Brazil

Work Title: Brazil
Medium: Film
Episode Title:
Year: 1985
Writer(s): Terry Gilliam
"Original" Writer: Yes Writer(s): Charles McKeown
"Original" Writer: Yes Writer(s): Tom Stoppard
"Original" Writer: Own work?: No
Summary:

from imdb.com: Sam Lowry is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle, Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and both Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger. Written by Philip Brubaker {coda@nando.net}

Era/Year of Portrayal: distant_past
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

The society portrayed in Brazil is highly technocratic, bureaucratic, and consumeristic. Overly-intricate machines and processes dominate life: buildings are crowded with absurdly intricate ductwork and characters undergo as much plastic surgery as they can afford, annually. A form is needed to do, or fix, anything.

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: Wiring and ductwork.
  • Description of the technology: Sam, the main character, has a presence experience or, as portrayed in the film, a daydream, that his apartment’s ductwork is a giant metal samurai. Some might disagree that this is indeed a presence experience. But, if we define tele-presence, as an illusion of nonmediation in a mediated environment, the metaphorical role of the ductwork, qua technology, functions so as to create an illusion of nonmediation. The illusion is literally that Sam finds himself fighting a samurai and, in the powerful illusory state, he forgets that the experience is mediated by his apartment’s ductwork. Sam “fights” the metal samurai (when he “wakes up” he is tangled up in the ductwork in his apartment). The daydream is vivid and convincing, for Sam. As the samurai, the technology is superior, controlling, and aggressive. As ductwork, it’s overpowering characteristics seem absurd.
  • Nature of task or activity: Sam’s apartment is overrun with a broken cooling system’s ductwork. He gets tangled up in the mess.
  • Performance of the Technology: The technology breaks. It’s a nuisance.
  • Description of creator(s): The group that created the technology did not mean for it to provoke a presence experience. It is meant to be ductwork, and so the creators would be “Central Services,” or some bureaucratic institution.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): Explicitly, to cool the apartment. Implicitly, to create such complicated ductwork that needs consistent repair by “Central Services.”
  • Description of users of technology: By implication, everyone. Everyone’s apartment is serviced by “Central Services.”
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: both
  • Description of presence experience: When the technology breaks, it invades Sam’s apartment. There is ductwork hanging from the ceiling and crowding the walkways. Sam gets tangled up in it, enters a dream-like state (which one could loosely say evokes presence) and fights the technology (which manifests itself as a giant metal samurai).
  • User awareness of technology during experience: Once Sam enters into the (metaphorical) daydream, he is unaware that he is fighting mere ductwork.
  • Valence of experience: The presence experience is, in a sense, forced onto Sam. The ductwork is so practically unpleasant that it seems to force a presence experience.
  • Specific responses: Sam experiences high anxiety and a distorted sense of reality during the presence experience. The ductwork becomes a parasocial actor. Much like we anthropomorphize our computers, Sam anthropomorphizes his ductwork. The result is a daydream in which he fights it.
Long-term consequences:

Sam has several interactions with technology that seems to force a presence-experience (through daydream). The film ends with Sam being tortured in an institutional facility (which, interestingly, looks much like a virtual reality room) in which he has entered into a daydream. His daydream is pleasant (he escapes the technocratic hell with the girl of his dreams) but in reality he is lobotomized. The finale is horrific. Sam’s experience with the apartment’s ductwork concludes horrifically, as well. When the samurai removes the mask, Sam is inside. The implication is that Sam is complicit in his demise.

Other:

Again, it is arguable that the ductwork is a tele-presence evoking medium. But given the diverse absurdist metaphors that pervade the film, it is plausible that the ductwork is meant to stand for a tele-presence invoking technology (as is much of the technology in the film). Also, it’s interesting that the presence experiences seem forced. Sure, Sam is portrayed as a natural daydreamer, but as he battles technology and bureaucracy, it’s as if he can’t help but be in mediated environments in which he forgets that the technology is mediating the experience. Oftentimes, the technology takes on monolithic and human characteristics. Though the fact that the presence experiences are represented as daydreams makes it questionable that Sam is experiencing explicit spatial tele-presence, it is unquestionable that the technology evokes social presence experiences (represented metaphorically as with the fighting of the giant metal samurai). The film has important things to say about technology, mediation, and illusion.

Coder name: Joan Jasak
Coder email: jasak@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple graduate student in philosophy