ietzenmaschine

HE GET OUT CLAUSE – ‘PAPER’

Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (came into force in Jan 2005 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales)

• ICO: UK’s independent public body set up to promote access to official information and protect personal information. The Ministry of Justice is the sponsoring department within the Government

1. ‘SUPERPANOPTICON’

Surveillance Report NYC 02.03.03

“What seems to motivate them is the desire to control.”

“Today we are told that privacy and security are mutually exclusive. If you want your security you have to give up your privacy.” …while during the 18th c it was argued that “…you are not secure unless you have your privacy.”

“You cannot give up some of your privacy. It is not a commodity that can be quantified and sold off bit by bit. You either have it or you don’t.”

“You have your privacy where ever you take your person.”

“In capitalism there is no lingering.”

2. ‘DIVIDUALS’

from the Peter Weibel reading:

• post-modern image theory is more about observing the image than the actual world

• visibility used to be the prerequisite for security

• “When the phantom becomes reality, reality becomes a phantom.”

Surveillance Camera Players (SCP)

• informal group, New York City based
• first performance in 1996
• using its own maps for guidance, the group has given free walking tours of heavily surveilled neighborhoods in New York City. These tours have concentrated on what the things look like, how they work, and how they will work if they are improved (“smart cameras”)
• works have been displayed in museums etc.
• online encyclopedia

DENIS BEAUBOIS – ‘AMNESIA’ (1996/97)

3. ‘AUTOMATED SOCIO-TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENTS’ (ASTEs)

• most apparent in current ‘information age capitalism’

• spaces in which power is exerted by creating ‘non-negotiable contexts of interaction’

• Technological mediation of suspicion

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(medienkunstnetz.de offers detailled information on media art)

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THOUGHTS/ QUESTIONS:

Who benefits from surveillance?

As was mentioned during yesterday’s lecture the mere process of surveillance does not guarantee the decline of crime or an increase of security. What it generates is footage, huge amounts of data that need to be interpreted. In most cases crime cannot be prevented. How come technological surveillance systems seem to be widely accepted as a justified means of facilitating security?

The ways in which (digital) surveillance causes some ‘subjects’ to be excluded seems obvious. How can (digital) surveillance function as a means of inclusion? (leaving aside cases in which people are given preferential treatment e.g. due to them having more social, financial or health capital at their disposal)

How does the noticeable increase of surveillance systems in urban spaces impact on individuals’ notions of community? Does it have an affect on a community’s collective set of values or standards?

10. Address the interest in televisual and filmic texts that utilise medical procedures of the body. What are some of the thematic narratives of these texts?

Clarifying the main reasons that cause people’s interest in medical series appears to be far from easy. Apparently medical television series look back on a long tradition and have always been popular amongst television consumers. There is different types of those series ranging from comedies (i.e.“M.A.S.H“. or the more contemporary “Scrubs“) over serious ones (i.e. “Greys Anatomy“, “ER“) to Lars von Trier’s more exceptional mini-series “The Kingdom“ (1994) on which this essay will be focussing. “The Kingdom“ falls into the categorie of fantasy, horror and comedy. Lars von Trier deconstructs the traditional narrative which is employed in prevalent shows. Although in its way “The Kingdom“ might be perceived as a disruption of the mode in which the usual medical show presents its characters and contents it nevertheless comes up with similar body rhetorics. It is for that reason that the focus on a series although different to the norm seems to be justified. Furthermore, reading its differentness against the background of the other shows helps deciphering ideas about the body which are communicated through them.

The mini-series consists of eight episodes and is staged at the Copenhagen hospital known as “The Kingdom“. The main characters whose appearance in the show has to be mentioned as they will be referred to in the course of this essay. First, there is the ambitious and unscrupulous Swedish doctor Stig Helmer, who just recently joined the team at “The Kingdom“ filling a vacant position as a consultant neurosurgeon. Then there is Professor Bondo who heads the pathology department and resembles a postmodern version of “Faust“ in that he sacrifices his own life for the higher cause of science but above all especially for the purpose of boosting his own career. On the patients side mainly Sigurd Drusse has to be brought up here. She holds an important role in that it is her who goes on to solve the mystery about the hospital which happens to be haunted. Mrs Drusse, being a medium, is able to hear a girl’s screams in the hospital’s elevator shaft. She consequently tries to get herself admitted into the “The Kingdom“ by pretending to suffer from a number of symptoms that call for examination. While the young doctor Jurgen Hook recommends hospitalization and a subsequent checkup, Dr. Helmer dismisses her for being a malingerer.

