LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 19:12 December 2019
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2016
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Reading Surveillance in Hollywood Film
Behind Enemy Lines

Dr. Nancy S Rethinam, Ph.D., M.A., B.Ed., PGDEPMA, PGDCJ

Abstract

Hollywood films since antiquity consistently enjoyed undeterred popularity among the spectators around the world. The knowledge that reached the audience through films brought to front, plural views, imaginings and representations at the individual and the collective level. It is not different in the case of technological innovations like surveillance and monitoring systems as well. This article tries to critically analyze the representation of surveillance in Hollywood film, Behind Enemy Lines from the perspectives of culture studies. It also focuses on the process of intermeshing of representation of meanings mediated through the film and the manipulation of audience to favour such techniques which disrupts one’s privacy and freedom. The proposed article encapsulates how the select film explains away the plural views and imaginings paving way for surveillance.

Keywords: Hollywood Film Behind Enemy Lines (2001), Surveillance, knowledge, ideology

Surveillance, an act of watching, is an intervention. The English word, ‘surveillance’ is derived from the combination of a Latin word ‘vigilare’ (keep watch) and a French word ‘sur’ (over). According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, Surveillance means “the act of carefully watching a person suspected of a crime” (1578). Surveillance is a nonviolent means of intervention in which a party or country carefully watches another party or country and collects necessary information with or without the permission of the other person or country with which intervention takes place. It is an intervention into the freedom or privacy or secret of others. To quote:

There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constrains. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorizing to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be a minimal cost. (Foucault 155)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. Nancy S Rethinam, Ph.D., M.A., B.Ed., PGDEPMA, PGDCJ
Independent Researcher
Institute of English, Kerala University
nancy.sr40@yahoo.co.in
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.