The Panopticon
The following is a short paper written for my Political Geography class in response to Michel Foucault's Crime and Punishment. Additionally, I watched a Swiss documentary entitled The Panopticon by filmmaker Peter Vlemmix which can be found here! Feel free to leave thoughts/comments/questions etc. It seems since the beginning of modern societies there has been a question of how to control the people who are a part of them in attempts to create a Utopian society. Governments, from monarchs to democracies, have used different techniques to accomplish this goal. In the beginning there was the spectacle; those suspected of committing crimes were publicly humiliated, beaten and often killed. This form of punishment, however, had a downside. It often led to public protests in which common citizens demanded the release of the accused and physically assaulted the executioner. In the end, instead of instilling fear, this technique perpetuated deviance. At the end of th...