The Eye of the Storm: Katrina, New Orleans and Power

The beast. The system. The man with no eyes. The coup d’état. The prison. The sexual confession. Throughout this project, all these names appear in a relationship with power. Whatever the label, power can be understood to be immanent in relationships already present. It is continually decentralized, mobile and transitive, thereby eliminating any presuppositions of control and unity. Like the hydra it regenerates, reshapes and does not operate from one central source but from many centers. This paper shows power in three areas: sexuality, a personal arena; prisons, a communal arena; and politics, a global arena. These three locations of power show the type of influence over the person that is possible. Even still, the framework often placed around power does not always allow for this multiplicity; often, power is seen as control wielded by one actor. That framework may be dissolved by one final allegory, that of Hurricane Katrina and the City of New Orleans.

At first glance, the power that devastated the Gulf Coast maybe constrained to a hurricane, or a large storm. But deconstruction unearths a larger and far more complex system of relationships that lead to tragedy. Power cannot be localized within the storm but must be seen as intrinsic in the relationships exterior to the storm but that influenced the outcome. To begin with, a storm itself is far from being singular. Instead of presenting itself as a unified force, a storm is a system of wind, water, gravity and atmosphere that is constantly changing, constantly in motion and continually decentralized. A storm is never the same from one moment to the next, therefore one could not locate its center or the source of its strength. It simply is, and its being is never the same. Like Foucault’s power it lacks any unity. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the storm also exhibited power by exposing relationships and weaknesses already present in the fabric of the city. The storm was not the source of the resident’s poverty. It was not the source of the disorganized response. It did not directly cause looting or lawlessness. It did not neglect the levees. Power was already immanent in those factors; it simply took the storm to awaken the public to these realities. In this way the storm, though powerful, was not the sole actor that brought disaster. It was instead a catalyst that illuminated the functioning of power already present in New Orleans. To refer to the disaster simply as “Hurricane Katrina” neglects the truer sources of catastrophe: power already intrinsic in the setting.

The visual image of the storm offers a metaphor for power.



Though it clearly shows motion and change, the image also reveals a curious center: the eye of the storm. No wind or rain punishes within the eye; instead there is a reprieve from the effects of the system. But this reprieve is temporary. The eye of the storm, that appears as the center of the storm’s great power, remains a false shelter. Those seeking shelter within its center reside in a false reality where power and control are relegated to one place. Like the storm as a whole shows, power comes from many. The illusion of peace offered by the eye at its center soon succumbs to the multiplicity of power sources immanent within the storm and wherever it travels. These relationships, not the storm itself, present power. In the final analysis power must not be seen as control, as force, as strength and least likely, as one. Instead it demands recognition as immanent, motive, and many: the new hydra.

Power in Oliver Stone's JFK

There has been no shortage of conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of President Kennedy, which continues to inspire passionate discussions and powerful emotions. An investigation of one conspiracy theory, as presented in Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), provides the viewer with a power structure in motion that flexes its muscles against even the most prominent politician. The collection of actors investigated by District Attorney Jim Garrison displays themes consistent with Foucault’s writing on power. By looking at three scenes from the film, the project turns now to presenting power as a crisis – a crisis of identity, of oneness, and of autonomy. These crises will become apparent by a viewing of Garrison’s team as they discuss multiple “Oswalds,” the rampant paranoia displayed by David Ferrie, and finally the discussion between Garrison and “X” on black operations. These scenes, characterized together as crises of unity with special consideration for their narrative implications, render Foucault’s decentralized power accessible.

Scene 36, “More than one Oswald,” recounts the lengthy development of Oswald as the perfect fall guy. By piecing together the testimonies of witnesses, government documents, and the Warren Report, the team of investigators see Oswald’s narrative as one carefully planned and executed by a power structure beyond Oswald’s perception and control. Susie Cox, part of Garrison’s team, explains that “starting in September’63 on, two months before the assassination, there are sightings of Oswald all over Dallas.” She gives three examples of noteworthy sightings. First, someone using the name Oswald test drives a car before informing the salesman that “no honest working man can afford to buy a car in this goddam country anymore. Maybe I’ll have to go to Russia to buy a car.” Cox informs the team that this car salesman remembered Oswald as being 5’7” tall, though his draft card lists him as being 5’11.” She continues to describe an incident wherein Oswald was introduced to a Cuban woman working in the anti-Castro collective. Later she was phoned by his companions who told her that Oswald said “You Cubans don’t have any guts because Kennedy should have been killed after the Bay of Pigs and some Cuban should have done it.” According to Cox, the Warren Commission reported that Oswald was trying to get into Cuba at this time, citing a photograph as evidence that bears little resemblance to the Oswald arrested in Dallas. A team member comments about the photo, “If this is Oswald, it must be our third Oswald.” Finally, someone using Oswald’s name buys trucks for the group Friends For a Democratic Cuba in New Orleans while the “real” Oswald is known to be in Russia. These examples, along with several others within the scene, show the difficulty of responding to the question: Who is Lee Harvey Oswald? Stone shows through this scene that answering, as the Warren Commission does, that Oswald is the lone, communist killer of Kennedy is inconsistent with the true structure of power behind the killing. Instead, the case of Oswald suggests a crisis of identity.



This crisis is symbolized by the jazz funeral that takes place at the beginning of the scene. Although scene 35 contains a full conversation during the funeral, Stone allows it to continue on through the beginning of scene 36 before the conversation on Oswald starts. A New Orleans jazz funeral remains unique in the United States. A brass band accompanies the funeral march, playing dirges on the way to the grave. After the burial, however, the procession returns to the town with the band now playing celebratory and rousing music.

In scenes 35 and 36, the band blares an improvised version of “When the Saints” accompanied by the wild dancing of the mourners. This funeral can be seen as the symbolic death of a unified identity. The procession mourns at the burial of one individual person but celebrates in jubilation on their return as a group. The group consists of old and young, musicians, dancers, mourners, relatives, friends and strangers. This collective calls for celebration. By placing this funeral sequence just before a scene called “More than one Oswald,” Stone presents the viewer with a crisis of unitive identity. The conspiracy, which disputes Oswald as the lone killer, also effectively challenges the idea that any one person could be the killer. The film implicitly argues that the very notion of unity and identity are inconsistent with the power structure responsible for the murder.

Scene 44 provides the viewer with a window into the paranoia of David Ferrie. Ferrie speaks with Garrison and his team about the murder; once Garrison’s investigation appears in the news, Ferrie fears for his life.



His fear and paranoia stem from his understanding of the power structure that threatens him. Because he fears “everybody - agency, Mob, Cubans…here, Miami, Dallas” he displays an understanding of power as decentralized and dispersed. This presents the viewer with his crisis: a crisis of oneness. Since there is no one to fear, his paranoia runs rampant; during the scene, he checks an investigator for bugs, searches behind closed doors, behind wall decorations, around corners and nearly jumps out the window when he hears a knock on the door. His actions are complemented by his dialog. His conversation runs from Cubans, to Oswald, to the CIA, to Clay Shaw (a man later arrested for conspiracy to murder) to having cancer in his neck to the Mob and on. His fear comes from a perception of the power that is immanent in those acting around him. Remember that Foucault writes “relations of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect to other types of relationships (economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual relations), but are immanent in the latter” (History 94).
This immanence, that characterizes a dispersed power structure, comes to a point towards the end of his dialog. He describes the actors he knew saying:

"He [Jack Ruby, Dallas Mob] used to run guns to Castro when he was still on our side. We almost had Castro – then we tried to whack him. Everybody’s flipping sides all the time. It’s fun and games, man, fun and games…there’s more of this than you can dream…Who the fuck pulls whose chain? Who the fuck knows? Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive!"

Ferrie presents the team of investigators with a “web” of actors. Within this web, the actors never work solely for themselves or even to achieve their own goals. There are no clear cut sides, no clear winners and losers and certainly no personal autonomy. There is only the web. When Garrison dares to ask “who killed the President?” Ferrie responds with a statement that Foucault might as well have written:

"Why don’t you fucking stop it? Shit! This is too fucking big for you, you know that? Who did the President? Who killed Kennedy? Fuck man! It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fucking shooters don’t even know!! Don’t you get it!?"

Perhaps the most compelling part of his statement, that the shooters do not know and perhaps cannot know who killed the President, helps the viewer to understand just what sort of power structure is required by the theory Stone proposes. The shooters cannot know who killed the President because “power relations are both intentional and non-subjective” (History 94). There can be no unity, no oneness within this web of actors that kills a President to sustain the system.

