The Panopticon – Jeremy Bentham’s Idea for a Perfect Prison

Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher and social theorist, never quite got over the rejection of his ideas for “the perfect prison”.  In fact, he was so disgruntled that he came up with the idea of sinister interest –the vested interests of the powerful that then conspire against a wider public interest.  That rings bells…

Regardless, his ideas were not original – there had been round prisons before – but he did live to see his own idea incorporated into a National Penitentiary (otherwise known as Millbank Prison) in the UK, which opened in 1821.  He wasn’t happy with that either.  After his death, the idea of radial prisons did take off – which most say owe a debt to Bentham’s Panopticon idea.

I won’t explain how the Pantopticon was meant to work – the video below (created by the very talented Myles Zhang) does a really good job of that.  The name hails from the Greek for “all seeing” – panoptes – and not from an old Tom Baker Doctor Who story (The Deadly Assassin if you’re interested).  It has become somewhat embedded in popular culture, a similar Panopticon appeared in one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, too.

Back to Earth, perhaps it was pre-revolutionary Cuba that got the closest to Bentham’s original ideas when it built the Presidio Modelo in the 1920s.  However idealistic the plan, they soon went wrong.  When a young Fidel Castro found himself imprisoned there decades later, what was designed to be a space to hold 5,000 inmates at capacity was now “home” to over 6,000 with no running water and almost overflowing with the detritus of everyday life.  I guess the idea of “who watches the watcher” was as important then as Bentham thought it originally, but as the idea of the Panopticon only works in the authorities ensure that the watchers are watched, perhaps the idea was flawed from the get-go, in its assumption that human nature gives a damn.  If only he could see the future and the all-pervasive cameras that cover every inch of our cities. I wonder what he would make of them?

Perhaps he would resort to something he had already said - and one of my favourite quotes about the human condition to boot. That is “Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”  Put kindly, we’re all a little too obsessed with progress to realise that what we currently have, after all, is not so bad.

Watch the video about the Panopticon below.

Plurality

Want to experience the ultimate social network? The Bentham Grid went online in 2023 and it ties every detail of your existence up and tracks you using your DNA.  New York City gives the grid the green light and crime plummets to all-time lows. A new era seems to be upon us – the perfect society.

Set in 2023 New York looks little changed – except for the technology involved – and it strikes the right note. It is something that the makes of Children of Men got right a few years ago, transplanting us to a near future without losing the cultural handles needed to make it seem real to us.  I was left wanting more – much more – at the end.  This could (and should) be developed in to a motion picture.

The movie is jam packed with excellent ideas and imagery, from the familiar but futuristic technology (I just hope the executives of Apple aren’t watching) to the weaponry – plenty of references to other movies too.
Yet one reference is to the past. The name of the Bentham Grid harkens back to one Jeremy Bentham, the English founder of modern utilitarianism and someone who designed but never built something called the Panopticon.

The basic concept of his design was to allow watchmen to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) people within a certain area without their being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.  An interesting idea, but the enterprise was to create a perfect prison and not a perfect society.

This is an excellent slice of science fiction by @radical.media who until this point has been best known for its commercial work.  However, Plurality looks set to change that.  They are hybridizing to develop, produce and distribute TV and movies among other forms of digital content and design.

The movie stars Jeff Nissani who you may have seen in last year’s comedy short Mac & Cheese.  The female lead is played by Samantha Strelitz who has recently been seen in The OC Club and I Married a Mobster.   If support actor John Di Domenico seems familiar then it’s probably because you have seen Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans although his résumé does also feature the more upmarket The Sopranos, in which he played Howie Reinstein in 2007.

Hats off to director and writer Dennis Liu, who is a graduate of the Taft School and NYU with a major in film, for this exemplary work.