Panopticism

While watching Enemy of the State, I was interested most by how hyper-visibility was used to discredit Will Smith's character. In a Keenan-esque fashion, light penetrated Smith's life, exposing the darkest corners. In connecting this with Parks' wonderful essay on airport screening culture, a trend emerges. Airport screening, in rendering us transparent, seems to purify us. It ensures uniformity and safety, granting a sort of nebulous wholeness to what was previously compartmentalized and restricted. All of this reminds me of the Panopticon, which used the omnipotent and omnipresent gaze to remedy criminality. This Puritanical ideal of the transparent, homogenous individual, rendered flat and fully readable seems to have persisted throughout the centuries. Even in the case of Will Smith, panopticism seems motivated in this way; the only way surveillance is able to hurt him is by exposing immoral sectors of his life for which he is rebuked. The panoptic gaze seems to provide a collective superego, perpetually scolding us, reminding us of pending (or instantaneous) judgement, and venerating the pure or aligned.