{"id":5825,"date":"2020-03-24T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tembusu.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/?p=5825"},"modified":"2025-09-25T12:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T04:35:07","slug":"brazil-weber-and-foucault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/2020\/03\/brazil-weber-and-foucault\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil, Weber, and Foucault"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Set\nin an Orwellian dystopia, Brazil <\/em>(1985) tells the story of Sam Lowry, a\nclerk in the Ministry of Information who, on account of his disobedience, finds\nhimself a fugitive of the law. He is part of a bureaucratic totalitarian regime\nwhere paperwork is more important than people, where blind conformity is\nexpected and civil liberty is suppressed, and where technology is weaponised\nfor mass surveillance and torture. The film is a cautionary tale about the\nexcesses of bureaucracy. As a work of political satire, it asks searching\nquestions about the effects of a hyper-bureaucratised society on those who have\nto live within it and why they should be complicit in its reproduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like\nany bureaucracy, the Ministry of Information rests on a clear hierarchy, an\nextensive division of labour, and a rigid adherence to rules and regulations. Operations\nare routinised through forms, receipts, stamps, standard procedures, and\nmicromanagement, allowing the office to run like clockwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This emphasis on instrumental-rational action affords a level of efficiency modern society cannot do without, but the costs imposed are morally problematic. First, when workers are trained to respond mechanically to the dictates of a job, they often fail to recognise that some official policies are wrong or may be causing harm\u2014for example, the arrest, incarceration, and torture of innocent civilians. Second, when workers see themselves as obeying rules or an impersonal order, as is the case under rational-legal authority, they are able to deny responsibility for their actions\u2014for example, the buck-passing over the wrongful death of Archibald Buttle. This is one danger of bureaucracy as depicted in Brazil<\/em>: there is no accountability and no incentive to restructure a deeply flawed system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare also costs to individual psychology and freedom. Indeed, the characters of Brazil<\/em>\nseem to be undergoing various stages of insanity. Sam fantasises about himself\nas a winged warrior saving a damsel in distress, Kurtzmann is a jittery bundle\nof nerves, and Spoor and Dowser tremble at the very mention of \u201c27B\/C\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even\nthe physical environment is stifling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nits industrial pollution and menacing grey buildings, the city reeks of death,\ndecay, and claustrophobia. At the same time, ugly air ducts snake through every\nroom, disfiguring intimate personal spaces and precluding any possibility of\nprivacy, a striking metaphor for the omnipresence of the bureaucratic state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weber\nwould call this an iron cage\u2014individuals are reduced to lifeless cogs, deprived\nof their creativity, autonomy and agency.[1]<\/a>\nFoucault would call this a panopticon\u2014under its gaze, individuals become docile\nas they learn to self-police and self-regulate.[2]<\/a>\nIn both these cases, bureaucratisation leads to dehumanisation, ironically generating\nthe very irrationalities it was designed to eliminate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe world of Brazil<\/em>, therefore, bureaucracy is not so much a means to an\nend as an end in itself: a ruling class in its own right. What is the source of\nits power? It is knowledge: knowledge about a given population, knowledge in\nthe form of surveillance and discourse, knowledge as \u201cregimes of truth\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nare not mere abstractions; they are everyday instruments of oppression and\nviolence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\nenable the Ministry of Information to hunt down its targets with ease and\nefficiency. In this regard, Weber is correct in saying that power is a\ndependent variable with multiple bases and manifestations. Particularly in the\ncontext of professionalisation and technological advancement, power should be conceptualised\nin non-economic terms as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\nthe same taken, the rational-legal authority underpinning bureaucracy cannot be\nequated with democracy. On the contrary, it tends towards technocracy, as\ndecision-making processes come to be controlled by a narrow circle of experts. This\nis because the more a bureaucracy increases in size and complexity, the more its\nspecialised parts become unknowable to the vast majority of citizens, and the\nmore ordinary voices are ignored or marginalised. Not only does this breed\nintellectual arrogance and elitism, but it also institutionalises groupthink. Moreover,\nwhen power interests solidify, technocratic management becomes an excuse for\npaternalistic\u2014even totalitarian\u2014government. This is the essence of the\nbureaucratic state. Participatory decision-making is restricted in the name of\nrationality and public consultation is rejected in the name of efficiency. In\nthis context, a politics of alienation and disillusionment may take root, triggering\na legitimacy deficit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brazil<\/em> is a satire on bureaucracy\u2014its dehumanising effects, its totalitarian tendencies, its irrational excesses. With automation, technocratisation, mass surveillance, and corporate power growing around the world, the film is all too timely. And perhaps this why the movie hits so close to home: it is the future of our own society, the logical outcome of our worst and most absurd impulses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Max\nWeber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em> (New York,\nRoutledge, 2005 [1905]).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison<\/em> (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Header Image: Screengrab from Brazil<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feature Image: Product Image by Vintage Movie Posters<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan is a third-year student from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Sociology. He is interested in literature, politics, language, time and memory. He longer lives in Tembusu, but he continues to contribute to Treehouse from time to time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Lee analyses the film Brazil’s satire of bureaucracy with reference to Weber and Foucault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":5858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_type-op-ed","theme-media","theme-society","scope-others","flavour-contemplative","flavour-informative"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5867,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions\/5867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}