Review: Reading Divergent Through Foucault's Panopticon

Jeanine's speech to Tris

The brilliance of the faction system is its conformity to the faction that removes the threat of anyone exercising their independent will. Divergents threaten that system.

Don't get me wrong. There is a certain beauty to your resistance, its defiance of any categorization. 

It's a beauty we can't afford.

Power/Knowledge/Normality

Power and Knowledge are a relation. They form a grid that intersects with history. As capitalism grows the demand for workers/consumers grows and "normality" is demanded. The vagrants, the mad, criminals, derelicts, et al are rounded up and confined all over Europe.

Divergent's Faction System illustrates the Foucauldian Grid. Each faction demands explicit and implicit conformity. Beatrice smothers herself to display the correct behavior demanded of her in the faction of Abnegation. Caleb is able to pass by displaying all the outward behavior of Abnegation as "floating signs" masking the emptiness of his commitment. He passes.

Foucault has taught us that power does not come from above. It seeps from below, through the interstices. Caleb controls Beatrice, inhibiting any spontaneous gesture she begins to make. This is where power is. Right there with Caleb overseeing her every move when he is with her. Pecking at her like a crow, keeping her from growing as a person.

What is important is that Beatrice be obedient. That she display the "floating signs" at least of selflessness.And this is the meaning of the Grid of power/knowledge/normality.

The other aspect here is 24/7 surveillance.

This movie which has so much respect for its fan base signals surveillance without explaining it.

1. Beatrice has been told by Tori to go home, say the test made her sick so she can think over what to do without being in a room with others to distract her. Caleb asks her over dinner prep where she was and she tells him she was sick and came home. He asks her if she finished her test and she says yes. Then he asks her her result. Instead of her usual avoidance or lying, she inverts his question to address his intent by saying, "What were your results?" His questions are interrogative, for the purpose of domination and she turns the tables on him.

2. At the dinner table her father admonishes her for just coming home like that and she says, "I was sick." And still he reprimands her as they are being watched carefully, being scrutinized. 

3. When her mother appears as they are loading the truck, right after embracing her Tris says, "Mom, you can't be here." Natalie says, "I know but you're in danger."

So with these few sentences we know people are not only in factions, but they are confined as to where they can and cannot go.So, as in Hunger Games, we get confinement, although not as harsh, but still confinement it is.

Discipline and Punish

And here's Taylor Swift

But that's exactly what Foucault meant Swiftie
Smart woman

Divergent Reveiw: Reading Beatrice/Tris Through Lacan's Mirror Stage

Beatrice at mirror in Abnegation gif

Beatrice gets her hair trimmed the second day of every third month. At that time she may look in the mirror for a minute or so. That's FOUR times a year she gets to see her image in a mirror, from the chest up.

Beatrice at Mirror at Abnegation

Beatrice entering aptitude test room sneaking a look at herself

Tori: What's with Abnegation and mirrors.
Beatrice: We reject vanity.
Tori: Yes, I know. Sit down.

Here's a clip of that scene with commentary by director 
Neil Burger

So now you have seen that she lies in the chair and looks to her left that is a mirror, seeing herself. She gets up, walks over and sees herself standing for the first time - that is 

her entire physical body for the first time, not just from her chest up for a few seconds.

She gestures by raising her right hand as her image mirrors her in the mirror.

Reading through Lacan's Mirror Stage:

This EVENT takes place at six months usually. The mother plays with her baby in front of the mirror as the baby experiences an image that also waves its arms, jiggles its legs, moves in the excitement of its image, before words, before walking, before experiencing any SELF. 

Jacques Lacan

Beatrice - and Tobias and Caleb - have never experienced the Mirror Stage in the development of the SELF - the ego.

Beatrice has experienced herself as not selfless enough for Abnegation. She doesn't fit in. She doesn't belong.

How is it possible to feel or be selfless if you don't have a self.

Caleb fakes it by assuming a false self.

Tobias constructs a self at Dauntless.

A ZEN story:

A student goes to the zen master wanting to lose his ego.

ZEN master: First bring me an ego to lose.

