Modern Dünyanın Bir Metaforu Olarak “Ada” Filminde Metalaştırılan ve Nesneleştirilen Yaşamlar: Biyoiktidar, Kutsal İnsan, Kamp
Lives Commodified in The Film “Island” As A Metaphor for The Modern World: Biopower, Sacred Man, Camp

Summary/Abstract: According to Foucault, the administration practiced by spreading the power to the subjects through public punishment and torture since the 18th century has been replaced by a management practice that does not say “do-not”. A management logic that sees the people as a manageable whole and at the same time as individual disciplinable parts that can be articulated to the production systems by using their full potential is the practice of management, which he calls “biopower”. As biopower disciplines each individual, it also sees the entire population as a biological whole. In this management logic, the discipline of bodies becomes essential. On the other hand, when the human body directly becomes the object of biopower, human life also becomes the object of political decisions. Agamben explains this situation with the concept of “bare life”. Agamben takes these ideas from a figure in Roman law: the “sacred man”. In Roman law, a person could be proclaimed a “sacred man” if she/he was tried by a public vote by the people for any crime and was found guilty. The nature of holiness here differed significantly from its meaning in religious texts. In Rome, there was no punishment for anyone killing this person who was branded as a “sacred man”. According to Agamben, this area is the area of the political sovereign or where the political sovereign emerges. However, according to him, the power that holds power declares an “exceptional situation” in the face of an artificial threat that is both real and self-produced and only appears in the discourse. Places considered as camps are also places where exceptional circumstances are declared. In exceptional cases, all human rights are suspended, the human body is directly the object of all kinds of violence, and violence is justified through security discourse. The movie “The Island” is a science fiction, adventure, and thriller sub-genre movie made and released in 2005 under the direction of Michael Bay. The film describes today’s world metaphorically; the facility’s structure and everything that happens there is a miniature model of the world. The company (Merrik Institute) establishes bodies as docile bodies in constant discipline and regulation on an excellent quality clone in the movie. Clones are monitored 24 hours a day, medical records are kept, statistical data are stored, and nutrition and exercise practices are subject to sensitive surveillance. In this context, the aim of the article is to reveal that the movie ‘The Island’, with its entire narrative, is a metaphor for modern biopower, and that the movie metaphorically describes the way today’s societies are governed and the discipline and surveillance techniques used by those in power. In the article, the movie was analyzed using the text analysis technique of qualitative content analysis. In the film, the characters of Lincoln Six-Echo and Jordan Two-Delta, who understand the games of truth set up by the government and are branded by Merrik with the words ‘exposed to biological contamination - guilty’, fit the definition of ‘sacred man’ conceptualized by Agamben; these characters were declared ‘sacred man’ by the government and their lives were ‘bare lives’; therefore, these are the findings obtained as a result of the analysis in which those who understand the truth game established by the government through discourses are stigmatized.

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