Finally, beginning in scene 48 Garrison travels to Washington, D.C. for an enlightening conversation. To continue the theme of crisis, his interlocutor gives no name except “X.” The person as unnamable foreshadows a conversation that will direct Garrison towards seeing a coup d’état as a political crisis. By viewing the scene as Foucault might, the postmodern themes of X’s coup become clear. X first identifies himself as a soldier who participated in planning and executing black operations (black ops), including “assassinations, coup d’état, rigging elections, propaganda, psych warfare and so forth.” Returning from an unexpected trip to the South Pole, X explains how he discovered the President’s murder in New Zealand. He tells Garrison that

"Oswald was charged at 7pm Dallas time with Tippet’s [a Dallas policeman] murder. Now, it’s two o’clock in the afternoon the next day New Zealand time. But already their papers had the entire history of this unknown, 24 year old man Oswald. Studio picture, detailed biographical data, Russian information, and we’re pretty sure of the fact that he killed the President alone, although it took them four more hours before they even charged him for that crime in Dallas. It felt to me like…well it felt like a cover story was being put up, like we would in a black op."

X’s statements here lay background information for conspiracy theorists. But more importantly, they discuss the issue of identity in a new way. Oswald, whose identity has been questionable for the entire film, appears in New Zealand as a narrative with “detailed biographical data.” The paper sells Oswald as a story but as a story necessarily created by the powerful. Oswald’s life in previous scenes can be seen as a construction of the powerful, and so this final retelling of his story to the public is the final selling of his identity to the public. But as Stone sees it, this identity must necessarily be false.



The remainder of the conversation attempts to depict Kennedy’s assassination as a coup. X begins “like Caesar, he [Kennedy] is surrounded by enemies and something’s underway – but it has no face, yet everybody in the loop knows.” He continues by saying

"it started like that, in the wind…just conversations, nothing more. Then a call is made…everything is cellularized. No one has said “he must die.” There’s been no vote, nothing’s on paper. There’s no one to blame. It’s as old as the crucifixion – a military firing squad. Five bullets, one blank, no one’s guilty…That is a coup d’état."

By describing the beginnings of the murder, its actors and its construction X shows Garrison the nature of the power structure as decentralized, organic and dispersed. The explanation rings true with Foucault’s own account of power in History of Sexuality: in power’s “comprehensive systems…the logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable, and yet it is often the case that no one is there to have invented them, and few who can be said to have formulated them: an implicit characteristic of the great anonymous” (95). No one person has any true identity or any true autonomy. There are no individuals and only the structure exists tangibly. What results is a coup – the replacement of one with many. No longer can Kennedy control the CIA and military as he has arranged. The structure corrects itself in order that the system, a manifestation of power itself, has control instead of any one individual.

These three scenes from JFK characterize a power structure in action that manifests itself through a crisis of oneness. For that is true nature of the crisis of identity in scene 36, the crisis of unity in scene 44 and the political crisis in scene 48 on. Those expecting to find unity, personal autonomy, and one in any form it will instead find only power - power as plural and diverse. The manifestation of power through a pluralistic web of actors, each without any tangible control over the system, provides the viewer with insight on Foucault’s ideas.

Power in Oliver Stone's Nixon

Words such as decentralized, dispersed and organic pave the way for a thematic understanding of postmodern power. Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) is particularly useful in illuminating these major themes in Michel Foucault’s work. Three scenes especially help the viewer form connections to Foucault’s notion of power: Nixon’s conversation with J. Edgar Hoover at the horse races, his discussion with Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence and finally his late night visit to the Lincoln Memorial. In addition, the narrative taken in its entirety shows a failed attempt at centralizing power; the fall of Nixon and the collapse of his politics support Foucault’s idea that the natural tendency of power is to be decentralized and dispersed. Reflecting on each scene in turn with an accompanying commentary will elucidate the image of power in the works of Foucault and Stone.

Intensity abounds from the opening shot of scene 12: a fallen horse lies suffering on the dirt of the track. The image foreshadows the outcome of the scene’s race. J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Johnny Roselle, a noted mob figure, scrutinize through binoculars every move the horses make. Hoover complains to Roselle that their horse is performing poorly; Roselle asks for his patience and soon thereafter one horse goes down, allowing their pick to sprint to victory. The race is a dramatic allusion to the presidential race that Nixon has come to discuss. When Nixon arrives at the races, the conversation quickly turns to Robert F. Kennedy’s popularity as a presidential candidate. Nixon explains Kennedy’s “rock star” status and suggests that he will “ride his brother’s corpse right into the White House.” Hoover responds with the suggestive comment, “If things remain as they are.” Moments later, Hoover’s colleague suggests they should just “shoot the son of a bitch.” Nixon and Hoover exchange an awkward glance. The point here is not that Stone wants to connect Nixon to RFK’s assassination. Instead he wants to suggest that a particular system of power asserts itself through a collective of actors.



Hoover’s small monologue explains that a power structure is in place that has the ability to protect itself from any threats. Referring to the Kennedy brothers as threats to that system, he makes the following speech:

"I look at it from the point of view that the system can only take so much abuse. It adjusts itself eventually. But there are times, there are savage outbursts…sometimes the system comes very close to cracking. We’ve already had one radical in the White House. I don’t believe it can survive another."

What is implied in Hoover’s speech is that power, here manifested in a political system, has somewhat of an organic awareness of outside threats. It can identify and even prevent these threats when it uses a decentralized method. This is suggested by the presence of different group representatives at the discussion: Nixon as a politician, more specifically a representative of the Republican Party; Hoover representing the FBI; and Roselle representing the mob. Power here manifests itself in the complex and interactive relationship of interests within these groups. Through this collective web, power is able to protect itself from a threatening presence: Robert F. Kennedy.

Later in the scene, Nixon details his involvement in a venture called Track 2, a unit that designed overseas operations in secret. His explanation to Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman informs the viewer that Track 2 was responsible for assassination attempts on Castro. When Haldeman asks why “if Kennedy was so clean in all of this [why] didn’t he cancel Track 2?” Nixon’s response is enlightening: “Because he didn’t even know about it. The CIA never told him. They just kept it going. Like it had a life of its own, like it was some…kind of a…thing, that doesn’t even know it exists. It just eats people when it doesn’t need them any more.” Within these comments, Nixon presents power as an organic entity that solicits the image of a virus for the viewer. By giving Track 2 a life of its own, Nixon refers to this group in the terms of Foucault’s power, which is necessarily organic. In the context of this scene, the comments imply to the viewer that other government groups are of a similar nature; Nixon had just previously mentioned the omniscience of the FBI and CIA. By discussing these groups as themselves organic, Stone implicitly argues for a type of power that manifests itself in a decentralized presence immanent in the groups yet beyond their control.

In a scene deleted from the theatrical version of the film, Nixon pays a visit to Richard Helms at the Central Intelligence Agency. What follows is perhaps the most intense confrontation of the film. Two aspects of their conversation stand out: first is Helms’ description of Nixon’s foreign involvement during his vice presidency, and second is his recitation of Yeats’ The Second Coming. Early in the scene, Nixon requests that Helms gather all documents that connect Nixon to a string of overseas blunders. Helms then comments on the special operations group that Nixon chaired as Vice President, saying “as you know, that was unique. Not an operation so much as an organic phenomenon. It grew, it changed shape, it developed appetites.” This description is consistent with a theme shared by Stone and Foucault: the organic nature of power structures. The group, though theoretically controlled by Nixon as its chair, simply took on a life of its own beyond his jurisdiction. Such is the nature of many groups considered in the film. In this scene, that idea is complemented by the presence of many flowers in Helms’ office. As they discuss the nature of the special operations group and the CIA, Helms moves through the office examining and considering all the flowers. The implication is that Helms, perhaps the most powerful man in the film, gets his ability from an understanding of the very organic nature of power. His obsession with flowers can be seen as an allusion to his ability to comprehend the manifestations of power as comparable to flowers.



As the scene closes, Helms recites his favorite poem by Yeats. The poem itself, The Second Coming, summarizes some of the themes that occurred in the conversation. His recitation of its opening lines brings together this exploration of the scene: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…” The opening lines suggest the decentralized nature of power. Perhaps Helms would have done well to speak some of the middle lines as well. Yeats writes that “somewhere in the sands of the desert / a shape with lion body and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, is moving its slow thighs.” These lines as well might be applied to this description of power as understood by Helms to be, like flowers, definitively organic in nature.