___________________________________________________________________

"This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject." (Lacan ECRITS)

Lacan likens the EVENT to Kohler's Aha! of the ape grasping the stick to get the banana, the beginning moment of intelligence.

The moment as GESTALT!

____________________________________________________________________________

Beatrice has just experienced herself completely in the mirror then looks to her left, where she is multiplied into infinity.

This is an EVENT!

For Beatrice it has never occurred until the Aptitude Test when she experiences the 

EVENT of the Mirror Stage,

which sheds its light on the formation of the I  the Imago that ancient term - as experienced in psychoanalysis. (p.118 Ecrits)

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

Turning to the left she sees herself multiplied into infinity and turning around again multiplied.

And there are multitudes of images of Beatrice. 
To echo the Walt Whitman quote, "I am multitudes." 
That there is no one person you are. There are changes and they can be made.

Turning around behind her to respond to the command "Choose"

Choose (Now we have had 3 Beatrices)

Beatrice says, "Tell me." She doesn't understand. Choose what as she looks at the luscious raw steak and shiny knife on the pedestal surface.
"Choose before it's too late."
And then it is too late as the growling ferocious dog comes at her and she looks at the now empty pedestal tables. She has missed her chance by refusing to choose.

But how can one choose between options if there is no SELF to do the choosing?

Now she must respond to the simulation - aptitude test - with her instincts, responding to what occurs. Trusting herself to choose now since she is alone with the situation in the simulation. Only now does she experience a self that responds instinctively, rather than complying obediently to demands.

As the multiple ferocious dogs get ready to attack multitple Beatrices, Beatrice assumes the position of satyagraha - passivity in the face of violence. At this moment all the multiples disappear and there is just one Beatrice who now responds in multiple ways to the problems in the Simulation. At this moment Beatrice experiences a SELF who chooses, and who chooses instinctively. 
In a few moments Beatrice has embraced the entire Mirror Stage.

In other words we have TWO egos (at least), if you will. Or rather an unexplainable, pre-linguistic core of a bodily and mental and emotional self that has no words to define it. Just a GESTALT. Identity is irrelevant here. And on this "self" is built the social self, our many identifications, our tweaking of it to present ourselves to our world, our presented and performative self to others.

Exiting from the simulation Tori tells her she must trust herself. The test didn't work on her, she is divergent.

She leaves the building and on the way home sees some "factionless" outside rummaging through the dumpsters. A woman is there that she looks at. For the first time Beatrice sees the Other as a person, not a nameless outcast. And the factionless woman turns, knowing that she is not only being looked at, but that Beatrice SEES her, and she feels shame, quietly walking away from her gaze.

At home she will reflect Caleb's questioning of her result in the test by inverting his question,
"What were your results?"
And Caleb smiles.
Beatrice has felt her SELF and its will to know/power
She will continue questioning at the dinner table.

The infant repeats the Mirror Stage up until 18 months and then tires of it. The chimp tires of it almost immediately as the mirror is empty.
Beatrice repeats it during dinner at home as she turns her spoon over and regards her face in the curved reflection of her spoon. 

Lacan discusses the non-verbal, pre-verbal imago as the unalterable core of the self before all social identifications are piled on top of it, obscuring it to our knowing, enabling us to forget it.
And this is where Lacan brings in the concept, that again ancient concept, of
THE DOUBLE. THE SHADOW. The reflection in the mirror

Reading through Baudrillard-LINK Beatrice will encounter her DOUBLE as Tris, when in a life threatening situation, during her fearscape. She is not alienated, as we are, from her DOUBLE, but converses with it as primitive cultures do.
This isn't real.

Returning to Lacan, the SELF in The Mirror Stage begins to repeat and to imitate others, building up with social identifications a social or second self. Beatrice after entering Dauntless begins by observing how others are running down the stairs, climbing to the platform, getting on the train, jumping off onto the roof.
Copying the others.

And then comes the moment, the EVENT for Beatrice. 

Eric: Who's it gonna be?
Beatrice: Me.

