Analysis #5

For this analysis I decided to take a closer look at the scene that we watched from “Westside Story” in terms of postmodernism. In this scene we see a group of young gang members confronted by a cop, officer Krupke. I want to look at this text specifically in terms of Foucault’s work “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” In this text Foucault explains the relationship between a panoptic prison system and how it relates to society.
The first relationship that I see in this movie clip is the interaction between Officer Krupke and the gang kids. He treats them as delinquents and the kids blame it on their parents. They are standing around in the streets because they don’t want to be at home. Foucault explains, in relationship to incarceration, that the delinquent’s home life should be investigated prior to his arrest. He writes, “‘On entering the colony, the child is subjected to a sort of interrogation as to his origins, the position of his family, the offence for which he was brought before the courts and all other offences that make up his short and often very sad existence” (1491). This quote exemplifies that it may not be entirely the child/culprits fault for his/her bad behavior; which is exactly what the gang members in the video are trying to point out.
The next scene is the song, where the guys try to point out the fact I have just suggested; that they are delinquents because of bad parenting. When the kid is bounced from place to place, from diagnosis to diagnosis, this shows that none of these diagnoses are correct. I think Foucault shows, in his work, an alternate form of punishment or diagnosis. As we see in the video clip, the end resolution after going through various diagnoses is to put him in jail after all; this was the first suggested form of punishment or reform. Foucault’s prison system essentially suggests that one watches over oneself or as he suggests the concept that “God sees you” (1491). This idea of a watch over oneself imprisonment, may or may not be effective but rather than putting someone through all sorts of hoops trying to diagnose him, it seems almost more practical to simply loop him in with all the other misfits or inmates with whatever issue they have.
I do not necessarily agree with this prison system, as it relates so greatly to leper colonies in that everyone, no matter what the sentence or disability they pertain, is all put into one place. I think that the watch over oneself style of running things could prove to be extremely disastrous; however, I think that this clip shows the amount of time and money that is wasted on diagnosing someone with a psychological or sociological disorder. Especially when in the end, he is diagnosed simply for being ‘bad.’
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism Second Edition. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010. 1490-1502.