Desert of the Real - Power/Knowledge Relationships in Gilliam's "Brazil"

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).

 Soothing music to help you step over that 'threshold'.