Hello all! Welcome back to the Knowledge of Consequences,
where this week we will be analyzing the film Brazil through the lens of Foucault’s power/knowledge relationship.
Let’s begin.
Objective Review
Many of the themes and concepts that we will introduce today
are recurrent throughout the film and, one might argue, they increase in
intensity and apparentness as the film progresses. However, since looking at
the entire film would take much more time than I am able to spare, and surely
you are willing to give, we’re going to focus on the entrance of my favorite
character, Archibald “Harry” Tuttle. Since I am so incredibly benevolent, I
have included two clips of the scene here:
To get us up to speed, and since our film actually has an
important, structured plot this time, I will summarize. Our main protagonist
Sam Lowry is living in a dystopian society where his air conditioned has just
badly malfunctioned. He has attempted to contact “Central Services”, a
dystopian form of maintenance service run by the government. I’m sure you can imagine how well this works
out.
Sam is wallowing in the misery that is his now furnace-like apartment when he suddenly finds that an intruder is in his home, pointing a Walther P38 9mm handgun at him. Certainly not how he was hoping his night would go. Shortly though, our intruder jovially reveals himself to be “Harry Tuttle, heating engineer at your service”. Apparently in the future we have euphemisms for A/C repairmen. Tuttle proceeds to begin his work as Sam (remember, our slightly naïve, slightly pitiful protagonist) begins to ask him questions. Several very important elements are revealed during this conversation.
First of all, we’re just going to establish here and now
that Terry Gilliam (the director) has a fetish for ducts. Big, small, corrugated
grey ducts much like the kind used in HVAC systems or sewers or pneumatic
canister message systems. These ducts
are absolutely everywhere in this film and completely permeate (almost) every
setting. This is absolutely ludicrous and surely can’t have anything to do with
a deeper meaning. …..?
Now, we also learn in this scene that it is absolutely
forbidden to touch, mess with, attempt to repair or think of interacting with
these ducts. Sam asks, “Are you saying this is illegal?” To which Tuttle
replies “Well, yes... and no. Officially, only Central Service operatives are
supposed to touch this stuff...” The
establishment doesn’t want anyone messing with their ductwork. Curious. Curiouser
and curiouser…
We also discover that our pal Tuttle is not quite your average
peach. Obviously, intruding into someone’s domicile in a ski mask and a Walther
in your hand is not quite normative behavior. But, more than that, we see more
clues that Tuttle is an outlier. For example, although it is highly illegal and
no one else in this society (that we know of) dares, Tuttle has no qualms about
fiddling with the ever prevalent duct work. Essentially, Tuttle has broken into
someone’s home (an illegal act) in order to commit an even more heinous
illegality! Clearly Tuttle doesn’t play
by the rules.
Finally, after some fun conversation and a view of the
absurdly designed ductwork (complete with creepy lung-like bladder), we are privileged
to witness a major character change in Sam. Up to this point, Sam has been a
placid non-achieving sheep that is fine just where he is, being led wherever and
playing by whatever rules are set before him. But, there comes a time in every
sheep’s life where they must decide whether to continue being unthinking
automatons, or stand up to the wolf in defense of their own agency. (Not
really, as a sheep would surely get swiftly devoured by any wolf that it stood
up to, but for right now I’m using it as a colorful and amusing metaphor so we’ll
just go with that for now) Suddenly, a knock comes at Sam’s door. Two Central
Services repairmen arrive and suspiciously insist on gaining immediate entrance
to Sam’s apartment in order to fix his air conditioning. Sam, however, knows
that Harry Tuttle is in the next room and that the entrance of these newcomers
will certainly end in disaster for all. So, Sam deviates from the rules given to him and lies to the repairmen,
forcing them to leave and thereby protecting Tuttle from whatever
unpleasantries may have ensued.
