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Epistemology in Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville
In Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville, a secret agent, Lemmy Caution, infiltrates a city controlled by a super-computer called Alpha60. He is sent to Alphaville posing as a journalist to investigate its residents and encounters a conflict of human emotion versus logical machines. The weapon of choice for both man and machine is knowledge that the other does not possess. This knowledge is marked throughout the film by Caution's observations as he deciphers how Alpha 60 reinforces logical thinking by eliminating emotional ideas. These observations are Godard's epistemological representation of what can only be known to humans and never grasped by computers. Caution has knowledge of poetic language important in his defense against Alpha60's interrogation. He is arrested for trying to take photographs of Professor Van Braun, the computer's creator and taken to Alpha60's central control. Seated in an interrogation room he is questioned about his purpose for being in Alphaville. He manages to avoid revealing his true motives, which are to undermine Professor Van Braun and destroy Alpha60. He does this by answering in circumlocutory poetic language that the computer cannot register. The computer's questions are similar to a lie detector test and the exchange of dialogue marks an important distinction in the knowledge they both possess. The computer's thinking and speech process is maintained by a knowledge based in logic. Whereas the poetic language Caution uses is knowledge rooted in an intuitive emotional thinking. The computer at first asks completely factual questions of, places, dates and objects. The only Lie Caution tells is that of his name saying it is Ivan Johnson, his cover as a journalist. The computer can detect this falsity, as it is factual information. It is not until the computer delves into matters of Caution's opinions and ideas that it has problems detecting him. When asked "Do you make any distinction between the mysterious principles of knowledge and those of love", Caution responds, "In my opinion, in love there is no mystery." This boggles the computer, as do his other opinion based responses and he is set free. Here Caution has encoded knowledge of the self through stating his opinion in poetic phrases. The computer's question could have been answered by a yes or no, but he hides his meaning just as poetry often hides it's meaning in the language. Here Caution displays the complexity in how humans have the ability to know as compared to a computer's ability to calculate only facts. A yes or no answer would be analogous to the binary language of a computer in ones and zeroes, easily decoded. Instead Caution creates something like a code of language that the computer cannot crack. After the computer interrogates Caution he is led to another room where an engineer interrogates him. Here the engineer tells Caution that his replies to the computers questions were "difficult and sometimes impossible to codify." No logical meaning could be found in Caution's replies so he is a mystery to Alpha60 and its brainwashed servants. To explain the thinking of Alphaville the engineer says, "we record, calculate, and draw conclusions." Within these dialogues Godard has drawn the line between the logical language of computers and the human language of poetry. The language of Poetry that Caution represents is as he says "inspirations of the conscience." Alpha60's binary language of yes and no is limited to that of calculations and conclusions. Knowledge in Alphaville is reduced to this simplified form of logic and as Caution says its people are "slaves of probabilities." The conflicting forms of knowledge are marked in two different ways in the film. One is the film's visualization of censorship that expresses the formal language instructed to the residents of Alphaville by the computer. The second is the use of light to symbolize human knowledge in Lemmy Caution and electricity as the artificial knowledge of Alpha60.
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Read the rest of this essay at the link provided, including discussion about the film's themes of Censorship and the Filmmaker as Poet.
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Contributor's Note
When the past meets future for Jason, the moment is fueled by a creative background in music, writing, film and philosophy providing a nexus of the complex world to come. He is currently a freelance writer and ghostwriter of books, articles and screenplays.
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Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville
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