"The Box"
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Sunday, February 22, 2009
Playing it Cool
For those of us not taking Social Psychology this semester, we recently watched Cool Hand Luke as an example of the effects of social conformity and obedience. Since the movie is the story of a man sent to prison for a petty crime, and struggles with the oppression of prison life, there are also interesting ties to Durkheim and Foucault (especially as we continue reading Discipline and Punish I bet)
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3 comments:
Prisons seem to be a clear example of enforced Mechanical Solidarity, in which prisoners are given the same clothes, same tasks and schedule. Punishment for disobeying the rules is repressive and is to maintain the strict idea that prisoners must conform to the warden's orders. But this examination seems somewhat shallow for prisons. Solidarity in MS is born from a strong collective consciousness that shouldn't, it seems, be forced, but should be natural.
How would Foucault look at this punishment? We've only started reading Discipline and Punishment, but Foucault argues that punishment since the 17th c. or so has shifted from a punishment of the body to that of the soul(16). What do you think the prison in Cool Hand Luke is trying to punish?
"How our midterms feel" er I mean, "The Boxing Scene"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n0mgkaEGQc
(Copy and paste the link, can't embed videos in comments sadly)
Who won the match?
And for those who are interested in seeing all of the movie, which I highly recommend, you can find it on youtube (Shh) here http://www.youtube.com/user/coolhandmov
Cool Hand Luke! I'm not sure why you posted the boxing scene link. Here's a link showing a guy getting "put in the box." I can't find a link showing Luke in a box, but he does get put there several times during the movie, i think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biAMeivOf9g
So first they make the guy strip and change. Then he's put in a tiny wooden box (resembling an outhouse) for an extended period of time. Most prisoners crack under this kind of punishment (the guy in the clip starts to cry).
The inmates do build a sort of solidarity with each other throughout the movie, but only to the extent that they conform to the warden's wishes. Once one disobeys (Luke), he becomes simultaneously admired and partially ostracized. Being put in the box furthers the separation of the outcast from fellow prisoners. He is physically separated from his cohort and in this way becomes emotionally distanced from them.
Why post the boxing scene? Why?
1)Because it is awesome 2) As we foreshadowed in lecture on 2/19, Foucault is interested in power and how there is freedom in struggling against and with power. In the boxing scene we see Luke fighting against a very physical power of Dragline (that's the name of his opponent). Luke's pretty much completely outmatched, but he keeps getting up even though he knows he'll just get knocked down again. Luke's a real life Sisyphus, and I think, in the end, he won the match.
Also, on the box, do you think that the box is more like Foucault's idea of execution or time table? Does it affect more the body or the soul?
We can also look at the box as a Durkheim MS repression technique. Interesting that you say, Charita, that the box separated Luke from the other prisoners, as if the box breaks Luke from the CC of the prisoners. I think he wasn't really broken until Luke began to give in to authority and stop rebelling. It was then that his prisoner friends scorned him instead of rallying behind him. When he was rebelling, the other prisoners saw Luke as a symbol for their desired rebellion, though none of the prisoners themselves independently rebel. When Luke finally gives in to power, he had turned from a symbol of their CC to an anti-symbol.
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