Fascism versus Panopticism: What's a Puppy Got to Do with It?

Imagine a world without emotion, a world without anger, love, happiness, or fear. In Equilibrium, Christian Bale’s Preston lives in such a world, a nation in which emotions are illegal and the punishment for them is death. He is a “grammaton cleric,” an enforcer of the anti-emotion law. He has been trained not only to feel nothing, but to destroy all things that feel or inspire feeling. This is how the fascist government of Libria maintains its supposedly ‘peaceful’ and ‘harmonious’ state: by committing heartless acts of violence upon its citizens and abruptly halting any and all cultural or intellectual progression or accumulation of knowledge. Prior to this scene, Preston destroyed the original “Mona Lisa” because it inspires emotion. But in the following scene, he does just the opposite. He, too, has begun to feel. He is now inspired to act in accordance with his own ‘conscience’, his previously suppressed internal governing force, and this internal force has proven to be quite a match for the external, oppressive forces of the Librian government.



In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault presents two models for governing the masses: the plague model versus Bentham’s Panopitcon. The plague model details the extent to which the governing magistrates went in order to prevent the spread of the plague. All citizens were locked in their homes from the outside and all houses, streets, and city borders and gates were supervised by armed guards. Foucault writes that “the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects” which resulted in the sick being “caught up in a meticulous tactical partitioning” (553), but although this model was perfect, it was also “absolutely violent” (556). He explains, “to the disease that brought death, power opposed its perpetual threat of death” (Foucault 556). The concept of the Panopticon is an extension of the segmentation, differentiation, and individualization of the plague model, but with one significant difference. The plague model involves an externalized power of violence and threats of violence whereas the Panopticon results in power-over through the internalization of the governing forces without violence. Foucault explains that those who possess knowledge will also possess power, and that this power is most effectively exercised when it becomes a part of the individual himself; when he exercises it over himself.

The Librian government in Equilibrium attempts to create this Panoptic form of government. All citizens appear to be governing themselves: they inject the anti-emotion serum daily and supervise themselves and each other. But the existence of the ‘Clerics’ is enough in itself to prove that the power lies not in the internalization of knowledge-power, but rather in the ever-present threat of death. This is the primary fault of Libria. It indirectly professes to be a Panoptic nation, one which, “although it arranges power, […] it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces—to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, [and to] raise the level of public morality” (Foucault 556). But Libria does not actually do these things. Instead, it suppresses knowledge within individuals and within the disciplines. Only a select few have knowledge, and thus, as soon as an individual gains knowledge for himself, he will not govern himself according to those in power, but rather according to himself and his newfound insight. A society based on the “old principle of ‘levying violence’” is not conducive to the Panoptic “principle of ‘mildness-production-profit’” (Foucault 563): the people will rebel against external government, against the threat of violence, more so than they would be inclined to rebel against an internalized governing force.

This thin veil of ‘self-surveillance’ inherent in the Librian government is quickly torn asunder when Preston sees the defenseless and cuddly puppy. He has been trained to destroy such emotion-inspiring stimuli, but because he, like most humans, is more influenced by internal forces than external ones, he chooses to protect it. Furthermore, the fact that he has no stake in preserving the status quo other than the threat of physical harm (which he cares little about) means he is not afraid to act in opposition to it. This is a prime example of the need, in modern society at least, for more than just external governmental forces and threats of violence. The use of the disciplines, rather than violence, to “assur[e] the ordering of human multiplicities” (562) is proven in this scene to be the preferred means of government. Had Preston been taught to internalize the disciplines, to believe he is an empowered individual with a stake in the success of his culture, he would have been less inclined to disrupt that culture. However, there is no way to reconcile a fascist state (and Libria is literally one, what with its head of state being called “Father”) with one which encourages individual self-surveillance and self-government. Preston is proof of this.

But even if this film emphasized the success of a Panoptic state, Preston would still be a rebel. For he uses the disciplines, the knowledge he accumulates, to act in subversion of his culture. He acknowledges the current state of things, the ways of thinking, the expectations, and prescribed behaviors, and he enacts them as long as it suits him. He infiltrates his own society, and tears it down from the inside. When Foucault writes that “panopticism constituted the technique, universally widespread, of coercion” and that “the ‘Enlightenment,’ which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines” (565), he demonstrates that knowledge has always been and will always be used to govern individuals, either through force or coercion. Thus, individuals like Preston who acknowledge knowledge, but then use their knowledge of knowledge to subvert those in power or the internal coercive power, are the only ones who are capable of creating change. But because this is an action movie first, and a political commentary second, he resorts to extreme ‘matrix-esque’ violence and saves the day that way.

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 549-566.