Now this is where I thought Focault kind of steps into the picture. There are no scenes of punishment or rehabilitation to what I could notice. Prison was actually depicted as a fun place. Focault would have not known how to even analyze a prison like the one Bluth was staying in. There was only one part that actually showed so sort of reprogramming and discipline of the prisoners and that was when Bluth leaned over to hug his son the guards would scream at him "no touching!!!" Obviously there had to be some sort of consequences for this to be drilled into the prisoners head and scare them so much. you never find out the actual punishment. Its strange that they punish for compassion and they are trying to rehabilitate and reinstill compassion. I feel as though it was a critique on how prisons are kind of pointless as places of rehabilitation. Finally at the end of the the pilot George Bluth says hes having the time of his life and doesn't want to leave. This totally turns over all of Focault's theories.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Arrested Development: Rehabilitation or Recreation
So a few months ago I started watching the television series Arrested Development. The pilot starts off with a family of dysfunctional characters. They are all pretty clean-cut and "good" compared to families you would see in TV programs of our generation. Arrested Development is by no means a dramatic series like 24 or Lost. The whole series is based around how the father, George Bluth, stole money from his own company. In the very first episode they take him off his yacht and put him in jail. The entire first season he is in prison.
Monday, March 23, 2009
It Is What It Is
I recently went to The New Museum in NYC. It was unlike any museum I had ever visited (you can tell just from viewing the outside of the building). Each floor was dedicated to a different installation but the one the stuck me the most was called It Is What It Is. There were couches and chairs set up in the middle of a warehouse sized room and there was a very serious discussion going on. Next to this was a hunk of twisted, rusted metal that with closer inspection one could tell had once been a car. At first I could not understand why these people were having a conversation in the midst of an exhibition. As I moved into the room I realized that the conversation was being led by an Iraqi doctor. Sitting down to listen to the group the doctor was explaining how Iraq was unlike anything the media portrayed of his country. He went on to talk about the bomb that had gone off in one of the country's main shopping centers, which is where the car had come from, and all the devastation he had witnessed in his profession. Hearing this man's take on the war was unsettling. The media portrays Iraq as anti-American, angry, and uneducated to just name a few. This man in front of us was none of those things. He came of his own accord to this exhibition to enlighten us of his beloved country. There was no spite in his voice, no anger. He seemed hopeful and was glad to be sharing his stories with us.
It is extremely unfortunate how whatever the media says is what most readily accept as the truth. We are no longer allowed the right to form our own opinions of events since there is so much information being thrown at us through television and radio. One is forced to dig through mountains of reporting in order to discover the unbiased truth. Just because there is a war going on does not mean that everyone from all sides are against the other. Both sides working together to enlighten the other of their ways of life, rather than forcing belief systems upon each other is what is going to save us all.
It is extremely unfortunate how whatever the media says is what most readily accept as the truth. We are no longer allowed the right to form our own opinions of events since there is so much information being thrown at us through television and radio. One is forced to dig through mountains of reporting in order to discover the unbiased truth. Just because there is a war going on does not mean that everyone from all sides are against the other. Both sides working together to enlighten the other of their ways of life, rather than forcing belief systems upon each other is what is going to save us all.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/14/torture_at_abu_ghraib_followed_cias_manual/ While looking over articles and pictures about the torture that was preformed in the prisons, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo bay, It was shocking to think that the US would allow such torture. Just looking at certain pictures of the prisoners being forced to hold strange positions for hours with no food or water, and then having people pose behind them with a thumbs up! What kind of sick person can do such a thing. I understand that the people they are "interrogating" are terrorists or so called terrorists, but that does not mean that you preform such acts of torture. These men are psychologically scared for life, and what if this psychological method of torturing doesn't help gain intelligence, what if it makes it worse. Psychologically stunning a person can change all the answers a person might be given. The prisoner can be hallucinating, or might not even understand what is going on and what is being asked.
There is a point and a comparison in here somewhere....After watching 24 and seeing how Jack Bower, (I hope thats how you spell his name), tortures people for valuable information, physically or psychologically, either way there could be false information handed to you. How do you know the person you are torturing is telling the truth when they are screaming for mercy? I am against torture, everything that has to do with it, maybe because I feel its inhumane. Thats besides the point, the real picture, how do you know if the person is telling the truth? How do you know that using physical torture compared to psychological torture works? That is why i feel torture is inhumane, you are killing a person slowly to obtain information out of them, but there is always that question of is that information false.
Pandemic, Globalization, and the Body Politic
One friend of mine, who regularly supplies me with the most popular images, articles, and memes of the Internet, recently sent me a link to a game called Pandemic. This game caught my attention not because of its graphics or playability, but because of its controversial nature in a world that is preoccupied with terrorism and international relations.