The final scene to be considered in Nixon is perhaps the most relevant. Opening with a time lapse shot of the Washington Monument, it continues with the President weaving through sleeping protestors to visit the Lincoln Memorial. The screen reads “May 9, 1970 – 4.00 AM.” As he contemplates Lincoln’s figure and his words inscribed on the wall, the protestors awake and begin to crowd around him. The conversation soon turns to the Vietnam War. Nixon defends his desire for “peace with honor” but is soon accused by a young girl of being powerless. Their conversation ensues:

GIRL: You don’t want the war. We don’t want the war. The Vietnamese don’t want the war. So why does it go on?
GIRL: You can’t stop it, can you? Even if you wanted to. Because it’s not you, it’s the system. The system won’t let you stop it.
NIXON: There’s…there’s more at stake here than what you want or what I want.
GIRL: Then what’s the point? What’s the point of being president? You’re powerless.
NIXON: NO. No, I’m not powerless. Because I understand the system, I believe I can, uh…I can control it, maybe not control it totally…but tame it enough to do some good.
GIRL: Sounds like you’re talking about a wild animal.
NIXON: Yeah, maybe I am…[to his aide] Nineteen year old kid. She understood something that has taken me years in politics to understand. The C.I.A., the Mafia, those Wall Street bastards. The beast. Nineteen year old kid. She called it a wild animal.

Several pieces of this conversation stand out as intrinsic to this viewing through a Foucaultean lense. The girl’s characterization of “the system” calls for investigation. What exactly does she mean when she uses this phrase? In this case, it can be assumed that she refers to the complex network of relationships between government, government agencies and even nations. Her choice of the word “system” implies a mechanistic and methodical presence but one that is decidedly not human. The girl believes that this system renders any one man, even the President, “powerless.” Nixon, true to his character, responds to this claim with an emphatic “NO!”



Yet even his attempt at defending his power backfires. He tries to explain his understanding and comprehension of the system but his effort clearly pales in comparison to men depicted in the film as truly powerful, such as Helms. Where such men exhibit a clear vision of a decentralized and organic power, Nixon struggles to explain “the system” even in simple terms. His confusion betrays his ignorance of Foucault’s concept of power, or at least his lack of commitment to it. This lack of vision leads to the downfall of Nixon and his concept of power in the film’s narrative. Commentary on the narrative of Nixon’s political life as a whole will conclude this chapter.

In the film, as in life, Nixon’s political career ends in disaster. His connection to the Watergate break-in led to his resignation on August 9, 1974. Taking Nixon’s life as a narrative, as the film does, can be useful in showing how Stone’s presentation is in line with Foucault’s power. From beginning to end, Nixon is convinced that he needs a powerful office to give credibility to his ideas and work. He admits to his wife in scene 11 that he desires the presidency more than anything else: “Yes, this above all!” As his words to the young girl at the Lincoln Memorial indicate, he considers the Presidency to be a position of great power and control. Indeed, as President his actions are to continue to centralize power to the executive branch and more specifically to a small team of insiders. In scene 21, one of his aides suggests the creation of a White House intelligence agency to spy on other parts of government; acting as “plumbers,” these men would operate in order to prevent leaks to the press. Nixon responds that he “likes the idea” and subsequently arranges for “plumbers.” It is these plumbers who break into the Watergate building. Stone’s presentation of these happenings provide a direct link between Nixon’s desire to appropriate power to one central source and his downfall as a politician. By creating the intelligence agency within the oval office, Nixon wants the ability to spy on and control every part of the government. This would give him personal oversight over areas of government in which he theoretically has no jurisdiction. As fate would have it, this type of power structure was inconsistent with reality. According to Stone’s presentation, and perhaps what could have been Foucault’s viewing of the film, the system corrects itself. Nixon’s efforts at the centralization and appropriation of power must inevitably lead to his destruction. According to Foucault, his power structure that puts control in the hands of one person must necessarily fail.

Power and Hope in Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Frank Darabont’s Shawshank Redemption provides an opportunity to investigate two different responses to power seen through the eyes of a third character. This section looks at the experience of Brooks and of Andy, two prisoners in Shawshank Prison that meet very different fates. Their mutual friend Red goes through an evolution from the philosophy of acceptance characterized by Brooks to a philosophy of hope embodied by Andy. Whereas Brooks’ philosophy shows the intention of power Andy’s philosophy presents a literal and figurative escape from power. It is left to the viewer to decide whether or not he has truly escaped power or whether power was present throughout his rebellion.

A prisoner of over 50 years, Brooks resides in Shawshank where he works as a librarian. From his first appearance, where he feeds an injured bird to nurse it back to health, the viewer makes an emotional connection to the gentle prisoner. Thus the meltdown of this grandfatherly figure in scene 16 shocks both Brooks’ fellow prisoners and those watching the film. Brooks holds a knife to his friend Haywood’s throat; when asked what Haywood has done to deserve this he replies “It’s what they done. I got no choice. [He sobs]. It’s the only way they’d let me stay.” Haywood explains that he came to congratulate Brooks on his parole approval. Brooks panicked and tried to commit a crime so that he could stay in the prison. Red defends Brooks by commenting on the manifestations of power closing in on Brooks at Shawshank: “These walls are funny. First you hate them. Then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized…they send you here for life. That’s exactly what they take.” Here is another glimpse of power at work, this time a power that directs the response to control and observation. The image of the wall becomes compelling as it validates the prison as power over the body while simultaneously becoming a false support for the body. Brooks believes that he needs the prison. Without the walls he cannot stand by himself. This truly would be an example of effective and efficient power.

Brooks verifies this idea in the following scene. Brooks leaves Shawshank for a halfway house and a job at a grocery store. But in scene 17 he reveals to his friends at the prison his difficulty with adjusting to free life. In another rich symbol, Brooks feeds the birds in the park after work. Remembering his companion bird in the prison, the viewer sees Brooks struggle to understand the bird: a symbol of ultimate freedom through the power of flight. Although Brooks tries throughout the movie to kindle that power of freedom within himself, he ultimately gives in. Brooks hangs himself in the halfway house, with the explanation that

"I have trouble sleeping at night. I have bad dreams like I’m falling. I wake up, scared. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember where I am…I don’t like it here. I’m tired of being afraid all of the time. I’ve decided not to stay. I doubt they’ll kick up any fuss, not for an old crook like me."



Brooks represents a victim of a power over the body mechanized through the prison system. Power so deprived him of an identity and of liberty that even when given freedom he could not embrace it. Andy, on the contrary, subscribes to a philosophy of hope that leads to his escape from the prison.

Though his colleagues tell him to accept his permanent imprisonment, Andy wants instead to retain some independence and hope. In scene 20 Andy manages to play a Mozart record over the prison’s public address system, a performance for which he receives two weeks in solitary confinement. When asked by his friends whether or not the time was worth it, he replies that “I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company…it [the music] was in here [he points to his head] and in here [he points to his heart]. That’s the beauty of music. They can’t get that from you.” Andy tries to convince them that they should maintain some inner sanctuary, to keep the vision of freedom at hand. The prisoners, themselves conditioned by power, struggle to understand Andy’s optimism. The dialog between Andy and Red displays Red’s apprehension:

Red: Well I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though - didn't make much sense in here.
Andy: In here is where it makes the most sense. You need it so you
don't forget.
Red: Forget?
Andy: Yes - forget that there are places in the world that aren't made
out of stone; that there's something inside that they can't get to -
that they can't touch, that's yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.
Red: Hope. Let me tell you something my friend: Hope is a dangerous
thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It's got no use on the inside.
You better get used to that idea.
Andy: Like Brooks did?
Here Red cannot conceive of Andy’s hope. Like Brooks, power convinces him to accept his fate. This is displayed in scene 21 where Red attends his parole hearing. After giving the officers scripted answers on his rehabilitation, he is denied parole. This implies that he has not yet transitioned into a state of mind where he can embrace freedom. Andy will lead him to that point.



In scene 29 Andy and Red discuss their imprisonment. Andy explains how he came to be in prison, blaming it on “bad luck I guess. It floats around. It’s gotta land on somebody. It was my turn, that’s all. I was in the path of the tornado. I just didn’t expect that the storm would last as long as it has.” This conversation precedes Andy’s escape, which is accommodated by a long term financial operation conducted by Andy using the warden’s funds. Red begins to understand how Andy’s optimism lead gave him the power to manipulate the system. Andy used his imprisonment and the warden’s schemes to put himself into a position where he could successfully flee the country. Red takes Andy’s hope to be the underlying cause of his success. When Red is finally granted parole after an interview in which he defies the norms of the judicial process, he sets out to join Andy in Mexico. As he rides the southbound bus his narrations says that “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.” Thus the final two words in the entire film are “I hope.”



Clearly the director wants to present hope as the antidote to the control and oppression that characterizes the mechanisms of the prison. But is this an accurate interpretation of power or is there actually power present in Andy’s rebellion? In short, are Andy and Red truly free now in a way that Brooks was not?

