Coming Soon From a Screen Near You: The Camera’s Gaze in the Age of Surveillance

Within the past thirty years, privacy concerns among American citizens are rising
with counter-terrorist surveillance going beyond targeting people of interest. These
concerns are reflected in American cinema where many contemporary films have
explored surveillance in society. The textual analyses presented in the thesis will focus on
three such films, Strange Days (1995), Southland Tales (2005), and Nightcrawler (2014).
Throughout this thesis, I examine how each of these films offers a unique, reflexive take
on surveillance, adhering to generative mechanisms that evoke differing attitudes about
surveillance through their form. My analysis draws on Laura Mulvey and Patricia Pisters’
theories on the gaze to understand the politics of looking in contemporary surveillance
cinema and highlight how cinematic scopophilia evolved into a networked perspective.
My analysis suggests that the politics of surveillance cinema is reflected in these films as
their differences mirror the changing perception of surveillance and the gaze over time.