Tuesday 21 August 2007

the bourne sur·veil·lance



http://www.thebourneultimatum.com/

Wow, okay so I'm a sucker, at present for shit, opaque, media forms like modern cinema in the blandest of senses. Since I've been living in Thunder Bay I have upped my intake of MOVIES to what may be considered unhealthy levels, but which may still fall far behind that of many Canadians. MOVIES are what you go and see at the Famous Players theater in Thunder Bay, since there is only one major player, they only bring in that which is a definite hit - meaning nothing subversive or genuinely interesting can possibly sneak past and get played on one of the 12 screens. That being said I went this Tuesday night for the price of $4.20X2 to see the new Bourne MOVIE.

I'm no surveillance expert, but this 1hr and 50min is perhaps the most seamlessly blended surveillance effort in movie history. Although since we've all seen the gags before, and know that the protagonist will always be one step ahead of the pursuer we know that means that in essence the surveillance has some obvious holes in it.

Since this is not an expose of surveillance and should be read more as a review of the movie, I urge you, if you happen upon it, to watch for the scene with the guns and video cameras in the same hands. Meaning that the "bad" guy has a gun and a video camera with a live feed to the CIA folks who are watching the scene from their armchairs in new york. Indeed the armed cameraman has a telecommunication line directly on his person as well, meaning that the video is transmitted back to New York and visual decisions can be made to tell the op what to do next.

I imagine that the cost of technology and the need to surveil will soon become so demanded by the public that Benthams Panoptic model will take on a much mutated form, a digital form, and as text is now scanned by computers in investigations and as a combing procedure over the entire net, so too will infinite real time up to the second digitally encoded and stored video be virtually scanned and flagged if need be.

I have no conclusion, these are my ramblings. This has all been said before.

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