The game itself is simple, with the player acting as an infectious disease with the goal of evolving and infecting as many people as possible. The player controls factors such as climate viability, drug resistance, and visibility of symptoms. In turn, the modifications that the player makes influence how each country's government reacts to the disease.
Government regulations such as the closing of schools and airports, or the enforcement of curfews show how the game represents the body politic. The government regulations in the game are made to mirror present-day governments' responses to the public's paranoia. In a world where the media portrays chemical warfare and biological terrorism as imminent threats, governments often respond by having emergency procedures in place. These procedures serve as ways to regulate the individual as well as a nation's collective body. The regulation of bodies is a right that is often given over to the government in today's world in order to assuage the public's fear of physical attack and to prevent disorder (disorderly bodies, bodies not in their "correct" state or location).
The idea of the collective body becomes important in this game with the governments' option to close their borders. In a world where globalization allows for money, conversations, jobs, etc. to transcend the physical borders between countries, one may wonder how effective borders will be in the event of a pandemic. According to the game, disease can still spread whether or not international borders are closed, by way of ships, airplanes, animals, even air. By closing its borders, a country seeks to protect its collective body, thus creating a political strategy for combating the pandemic, as if the disease could be repelled by the political ideology of a country, regardless of its close proximity to other infected countries.
This view of the body politic reminded me of the people Emily Martin interviewed in her article, The End of the Body?1 She remarks that "The self has retreated inside the body, is a witness to itself, a tiny figure in a cosmic landscape, which is the body" (Martin 1992:125). With a new understanding of immunology comes a new understanding of the individual body. While the body of an individual occupies a specific physical place, that individual's immune system is part of a vast web which is connected to every pathogen and every other immune system in the world. The government regulations in the game show how the regulation of the political body has expanded over the years to include both the regulation of the tangible physical body and the seemingly intangible immune system.
The appeal of Pandemic lies with its ability to play into people's fears of increasing globalization, government regulation, and bio-terrorism. Some may find this game to be in bad taste because it uses the idea of a serious pandemic to entertain, in the same way that some comedians are considered to have bad taste because of their jokes concerning serious issues such as racism or sexism. While the objective of the game may be controversial, Pandemic allows players to understand and control their fears rather than being a victim of terror. The fact that this game even exists shows that the public is preoccupied with the threat of global disaster and how to prevent it. Its popularity speaks for its relevance in today's understanding of the body politic.
1. Martin, Emily. 1992. The end of the body?. American Ethnologist 19(1):121-140.
The game itself is simple, with the player acting as an infectious disease with the goal of evolving and infecting as many people as possible. The player controls factors such as climate viability, drug resistance, and visibility of symptoms. In turn, the modifications that the player makes influence how each country's government reacts to the disease.
Government regulations such as the closing of schools and airports, or the enforcement of curfews show how the game represents the body politic. The government regulations in the game are made to mirror present-day governments' responses to the public's paranoia. In a world where the media portrays chemical warfare and biological terrorism as imminent threats, governments often respond by having emergency procedures in place. These procedures serve as ways to regulate the individual as well as a nation's collective body. The regulation of bodies is a right that is often given over to the government in today's world in order to assuage the public's fear of physical attack and to prevent disorder (disorderly bodies, bodies not in their "correct" state or location).
The idea of the collective body becomes important in this game with the governments' option to close their borders. In a world where globalization allows for money, conversations, jobs, etc. to transcend the physical borders between countries, one may wonder how effective borders will be in the event of a pandemic. According to the game, disease can still spread whether or not international borders are closed, by way of ships, airplanes, animals, even air. By closing its borders, a country seeks to protect its collective body, thus creating a political strategy for combating the pandemic, as if the disease could be repelled by the political ideology of a country, regardless of its close proximity to other infected countries.
This view of the body politic reminded me of the people Emily Martin interviewed in her article, The End of the Body?1 She remarks that "The self has retreated inside the body, is a witness to itself, a tiny figure in a cosmic landscape, which is the body" (Martin 1992:125). With a new understanding of immunology comes a new understanding of the individual body. While the body of an individual occupies a specific physical place, that individual's immune system is part of a vast web which is connected to every pathogen and every other immune system in the world. The government regulations in the game show how the regulation of the political body has expanded over the years to include both the regulation of the tangible physical body and the seemingly intangible immune system.
The appeal of Pandemic lies with its ability to play into people's fears of increasing globalization, government regulation, and bio-terrorism. Some may find this game to be in bad taste because it uses the idea of a serious pandemic to entertain, in the same way that some comedians are considered to have bad taste because of their jokes concerning serious issues such as racism or sexism. While the objective of the game may be controversial, Pandemic allows players to understand and control their fears rather than being a victim of terror. The fact that this game even exists shows that the public is preoccupied with the threat of global disaster and how to prevent it. Its popularity speaks for its relevance in today's understanding of the body politic.
1. Martin, Emily. 1992. The end of the body?. American Ethnologist 19(1):121-140.
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