In The Net, Sandra Bullock portrays a reclusive "techie" who stumbles upon, yep, you guessed it, the big conspiracy. We (the audience) enter the movie as Bullock is engaging in (what we are lead to believe is) her isolationist daily life. She communicates socially and professionally and even orders food through her computer. Whereas Bullock's computer screen represents her lifeline and she is totally interactive through this medium, we, as spectators, are resigned to "gaze" upon her. Although Bullock's body is absent from her computer mediated life, her body is everywhere on the movie screen. We see Bullock seeing her screen. Nevertheless, crisis comes at just the opportune moment...Bullock has planned her first vacation in years (note the comparison to While You Were Sleeping); low and behold, Bullock, laptop in tow, winds up on a tropical beach.
Interestingly, in the segment before the beach, we witness an
exchange between Bullock and her computer interactive friends where she describes the
"perfect" man. Of course, he appears at the beach and orders her favorite drink. Prince
Charming turns out to be the angel of death and the conspiracy reveals its insidious head. All of
Bullock's life has been erased. This is the crucial part. Because Bullock has isolated herself and
has no living relatives aside from an Alzheimer's stricken mother, she has no one to reconfirm her
identity. In essence, her physical appearance and presence do not save or repudiate her.
Nevertheless, because of the genre of film, her body is very real and very apparent on the movie screen as she salvages
her life and avoids and ultimately bags the bad guys. (Check out the more detailed summary/review.) Through this film, we learn the effects of
too much technology on our sense of identity. Essentially, this movie reveals that bodies do
not define our identities, but rather, and perhaps more pernisciously, the recognition of our
bodies determines our selfhood.
In her article, "Performing Lesbian in the Space of Technology, Part II," Sue-Ellen Case discusses
the potentially subversive possibilities of new technologies. She comments,
The Gaze, as concept, and as camera operates by focus. The camera is an instrument of focus, but the computer screen is not. The screen has no camera--no eye. The increasing anxiety around the loss of focus in the new technological age marks the dawning of a new mode of organization that is unlike the Gaze and the camera...postmodernist studies have anointed the new unfocused sensibility bricolage...If the Gaze constituted gender, what happens to gender after the era of focus has passed? (331)
Case bases her definition of the "Gaze" on an article by Laura Mulvey entitled, "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema." In Mulvey's article, she contends that the very act of looking conveys relations of power and access. Mulvey points out that in narrative cinema, the man looks while the woman, passively, is looked at. Men are the voyeuristic or fetishistic viewers. Meanwhile, the gaze of the camera phallocentrically creates "Woman," as a category and as the object of the gaze. Women, as viewers, have two possible roles; we can associate as masochists with the female object of the film or we can simply and passively adopt the male spectator position. Although Mulvey's theory has been refuted and recuperated by subsequent feminist film theorists who argue for radical feminist spectatorship, the "Gaze" associates crucial and oppressive characteristics with filmic forms of representation. Yet, Case wants to distinguish the movie screen, from the computer screen. The Net incorporates both.
In effect, I argue that Bullock's character in The Net evidences the "brickolage" of new technology, but the representation of Bullock and that technology recuperates the Gaze. We, as spectators, are positioned to view Bullock's body as an object and the technology which breaks down that objectification serves to erase Bullock's personhood as well.
Finally, unlike Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days, and Virtuosity, The Net takes place in present time. The setting is crucial to the movie's statement about the "dangerousness" of technology. Because the plot could occur today, the movie comment that technology, even in its subversiveness, threatens to erase our identities.
Bibliography
Introduction
Johnny MnemonicStrange DaysVirtuosityCopycat