To bring Cool Hand Luke back into the discussion will show the different interpretations of power presented in the two films. The films culminate with escapes of two very different natures: one a failure and one a success. As Luke finally realizes that he cannot locate power in the oneness and unity of a God, the system affirms his revelation by killing him. But Andy’s hope in himself and in justice brings him to a peaceful beach on the Pacific. Is hope, then, a possible antidote for power? What Foucault would undoubtedly suggest is that Andy never moved beyond power. Recall Foucault’s suggestion that “where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History 35). Therefore Andy’s success story cannot be seen as a victory over power but rather, in some way, another submission to its mechanisms. How can this be done? Either Andy’s success must be seen as a victory over some unitive force where power was concentrated in a central place, such as in the warden, or Andy’s success must be qualified so as to indicate less of a victory over power rather than a progression from one form of captivity to another. Both are reasonable assertions.

What is shown in the above discussion is that power evolves from being a public display of pain to a much more personal and intensive form of control that still remains centered on the body. There is no doubt that this type of power, that of the prison system, is closely tied to political systems. To explore power in political systems the section that follows examines two Oliver Stone films dealing with political controversy in the United States. The analysis should show that a political system, and not politicians or the government as a whole, stands as another mode for power to enter into the life of subjects, though as always by modifying and influencing relationships in which power is already immanent.

Cool Hand Luke

Though the prison compound of Cool Hand Luke looks nothing like the panopticon, it nonetheless shows the mechanisms of power at work. The opening credits of the film show the men at work on the side of the road. Watching persistently by armed guards, the men must notify their boss when making even the most innocent of movements. Taking off a shirt, wiping off stray grass and drinking water are all announced in advance. The bosses, or common guards, follow the direction of a man wearing reflective sunglasses. This man, called the “man with no eyes” by the prisoners, provides an image of power at work that is similar to the panopticon.

Because he wears sunglasses the prisoners never know where his gaze falls. His silent manners supplement the paranoia brought on by his always (or never) constant searching. During scene 15 the men find a snake in the grass. Luke picks up the snake; the man with no eyes quickly kills it with one pulverizing shotgun round. Previously in scene 4 he shot a bird out of the air at the worksite. The message to the prisoners is clear: this is what will happen should one of you try to be clever and deceitful like a snake. This is what will happen should one of you try to fly away like a bird. Without saying a word to the prisoners and without inflicting any physical pain on them he manages to establish complete control by his gaze and his posture. He operates like the living panopticon, inspiring paranoia through his eye.

Luke, ever the free spirit, does not take to his confinement and decides to run. After being brought back the prison warden symbolically places chains on his legs to keep him from running quickly. The warden states famously in scene 20 that “what we’ve got here, is failure to communicate.” Luke rebelled against the system that held him in place, perhaps because he could not understand it as power over the body. Like the prison rebellions Foucault mentions that the prisoners cannot understand why reasonable accommodations, food and work disagree with the body. Luke knows, perhaps too well, that the prison exerts power over the body; hence the warden restricts Luke without bodily harm, in keeping with the new prison type. Rather than cut off his leg they choose to set him as a symbol for the other prisoners. The failure to communicate indicates that the prisoners may still feel that their body is their own and that they have a sort of freedom of the body that the prison cannot compromise. The chains are a visible reminder, without inflicting pain, that the prison indeed controls the body: that its very essence is to exert power over the body.

Yet Luke runs again. After his capture, the bosses opt for a new symbol in addition to the chains. This time the punishment is psychological. In scene 26 the bosses alternately give Luke instructions, with each instruction compromising an earlier order. Luke is told that this dirt is in one of the boss’s ditch; Luke consequently shovels a large hole in the ground to remove his dirt from the boss’s ditch. Soon thereafter another boss follows to inform Luke that his dirt is on the boss’s yard. Luke begins filling in the ditch; just as he finishes the first boss returns to ask why his dirt is in Boss Kean’s ditch. When Luke replies that he does not know the boss knocks him onto the dirt to think about it. The other prisoners observe the whole performance. Though physical labor is involved, the drama shows that without inflicting pain directly on Luke, the bosses, or more specifically the prison itself, nevertheless exert influence over and through the body. Luke’s legs now bear two sets of chains and his mind bears the knowledge that he will never satisfy or win over any guard by any action he takes. Luke is powerless.



The incident closes with a telling metaphor. As Luke finally returns to his bunk, no longer under the strict supervision of the bosses, he falls to the ground of exhaustion. Lying on the ground, he cries out “Where are you? Where are you now?” Foucault might argue that Luke calls out for the guards to harass him and take part in his misery once more. Yet even in the absence of the guards Luke cannot lift himself off the ground, let alone to his top bunk. Without any physical control mechanisms present Luke lies on the ground weeping. One can understand at this point the type of power exerted over Luke.

But Luke cannot. A particularly crafty escape in scenes 30-33 ends with a dramatic speech from Luke. Surrounded by police and bosses, Luke stands alone in a church and speaks to God. The dialog reveals the level of Luke’s understanding of the power placed over him in his particular political and social environment:



"Anybody here? Hey old man, you home tonight?…I know I got no call to ask for much but even so you gotta admit you ain’t dealt me no cards in a long time. It looks like you got things fixed so I can’t never win out. Inside, outside, all them rules and regulations and bosses. You made me like I am. Now just where am I supposed to fit in?"

Luke sees that to a certain extent his freedom cannot come from himself, that his body rests under the control of numerous exterior relationships. The power to control comes not from within Luke, or indeed with the people who seem to control him, but the institutions and relationships present around him. Luke sees the origin of this panopticon to be God; but what does the director imply when Luke gets no response? Luke asks for God’s guidance:
What do I do now? Fine. Fine. [he kneels.] I’m on my knees asking. [he looks at the ceiling, receiving no response]. Yea that’s what I thought. I guess I’m pretty tough to deal with, a hard case. I guess I gotta find my own way.”

Luke still seeks to locate the source of power in one place: God. But what Luke does not understand, despite all the symbols thrown at him, is that power comes from the institution and its relationships. It is mobile, sourced in the many rather than the one. It is with great irony that Luke pronounces, “What we’ve got here, is failure to communicate” just before he is shot by the man with no eyes. Finally the viewer can ask whether the power was located in God or in the very institution of the prison. Luke’s death suggests that the prison structure was driven by power: a power that manipulated Luke’s condition and the relationships that surrounded him so as to reveal the power already present in them.

Introduction to prison films and the Count of Monte Cristo

Two films with prisons as settings will compliment Foucault’s writing on the subject: Frank Darabont’s Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke (1967). Within the prisons explored in the films the prisoners find themselves subject to just the sort of power described above: a power over the body supported by the very structure that confines the prisoners. Though the prisons themselves do not resemble the panopticon, the systems of control in place at the institutions also offer an image of power at work. The man with no eyes finally conquers Luke’s spirit in Cool Hand Luke. Within Shawshank two different responses to the power of the prison system lead to different characterizations of Brooks and Andy, one of conquered and one of conqueror. These and other images displayed in the films capture power at work in the prison system. Before discussing these films that center on prisons a brief analysis of one scene from The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) shows the old manifestation of power typical to the time of public torture.

Edmond Dantes finds himself imprisoned inside the Chateau d’If, a cliffside fortress in Marseilles, France, with cells of rock. The prison looks nothing like the panopticon; indeed its architecture is far from symmetrical. Contrary to the more modern prisons that promise surveillance at all times, the prisoners are largely ignored. The food comes through a slot low on the door; their toilet buckets leave the same way. In fact, the prisoners are only actually seen once a year: on the anniversary of their arrival at the prison. The warden promises to visit the prisoners on this anniversary for a whipping.



This annual contact for physical torture is the only contact the prisoners have with any human. Left alone in their isolation, they are out of sight but not out of the influence of power. The promise of physical pain each year weakens their morale and their willingness to attempt any rebellion or escape. This is the power of torture described by Foucault. But the prison changed for simple reasons of efficiency: for a cell to offer isolation and also to be impenetrable requires too much space. To accommodate more prisons as well as a new economy of power, prisons became places where power was distributed through means other than physical torture – though the body remains the chief target.

The Power of Politics and the Panopticon

Foucault reads this change in structure as a change in the way power manifests itself politically. But although the body no longer comes under physical torture, it remains the vessel commandeered by power. He writes “that punishment in general and the prison in particular belong to a political technology of the body is a lesson that I have learnt not so much from history as from the present” (30). He refers to prison revolts that take place in new and accommodating prisons just as frequently as in old and outmoded prisons. Foucault found that a prison offering medical and educational services was no less vulnerable to revolt than any other prison. Less physical misery did not lead to more contentment. Foucault sees that these revolts as evidence of the surviving influence of power over the body.

