In 1786, an English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham wrote a series of letters to his father, which he later revised and collected in a book titled Panopticon; Or, the Inspection House: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in Which Persons of Any Description Are to be Kept Under Inspection; and in Particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Work-Houses, Poor-Houses, Lazarettos, Manufactories, Hospitals, Mad-Houses, and Schools: With a Plan of Management Adapted to the Principle: In a Series of Letters, Written in the Year 1787, from Crecheff in White Russia, to a Friend in England.
(It was the 18th century. Long titles were trendy.)
His primary subject matter was an architectural plan for a prison that would allow a single guard to watch a large number of inmates simultaneously. From this basic principle, he extrapolated a number of theories about the act of surveillance and how it would impact people subjected to it. Specifically, he anticipated dramatic and beneficial changes to their behavior, stimulated by both the external act of being watched and their own internal reactions to being watched.
In 2007 and again in 2009, Britney Spears became the Guinness Book of World Records’ Most Searched Person; between 2005 and 2008, her name was Yahoo’s most popular search term and she later became the most-searched person of the decade. Since the age of seventeen, she has lived in a world of surveillance beyond Bentham’s most semicolon-interrupted dreams. It has not worked out quite the way either she or he had planned.
In 2013, Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers hit theaters, revealing itself to be less the adolescent sex comedy promised by the trailers and more a neon spotlight on a certain less-celebrated segment of American society, dissected ruthlessly via contrasting depictions of sexuality, race, and class. It is also a love letter of sorts to Britney, drawing many of its aesthetic elements straight from her videos and personal life, and prominently featuring two of her biggest hits. More than anything else, though, Spring Breakers is a meta-meditation on young women’s understanding of themselves as constantly under scrutiny, always being consumable erotic objects for viewers of all kinds, and how they deal with that reality and occasionally succeed in subverting it.
Come on, y’all. Why you acting ‘spicious? I promise that it’ll make sense by the end.









