ISBN: 1628924837 9781628924831

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies

Page count: 208

<b>Winner of the Surveillance Studies Network Book Award: 2017</b><br><br>Surveillance is a common feature of everyday life. But how are we to make sense of or understand what surveillance is, how we should feel about it, and what, if anything, can we do? <i>Surveillance and Film</i> is an engaging and accessible book that maps out important themes in how popular culture imagines surveillance by examining key feature films that prominently address the subject. Drawing on dozens of examples from around the world, J. Macgregor Wise analyzes films that focus on those who watch (like <i>Rear Window</i>, <i>Peeping Tom</i>, <i>Disturbia</i>, <i>Gigante</i>, and <i>The Lives of Others</i>), films that focus on those who are watched (like <i>The Conversation</i>, <i>Caché</i>, and <i>Ed TV</i>), films that feature surveillance societies (like <i>1984</i>, <i>THX 1138</i>, <i>V for Vendetta</i>, <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i>, <i>The Truman Show</i>, and <i>Minority Report</i>), surveillance procedural films (from <i>The Naked City</i>, to Hong Kong's <i>Eye in the Sky</i>, The <i>Infernal Affairs</i> Trilogy, and the <i>Overheard</i> Trilogy of films), and films that interrogate the aesthetics of the surveillance image itself (like <i>Sliver</i>, <i>Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries)</i>, <i>Der Riese</i>, and <i>Look</i>). Wise uses these films to describe key models of understanding surveillance (like Big Brother, Panopticism, or the Control Society) as well as to raise issues of voyeurism, trust, ethics, technology, visibility, identity, privacy, and control that are essential elements of today's culture of surveillance. The text features questions for further discussion as well as lists of additional films that engage these topics.