"In fact, they were revolts, at the level of the body, against the very body of the prison. What was at issue was not whether the prison environment was too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power; it is this whole technology of power over the body that the technology of the ‘soul’…fails either to conceal or to compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools" (30).

Hence Foucault sees the prison itself as the visible instrument of a political power over the body. Nowhere else does this appear more clearly than in Foucault’s discussion of the panopticon.

Foucault points to Bentham’s panopticon as the best illustration of power’s systematic manifestation. An image of efficiency and control, the prison stands out as an ideal realization of power upon the body. The design features a central guard tower that looks to the cells, which are spread out around the tower in a circle. The prisoners are isolated in as much as is possible allowing the guards to monitor each prisoner individually. Because of the structure the guard can see into every cell yet the prisoners never know when they are being watched. They cannot see the guard, if one is even present.

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary" (201).

The very design of the building exerts power over the prisoner while simultaneously standing as an analogy to the political power of a society.



Just as the prisoners within the panopticon develop paranoia within the context of the architecture, so too are the subjects of power controlled by the systems in place above their heads. Foucault presents the panopticon as an image of the way power works in the new politico-judicial system he describes. The panopticon “must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men” (205). In a setup where the power must be exerted over the body but where the public spectacle and torture are no longer used then the entire judicial system presiding over the subjects becomes a major arena, like sexuality, through which power can operate. What is interesting about this operation is that it removes the need for physical contact with the body while remaining an instrument of power over the body. Like the discussion above of sexual discourse as a manipulation of power via the will to knowledge, so too does the disciplinary procedure move according to the will to knowledge for the benefit of power. Foucault readily admits that this analysis of power is very much a political one, stating that he intends to “regard punishment as a political tactic” and to “make the technology of power the very principle both of the humanization of the penal system and of the knowledge of man” (23). The link to politics comes through the panopticon; it stands as both an actual and hypothetical diagram of power’s operation within a society.

"The Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building; it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use" (205).

Just as was discovered within the discussion on sexuality, “a specific mode of subjection [the politically imposed penal system] was able to give birth to man as an object of knowledge for a discourse with a ‘scientific status’” (24). Power then certainly exhibits a sort of control over the body but perhaps in a much more subtle and complex way than generally believed. Power like that of the panopticon controls the body but it wants the soul: Foucault quotes Mably as writing that “punishment, if I may so put it, should strike the soul” (326). Two films about prison life that illuminate Discipline and Punish will be in the following chapter.

A New Mechanics of Power

But power did not exert itself in this manner forever. A transformation occurred that appeared to prefer less violent methods of disciplining rather than simple torture. Foucault explains the day to day routine of a prison community in Paris and compares it to the spectacle. The prison proceeds like clockwork with activities intended to enrich the prisoners physically, mentally and spiritually through work, education and prayer. This is shown through the prison schedule.

"At twenty minutes to eleven, at the drum-roll, the prisoners form into ranks, and proceed in division to the school. The class lasts two hours and consists alternatively of reading, writing, drawing and arithmetic…

At seven o’clock in the summer, at eight in winter, work stops; bread is distributed for the last time in the workshops. For a quarter of an hour one of the prisoners or supervisors reads a passage from some instructive or uplifting work. This is followed by evening prayer" (6-7).

This attention, effort and care to discipline all parts of the convicted rather than only the body marked a change in the penal system. No longer did power appear as a source of pain and agony but instead as a shaping force for the entire person. Foucault writes of this change that “we have, then, a public execution and a time-table…they each define a certain penal style. Less than a century separates them. It was a time when, in Europe and the United States, the entire economy of punishment was redistributed” (7).

This economic redistribution was apparent not only in punishment but also throughout the entire judicial process. Previously during the reign of the monarchs the head of state played the parts of investigator, jury and judge all at once. The new system showed a distribution of these operations to different actors. “The power of judging has been transferred, in whole or in part, to other authorities than the judges of the offence” (22). But though the judge seems to wield less control over a case, it is still left to him to judge more than the guilt of the accused. As was shown above in the case of the farm hand accused of sexual misconduct, the judge must take into consideration medical health both physical and mental, as well as social and economic factors when judging a case. The treatment of the insane or mentally compromised appears as more than just a sentence:

"And the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgment of guilt, a legal decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization. Today the judge – magistrate or juror – certainly does more than judge" (21).

Clearly the breadth of information considered within the case expands. This can be attributed to the will to knowledge, as was identified above with regard to the scientific discourse on sexuality. Here again we have a pervasive and scientific inquiry into the mind of the criminal; the state looks to expand its influence from physical pain to the rest of the person, taking a more holistic approach. As mentioned previously, the judge of expanded breadth still wields less control over his office. Foucault writes that

"Throughout the penal procedure and the implementation of the sentence there swarms a whole series of subsidiary authorities. Small-scale legal systems and parallel judges have multiplied around the principal judgment: psychiatric or psychological experts, magistrates concerned with the implementation of sentences, educationalists, members of the prison service, all fragment the legal power to punish; it might be objected that none of them really shares the right to judge; that some after sentence is passed, have no other right than to implement the punishment laid down by the court and, above all, that others – the experts – intervene before the sentence not to pass judgment, but to assist the judges in their decisions" (21).

The judging process has expanded in territory but become fragmented in operation. This provides a clear parallel to the power distributed through scientific discourse on sexuality. The vocabulary and subjects change but the operation expands and is decentralized.

The Public Spectacle

In addition to sexuality and sexual relationships serving as venues through which power can exert influence, the penal system is a second institution identified by Foucault as a staging area for power. Discipline and Punish, published in 1975, provides another genealogical glimpse at changes in forms of punishment. Foucault identifies a transition from torture to punishment and finally to discipline, all the while showing that the body itself stands as the place of action. Though more recent developments in discipline appear more humane in their methods, they nonetheless use the body as a site for conflict. Foucault’s description comes to a point in his discussion of the panopticon, a prison designed for maximum efficiency and control over the prisoners. Taken literally and metaphorically, it can become a microcosmic image of power itself. The panopticon, or the penultimate prison, becomes for Foucault a place where a technology of power exerts itself over the human body.

The public spectacle of torture allowed the state to exert power directly over the body of the individual to be punished. The method plainly shows that the body itself presents as the site of the punishment. Instead of imprisonment, the public spectacle visited violence directly and physically instead of mentally or socially. Foucault cites accounts of a drawing and quartering in Paris in 1757, quoting the precise instructions given at the prisoner’s sentencing:

"the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the wind" (3).

Little is left to the imagination; none of the punishment lands anywhere than squarely on the criminal’s body. Foucault presents this event as a precursor to the power exerted through modern prisons. With the nation state reigning, often held together by fragile alliances and fickle monarchs, the simplest way to control subjects was by fear – fear of physical harm. Public torture certainly accomplishes this, especially when the torture does not go smoothly. At the aforementioned torture, eyewitnesses report that the horses were not aptly trained for the event and that due to the strength of the convict’s body they were forced to “sever the sinews and hack at the joints” (3). Certainly this public punishment serves actual and figurative purposes; not only does the criminal receive physically the justice imposed on him by the court but the observers become truly subjects out of fear. This can be seen as an archaic method of control and power.

The Confession in Closer (2004)

To continue the theme of confessions the analysis turns now to the film Closer. Centering upon the porous relationships of four main characters, the film follows the course of the adultery and lying that takes place in each. The scenes in which the affairs surface provide support for Foucault’s thesis that sexual discourse has taken on the form of confession: that confession must expose every secret and that from these secrets will emerge some sort of truth. Foucault notes, and the film affirms, that this truth and the stability it promises require more than simple confessions.

During scenes 12 and 13 Dan (Jude Law) confesses to Alice (Natalie Portman) that he has been having an affair with Anna (Julia Roberts). First recall what Foucault has written on the confession in sexual discourse.

"The west requires the nearly infinite task of telling – telling oneself and another…everything that might concern the interplay of innumerable pleasures, sensations, and thoughts which, through the body and the soul, had some affinity with sex. This scheme for transforming sex into discourse had been devised long before in an ascetic and monastic setting. The seventeenth century made it into a rule for everyone" (History 20).

Within this quotation Foucault explains how sexual discourse derives its form from the Christian confessional. Dan’s confession follows this script; the betrayed even comes to his aid in ensuring that he tells all. For Dan’s part, he appears prepared as if for an interview; honesty was obviously the primary motivation behind his answers. “Deception is brutal; I’m not pretending otherwise.” No doubt he intends to appear as conscientious by telling the truth. Alice, though she asks for details such as “Do you bring her here?” remains unimpressed by his confession. Whereas Dan expects that revelation of the truth surrounding his sexual activity will bring some sort of understanding, however painful, instead Alice’s reaction shows him that the confession brings neither truth nor stability. In this case, the incitement to discourse fails to provide the insight promised. Instead of finding satisfaction by exercising the will to knowledge, the characters find themselves as nothing more than instruments of power.



