The Powerful and the Powerless

In THX-1138, a movie written and directed by George Lucas and released in 1971, Robert Duvall plays the titular chemically oppressed man. He lives in a society in which a computer controls every aspect of one's life. Fetuses are developed in glass wombs and children are taught by intravenous drips. Adults are matched for roommates and occupation based on algorithmic calculations and pharmaceutical sedation is employed to suppress emotion, bonding, and sexual desire, and to promote endurance in stressful labor. Religion is used as a release valve. At anytime, a person may step into a confession booth-like room to off-load their doubts or disturbances to a picture of Jesus' face along with pre-recorded positive affirmations. Enforcement is the domain of atomically powered android police officers who speak softly and carry very large sticks; sticks that can send targeted jolts of pain through specific nerves. Prison is a seemingly endless expanse of a bright white limbo.

THX is awakened by his roommate, LUH, with whom he finds that he is in love. They plot to escape together in order to avoid going back on sedatives, therefore losing the emotional connection they now feel, or being prosecuted for drug violations and executed. The effects of being off the sedatives and an attempted manipulation by a man designated SEN-5241, lead to their arrest. THX is isolated and experimented on before a brief reunion with LUH, during which she informs him that she is pregnant. Losing his mate and the interminable rantings of his fellow inmates compel THX to look for an escape. SEN accompanies THX and, after coming across a hologram incarnate named SRT, they do find the unguarded exits. SEN is separated from THX and SRT who discover that LUH's designation has been reassigned to a fetus, indicating her destruction. After a series of chase scenes, THX escapes alone to the surface because the cost of his pursuit has exceeded its allotted budget (Lucas).

Character development in this film is completely non-existent. This story does not allow for personality because the individuals living in this tale are controlled in a way that destroys ego. Choice is removed from the equation as well as emotion and higher level cognitive activities. The humans not only do not have any power, and therefore freedom, they do not desire it. The genesis of LUH's defiance is not explained, but her actions embody personal power and embolden further rebellion.

It would be quite a shock to wake up, an adult, and find that you have been under the control of some Other – whether it be a government, person, or computer or some such technology. This is what happens to THX and he seems to be in denial up until the moment of his arrest. He attempts to go about his usual routine, even going to work, but his lack of sedation is obvious and a serious liability on the job. Stressors – arrest, torture, solitary confinement, the pronouncement of parenthood – piled upon the man make him, for a time, unresponsive and withdrawn. Without hope, such things could fracture the mind, leaving it incoherent, or merely functional. Without impetus, one would be apathetic to one's imprisonment.

THX has both hope and impetus. His emotional bond with his mate, LUH, and their unborn child creates within him a purpose, but, it is the appearance of a shelldweller – one who lives in the outer shell of the city – that reminds him that there is somewhere to escape to. The control of this society is so nearly complete, that the exits of both prison and the city itself are not even guarded, just difficult to find.

In contrast, the level of control attained in The Handmaid's Tale is still under barrage and therefore maintained by guardians at the borders and within its structure. In the 1990 film adaptation, Robert Duvall plays the Commander, a high level security officer and complicit oppressor. In an attempt to cure the ills of a free society, a fundamentalist Christian sect execute a military coup in the United States and install a theocracy with the aims of repopulating through sex slaves as human surrogates.

All that is learned about the Commander is gleaned through his candid illicit conversations with the handmaid during their late night rendezvous. He craves a personal relationship, a sort of closeness, which he cannot have with his wife. Yet he is often condescending and retains an attitude of superiority, sometimes masterly, openly hypocritical and bigoted. When the handmaid asks him why he joined in with this regime, he replies

Why? The country was a mess, that's why. A total mess. All the garbage had risen to the top. You know? Had all these pressure groups running the store, trying to dictate to us. Blacks, homos, you know, all those people on welfare....Yesiree, women. So we had to clean it up. We got a big hose and washed the place clean....I don't mean you, I...Alright, let me explain something. I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the country. The country was crazy. Nobody felt anything - men or women. All they had was, like, how can I put this, like itches. Sex itches, money itches, power itches. That's not enough. There was no common purpose. Nothing to believe in, nothing to fight for. Nobody knew how to really feel anything, anymore. (Schlöndorff )

He goes on to mention respect and reverence as being things that are now felt by the people of Gilead. The Commander cites respect as a value important to those of Gilead in a conversation in which he is trying to justify his collusion with the architects of a society that depends upon the enslavement of fertile women and their officially sanctioned and ritualized rape.