Before going any further into the details with “The Kingdom“ it will be useful to recapitulate the selected threads of thinking within the traditional body discourse first. In Plato we find one of the earliest philosophers who contemplated on the relation between body and soul. He formulated two contradicting notions of the soul in its relation to the body. He argued that either the soul can be considered as ’of celestial origin’ encaged in the body or as the incentive that keeps the body in motion and commands it. [1] It is Plato’s very reasoning that somehow contributed to engender a dichotomy which still holds significance to the present day. Though of course in modern secular societies the idea of the soul has been replaced by that of personality. To argue with Descartes and referring back to the perception of the body within the medical context, it is the partition of body and soul that allows for the “patient’s reduction to a set of physical symptoms“.[2] In postmodern medical terms the examination of the body has evolved from being a ’clinical gaze’ that discovers the inside of the body to an ’informatic medical gaze’ that exteriorizes the ’textual system of the body’ and has it ready for decoding.[3] In other words the in any way visual grasp of the body which is exemplary for postmodern times and aims at making the inside of the body visible has turned into the visualization of the body’s interior. The body being in general reduced to an ’empty screen’ within the realm of medical science becomes the site where ’organs and eyes meet’.[4]

Another major shift of meaning was brought about by the discourse centred on the immune system. Through it a reinterpretation of the body was initiated. What this new take on the body anticipates is the understanding of the body as a whole representing ’intercommunicating entities’ and the interconnection of the emotional and the physical self of a person. In that way it contest former assumptions like the Cartesian dualism of body and mind. [5] The body in postmodern times is characterized by the permeation of the different spheres of the outside and the inside.

In “The Kingdom“ the issue of the divide between the body and mind is brought up: Apparently that outdated dualism of body and mind still seems to be at work within the realm of orthodox medicin, biomedicin respectively in that it informs the power relation between doctors and patients. But in all types of medical series one can observe the attempt to overcome this division in order to achieve different goals. In the more typical series the body is used as a bridge between the physical and emotional self of the patients in order to tell their personal stories and linger on the emotional states of the shows’ characters and the relationships spun between them. The shows also offers the viewer to identify with patients and doctors alike and get involved with what is happening on screen. In “The Kingdom“ Lars von Trier adopts a critical perspective on medical institutions, the profession of doctors and the health system presenting the body as the nexus in which societal failures coincide.

But the partition of body and mind/soul is not only expressed through the relationship between the doctors and the patients but also through a ghost that haunts the “The Kingdom“. While the body of the young girl, Mary Jensen, who apparently was killed in the hospital at the beginning of the last century by one of the doctors – Professor Aage Krueger – is presevered and part of the collection of specimen in Dr. Bondo’s office her spirit wanders around restlessly in the building. The character Sigurd Drusse senses her presence and tries to end the girl’s unease by reuniting her spirit and her body outside the actual hospital complex. Taking the whole incidence as a metaphor it can be interpreted as mirroring science’s and doctors’ modes of dealing with patients. Sigurd Drusse, being interested in the spiritual side of life, represents an opposition to inhumane medical sciences which are shown to neglect the emotional component of the patients’ selves. Surgeons’ failures or mistakes are filed under collateral damage. In seems that in modern science doctors have taken on the role of health engineers as “it is the most constant and unanimous result of experience that in all public asylums, as in prisons and hospitals, the surest and perhaps the sole guarantee of maintenance of health and good habits and order is the law of rigorously executed mechanical work.“[6]

The case of the little girl who is suffering from reversible brain damage after Dr. Helmer has operated on her shows the way in which he deals with his own shortcomings. Instead of admitting a probable mistake or his actual failure he tries to get by the situation relying on his authority as a reknown neurosurgeon who cannot be argued with. He also feels supported by the secret guild founded by some doctors at “The Kingdom“.

In the traditional medical series by and large doctors are presented as trustworthy and their authority is only seldomly questioned. Conversely Lars von Trier reverses the picture in that he depicts a situation in which the truly trustworthy doctor seems to be the exception to the rule. Most of the doctors at “The Kingdom“ are described as dubious and taking advantage of their position and therefore treated with suspicion. Even Dr. Hook who seems to work for his own benefit only and although not being a member of the doctors’ guild is involved into its secret ventures.

On the whole, in postmodern times the body is turned into an object. In fact it has always been one. But it is the recent fading away of the body within systems informed by technological analyses that is most striking. In “The Kingdom“ the body is shown as a commodity whose value is estimated by personal standards of doctors who are striving for success. In any case the body seems to be ’an inanimate container’ that only Sigurd Drusse thinks of as ’inhabited by a higher soul’[7]. Numerous indications for how little respect is paid to patients and more generally to bodies can be found: Judith’s (who is also a doctor) body is used as a birthing machine in the process of Professor Aage Krueger’s reincarnation. Also, the viewers witness an intern decapitating a corpse and using the head to get the attention of a nurse who he admires. Furthermore the spectators encounter Dr. Bondo who uses his own body as a ’container’ to preserve an extraordinarily example of a cancerous liver that is sure to help him proceed with his research and gain him scientific glory. When the patient/organ-provider from which he eventually extracts the liver is committed into “The Kingdom“ Dr. Bondo exclaims that ’a heptasarcoma has arrived’.[8] To actually get hold of that liver and to stay within the law Dr. Bondo has to have the carzinogen organ transplanted into him as the patient’s relatives do not agree to a dissection. When he proposes his idea to the secret guild – he needs his colleagues’ colaboration in this bending of ethical norms – it is Dr. Helmer who, being horrified by the possibility that doctors could one day be just as objectified as patients are already, strongly opposes Bondo’s plan saying that ’doctors must stay at the right end of the scalpel.’[9]. It is at that point that he thinks the professionals’ powerful position, and his own, endangered.

