Thesis_14_"Surveillance Screens and Screening in Code 46"
Journal of media Arts and Culture
Essay title: Surveillance Screens and Screening in Code 46
Written By: Peter marks
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Code 46 is a futuristic film starring Tim Robbins and directed by Michael Winterbottom (2003) that is set in a near future Utopic/Dystopic world where the ever present government controls it’s population via genetic and spatial surveillance. Via this surveillance, you are either IN or OUT. The INS live in the central city where comfort and affluence guides their lives. On the other hand, the OUTS live on the outside of the city in a dessert land that is harsh end even inhospitable.
“My focus here, Michael Winterbottom’s edgy 2003 film Code 46, examines new direction in and possibilities for surveillance that move beyond, or, in some senses, beneath that envisaged by Bentham, Orwell, or Foucalt. Humans are made up from 46 chromosomes, and as its title indicates, the film investigates the surveillance of DNA in a world complicated by recent advances in reproductive procedures. But it folds other, sometimes much more older surveillance practices and systems into the mix, as well as drawing on long established tropes and questions associated with Utopias. By integrating surveillance and Utopia, Code 46 fashions a provocative and alarming account of possible things to come”. (Peter marks 1993: p.2)
An intended Utopia relying heavily on differing types of surveillance becomes it’s worst enemy, a dystopia.
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How does this connect with my thesis idea? Devising a new customer level advertising that is more personal and heavily relies on extensive data mining?
Well, this from of ‘intimate’ advertising relies heavily on gathering, processing, and assessing of extensive data to determine the future/potential behavior of people. To beat people to the punch, sort of speak. This forecasting can be used to control the people as well and to also know there whereabouts 24/7.
On the other hand, it can be used to tailor the advertisements for each individual according to the data collected. It could make our lives easier and it could also allow marketers and corporations to streamline their messages/adverts individually.
With the advent of the internet, this type of marketing is no longer expensive.
According to Peter marks, “People are willing to endure surveillance if it ensures security and comfort; the price of utopia may be eternal vigilance.”
Tags: Code 46, Screening, Surveillance