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导读：本文是一篇英国assignment，讨论了监控实践是一种艺术形式和表现手法。作为一种艺术形式的表达，监视在今天的电子媒体（Norris and Armstrong，1999，p.3）中得到越来越广泛的代表，如电影，电视节目，网络媒体等，表明了监视工作已定位于观众，但监督的不当表现也引起了很多争议，因为监视将涉及道德和道德问题，如隐私披露（Albrechtslund，2008，p.171）。正如Albrechtslund（2008，p.163）提到的那样，电影中存在着广泛的矛盾，这些矛盾声称颠覆了监视娱乐的必要性，并暗示那些因观看不应该被观看而获得快乐的人。在此基础上，本文以好莱坞1993年制作的名为“银”的电影为研究对象，对电影中的监控表现形式进行了密切分析，以及如何定位观众。
在这部电影中，导演代表监视场景记录故事，以表明监视在当代人类生活中无处不在。 Carly（Silver的女主角）是一位职业生涯成功的女编辑，但她的婚姻失败了（Silver，1993）。离婚后，她搬进了Sliver公寓楼。在这里，她遇到了一位名叫泽克的新男友。As an artistic form of expression, surveillance is represented more and more widely in today's electronic media (Norris and Armstrong, 1999, p.3), such as film, TV show, network media, etc., showing that surveillance has been positioned by audience, but the improper representation of surveillance has also caused a lot of controversy, because surveillance will involve moral and ethical issues such as privacy disclosure (Albrechtslund, 2008, p.171). As Albrechtslund (2008, p.163) mentions that extensive contradictions within a movie that claims to subvert the necessity of surveillance for entertainment and implicate those who obtain pleasure from watching that which should not be watched. Based on this, this essay takes the movie named Silver produced by the Hollywood in 1993 as the research object to carry out close analysis on representation of surveillance in the film and how this positions the audience.
In this film, the director represented surveillance scene to record the story to represent that surveillance is omnipresent in contemporary human life. Carly (the heroine of Silver) was a female editor with successful career, but she failed in her marriage (Silver, 1993). After divorce, she moved into the Sliver apartment building. Here she met a new boyfriend named Zeke. Carly was very beautiful, she attracted Zeke. Zeke was through the monitoring system in his room to watch Carly’s bathing: her slender thighs, her breasts attracted Zeke, and the whole process of her masturbation showed that she needed a man, so he began to pursue Carly. When Carly and other people partied in her apartment, a "lady" found through telescope that a couple were having sex in a room of the opposite building, she was surprised and cheered. At the moment, other guests swarmed to watch them. And Carly apparently showed unusual excitement. When the party ended, Carly used the telescope to watch again, the couple turned out to pry about her through the same way. As time went on, Carly fell in love with Zeke. And after in-depth exchanges with Zeke, Carly found that he was actually the master of the apartment, and in every nook of the apartment, it was full of the camera set up by Zeke to meet his voyeuristic tendencies (Silver, 1993). At first, Carly resisted such a way of surveillance, but she began to love the sense of superiority and satisfaction brought by knowing about the secrets of others. Even though she knew that she was peeped, which made her feel upset, she could not prevent herself from peeping other people’s secrets (Silver, 1993). Carly inadvertently found that Zeke had a physical relationship with other dead women in the apartment, she could not reconcile to be cheated, under coercion of a gun, Zeke admitted his mistake and expressed that he really loved Carly. Then Carly destroyed the monitoring room, the two people began their new life (Silver, 1993).
Representation of surveillance in films has caused a lot of discussion about its ethical issues. Albrechtslund (2008, p. 158) analyzes two ethical issues arising from surveillance. First is the justification of surveillance, this problem is mainly related to the destruction of individual privacy. Destruction of individual privacy is an important problem that the current society faces (Rule, 1973). In the film Silver, the hero and heroine used surveillance equipment to monitor other people without their permission, which was a clear violation of the privacy of others. Second is the responsibility inherent in the practice of surveillance. For instance, road monitoring is set to ensure the safety of road traffic, the film's hero and heroine’s monitoring other people in the apartment not just for a just purpose, but for satisfying their psychological and voyeuristic desires. The film (Silver) director, in fact, criticized the surveillance practice, as the result, he designed that in the movie, the hero and heroine voluntarily gave up the behavior of monitoring other people's privacy, and returned to normal life.
Mulvey (1975, p.11) describes two aspects of pleasure brought by seeing a movie. Firstly, it is through visual sense to take the role in a film as the object of sexual excitement to get the pleasure. Movies record people’s life and events through lens, and movies are screening in dark space of theaters, the art of films itself has the qualities to meet human voyeurism, as Albrechtslund (2008, p. 175) mentions that movies provide the body for human desire. The director of Silver was through using a surveillance camera to record some sexual scene, which is tantamount to double audience's voyeurism. Secondly, it is the identity of the image observed, it comes from self-love. The highlight of the film not only lies in that the erotic scene in the film about the heroine meets the surveillance of the audience, but also rests on obtaining the identity of the audience by the method of surveillance practice, so as to let the audience get pleasure. It is known that surveillance is one of human's instinct, and it is a great temptation for majority of people to have a chance to monitor the privacy of others. As the heroine of the film knew that she was under surveillance, she felt anger and fear, and when she sat aside the peeping equipment set by Zeke, and controlled a remote manipulator in her hand, she could follow her inclinationsly to peep and monitor the joys and sorrows of every people’s in the apartment, she also showed a very enjoyable feeling.
Albrechtslund (2008, p. 169) analyzes that surveillance is not only a theme in films, but can also be said to structure the films’ imagery and narration. Although social morality, ethics and reason tells that surveillance practice is wrong, but through the art of film, surveillance practice is positioned, on the one hand, after all, what films show is suppositional; on the other hand, surveillance practice can better meet the voyeurism of audience to bring more pleasure to audience.
With the development of technology and the advent of the era of data, science and technology brings our lives a lot of convenience, it also has brought many changes, some changes are positive, but some changes have a conflict to our traditional values. In the movie, the director was through surveillance camera to record the story to represent that surveillance existed everywhere in contemporary human life. Judging from a society's ethics and morality, the legitimacy of widespread monitoring is clearly subject to some controversy, but as the art of film, surveillance helps to double the excitement and satisfy audience's voyeurism, which is the success of Silver. Freud divided surveillance into three levels: the pathological level, the normal level and the artistic level. The artistic level of surveillance is a kind of group surveillance behavior admitted by social order (Freud, Strachey and Richards, 1977, p.24). As no one would think that it is a crime to go to the cinema to see a movie or to enjoy an exhibition. Therefore, representation of surveillance practice in Silver should be evaluated from the perspective of art, judging from the film itself, the surveillance practice is little worthy of criticism, because it is a form of art and technique of expression. In addition, at the end of the film, the hero and heroine voluntarily gave up the behavior of surveillance, revealing that the director held a critical attitude towards surveillance practice in real life.
References
Albrechtslund, A. (2008). Surveillance and ethics in film: rear window and the conversation. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 15 (2), 158.
Freud, S., Strachey, J., & Richards, A. (1977). On sexuality: three essays on the theory of sexuality and other works. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Mulvey, L.(1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6-18.
Norris, C., & Armstrong, G. (1999). The maximum surveillance society: the rise of CCTV. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Rule, J. B. (1973). Private lives and public surveillance. London: Allen Lane.
Silver. (1993). Phillip Noyce (dir.), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: Australia, DVD.
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