Just a Thought About…..Control
By:Brielle Smith
“Control” is subtle! Whether you’d think so, or not we live in a society filled with controls and pressures. Control never stops it’s never ending. Social media could be considered one of the most controlling of them all. Stuck in an endless cycle of the want and need to fit in, social media encourages people to share their lives . This motivates people to base their lives off what they’re seeing on social media; see more control. Yet, how else could our society be engaged in this control? Would you think it to be movies or possibly TV shows? Films showcase societies of control as some portray aspects of real life. To show this you can apply control to movies that you enjoy watching.
First, it is important to discuss what are societies of control? Gilles Deleuze describes control as never being finished with anything in his “Postscript on Societies of Control”. He describes how everything in our life no longer allows us to move from thing to thing, but to coexist with each other.
Let’s look at the movie “We Live in Time”. This movie is the portrayal of a man and women who through unfortunate circumstances meet and begin to fall in love. In a look through a few years the couple face tough life circumstances and decide to make the best of time. We see control in everyday life so subtlety like driving a car, working your job, even doing something like cooking dinner. In this life you never seem to feel fulfilled because you never feel like you’re done. Life is an endless cycle of needing to do more or else you will have nothing. These character live in this cycle. The woman in this movie wants more for her career as a chef. We are nothing if we aren’t making more money or getting ahead. This in return relates to Deleuze idea that “in the societies of control one is never finished with everything”.
We then see our main woman character develops an illness and endures treatment. They must decide on how to process this illness and how to grieve. But this also falls under a societal control as there are these expectations on how a family can mourn or grieve. Almost as if you don’t grieve quickly, or take your treatment and be grateful, you’re doing something wrong. In the movie she says, “I thought i was in control of my life, but it turns out i’m just another part of the system”. This quote is a good example of how your out in a box in society whether you think your in control or not. Yet, it’s a good thing we get insurance at work, right? There is no right or wrong way to grieve but under societal control, you need to let it happen, be sad and get over it.
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But in a way they are also being controlled by debt. Deleuze says, “man is not enclosed but now in debt”. Multiple trips for treatment and financial struggle that happens to occur due to the illness can be showcased as a form of control. Societies of control are such norms, we don’t even notice the problems there. I believe the end of this movie is important when it comes to understanding the cycle of control. At the end after finding out more about her illness, the woman competes in a televised cooking competition. She feels as though the life she has lived isn’t enough to be remembered and goes out of her way to prove she can do it, all the while hurting herself more. She explains how she wants her child to be able to watch back and see she was something. This whole part shows the pressures and controls of society that we must be something or someone important or it was all for nothing. I think this is a big takeaway from this movie and idea of control. We feel as though we aren’t worth enough if we haven’t done something special.
Films are easily very tied into control not just with what’s shown in it, but if everyone you know was going to see a movie like this one, wouldn’t you want to see it as well?
I dont know, Just a Thought!
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