And Beatrice climbs clumsily up on the ledge, gathers her courage, and she jumps first.
Upon landing in the net, Four lifting her out and suggesting a new name, she becomes 
TRIS

She has condensed the Mirror Stage into 2 days.
She now begins the journey of building a social self in Dauntless where she will meet her Double a number of times.
First in warning in fearscapes, then in joy as she "flies" down the zipline and sees herself reflected in the windows of the buildings, 

lastly when expecting to be shot, in acquiescence, at her moment of impending death. The Double appears at the moment of Death. Her Double is silent as she looks at her reflection in a puddle of water as Narcissus did.

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that psychoanalysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

REVIEW DIVERGENT: A Leap Into the Unknown:

Beatrice and Her Family - Abnegation Dinner

This dinner scene is that of a simple, more or less religious family quietly eating their dinner. Sort of pre-bourgeois. Not unlike eating dinner with an Amish family here in the Ozarks. Conversation is limited, and the focus is on the meal and eating, then carrying the plates to be washed.There is the Foucauldian Grid in Abnegation, The Matrix, a Dominating Discourse, a standard of Normality within the Grid of Power/Knowledge.

Agnes Martin Painting

The control in Abnegation is by repression: Inscription of the Body; censoring of words and gestures, actions of selflessness, etc. It is irreversible, accumulative, metastasis 
Foucault doesn't want to talk about repression: but what else is that slow, brutal infection of the mind through sex, whose only equivalent in the past was infection through the soul (see Nietzsche - the infection through sex is nothing anyway but the historical and mental reversal of the infection through the soul under the sign of materialist parousia!) (Baudrillard - Forget Foucault p.44)

Dauntless - First Night in Cafeteria After Dinner 

Here is Tris happy at last. For the moment.

From the constraints of Abnegation and its confinement of body/mind she jumps into Dauntless, a facsimile of ancient Sparta, with its communal life of living at the edge. Living, not surviving as she was in Abnegation. A life of inversion.

Dauntless Manifesto:

We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 

And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Dauntless never give up.

Only life pushed to the limit, to moments that escaped the system of equivalence, could render power powerless. 

Giving one's life away - a counter-gift - was the only present that couldn't be reciprocated.

Baudrillard in Forget Foucault p. 15

Tris will be more Dauntless than the Dauntless. 

Hyper-Dauntless; 

She gives the gift, following the ideology to its final consequences: 

Death

Dauntless can only respond with the counter-gift and if not then it must commit suicide. The Symbolic Order must be obeyed.

FOUR

Dauntless has given Four the gift of life. He now has an unpayable debt. The counter-gift must be repayed (not right away but it must be repayed) and it must be greater than the gift. Four's counter-gift is the destruction of Dauntless. The Death of Dauntless. 

Leading to the Death of the faction system.

He will lose Four, his identity as Four, his self, his everything that made him so exceptionally Four.

Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Be very careful about the life you save.

Review DIVERGENT: Deconstruction of the Script by Vanessa Taylor

Vanessa Taylor

Evan Daugherty

Disclosure: I was sent a bootlegged copy of Snow White and the Huntsman of Daugherty's sold script and it is so awful I was embarrassed for him to have written it while I was reading it. Even with Hossein Amini's doctoring of it, it was still filled with cringe worthy lines kept from the original. So I attribute the beauty of the writing in the Divergent script to Vanessa Taylor. It is intelligent, brilliantly so. 

As Foucault says, "When the writing is elegant it means that what is said is important."


Universal and Rupert fired him. (A blessing.)Five writers worked on Snow White. Rupert saved that film, made it beautiful. So much for Daugherty.

Aphoristic:Nietzsche's writing is almost completely aphoristic. It is musical and slips through your critical consciousness. The reader has no defenses. Nietzsche the great rhetorician of his time knew this full well. Ayn Rand, his disciple all her life followed his advice. Stephenie Meyer did, aware or not.

Your writing must be even more so than what you are writing about. - Nietzsche

Divergent is pared down, minimalist, no fluff. So is Dauntless.

Beatrice feels everyone is afraid to volunteer to be First Jumper. So she says, "Me."
And this is the pairing of brave/selflessness that Four will say to her later. She chooses here to be selfless which is also to be brave. And she chooses instead of holding back as she has done so far being last down the stairs, up the ladder, on the train, and jumping across the abyss. Now she will be first.

