Dziga Vertov’s experimental film Man with a Movie Camera was released in 1929. The film portrays a day in the life of people living in a Soviet city. It is a silent film, set in the 1920s, and incorporates a blend of documentary and cinematic art to showcase the city’s vast architecture and buildings, dense population, and bustling industries. Through the abstract editing of the film’s cinematic elements, surveillance totalitarian views are implied by the mine sequence.
The mine sequence is located in a Soviet mine and has lighting beginning on the left side of the screen. Initially, only the miner is illuminated but as he continues to work, the rest of the scene becomes lit up. The scene being illuminated reveals a camera operator filming a miner in action exposing the physical activity that occurs behind the camera as well.
The surveillance totalitarian views appear by the way that the miner and the camera operator are being recorded objectively. The frame’s lens symbolizes the worker’s lack of choice, connecting totalitarian views to surveillance. The camera operator being recorded also connects the totalitarian views to surveillance further emphasizing that someone is ‘always watching’ or ‘always recording’.
These views are related to a more modern surveillance issue regarding racial discrimination discussed in John Fiske’s article “Surveilling the City Whiteness, the Black Man and Democratic Totalitarianism”. According to Fiske’s analysis of O.J. Simpson’s trial, presenting videos for the law to interpret makes it impossible to find a guilty party. Polls showed that the ‘…majority of white people believed that Simpson was guilty, while an almost equal number of African-Americans believed he had been framed by the police…” (Fiske 70). This example presents a divide of economics based on race and class and the amount of surveillance upon each group. It is hard to have a fair, unbiased interpretation of anything recorded since its viewers are the ones who are bringing their subjectivity to the interpretation. The interpretation of the mine scene suggests that the working class is similar in how they are being surveilled under totalitarianism.
Surveillance totalitarian views are seen within the mine scene of the film Man with a Movie Camera. Similar to the criminal lens that news stations portray to their audience, which are often aligned with the station’s agenda. Voyeuristic approaches to modern media utilize techniques that are familiar to surveillance techniques as well. The voyeuristic perspective creates a feeling of unease and avoidance since these techniques are radical.