Nevertheless the question remains how the doctors’ do retain their authority. In “The Kingdom“ the viewer is presented with the doctors’ rather conservative self understanding of their profession as they employ traditional modes of securing their authoritarian position. Keeping knowledge and expertise exclusive is one such mode which is manifested in the secret guild that only allows restricted access. Although, in following Lyotard’s argumentation, this appears to be an anachronistic endeavour as in the late Twentieth century “the previous indivisibility of expert and expertise is replaced by an exteriorization of knowledge and a relativisation of the knower.“[10]

The above mentioned circumstances make for the ’unique dialogue’ between doctors and patients.[11] The patient’s body perceived as that ’textual system’ is interpreted by the doctor using medical technology. But as is the case with translations usually something gets lost in the process which is why there usually occurs to be a discrepancy between the actual and the visualized body. As a result of that, often “the copy speaks more urgently and with more authority than the opaque and occluded ’original body’“[12] for it is read within a specific context. As Arthur and Marilouise Kroker argue postmodernity has witnessed a ’twofold death of the body’.[13] First, the ’natural body’ is substituted for an reconstructed image. Second, the body has lost its discoursive relevance since in ’technological society the body has achieved a purely rhetorical existence’[14]. That is to say that the body which, as was stated earlier, has to be thought of as an ’empty screen’ that has whichever rhetoric is needed in the respective context projected onto it. If one understands medical series and how the body is represented in them as one way in which “media monopolizes the rhetoric for the just-nominated addiction of the week“[15] then what sort of addiction do those series satisfy and to whose benefit? “Are we to assume that the television organisations are outside the normal social structure? [...] What we are really faced with is a contradiction within the social system itself.“[16]

In fact, postmodern ideas about the body have also brought about a new interpretation of illnesses. Ever since the body has been conceived of as a system rather than a machine illness has no longer been understood as the break down of that machine but as the consequence of individual fault behaviour.

In addition to that, the 1980s’ Thatcherian liberalism has influenced the outline of the public health systems – not only in England but beyond – in that illness came to be conceived of as individuals’ responsibility. Ever since good health has been valued as an indication of good citizenship and has been affiliated as the outcome of reasonable behaviour. This approach is backed up by the presumption that the body contained numerous microcosms: cells which are endowed with personhood.[17]

As a consequence general problematics within society have been shifted onto the individual and the body has taken on the role of a ’crisis-centre’. Within the health system context that is opened up in “The Kingdom“ the postmodern simultaneity of loss and discovery of the body is made visible. Although the body is being the centre of the apparent crisis it has been accentuated by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker that “[h]ealth is outside the body“[18]. Health is abstracted into a discourse that affects people’s lives in that it functions ’as a ’field of power’ and a ’generalized, symbolic and circulating medium of exchange’[19]. It could be argued that with respect to the development of medical technological devices the profession of doctors might become obsolete as usually technology gains more faith when it comes to the accurate reading of the bodily text. But it actually is through the liberal health system that the doctors’ authority is reininstituted – at least temporarily – for it is still them who decide whether cost-intensive checkups are exercised or not.

As a general conclusion, the power-relations between doctors and patients show how the body is perceived in medical series. Just as much as the patients are dealt with as mere objects their bodies are objectified also. Taking a look at the narrative structure of the typical medical show in comparison to the perspective adopted in “The Kingdom“ shows evidence of that contradiction. In most cases the narrator in medical series is one of the doctors. Choosing such a perspective determines the focus of the stories and proves that even though staged in hospitals the series are rather about emotions and relationship issues within the ’professional family of the doctors’. Lars von Trier opposes this narrative stereotype in different ways: He not only introduces two omniscient (psychic) narrators who are neither doctors nor patients but furthermore von Trier uses the character Sigurd Drusse as a means to tell his story from an alternative point of view. It is her attempt to reunite body and mind that makes the gap between those two even more apparent.

FILMOGRAPHY

The Kingdom (The Riget) (1994) Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred, Koch-Lorber Films, Copenhagen, Denmark, 280min.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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[19] Ibid., iv-vii.