During scenes 15 and 16, the confession between Larry (Clive Owen) and Anna follows a similar path. In this case, Larry confesses that he slept with a prostitute on his business trip. Larry, the betrayer for the moment, becomes the driving force of the confession.

LARRY: I slept with someone in New York. A whore. I’m sorry.
ANNA: Why did you tell me?
LARRY: I couldn’t lie to you.
ANNA: Why not?
LARRY: Because I love you.

What has Larry gained through this disclosure? Does he feel less guilty? Is Anna pleased with his honest revelation? Only Larry is satisfied, and only somewhat.



The conversation then develops into Anna’s confession that she has been with Dan. Again Larry, now the betrayed, insists on total disclosure. Indeed, Larry insists that Anna spare no detail in explaining her extramarital sex.
LARRY: Answer the question [regarding her sexual activity]!
ANNA: Why are you doing this?
LARRY: Because I want to know.
ANNA: Why is the sex so important?
LARRY: BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING CAVEMAN!
ANNA: [She reveals all the details of her sexual relationship]
LARRY: That’s the spirit! Thank you for your honesty. Now fuck off and die.

Larry, like Kinsey’s father in the preceding film, can be seen as the embodiment of the repressive hypothesis. His obsession with sex and its discourse presumes to satisfy the will to knowledge. Knowledge he certainly obtains but to what end? As Foucault suggests, it is power that moves Larry to locate identity and truth within sex. Though such concepts typically offer comfort and stability, neither are available to any character.
The failure of Closer’s characters to benefit from sexual discourse in the form of confession upholds Foucault’s assertion that the repressive hypothesis is nothing more than a manifestation of power.

What these scene from Kinsey and Closer indicate is an understanding of Foucault’s thesis: that sexuality has become an object of discourse; that this discourse takes the form of a confession; that power exploits the will to knowledge in a way that arouses scientific discourse; that society improperly links truth and identity to this discourse. Each film offers characters themselves caught up in repressive hypothesis and shows how their misinterpretations and delusions lead them to suffering. The scientists in Kinsey and the confessors and confessants in Closer all operate with the understanding that candid sexual dialog will in some way bring them closer to the truth about themselves, their relationships and others. Though they may make strides and obtain knowledge, the scientific discourse on sex remains insufficient. Without something else, in Kinsey’s case the encounter, a void in knowledge remains. Foucault would appreciate the filmmaker’s deconstruction of the repressive hypothesis in their depiction of power’s exploitation of the will to knowledge in sexual discourse.

The Confession

Later in the film during scene 19, Kinsey takes his father’s sex history. The scene offers a twist on the conventional confession: this scene of sexual discourse features the pastor confessing to the scientist. When Kinsey the younger returns home for his mother’s funeral, he asks Kinsey the elder to contribute to his study. After breaking through some discomfort his father confesses to having had a “chronic condition” in his youth. He tells his son that
There was a problem. A chronic condition, the doctors called it. I was outfitted with a tight strap that I had to wear at all times. It kept me from coming into contact with my genitals. It was a highly embarrassing remedy but it proved effective. The condition was cured…I was ten [years old].



Here again is the image of the repressive hypothesis at work. The film presents the viewer with an obvious case of physical sexual repression. What Foucault might comment is that its presentation comes within an exposition on scientific discourse and confession. Here the father actually believes that the repression provided him with a cure. Kinsey the scientist thinks that he knows better because of his work. Therefore the father represents the repressed and Dr. Kinsey the person caught up in the repressive hypothesis. In the film, it is Dr. Kinsey who absolves his father when he says, “I’m so sorry, dad.”

What the scene says along with Foucault is that sexual discourse took the form of a confession; a confession to science with the expectation of revelation. But above it was shown that Kinsey’s true revelation comes later from an encounter – thus the filmmakers may be seen to support Foucault’s hypothesis that the science of sexuality provides only limited and masked access to truth and identity.

Sex Histories and Sermons

As Kinsey instructs his interviewer in the opening scene, the viewer glimpses a piece of Kinsey’s data amassing techniques. Kinsey prefers to use interviews as opposed to surveys when collecting sex histories. Scene one offers an image of the sheet used to catalog the responses.



As the interviewer explains, “this piece of paper has been divided up into squares. Your sex history will fit on this single page in a cryptic code.” Kinsey reminds him, “Don’t forget to mention that there’s no written key to the code. The interview subject will only be candid if he knows he’s speaking in the strictest confidence.” Within this dialog rests a commitment to keeping the secret of sex. As Foucault suggested, modern societies “dedicated themselves to speaking of it [sex] ad infinitum, while exploiting is as the secret” (History 35). Within this method Kinsey brings Foucault’s statement alive. By using an interview instead of a survey Kinsey purposely directs subjects to speak about sex honestly and comprehensively. Simultaneously he plays into society’s image of sex as a secret. The cryptic code makes the subject feel secure and more able to freely discuss his sex history. Therein the filmmakers support Foucault’s observation of power working through sexual discourse. Kinsey’s father further depicts the manifestations of power associated with sexual discourse.

Kinsey’s relationship with his father is also evident throughout the film. His father appears as a superb example of one caught up in the repressive hypothesis and also offers a variant on the typical confession. Soon after the film begins, an interviewer inquires about Kinsey’s relationship with his father. A scene depicting a young Kinsey listening to one of his father’s sermons follows. The topic, as fate would have it, was sexuality. The preacher manages to find sex in nearly every aspect of life.



Lust has a thousand avenues. The dance hall, the ice cream parlor, the tenement saloon, the Turkish bath. Like the Hydra, it grows new heads everywhere. Even the modern inventions of science are used to cultivate immorality. The gas engine has brought us the automobile joyride and an even more pernicious menace: the roadside brothel. Electricity has made possible the degrading picture show. Because of the telephone, a young woman can hear the voice of her suitor on the pillow right next to her. And let’s not forget the most scandalous invention of them all: the talon slide fastener, otherwise known as the zipper – which provides every man and boy speedy access to moral oblivion.

Clearly Kinsey the elder portrays that part of Foucault’s theory that sees sexuality as immanent in all things. One of Foucault’s concerns with power as manifested in sexuality is that it locates itself in a number of dispersed places that seem to offer truth and identity. For example, Foucault writes of homosexuals that “Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principles; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret which gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him” (History 43). The preacher shifts this immanence from the level of the individual to the level of society as a whole. The modern inventions of science are seen as symptomatic of an underlying sexual sickness. But even though the preacher sees this immanence as problematic, though not as a manifestation of power, he nevertheless personifies the repressive hypothesis. His viewing of sexuality as dispersed, however far fetched, is on some level consistent with Foucault’s ideas. Nevertheless his desire to eliminate all but the most essential sexual actions betrays his commitment to repression. His persona therefore shows one caught in the repressive hypothesis; by finding sexuality everywhere power manifests itself through his will to knowledge but through his insistence on the privatization of sex he himself continues to keep sex a secret.

Dr. Kinsey and Nature

During the opening scenes, one of the interviewers asks Kinsey about his health as a boy. Kinsey replies with a long list of ailments that plagued him including typhoid fever and rickets. He credits his recovery to a discovery of the outdoors. “It improved greatly when I finally discovered the great outdoors. I never got over the excitement of setting out into the wild, escaping bed, illness, family…I started to learn about things by grasping them, tasting them, looking at them” (Scene 1). Here the encounter with nature appears in direct opposition to the medical progress made against Kinsey’s illnesses. Though undoubtedly treated with medicine’s best answer to his sicknesses, Kinsey himself points to nature as the curer of his maladies. The director can be seen here to endorse some of Foucault’s ideas, most specifically those that discredit scientific discourse as the ultimate source of truth. Kinsey, penultimate scientist, does not yet see that science fails to find the truth of his illness. He discovers his own humanity through an encounter with nature. But Kinsey has yet to make this connection. The director alludes to this confusion later in the same scene during a discussion between Kinsey and a fellow scout. When the scout admits to Kinsey of a sexual problem, most likely nocturnal emission, Kinsey responds with some instruction from a manual before suggesting, “Let’s pray.”



