8:9:22

Enemy of the State, 1998

One of the most exhaustively dystopic mainstream films about the impossibility of living a free life under digital surveillance capitalism, or what the film refers to as “surveillance society.” We can also call it a surveillance ontology or bio-state ontology.

The State as 24/7 GPS. And this was made in 1997.

At the same time, in the form of Reality TV, surveillance cqpitalism officially became the dominant form of entertainment. in the late 90s. Reality TV was a highly infectious ontological bio-weapon against all modes of culture and social decency.

Reality TV was a way of normalizing, socializing, and internalizing the government’s cryptic destruction of privacy, inalienable rights, and personal sovereignty.

It acclimated and bonded us to surveillance, the digital control grid, and big-tech technology.

There is a nice homage to and resuming of Gene Hackman’s conspirator role in The Conversation (1974). In fact, the photo of “Brill” in Enemy of the State (aka Edward Lyle) in NSA’s file is of Hackman’s character in The Conversation. Hackman plays a former National Security System communication expert stationed in Iran during the Iranian Revolution.

The movie concludes with a real analogue ending, Peckinpah style. All blood and guts. A human ending.