The Commander is not without his sexual itches, either. He plans a special evening with his handmaid, secreting her to Jezebel's, a house of ill repute run by Gilead's government for use in international relations. This is seen as a useful diplomatic tool and, since it is populated by fallen women in any case, not a deadly sin to engage as patrons. The Commander, here, graduates from religiously approved rape to outright sexual assault in that, if the handmaid were to refuse, she would end up as an unwoman sent to clean radioactive waste - or worse (Schlöndorff ).

The characters lacking control of their lives in both films are followed through stages of oppression and rebellion. At each story's start, the powerless appear stunned and unable to act of their own volition. A study done at Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands by Pamela K. Smith, Nils B. Jostmann, Adam D. Galinsky, and Wilco W. van Dijk suggests that “lacking power itself fundamentally alters cognitive functioning (441)” because the stressors particular to powerless individuals disrupt their ability to focus on goal-relevant information (Smith et al. 441-442). Powerless people must focus much of their attention on constant self- and other-evaluation in response to current circumstances. This is illustrated in The Handmaid's Tale with the women's inability to revolt in any meaningful manner. Communications between handmaids are, by necessity, cryptic until it can be established who is a devout believer, perhaps even an Eye, and who is a potential ally. In a society like Gilead, all relationships must go through such evaluations, seriously tasking ones mental capacity for processing goal-relevant information. THX's need to postpone any rebellious action and attempt to maintain status quo in his relationship with his society also displays this effect. He is not simply in denial about the oppressive injustices visited himself and his fellows, he lacks the ability to formulate an expedient plan and execute it because he cannot focus long enough to do so.

In the worlds of the handmaid and of THX, personal shifts from powerlessness to power do occur, though, and we see this in reality as well. In view of the cognitive effects of powerlessness, revolutions of both a personal and popular nature are quite remarkable, but the mechanism driving rebellion is easy to intuit. All societies are hierarchical, consisting of those in power, or roles of leadership, and those who are lead, the powerless. A team of researchers at the Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Econimics Research published a study on how legitamacy of power affects the behavior of those in positions of both power and powerlessness. They first noted that “(l)egitimate hierarchies are associated with cooperation; the powerful act and the powerless follow. When power is illegitimate, however, this cooperation is often replaced with force and resistance (Lammers et al. 558).” Furthermore, when the powerless view the powerful as illegitimate, they will attempt alter the situation. The principle is described narratively by the solitary man confronted by a line of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He is “clearly powereless” and yet, he behaves in a manner contradictory to the effects of his powerlessness (Lammers et al. 558). The use of force and resistance is an active mode of interaction in Gilead, within its borders and at its edges. The government enforced social structure is a psychological means of control that belies its illegitimacy and keeps its citizens as prisoners while it is at war with the regions of the United States that it failed to contain in its original coup. For all those within Gilead's domain who recognize its lack of legitimate authority, rebellion is unavoidable and they have organized themselves under the auspicious title Mayday. In THX-1138, the issue of legitimacy is cleverly clouded by the mass sedation which limits the occurrences of revolt, yet the existence of “drug violation” charges shows the audience that it is not completely absent from this society. Imprisonment is advantageous to THX, in that it allows him to bypass the cognitive disadvantages of being powerless because he no longer has anything else to focus on but escape.

In these two films, Robert Duvall plays a zenith and a nadir – the Powerful and the Powerless. The effects of such positions have an intrinsic tension, a natural balance, as one creates the other. Those with power are those who take control and, when they take that control from others, they produce the Powerless. The Powerful allow any convenient trivia to justify the taking, whether it be class, race, gender, religion, or even species if it is allowed that the Powerful may someday be a computer as in THX-1138. Being the Powerless is wearying beyond measure, yet the meek and weary have boundaries across which, once they are pushed, they push back.

Works Cited

Handmaid's Tale, The. Dir. Volker Schlöndorff. Perf. Robert Duvall and Natasha Richardson. 1990. MGM/UA Home Entertainment, 2001. DVD.

Lammers, Joris, Adam D. Galinsky, Ernestine H. Gordijn, and Sabine Otten. "Illegitimacy Moderates the Effects of Power on Approach." Psychological Science. 19.6 (2008): 558 - 564. Print.

Smith, Pamela K., Nils B. Jostmann, Adam D. Galinsky, and Wilco W. van Dijk. "Lacking Power Impairs Executive Functions." Psychological Science. 19.5 (2008): 441 - 447. Print.

THX-1138. Dir. George Lucas. Perf. Robert Duvall. 1971. Warner Home Video, 2004. DVD