The confusion appears when Kinsey and company kneel before a spectacular wooded lake. Though he may have intended to pray to the Christian god, he appears to be praying to nature itself. This image implies ambiguity in Kinsey’s life. His youthful prayers are obliged to be made to the Christian god, a trend no doubt influenced by his father. During his adult years, as explored above, he looks to science for insight. But in the final scene, Kinsey’s revelation becomes complete as he sees the encounter with nature as a source of truth. The film sees Kinsey and his wife go through a variety of understandings within their relationship that result in some insecurity and suffering. This, compounded by Kinsey’s failing health, create struggle near the end of the film. In the last scene Kinsey suggests a walk through the woods that brings back some freshness and stability into their relationship. The encounter brings them to some truth. By presenting this in the closing moments of the film, the director locates truth, or at least insight that brings comfort in areas outside of both science and sexuality. This affirms Foucault’s theory of power and knowledge; for Foucault, the will to knowledge is exploited by power, offering only half truths that leave the searcher feeling secure but far away from truth. Kinsey compliments this argument by locating the peace of the main characters in a realm outside of science and inside the personal encounter.

Kinsey's Scientia Sexualis

Within Volume One Foucault draws a connection between the will to knowledge and power. The scientific discourse on sexuality thrives on the human will to knowledge, exploiting it as a medium through which to manifest power. Dr. Kinsey, or at least his character in the film, embodies this drive to scientific knowledge. He measures his success by how much data he has collected; he first gains notoriety for his overwhelming collection of gall wasps. With over one million wasps catalogued he considers himself the authority on the subject. Similarly, his studies on human sexuality aim to be no less exhaustive. While pitching his project to a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey betrays his trust that hidden inside enormous amounts of scientific data lies the truth. His conversation during dinner in scene 17 shows this dedication to amassing data:
A scientist can only generalize with reliable certainty if he has enough statistical information…that’s why I’ve broken the American population down into 200 major social subgroups. We’ll get anywhere from 400 to a thousand histories from each group for a total of 100,000 give or take a few. It could take 20 years but at the end we’ll finally be able to answer most of the basic questions about human sexuality…

Kinsey’s systematic approach to the collection of data can be seen as a direct parallel to what Foucault would call the will to knowledge. Though Kinsey’s study situates itself within a time the film sees as repressive, Kinsey’s study provides a link to Foucault’s deconstruction of the repressive hypothesis.
Since the end of the sixteenth century, the “putting into discourse of sex,” far from undergoing a process of restriction, on the contrary has been subjected to a mechanism of increasing incitement; that the techniques of power exercised over sex have not obeyed a principle of rigorous selection, but rather one of dissemination and implantation of polymorphous sexualities; and that the will to knowledge has not come to a halt in the face of a taboo that must not be lifted, but has persisted in constituting – despite many mistakes, of course - a science of sexuality (12-13).

What Foucault writes on and what Kinsey displays is how power inserts itself into sexual discourse by means of the will to knowledge. Foucault wants to suggest that wherever science claims to offer truth and insight on sexuality one should observe this to be a manifestation of power. If Foucault’s assertion is true, then Kinsey would necessarily develop an insufficient picture of human sexuality based only on cold scientific data. Instead of finding truth, or at least accompanying a discovery of truth, an outsider would observe the controlling mechanisms of power at work in Kinsey’s research. The will to knowledge uncovers only the truths allowed by power, which often are only shades of the whole truth. This paper argues that Kinsey’s love of nature, developed through the encounter, shows that additional insight lies in this encounter – an alternative to scientific discourse.

Sexuality and Power

Finally, the analysis centers explicitly on power. Foucault criticizes the common view that power is synonymous with control, asking “why are the deployments of power reduced simply to the procedure of law and interdiction?” (86). Luckily for those holding that view, Foucault provides a thorough exposition on power within History. Within a few pages he describes what power is and what it is not. From these key characterizations themes are isolated that become relevant for the analysis of films that follows. First, power does not locate itself in a central point of control. Rather, its influence comes through multiple sources. Further it does not describe an ability to control that is gained or lost by a ruler: “Power is not something that is acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile relations” (94). Here Foucault begins to undermine common ideas of ruler and ruled. Soon he outright condemns them.
Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and serving as a general matrix – no such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more limited groups to the very depths of the social body (94).

Understanding that Foucault’s power distances itself from ruler and ruled, oppressor and oppressed, is elemental. Recalling Nietzsche’s description of the “non-place,” Foucault writes more about power’s location. If it cannot be found within a ruler or a central source then it must be dispersed within relationships. “Relationships of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect to other types of relationships (economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual relations), but are immanent in the latter” (94). Here Foucault describes sexual relations as one realm in which power manifests itself. It is one of the many relations in which power is “both intentional and non-subjective” (94). Foucault here allows for purpose but removes a causal agent. In addition, resistance to power cannot escape its immanence: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (95).
The point of this summary and Volume One is to show that sexuality has become an area of assertion for power; it has become so through an explosion in discourse driven by the will to knowledge’s insistence that within sex is hidden truth and identity. To summarize and solidify these ideas, this chapter closes with the story of Herculine Barbin before the next chapter looks at sexuality in film. Herculine Barbin was a 19th century hermaphrodite, or a person born with both male and female sex organs, Foucault introduces her memoirs, in which her sex changes from female to male. In her case, this change stemmed from medical examinations. Foucault compares this, an intervention by society to determine one’s true sex, to the approach taken in the Middle Ages.
In the Middle Ages…it was the role of the father of the godfather (thus of those who ‘named’ the child) to determine at the time of baptism which sex was going to be retained…But later, on the threshold of adulthood, when the time came for them to marry, hermaphrodites were free to decide for themselves if they wished to go on being of the sex which had been assigned to them, or if they preferred the other (vii-viii).

Thus during that time period the individual of a reasonable age had the authority and the autonomy with which to make such a decision. For Herculine Barbin, society would decide her sex. “From the legal point of view, this obviously implied the disappearance of free choice. It was no longer up to the individual to decide which sex he wished to belong to, juridically or socially” (ix). Barbin’s case represents the operations of power that Foucault characterizes within History. The individual no longer stands in position to determine his or her sexuality, upon which the determining society places so much weight. Not only does the individual lack control over his sexuality but power simultaneously prompts the individual to see that sexuality as the place of truth and identity. The individual then is precluded from determining for himself or herself an identity. As Foucault writes, there was a “moral interest that inhered in the medical diagnosis of the truth sex” – an interest that “promises us at the same time our sex, our true sex, and that whole truth about ourselves which secretly keeps vigil in it” (ix, xi). Bearing in mind power manifested in sexuality, the next chapter investigates two films that take sexuality as their focus and offers a viewing that Foucault may have shared.

Confess: Sexuality as Scientific Discourse

Having introduced the genealogy, the project proceeds now to an investigation of a particular genealogy: History of Sexuality, Volume One. Within this volume, Foucault introduces what was to be a six volume project on sexuality – a sexuality defined in terms of and relations to power. First, this section looks at his thesis in this first volume by exploring the repressive hypothesis, the incitement to discourse as a confession, and finally the role sex plays in identity before exposing the role of power in each of these operations. Foucault calls the repressive hypothesis the idea that “one great central mechanism destined to say no” controls human sexuality (History 12). He refers to the common notion that societies require sex to be in some way private and forbidden. Indeed, the idea that sex does not present itself as a suitable hobby or topic for discussion persists. But Foucault finds that contrary to this common understanding, that society seeks to control and limit sexuality and the discussion of sexuality, power actually elicits sexual discourse.
But more important was the multiplication of discourses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: an institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail (18).

It is clear enough that Foucault does not see a privatization of sex, a localization of sex and discourse to the bedroom, but instead sees institutional efforts to solicit discussion. To defend this idea, he refers to several examples including the text My Secret Life, the narrative of a French farm hand and finally developments within the Christian confessional. My Secret Life describes in great detail the sexual habits and practices of its author. It seeks to leave nothing out while including even the most trivial of details. “The guiding principle for the strangest of these [sexual] practices…the fact of recounting them all, and in detail…had been lodged in the heart of modern man for over two centuries” (22). Foucault uses the work, written anonymously, as a symbol for an age in which though explicit sexual discourse appeared to be outlawed, it was also called for by society. To compliment this text, he recounts the story of a French farm hand mentioned above who paid a young girl to pleasure him. The simple man was a traveling laborer, working for food and often sleeping in barns. Yet his small sexual encounter caused a stir in France, requiring the assistance of lawyers, investigators, physicians and psychiatrists.
One can be fairly certain that during this same period the Lapcourt schoolmaster was instructing the little villagers to mind their language and not talk about these things aloud. But this was undoubtedly one of the conditions enabling the institutions of knowledge and power to overlay this bit of theater with their solemn discourse…our society…assembled around these timeless gestures, their barely furtive pleasures between simple-minded adults and alert children, a whole machinery for speechifying, analyzing and investigating (32).

