Post Class- Foucault

I really enjoyed our class discussion on Michele Foucault and the idea of surveillance- it got me thinking about how much it's related to ideology. There are those people who consider themselves more aware of the surveillance that occurs by the government of everyday people- we definitely aren't anonymous in this society. And yet those who publicize their beliefs are considered to be radical and crazy, a concept brought about by our ideology that anyone or anything against our government is, in some way or another, treacherous. Rather than instilling knowledge, these kinds of individuals are stigmatized as crazy, thus their rantings obsolete. We talked a lot in class about movies that relate to these concepts- I just saw that movie RED with Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Bruce Willis. Though it's comedy and not to be taken seriously, John Malkovich's character is one of those people I just talked about- a conspiracy nut always looking over his shoulder and obsessed with how the Internet and cell phones are used as tracking devices. Bruce Willis explains that, in fact, his rantings weren't entirely crazy- he was part of a government experiment and given a dose of LSD every day for a number of years. So now no matter what he says, he's obviously insane. Comical, yes, but in relation to Foucault and our class discussion of this lack of real privacy.. pretty interesting.