If you’re a child, please don’t read this post.
As Kristin and I were watching Santa Claus is Coming to Town tonight, I started thinking about Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison
, and his discussion of the panopticon and panopticism (here’s a random excerpt from the book that I found via a quick search if you’ve never read it; Wikipedia, of course, also has an entry on the book). If you were to ever study for an advanced degree in literature with a focus in critical theory, or perhaps study for a degree in philosophy, you would probably read this book (if you haven’t and these descriptions fit you, you should) and you’d also be plagued with thought processes for the rest of your life that cause you to think of the book while watching children’s stop-motion animation pieces like Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Listening to Fred Astaire telling the kids (the captive invisible audience for the tale; in other words you while you’re watching it; the show casts all audience members in the role of a child eager to hear the great origin story of Santa Claus) about Santa’s magic snowball that he can peer in to like an all-seeing god to see whether you’re being naughty or nice so be good for the sake of goodness—listening to Fred Astaire telling you about this will suddenly make you start thinking about the panopticon and Big Brother and the ever-watchful eyes on us that keep us disciplined. That is what you’ll think about if you’ve read the book and you’ve studied far too many books in graduate school. I recommend against it.
In any case, that’s what I started thinking about while watching the show, and although I love gifts and I really enjoy Christmas, I really hate the lie of Santa Claus that we tell our children both because it is a lie and because it is a bribe to persuade them to act good, not for the sake of goodness, but so that they will get toys at Christmas time. The whole thing smacks of dishonesty and hypocrisy and I hate it. I always have ever since I first learned that there wasn’t a Santa Claus when I was a child. I hated it more as I grew up and started reading Foucault. And I still hate it when I think of Foucault while watching a Christmas show that, admittedly, I love (because I love stop-motion and I love the one foot in front of the other song, which is a good message). I don’t have any kids, but I plan on having children someday (hopefully sooner rather than later) and I really don’t want to tell them these lies. Kristin says I’m just a grinch and interested in destroying the magic of the holidays, but can’t it be magical and fun and honest? Or am I being too much of a snobbish sort who has read too many books, filled his head with idealist thoughts, over thinks things, and I just need to relax?
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- Santa Ana Winds
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Tagged as:
discipline and punish,
michel foucault,
santa claus,
santa claus is coming to town
{ 11 comments }
Interesting….I was lecturing about Foucault's take on the panopticon in my litcrit class just last week.
hey CK… i was actually working on a blog post about a different instance of panopticon when i realized the irony of BLOGGING ABOUT PANOPTICON, that is, critiquing the notion of being surveiled while voluntarily submitting myself to that very process by publishing my thoughts on the interweb where all sorts of invisible eyes pore over my soul.
anyhow, when i saw your post i just had to comment:
first of all, i heart Foucault and loathe Santa but never saw the connection between Christmas and panopticonism. [the more obvious link for me would be between kids talking to santa and religious confession (the former read as a modern capitalist form of the latter)-- a ritual Foucault discusses in History of Sexuality: Volume I.] in any case i enjoyed your take on the subject.
secondly, how can you be an internet rock star and resist disciplinary power?? (this is what i ask myself daily…except i'm not an internet rock star, save for my brief mahalo days :-))
I've not read Foucault, but I wish I could build a house like that – maybe my kids would be good – ha!
We have not lied to our children about Santa Claus; we have always been honest about it to them. The drawback is when your kindergartener decides he needs to tell all his friends that Santa isn't real. It wasn't too much of a drawback, though, because it gave us the opportunity to discuss freedom of choice, freedom of religion, and personal rights. If the other children believe in Santa, that is their (parents') choice and it is not our place to dispel that for them – that's their parents' prerogative and right.
Our children (8, 6, and 3) enjoy Santa – as a fun story and character, much like Mickey Mouse or Winnie-the-Pooh, or any number of princesses. Christmas is a time of magic and wonder, and I don't think it has to exclude Santa in order to be honest… at least not in our family, anyway.
Well, ultimately, I think that privacy in public places is an unhealthy illusion of the bourgeoisie and paranoia about being always watched by Big Brother is a reflexive reaction to that unhealthy illusion.
Being aware of that struggle frees you to a certain extent. The point isn't that you're always being watched. The point is that everything is seeable by anyone with eyes to see. To act differently when you know people are watching you than you act when people aren't watching you and you're all alone is, at best, misrepresentation and at worst, just a plain lie.
I'm a big fan of being who you are and doing what you do and not giving much thought to who is watching and who isn't (as if that has any real effect on any of it). I've been called shameless for this. I've also been called an ass. But there you have it. That's how I think you resist. Be aware. Embrace it as a point of reality. Then deal with it rather than trying to sneakily work around it.
Then again, what do I know. I am an ass. Ask any of my friends ;-)
What did you lecture? What was the point of discussion? Please tell more!
I was giving a broad overview on New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. An MP3 of the lecture as well as my Keynote slides can be found here:
http://ccclitcrit.wordpress.com/podcasts/
Very cool. I'll check it out.
This is why I love the internet: just two minutes ago I found myself humming “Santa Claus is coming to town” on a dissertation-writing tea break. It suddenly hit me: Santa is the panopticon for little capitalist children! My glee was followed by the certainty that I was not the first person to stumble on this idea. And now, Google in its own panoptical wisdom has proven me correct. I feel a little less original, but also a little less lonely, in the world tonight. cheers.
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