Introduction
Biopolitics stands for the practice of politicization, regulation, and economic exploitation of human biology to structure and manage large and small-scale populations (Stryker, 2014). The philosophical underpinnings of biopolitics were developed by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Roberto Esposito (Stryker, 2014). The political idea pushed forward by their philosophy is that the peoples’ bodies can and should be utilized and managed with the higher purpose of ensuring, sustaining, and multiplying life through ensuring order (Stryker, 2014).
On a macro perspective, it justifies state intervention into how people manage their bodies either directly, through laws and regulations, or indirectly through the creation of stereotypes that are conducive to the state’s or the ruling class’s political objectives. Some of the examples of biopolitics taking a part in the US are many, ranging from prohibitive legislations (towards the utilization and distribution of marijuana), recommendatory (preferable BMI with those over or under it deemed unhealthy), and replicatory (the current fight over women’s reproductive rights) (Stryker, 2014). Biopolitics has a normative presence in the media as well, forming either the plot point or an overarching influence on the stories being told. This paper will demonstrate some of the major influences of biopolitics as portrayed by different films, including The Island, V for Vendetta, and Children of Men.
Biopolitics in The Island
The overarching plot line of The Island features a settlement of clones on a remote island owned by a private medical corporation, and is utilized as both a direct example and a metaphor of one of the major principles of biopolitics – human body commodification (Mitchell et al., 2019). It stands for parts of the human body being used as goods for the benefit of those that desire them. Related processes that bodies may be subjugated to include processes such as medical research, clinical trials, organ transplants and surrogate motherhood. Clones being grown and harvested for organs are shown as the new biological underclass being exploited by the rest of the society.
This message is reminiscent to the contemporary debate regarding opening the US organ market to supplies from abroad. The film opposes the practice for moral reasons, as allowing companies, corporations, and first-world governments exploit individuals from poorer countries would place them in even greater dependence and will encourage the rich to ensure the poor stay poor not only as a source of cheap labor, but also of spare human parts (Mitchell et al., 2019).
Although Merrick Institute is destroyed at the end and the clone initiative is closed, the film leaves on a somber note that the society that allowed for the Institute to continue its practices is still there, and that there will be another organization that would supply the demand (Mitchell et al., 2019). This message refers to the presence of organ traffickers in real world, who steal people to fulfil the need for more organ donations. The root of these practices is the commodification of human body and biopolitics.
Biopolitics in V for Vendetta
The film V for Vendetta presents the panopticon of London as the quintessential totalitarian security state. It is a dystopian future where the government is seized by a totalitarian party that imposes societal control on the society in the name of security (Maksimov, 2020). This idea is reminiscent of Foucault’s and Esposito’s ideas of a state where physical (bodily) security is more important than the abstract notions like freedom of choice (Maksimov, 2020).
The ruling party (Norsefire) engages in all manners of biopolitics. It imposes strict control over the population, their bodies, and their feelings. Individuals that do not conform to the bi-gender, heteronormative paradigm, such as gay people, lesbians, trans individuals, and others, are summarily rounded up and put into concentration camps. They are then slowly being eliminated, because their existence is perceived as a continuous threat to the political reality that Norsefire is trying to establish.
The film’s message is, ultimately, anti-biopolitics, as the revolution led by V is against the foundations of what the totalitarian government stands for. The scene where V subjugates the main heroine of the film to intense psychological torture also serves as an allegory of freeing the society from biopolitical drives. It shows just how difficult it will be for the society to reject the biopolitical aspects of its existence, and that to succeed, society has to be dismantled to its very foundations, and then rebuilt from the ground up (Maksimov, 2020).
Biopolitics in Children of Men
The plot of the film titled Children of Men is set in 2027, where wars and catastrophes have forced thousands of refugees to migrate into Britain. At the same time, the world is struck with an infertility disease, making individuals capable of having children a resource necessary for the survival of human race (Paz, 2020). The central idea here is childbirth as a commodity, which is reminiscent with Foucault’s theses of “ensuring, sustaining, and multiplying life” (Paz, 2020) Other related concepts demonstrated in the film are state surveillance and the use of medicine and science to control populations.
Normative biopolitics are demonstrated through the use of Quietus – essentially a suicide pill utilized to reduce the numbers of “unfit” individuals and thus reduce the social loads on the government. The film set in a not-so-distant future shows the potential pervasiveness of biopolitics less grotesquely than in V for Vendetta, instead opting for realism to show the potential consequences for individuals and our society (Paz, 2020).
Conclusions
Biopolitics is present both in today’s society and the media portraying it. Where exploration of biopolitics takes place, they are portrayed as pervasive practices leading to dystopias. They are to be fought against, reaffirming the rights of individuals for their bodies and refusing to allow governments to control people through various aspects of their being. At the same time, while films do show resistance to the direct consequences of biopolitics, they rarely address the underlying causes that make them prevalent in our society. To prevent the grotesque scenarios from happening in our lives, a thorough process of decolonization and counter-biopolitics has to be done, else the same ghosts would continue to haunt us in different forms.
References
Stryker, S. (2014). Biopolitics. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1, 37-42.
Maksimov, V. (2020). Politicization of life and auto-thanatopolitics in V for Vendetta. Critical Directions in Comics Studies.
Mitchell, D. T., Antebi, S., & Snyder, S. L. (Eds.). (2019). The matter of disability: materiality, biopolitics, Crip affect. Corporealities: Discourses of.
Paz, M. (2020). Dystopia redux: science fiction cinema and biopolitics. In European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 299-315). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.