Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon : Social Control And Power

1984, written by George Orwell, illustrates a perfect example of a dystopian government. The setting is in Oceania, Britain. The government is full of spies and secret police that carefully watch the common people for any mistake they might make that can harm the government in any way. As shown with Winston Smith, the protagonist of the novel and many other citizens in Oceania, the government manipulates these characters into their pawns. The government asserts their power over the people in many ways. They have large telescreens in the people’s houses. The telescreens show the government what people are doing at all times. It can be dimmed down, but can never be turned off. Although Oceania is well off in money, the government rations food. The government’s philosophy is that

Like Beccaria, he heavily disagreed with capital punishment and focused more on the Utilitarianism theory. This theory focuses on the happiness of greater society and for this reason, focuses on the idea that every crime is harmful towards society and every punishment should be equal depending on the criminal offence. Bentham strongly advocated the idea that every criminal should be punished with imprisonment. In doing so, he structure ‘The Panopticon’, a form of prison cell, this design was to make sure every offender, placed in a room without being able to see outside. Once the criminal is imprisoned, security guards will watch every single movement they make, without their knowledge. Although his exact vision and usage of ‘The Panopticon’ was not built, the ideology of imprisonment and being watched is used in present day society. This can be shown in Victoria, Australia’s Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act 2009 (Vic), where sex offenders are placed in a prison cell away from other offenders and will be under constant super vision. This idea of imprisoning criminals, have successful rates in reducing crime and prove the intent of acting out the crime, however the police focuses more on those offenders who are likely and have committed crime multiple times, leaving newly offenders to get away with

“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”(Orwell 2), is a saying that surrounds society in the classic novel 1984. The author, George Orwell provides his audience with an abundant amount of themes throughout his writing. One very prominent one is Orwell’s psychological manipulation of his characters. As characters within this society are constantly surrounded by sayings such as, “WAR IS PEACE”, “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY”, and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”(Orwell 4), Orwell shows the ultimate type of control within his characters. Orwell is able to achieve such psychological manipulation in his characters through physical control and the abundance of technology. Without Orwell’s use of telescreens, his characters would be able to have their

1984 is a forecast of an anti-utopian world. Oceania, where the book is set, is led by the socialist leader, Big Brother. In this state, all thoughts and actions are monitored through

George Orwell’s novel 1984 reflects on the society of dystopian city Airstrip 1 where main character Winston Smith lives. Along with the many other citizens, Winston is controlled by the Inner Party by constantly being monitored via telescreens that keep sight of everybody and their actions. Besides using telescreens the government also easily arrests people in any case of “thoughtcrime” which consists of any thoughts that regard disobedience towards the government. Thoughtcrime and telescreens are two of the several factors that reflect the extreme surveillance in 1984. Orwell uses surveillance as the central theme of the novel to spread his idea that the usage of more extreme surveillance could eventually lead to a totalitarian society. On a less extreme scale, today’s society also has a significant amount of surveillance but many question whether or not more surveillance is necessary. With the many current text sources, it is certain that we need less surveillance in order to keep a stable society that does not take away the individualism of people.

Orwell’s novel of 1984 depicts a dystopian society in which people are brainwashed with propaganda and bound to the chains of a strong dictatorship, also known as the Inner Party. Humanity has been filled with lies, as not a single person knows the truth that lies beneath the dictatorship. History is constantly being rewritten to mask their true identity. Any skeptical thoughts may make you disappear."Big Brother" is constantly observing you along with a telescreen watching every facial expression and recording any abnormal body language. However, two citizens called Winston and Julia rebel against "Big Brother's" totalitarian rule which triggers an astonishing warning towards future generations. Orwell is warning future generations of a society

“1984” is a chilling dystopian novel written by George Orwell, set in the 1980’s, in London, in the continent Oceania. Oceania is ruled by the Party, and their dictator Big Brother. Big Brother controls Oceania through four ministries, Love, Truth, Peace and Plenty. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he changes the dates, articles and photos of things to match up with what Big Brother is saying. Big Brother watches everyone through telescreens, which are in every room, and anyone who speaks out, or thinks to rebel, or even doesn’t get to their house at the right time, vanishes. “Big Brother is watching you” is the Party’s slogan, and is plastered all across London. In their society, the ideas of individuality, freedom and opinions

Complete control over a society can brainwash the citizens into believing the government laws and ways of life are normal. George Orwell's 1984 portrays a Utopian society in which the people of Oceania are blind to the world outside the controlling party. Reality control and surveillance of the citizens plays an important role in 1984 by George Orwell because of the negative Utopia that is illustrated by the use of paradox, symbolism, and imagery.

George Orwell's 1984 is a book that is purely based on power and propaganda. The party manages to accomplish this power and propaganda by using surveillance. Party members in Oceania are constantly under surveillance, whether it is of their private or public life. There are numerous surveillance techniques which are used by the party to maintain and even gain more power. This leads to the concept of a panopticon, originally thought up by Jeremy Bentham. Thus this essay will include the concepts of the panopticon with relation to the novel and consider how these extensive surveillance techniques eliminate party member’s private space and how it has the ability to constrict the thoughts of party members.

1984 creates a world ruled with an iron fist crushing any semblance of resistance or any actions less than complete devotion to The Party. They achieve this through a number of tactics the first and foremost being constant surveillance. Telescreens are omnipresent; they constantly transmit and receive both audio and video having a strong psychological effect on the citizens. They know, or at least believe, that they are constantly under the scrutiny of the thought police. This idea is confirmed from time to time in different ways; one day during the physical jerks, the mandatory

Shortly after world war two George Orwell obviously wanted us to know what could have really happened if the government gets too powerful over its citizens. So he wrote the novel 1984 to show us what life would've been like in a totalitarian state. In the beginning of the novel Winston the main character of the story saw a poster that had a face on it and on the bottom of it said, “Big Brother is watching you.” Already by that first citation you could guess it was one of those stories where people live in a dystopian, brink of human rights. I’ve read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which is very similar to this novel. They both could relate to the telescreens, limited knowledge, and human rights being taken away and privacy being invaded.

Through the discussion of punishment and its purpose Foucault brings up the idea of normalization. Government and other higher levels of authority have established what they consider to be proper conduct within society. Those who deter from those guidelines are punished.

The author of the essay “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault gives his opinion on power and discipline in Panopticism. He describes Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”, a tower in the centre of a room which has vision to every cell, generalized for prisoners. In simple words, it functioned in maintaining discipline throughout the jail. It’s most distinctive feature was that; prisoners could be seen without ever seeing. Prisoners would never really know when they are watched and when not. They are always under the impression that someone is keeping an eye on them continuously and if anything goes wrong, or they make mistake, they would be punished severely. Since, a prisoner would never know when he/she is watched, they have to be at their best. In a

A Panopticon is a cylindrical prison where all prisoners’ cells face a central watchtower with the intention of instilling the idea of constant surveillance in prisoners. Panopticism stems from the same model which refers to the idea of constant surveillance in any setting especially in today’s world of technological pervasiveness. The panopticon represents the double edged sword that is present to society as authorities want to exert more control on the individuals. Between giving up privacy for safety and private lives that endanger all, the need for regulation of behavior gets stuck in the middle of it all. The movie Citizen Four (Poitras, 2014) highlights that any shred of privacy that we thought we had has been lost in the “shadowy labyrinths

This is a summary of Michel Foucault's seminal work on the history of criminal punishment and social discipline as it transformed from punitive to correctional models during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.