Transparent fictions: Big data, information and the changing miseen-scène of (government and) surveillance

Abstract

Working within the framework of a hypothesised shift between Michel Foucault’s model of discipline and Gilles Deleuze’s paradigm of the control society, this article considers the cinematic expression of emerging modes of monitoring in a surveillance society in which there has been an exponential increase in, and access to, information. In order to contextualise this interplay between these two models, three related areas are considered in this article. Firstly, the growing awareness of the consequences of Big Data, not only within teaching and research institutions, but through the dissemination of (sometimes erroneous) information in popular media and various news platforms is discussed. The British government’s response to such developments with a ‘rhetoric of transparency’, which has been critically undermined with the recent ‘leaks’ from whistleblowers affecting both British and American security agencies, in particular, is considered. Secondly, a brief outline of the changing theoretical models which can be employed to aid understanding of this situation is offered and, thirdly, in examining popular cultural responses to the rise of a Big Data discourse, two films are analysed, Sam Mendes’s (2012) Skyfall and Tomas Alfredson’s (2011) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, both of which seek to engage with these changing frameworks. These films in turn contribute to the fictions of transparency in relation to government espionage agencies.