are run. In contrast, no one knows what happens in 1984’s Ministry of Love except for the people in it! The transparency of society is a mere illusion, a front to keep the Outer Party watching each other and nothing else so that those who are in control may remain in control. This is a completely contradiction of Foucault’s ideas, and thus following his principles would be unlikely to result in the world of Orwell’s 1984. Mandatory openness does not result in that type of domination.

I think it is far more likely that Panopticism would result in the world which is presented in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Panopticism is dependant upon citizens having control. It is they who watch each other, who are the keepings. It is this control which resented in Fahrenheit 451. It is outright stated that people being oversensitive and overreacting to everything is what led to books being banned. People watched each other, they watched too much, and they saw everything as being unsafe. They did it to themselves, because they were the ones watching and they were the ones in power. There is transparency in the world which Bradbury wrote. Everyone knew what happened to people who had banned books – they books and the houses were burned, and everyone knew when and how and why it happened. In Panopticism everyone would know how the prisons were run, how the guilty were punished, and this is exactly what occurs in Fahrenheit 451. Of course, Bradbury’s novel presents us with a world in which Foucault’s ideas had been distorted. Eventually, instead of watching each other, they grew complacent. They stopped watching anything. Until their own city was bombed in a war of which they knew little.

Although Panopticism seems creepy and intrusive on the surface, in reality there is o need to fear the oppression and all-seeing eyes of Big Brother. Although someone may be watching us at any time, we would have the ability to watch our watchers. We have the ability to see what is going on. The world would not devolve into the world of 1984. This means that we are the ones that we must watch out for, however. We must be careful to not relinquish control over our own lives, and become ignorant to our emotions, our lives, and our fellow man. It was not the watchfulness of Panopticism that destroyed the world of Fahrenheit 451, but oversensitivity combined with lack of caring. So long as we continue to care, we can watch without fear.




Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print.
Foucault, Michel. From Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Vintage Books, 1995. Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan, 1977. pp.195-228. Web.
Orwell, George. 1984. New York: New American Library, 1961. Print.

The Individual and Control: Analysis of A Clockwork Orange

The Individual and Control: Analysis of A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange presents us with a violent and dangerous criminal, Alex. But are his terrible ways really his own fault? By looking at the film and the main character through the lens of essays by Louis Althusser and Randy Martin, we are given the impression that the filmmaker believes the individual is not at fault for his actions; rather, a society which is disinterested in the individual is what produces violent citizens.

By approaching A Clockwork Orange thorough the lens of Louis Althusser’s essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” we feel that although Alex is clearly a violent and immoral person, this is not his fault. Althusser points out that the individual is the creation of the state. The state must be inherently violent if it creates the conditions/situations which create violent individuals. The state, by its very nature, creates individuals like Alex: “It follows that, in order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce”.

To Althusser, schools are largely what create the persons in a modern society, “But no other Ideological State Apparatus has the obligatory (and not least, free) audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation, eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven”. We certainly see how Alex’s authority figures have contributed to his behavior. In a scene with Mr. Deltoid, he chides Alex for his poor behavior but then violent hits/grabs Alex’s groin. With these as examples, it is any wonder, then, that Alex repeats these behaviors in his everyday life. That he uses sex and violence, often together? The Ludovico technique might have been an overt way for the authority to control Alex’s actions, but they had also subtly created the person who he was before the treatment as well. The society has made him the way that he is, and then brands him a criminal for it.

What should be done with criminals is a political matter, one which often generates a lot of controversy. One of the key phrases in Randy Martin’s essay, “Where Did The Future Go?” which relates to A Clockwork Orange is this: “Rather, politics, the sort brought by these imperial liberations, looks increasingly like war, and war is conducted as an exercise in managing risk.”. Both the treatment which Alex endures and the brutality he suffers at the hands of the police seem more like acts of war than anything else. Both involve violence and great discomfort to Alex. And especially the Ludovico technique is a war-like act committed in an attempt to manage risk, an attempt to control the criminal element for the supposed betterment of society. The controllers of society do not care about what they are doing to the criminal, as he does not matter.

This idea is also found in Martin’s essay, “the present incarnation of military dominance stands apart as an empire of indifference”. The men in charge are initially indifferent to Alex’s emotions. He pleads with them to not take away his ability to enjoy Beethoven, and they do not care. His distress and his desires are immaterial, all that matters is they are allowed to control his mind and turn him into a good citizen. Once he has had the treatment and is released back on the street a couple years later, they do not make sure he is integrating back into society. It is only once he nearly dies that they are forced to realize what they have done and try to make amends.

Both essays lend the idea that those in charge of society control the individual for those their purposes. Martin’s essay focuses on the lack of caring for the individual (in the film, Alex). When we consider that Althusser’s essay implies that those who control society are what made him a monster in the first place, this becomes even more horrible. First they create a violent individual, then they take away his free will and they don’t care about his individual wants,. Only once he nearly kills himself do they realize that they have done anything wrong and attempt to “un-do” their control of Alex. Of course, we know that removing the overt form of control has not truly “fixed” Alex, he is still whom society made him, which is why his final sarcastic words are so chilling: "I was cured, all right!"

Works Cited
A Clockwork Orange. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Malcolm McDowell and Patrick Magee. 1972. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”. April 1970. Marxists Internet Archive. 6 October 2009. .
Martin, Randy. “Where Did the Future Go?” 2006. Logosjournal.6 October 2009. .