Panoptical Power in China - 3094 Words

Panoptical Power in China Jeremy Bentham, a leading English prison reformer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, developed an architectural plan for an ideal prison that he called the Panopticon. Such a prison would consist of a ring of individual cells encircling an observation tower. Each of the cells would open toward the tower and be illuminated by its own outside window. So, by the effect of backlighting, a single guard in the observation tower could keep watch on many prisoners--each of whom would be individually confined--without himself being seen. And because the prisoners could not see their supervisors, they would have to assume that they were being watched at all times--even if they were not. The Panopticon was†¦show more content†¦Despite the films subsequent international acclaim, Chen Kaige was initially quite reluctant to take on the project of a film version of the novel. Chen has said: When I read the novel a long time ago . . . I didnt really like it. I thought it was very su perficial. But there was one thing that was very interesting: a struggle session in the Cultural Revolution (Cheshire, 1992, p. 37). Consequently, the screenplay involved extensive revisions of the novel and the struggle session became the climax of the film. This is not surprising, however, as Chen has been quoted as saying: Ive said this endlessly, but I have to repeat that the Cultural Revolution marked me as nothing else has or ever will. It still haunts me. I still think so much about how hard it was to form any kind of relationship at that time, and about the gap between what you said in public and thought in private, and about the primary need to protect yourself (Rayns, 1992, p. 13). Chen, born in 1952 to a film director and a wealthy mother, was an ardent young Maoist during the Cultural Revolution who denounced his father amid the verbal and physical abuse of a struggle session (Cheshire, 1992). Chens experience during the Cultural Revolution is echoed in the film as the t een-age Red Guard Xiao Si betrays Xiaolou and Dieyi, his adoptive