Kammerer, Dietmar (2020):
"Give Them Something to Watch. Videoüberwachung als Motiv in Werbung." Narrative der Überwachung: Typen, mediale Formen und Entwicklungen. Eds. Hauptmann, Kilian; Hennig, Martin; Krah, Hans. Berlin: Peter Lang. 115-135
Article in Anthology
Abstract

If 'video' is Latin for 'I see,' then 'video surveillance' literally means: I see surveillance. Thus, video surveillance is a technique that functions not only by making someone or some event visible to others. But also by making itself visible: by turning itself into a specific image and by disseminating these images of itself. Surveillance studies scholars examine not only the empirical reality of surveillance, but regularly find their objects in the field of pop and popular culture: in news broadcasts, feature films, computer games or pop music. In this paper, I will study how selected advertising clips represent video surveillance on a visual and narrative level, how they frame the discourse on surveillance in a specific way, how they seemingly show options of resistance and how they link the possibility of resistance to the consumption or use of a particular advertised commodity. From this, arguments are developed for a critique of some of the dominant topoi of the surveillance discourse.