Film Analysis through Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish - 28 Weeks Later

Film Analysis through Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish - 28 Weeks Later

Q1. Thinking about surveillance in the city, read and choose 3 to 4 scenes from

one of the following films: V for Vendetta, or 28 Weeks Later, or Minority Report (you must use labelled images of the chosen scenes in your essay). Read Michel Foucault's 'The Means of Correct Training' and the 'Panopticon' from Discipline and Punish (1977), which are on Weblearn. Using Foucault and other reading, show how the films represent the city as a place of power and surveillance.

Introduction

This purpose of this paper is to discuss the portrayal of the city of London and explain the representation of it as a place of surveillance and power through the film “28 weeks later” based upon the writings of Michel Foucault in his publication “discipline and punish (1977). Certain scenes will be analysed to validate the arguments presented in this essay, namely how individual and institutional rights have been represented as a whole in the film and how the visual design presents the ideas of oppression and surveillance. The space, characters, and colour juxtapositions in a film all help in creating the correct atmosphere which serves to guide the audience towards a set way of thinking of the filmmakers, and so a discussion of such aspects of it is also important as a part of the analysis. Furthermore, the representation of the city through various imaging and other ways of looking at it will also be briefly outlined so that the notions of oppressive dystopia spurred by extensive surveillance can be emphasised upon.

The film “28 Weeks Later” begins where the prequel “28 Days Later” ends, and the opening sequence suggests a surge of violence against the 'survivors' who have managed to hide out in the countryside. Throughout the film, a documentary style of filmmaking has been used, and all the events are based upon a week by week timeline as the title alludes. In cases, when anxieties emerge on the idea of urban space a pre-speculated locus of civil disobedience often comes into play. As Davis (2002) rightly asserted “insurrections against an intolerable political-economic order” (Davis, 2002), the Isle of Dogs in the film surrounded by military and declared a security zone, depicts a true picture of surveillance and oppressive containment to ensure totalitarian control.

The film depicts London as a city which has been abandoned and destroyed, thus ensuring the need for strict military intervention which is shown to the audience as a necessary transformation after the post apocalyptic catastrophe. The lockdown of 'District One” emphasises the transformation that the city goes through, especially after the introduction which shows London as an abandoned city from a ground level view. From early on the film focuses on surveillance, security and containment which are carried out almost compulsively, declaring all the citizens as potential rebels. The oppressive surveillance is established from a function of height, the city is shown ...