Reaction
I hate to be a downer again, but I don’t particularly like
Terry Gilliam movies and this is no exception. While I admire them for their
artfulness and their importance to a well-cultured mind, I rarely watch them
over again just for fun. They make me feel a little like I did too much LSD in
the 70’s and now I am increasingly worried that I am actually crazy, and
therefore am expressing that worry through film. There are exceptions however,
as 12 Monkeys is a pretty interesting
sci-fi time travel drama and Monty Python
and the Holy Grail is the epitome of everything that is sacred in the world
of comedy. I can say that I enjoyed some of the absurdity of the film and the
acting was pretty spot on. The art direction was also superb, but unfortunately
personally made me feel… less than satisfied.
Analysis
Shoot. I’ve written too much again. Well, that’ll have to do
because I have again included a lot of the beginning threads of analysis in the
review. We will now follow these threads to their interesting and intellectual
conclusions.
In the preface to The
Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Les
mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, 1966) Foucault
introduces us to the concept of “orders”. In this context, we are not
necessarily discussing order as in, the absence of anarchy or disorder. Rather,
an “order” is a particular way of organizing and orienting elements in relation
to one another. One visual representation of this is a grid, which might
organize delectable coffee roasts into three categories: light/blonde, medium
and dark roasts. This “order” informs the subject (ie. person looking into
coffee) as to how to perceive and understand these different delicious coffees.
Really though, the “order” itself is only represented in regards to how one
element relates to one another. We can say that a blonde roast is lighter (and
not nearly as delicious) as a dark roast, but we cannot actually observe the
order itself. Foucault describes order as “the interstitial blanks separating
all these entities from one another” (1966, pg 3). Another way to
understand order (in a broader sense) is the system by which an individual
views the world. We will dig deeper into the implications of this in a
moment, but we should be able to immediately acknowledge that this “order” has
amazing potential to influence.
This “order” is represented in Brazil through the ever present ducts
that intercept and weave through every single scene. This characteristic shows
that the “order” of the Ministry of Information (the governing body in Brazil)
permeates through every level of society, and psyche. Through these ducts, the
Ministry passes information (seen as papers in the film) and maintains its
control of the populace.
In order to understand the implications of this “order”, we need to
combine our concept of “order(s)” with what Foucault calls the “fundamental
codes of a culture” (1996, pg 7). These fundamental codes serve to educate the
uninitiated individual in the unspoken expectations of a culture. Basically,
fundamental codes will communicate to an individual that using particular “orders”
is expected, and therefore part of the culture of the whole. If we don’t
understand why this is such a big deal, perhaps we need to be reminded of the
words of Edgar Schein, who warned that “the forces that are created in
social and organizational situations that derive from culture are powerful. If
we don’t understand the operation of these forces we become victim of them.”
(Schein, 2004).
This “order”, when integrated into a culture, creates the
greatest superweapon in all of history. Not a weapon that is made to kill, per
se, but a weapon to subdue the masses. When you determine how someone will view
the world (and all of its inhabitants and their relationships) people will
follow that “order” without need for prompting.
This blind obedience is seen often in Brazil. Even just within this scene, we know that Sam will not
deviate from “normative” behavior by attempting to fix his air conditioning
unit, although this creates great personal discomfort for him. We also know
from other scenes that Sam is a “productive member of society” and goes to work
every day without question, happily doling his life away as a cog in the machine.
He does this because it is fundamental to the culture that has been created and
the “order” he has been handed tells him that it is necessary.
Thankfully, we are not
forever exiled to these established “orders”. Foucault describes the process of
one ‘stepping over the threshold’. He says:
“It is here that a culture, imperceptibly deviating from the empirical
orders prescribed for it by its primary codes, instituting an initial
separation from them, causes them to lose their original transparency, relinquishes
its immediate and invisible powers, frees itself sufficiently to discover that
these orders are perhaps not the only possible ones or the best ones” (1966,
pg7)
This is where we find our hero, Sam, at the
end of the film. Prompted by his adoration for the woman of his dreams, Sam
deviates from the established norm. He consistently breaks laws and, in doing
so, steps outside of the order created by the Ministry of Information.
This is “The Real” that is described by
French psychiatrist and philosopher Jacques Lacan. Whereas all other
metaphysical spaces (The Imaginary and The Symbolic) are skewed, representative
versions of reality, “The Real” is “"always in its place: it carries it
glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from there." (Lacan,
1981).