Texts which deserve our attention are those that challenge our thinking.

The movie challenges my thinking about surveillance and how it can affect peoples lives and how surveillance is used today.

Spider scene, train boarding scene, eye surgery scene.

Steven Spielberg’s film ‘Minority Report’ shows that a text which deserves our attention is one that challenges our thinking. I agree with this statement and the film ‘Minority Report’ is a good way to show this. I think that a text which deserves our attention is one that challenges our thinking because it gets us to think and relate it back to our lives and what the connections are. Texts that challenge our thinking can also be quite important to possibly make changes in our lives or observe certain things. They can expand our minds and thoughts, making us more aware of the life around us. This film challenges my thinking about many things, but one idea in particular is about surveillance. Throughout the movie, the idea of surveillance is seen everywhere. The scenes I think shows this the most is the ‘Spider scene’, the train boarding scene, and the eye surgery scene. These scenes show the idea of surveillance through camera angles, symbolism and sounds. 

First of all, the extensive use of a long bird’s eye view shot in the ‘spider scene’ plus us as the viewer shows the idea of surveillance. In this scene a camera pans over the rooms of a run down complex. As the viewers we are looking down on the lives on people which live here. Us as the viewer puts us in the position of the state – all knowing, all seeing, and we proceed to invade the intimate and and private lives of civilians that live in a run down complex that are not as well of as others in this visual text. The spiders and us watching as the viewers invade their privacy as we see many things that should be personal to these people. We see a couple fighting, a man on the toilet and even a couple having sex.  This reveals to us the lengths the state is willing to go and how they are always watching. The state thinks that because of the new technology they have of preventing crime, that they can always watch and track every bodies every move. This leads to them having power over most people. The insouciant attitude of the cops and their willingness to wanting to know where everyone is and who they are in this scene further reinforces the state’s indifferences to invade peoples personal lives just for convenience. This idea of invasion of privacy is seen in most other dystopian texts, including the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four where telescreens are used to see everything the citizens do. Explain how this makes me think, what about and how this makes the text successful.

Secondly, the train boarding scene also makes me think about the idea of surveillance. In this scene..(what happens?) Although this is a short scene, it shows quite a lot. It really focus’s on the idea of surveillance and how in this world, there is no privacy and no secrets. Everyone is constantly tracked and the government always knows where they are. The idea of surveillance and invasion of privacy is also seen in our world today. For example..(cameras everywhere)

Last of all, the eye surgery scene interprets the idea of surveillance once again. Another way in which invasion on privacy is seen today is.. (social media (snap maps), government hacking cameras and seeing every message we send or call we make)