How Have Depictions in Cinema, Television Series and Comic Books Reflected the Use and Proliferation of Surveillance in Contemporary Society Following the 9/11 Attacks?

Seminal novels such as George Orwell's 1984 have voiced the concerns regarding the proliferation of mass surveillance in society. Since the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington and the subsequent 'War on Terror', state surveillance has escalated. Cinema, Television Series and comic book format provide a means for engagement with such issues in contemporary society through both academic and non-academic discussion. These examples of modes that help define popular culture, assists in the theorising of surveillance through metaphor, reference and image. Many more people have encountered George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-four in one of its many iterations than have read the works of Bentham, Foucault or Deleuze and so popular culture makes for a linkage between everyday perceptions and the academic discourse.

Analysing the fictional worlds created in the film The Dark Knight, the Television series of Westworld and Person of Interest as well the narratives found in comic book form such as Verax and The Machine Never Blinks, this project compares such created depictions with our modern and technologically driven panoptic world. The aim is to see through the lens philosophical lens provided by Bentham, Foucault and Deleuze, if and how those portrayals have permeated, modified or perhaps defined understandings of contemporary and ubiquitous surveillance.