All of this is conveyed in the images and the one word "ME."

Here's Four as we first see and hear him: 

Our first look here at Four reveals his open and rather surprised face. He has witnessed a 

gift from the sky, from the Heavens miraculously appearing in the net. Like a Silkie from 

the deep. Or Dante's Beatrice: a gift from the Heavens, a Blessing.


Four: What,you were pushed?(quietly)

Beatrice: No. (all breathlessly happy)Thank 

you. (as he helps her down)

Four: What's your name?

Beatrice: B......stuttering

Four: Is it a hard one? 

Beatrice: nodding yes embarrassed

Four: You can pick a new one. But make it good. You only get to  pick once.(emphasis on 

choosing with no reversal)

Beatrice: stuttering saying Tris. My name is Tris.

Four: First jumper - Tris! Welcome to Dauntless.

So quick. The contained surprise that the first 

jumper is a girl, from Abnegation, who 

appears elated rather than frightened by her 

ordeal so far. Four is open faced, nice, 

assertive and non-threatening, non-aggressive. 

The ideal  presentation of the Butlerian 

masculine social construction of gender is performed.

Four has a beautiful face, intelligent and sensitive and sexy. But he is matter-of-fact all 

business here, gently and firmly. No provocation, just a short intimate moment.


People say that the first minutes of any encounter encompass the whole relationship in 

miniature. - ALEX by Pierre Lemaitre (p. 339)


There is quite a bit of subtext in this short and vivid scene:

1. He underestimates her sort of by alluding to the fact he thinks she was pushed.

2. He intuits her dissatisfaction with Beatrice and suggests it is possible for her to change 

her name, become a different person, become Other. He offers her a way to change her 

name with the limiting factor that it is a one shot choice with no return.

4. His welcome is warm and accepting. This is unlike Eric's immediate dislike of her (his 

frozen face) when she volunteers to be first.

5. Through Lacan, Tris rhymes with Chris, short for Christina her first friend. 


Here is Four's account of that first meeting with Beatrice/Tris in Allegiant:

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it 

and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and 

plain and in all ways unremarkable--except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had 

jumped first.

Even I didn't jump first.

Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.

Beautiful. (Allegiant p. 491)

_________________________________________

Here is Tris's account just before she dies.

I choke on a sob as the image of Tobias comes into my mind, of how dark and how still his eyes were, how strong and warm his hand was, when we first stood face to face. (Allegiant p. 475)

____________________________________________

Bataille in his The Eye: Her: Which part of me did you fall in love with first? Him: Your eyes of course.

All this in 9 short sentences and the images. Now that is a screenplay folks. 

Four introduces himself to the group as their instructor and says: My name is Four.

Christina: Like the number four.
Four: Exactly like the number four.
Christina: Were one, two and three taken? 
Four: What is your name?
Christina: Christina.
Four: (stepping closer to her face, half smiling)
Four: Well Christina, the first lesson you will learn from me is to keep your mouth shut,  if you want to survive here. Do you understand?
Christina: (nodding yes) 
Four: Good. (stepping back from her)

I will interject here to make a point Baudrillard makes on seduction and provocation. Christina is provocative not seductive. Tris is seductive.

All this is said firmly, assertively, non-threatening in a way that projects that he means what he says. Four's truth - not his candor - is frightening to Christina, the others and establishes Four's character.The difference between truth and candor (ventilating) is revealed for those who want to make this connection.

The Dauntless training here is immediately demonstrated as serious. We are not going to be your friends. It is not "training lite, decaffeinated training" as Zizek might say. 

Four has been written to be performed as the new masculine. He has established a distance between his students and himself. This intensifies the transference and transgression. And the sexual eroticism.

The trainers have no intention to be buddy buddy friendly with the initiates.And this is 

appropriate in a military paradigm.

In Roth's book his relationship with them is all muddied up. Vanessa Taylor has skimmed off the fluff to reveal the essence. And this is what is contributing to the Desire of the YA female/male viewers.The character Four's Excess is perceived as Desire, reading through Lacan and Zizek. The fantasy always present in Desire evaporates when listening to his interviews. Theo James is not Four. In the case of Twilight and Rob Pattinson it did not vanish but leaked across boundaries of screen and real life.


