Days three and four: Southland Tales

In the discussion at the end of day three, Shawn mentioned that the movie was full of amusing side-references for sharp observers. Having been enjoying it as a form of cinematic dadaism, I decided to reach for the big guns, the internet.

After a single-paragraph summary that only very loosely explained the matter, TVtropes summed up the movie as "an American Akira that manages to match the imagination and multiply the incomprehensibilty." It was at this point that I realized I was in trouble.

(As an aside, Dwayne-the-Rock-Johnson does the cutest pensive-look-and-finger-twiddle ever. That, right there, completely sold the character.)

But yes. Panopticism. An interesting movie to consider, as it so deliberately plays on the ideas of surveillance, voyeurism, and a media-driven culture. My first (and thus probably trivial) observation was that all the techs who work at USIdent wear transparent lab coats - in a "who watches the watchers" moment, the very dress code at USIdent is designed to further reinforce the idea that secrets are not only bad for National Security (TM) but also completely impossible to keep.

Towards the end of the film, the news is spooling off weather reports of "record highs throughout the southland" as rain pours down. This was (to my mind) the culmination of a theme that was building throughout the entire film: surveillance systems fall apart because people are boring. The watchers, growing tired of yet another hour of jaywalker-alerts-at-43rd-and-Westlake switch over to watching Krysta Now! instead, and society, realizing this, falls apart in the background.

The riots at the end of the movie contrast with the abandoned USIdent control room to point out the other main problem with a panoptic system: Replacing enforcers with powerless eyes is all well and good until the rioters outnumber the enforcers. Panoptic dread is no replacement for a good RSA or two.

We didn't quite get to the end of the movie, but from what I've heard, the ending only makes things weirder. In response to a movie without a clear, concise ending, have a blog post without a clear, concise conclusion.