So even as the school teacher reprimands children for discussing the sexual incident at school, other elements in the institution cannot refrain from extensive discussion. Not only that, but the psychological inquiry into the farm hand purported to offer truth.
Foucault sees similar developments within the Christian confessional.
According to the new pastoral, sex must not be named imprudently, but its aspects, its correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications: a shadow in a daydream, an image too slowly dispelled, a badly exorcised complicity between the body’s mechanics and the mind’s complacency: everything had to be told (19).

Not only has there been an increase in sexual discourse but also the linkage of sexual discourse to confession: “This technique [confession] might have remained tied to the destiny of Christian spirituality if it had not been supported and relayed by other mechanisms. In the first place, by a ‘public interest’…a power mechanism that functioned in a way that discourse on sex…became essential” (23). At first a confession can be understood as an admission of guilt. On the one hand this implies that the action confessed is a crime. On the other, it implies that something can be gained from the admission of such an offense. In other words, confession becomes a path towards truth. When applied to sexual discourse, the model of confession convinces that when the confessant admits to the truth of his deviations he will find some sort of liberation. “The confession became one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth…Western man has become a confessing animal” (59). For Foucault, this is just the sort of activity to which the will to knowledge and power would be intrinsic to.
Of what significance is the shift of sexual discourse towards the confessional? By positing the idea that sexual discourse as a confession in some way reveals truth, it simultaneously becomes a source of identity. The truth not only of the sexual act appears but along with it comes a glimpse into the personhood of the confessor. “Between each of us and our sex, the West has placed a never-ending demand for truth…it is up to sex to tell us our truth, since sex is what holds it in darkness” (77). The truth kept secret by sex offers a connection to the very identity and being of the person. Sex therefore cannot be separated from the entirety of a person’s being and identity. According to the West, no part of a person’s composition is isolated from his sexuality.
Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected [by his sexuality]. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principles; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret which gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him (43).

Such a mentality lead to what Foucault calls a “new specification of individuals” that without explicit acknowledgement allows sexuality to permeate each part of someone’s personhood. Words describing such a relationship between sex and identity might include presence, immanence and organic. It can be seen within the text that such terms will also characterize power, which is not coincidentally the driving force behind developments in the use of sexuality.

Foucault and the Genealogy

Foucault’s philosophy presents itself accessibly in large part because it consists of genealogies. To begin with, genealogies are topical; that is, their investigations peer into common subjects experienced widely. When Foucault writes on medical institutions in The Birth of the Clinic and punishment in Discipline and Punish, many readers will prefer this concrete analysis of familiar structures to a more abstract philosophical analysis of the issues raised. When he writes on sexuality in particular, he addresses an experience nearly universal. He offers an explanation on the genealogy and its usefulness in the essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy History.” Ultimately, the essay provides an essential foundation to understanding Foucault’s power when it describes the nature of conflict and how the genealogy can address this nature. In the first place, the genealogy appears as an alternative to an historical analysis. Foucault’s intention is not to discredit historians and their detailed work. Instead, he wants to show that historians often burden themselves with a search for origins that do not exist. “Genealogy does not oppose itself to history as the lofty and profound gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects the meta-historical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to the search for ‘origins’” (140). Why reject the concept of an origin? Foucault’s problem, and Nietzsche’s problem as well, is simply that the origin is commonly understood as being “the site of truth” (143). Foucault rejects the notion that “the origin makes possible a field of knowledge whose function is to recover it [truth]” (143). The genealogy rejects using history as a search for origin as a means of recovering truth; instead it challenges the very idea of cause and effect in history, thus weakening any connection between the hypothetical origin and events that followed.
To better understand cause and effect, Nietzsche and Foucault introduce the term “non-place” as the location of conflict.
Emergence designates a place of confrontation but not as a closed field offering the spectacle of a struggle among equals. Rather…it is a ‘non-place,’ a pure distance, which indicates that the adversaries do not belong to a common space. Consequently, no one is responsible for an emergence; no one can glory in it, since it always occurs in the interstice (150).

Here appears a fundamental principle for introducing Foucault’s power. He uses the genealogy precisely because it rejects the claim that truth can be found by the exposition of historical sequences. Put simply, change happens due to a conflict occurring nowhere. There is no truth inherent in the study of historical developments; the phrase itself would likely be contested by Foucault. Does this mean that the genealogy pays little attention to the details of beginnings and ends in history? “On the contrary, it will cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning; it will be scrupulously attentive…[the genealogist] must be able to recognize the events of history, its jolts, its surprises, its unsteady victories and unpalatable defeats” (144). The genealogist does not ignore historical sequences but instead declines to give them authority to dictate truths on cause and effect. So of what use is this information on the genealogy in this investigation of Foucault’s power? To begin with, it is a reminder of one element that makes Foucault accessible: the common topical content of his genealogies. Further, the use of genealogy introduces Foucault’s thoughts on truth and knowledge. By showing that truth does not conform to an origin and that historical investigation does not inevitably lead to primary truth he reminds the reader of the following:
"In appearance, or rather, according to the mask it bears, historical consciousness is neutral, devoid of passions, and committed solely to truth. But if it examines itself and if, more generally, it interrogates the various forms of scientific consciousnesses in its history, it finds that all these forms and transformations are aspects of the will to knowledge: instinct, passion, the inquisitor’s devotion, cruel subtlety, and malice" (162).

This insight, that even historical inquiry that purports to be objective is subject to other elemental processes such as the will to knowledge, alerts the reader that what is at stake in this power inquiry is more than just cause and effect, dominance and slavery.

Plato and the Homeless: An Introduction

Tom Gahl (A&S ’04) found a new activity to conduct on a rainy day at the homeless shelter at which he volunteered: discussing Plato. One might reasonably expect this activity to have been too challenging for the group of men, considering that “homeless men have an average reading ability equal to that of a 5th grade student (maybe even lower).” But Gahl found that with some background information on the more complex concepts of metaphysics, truth, and the human soul, the men were able to place themselves in Plato’s allegory of the cave. What resulted was a lively discussion on how Plato’s themes were intelligible to them through their own experiences: “homelessness, alcoholism, drug abuse, fear, lack of knowledge and skills.” Gahl draws two conclusions from his activity. First, he writes that “I am not sure anyone started living a better life because of our activity, but nobody can tell me, or the guys, that Plato is not applicable to everyday life, even for homeless people.” Within this statement there is the certainty that philosophy truly centers on and is applicable to common life experience; rather than mere abstractions, philosophy offers tangible considerations of the experienced world. Second, Gahl writes that “to say philosophy is universally accessible is almost an understatement.” If those lacking in formal education and even in intellectual skill can make a connection, then surely an overwhelming majority of those interested can. These two points, the relevance and accessibility of philosophy, comprise the starting point for this project.

Although this thesis has survived many changes of form and content, the preliminary goal remains the same: to create an accessible project for people who fear philosophy. Philosophy, for those who study it, provides a useful exploration of life and experience. For those who do not study it, it can remain a complex and confusing set of abstractions with little or no connection to the world and everyday life. This project implicitly affirms the relevance of philosophy to everyday life and even suggests its immanence in common experience. As a consequence, the style of the writing intends to be discursive in style while remaining analytical in method. In addition, the content and form reflect the goal of showing philosophy’s relevance to typical experience.

The content of this thesis is twofold. It contains analyses of philosophy and analyses of film. The philosophy is that of Michel Foucault, specifically his philosophy of power as presented in History of Sexuality: Volume One and Discipline and Punish. Foucault’s method of research makes these texts particularly useful. By following Nietzsche through the use of a genealogy, Foucault writes about subjects common to many civilizations. Whether through experience or through media coverage, most people are familiar with sex and with crime and punishment. By selecting common ideas that many people experience, Foucault can approach a difficult concept (power) through appealing and accessible research. Likewise, film provides viewers with an entertaining method of approaching philosophical concepts. Popular films are certainly based on real life scenarios but can also offer artistic portrayals of complex ideas. In many ways, a fine film is a model for a project that seeks to connect great ideas with real life in an accessible way. For these reasons this thesis includes analyses of popular films, connecting them with Foucault’s ideas as presented in the earlier chapters. Ultimately, the content will provide a route to Foucault’s idea of power.

The form of the thesis will also be twofold. First, there will be a long paper typical of a research project. It will include screenshots from the films and will be accompanied by a DVD containing the scenes referred to in the text. The thesis’ truer and more creative form will be that of a video weblog. The website will present the writings of Foucault in juxtaposition with the exegesis of this paper and the pertinent video clips. It will be an open forum for anyone to view and anyone to contribute to. The site, and therefore the project, will be decidedly subject to the power and knowledge immanent in the many rather than the one. If Foucault is correct, it could not be any other way.