Neil Burger's direction - in screenplay? - will have Four walk into almost every scene. His is a distinct, purposive, masculine walk that is immediately sexy and seductive rather than provocative.If he is in the scene already his face responds to the context of it.His Inscription of the Body is the new masculine: fit, sexy, sensitive, intelligent, and competent in what he has chosen to do. His flipping with the knives is masculine, the way he stands in the train when he lectures them. All on purpose.

The faces: This is the influence of Passolini on Burger. The use of the face to convey emotion, thinking, hidden feelings, vulnerability, etc. Not the way Francis Lawrence used Rob Pattinson's face as porno in Water For Elephants. This is not to say Four's face is not sexy. It is, but there is more to the image than just beauty. And Burger's use of Tris's face is incredible. That young woman has so many different faces. Her face of repose in Abnegation is completely different from her face in repose in Dauntless. The close close-ups reveal her emotions when she doesn't look pretty or beautiful but very messed up. Shai performs Tris as a girl who grew up never having looked at her face in a mirror. Shai is fearless when looking in the lens of the camera.Rob Pattinson always knows how he looks when he looks in the lens as he was a model. Now he can't unknow it. And then there are those times he doesn't give a shit. 


Primitive cultures felt that mirrors were destructive. One should know their face from the way they respond to people and the way people respond to them. 


Theo James knows and early on in the film - it was shot in sequence - I felt uncomfortableness when the camera closed in on him. Especially when he runs at the head of the initiates and is called over and says, 

"What've you got?" and we are shown the Factionless. It is quick and emphasizes his expressed masculinity - the way Four runs -  as well as showing us the Factionless in a group that appears somewhat menacing. Is it because they were once initiates who were dropped into Factionless status? The question hovers silently.

I am not finished deconstructing this script but this will do for now.

DIVERGENT: Shai Woodley and Theo James - What Real Beauty looks like

Theo James as Four in Divergent

Yes he is beautiful. The performed role of Four introduces the new masculine. What man can and could be.

Shai Woodley as Tris in Divergent

Tris is not pretty.

She is not sexy.

She is not cute.

She is not hot.

Shai is simply beautiful.

Tobias runs from Abnegation to Dauntless.

Beatrice runs to Dauntless from Abnegation.

In his fearscapes Four calms his breathing and heart rate. His approach is passive. Four advises Tris to calm her breathing and lower her heart rate. Deal with what's in front of you. Be brave.

Tris actively deals with what's in front of her, to confront and eliminate it so the simulation moves to the next one. An active approach.

Interesting inversion

Yosarrian  in Catch-22: “I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them."

Rebecca Schwart/Hazel Jones in The 

Gravedigger's Daughter: Where we're from is nowhere, Mister. But somewhere is where we are going.

Or shall we just read Beatrice through Dante who first saw her when she was nine. As a woman she had the highest reputation of goodness and charity as did her father. Completely selfless. He loved her all his life. She accompanied his imagination through the Circles of Hell and to Paradise, always guiding him with her strength and goodness. 

Beatrice comes to a Circle of Hell which is Dauntless to rescue Tobias.

Greek form of TOBIAH. This is the name of the hero of the apocryphal Book of Tobit in many English versions of the Old Testament. It relates how Tobias, with the help of the archangel Raphael, is able to drive away a demon who has been plaguing Sarah, who subsequently becomes his wife. 

Dante's  Beatrice dies when they are both around 25 years old. Dante cannot be consoled and he writes poetry about death as in Medieval times love and death were joined - Courtly Love. For 2 years afterwards he has an infatuation with a "woman in a window' to whom he writes poetry. Beatrice will reproach him for this in his writing. Then Dante will go into local Florence politics until he is exiled with a threat of death over him. (Both of them had been betrothed as children to others and married others.)

...but the government was still essentially middle-class republican. At the head were the three priors, drawn from the major guilds and housed across the way from the Alighieri hose, in the Tower of Castagna. (p. 71 Dante by R. W. B. Lewis)- I found this floating sign interesting although unimportant.