Foucault is uniquely akin to contemporary film.
--Gilles Deleuze

In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault traces the spread of panopticism from its origin as a closed and segmented physical space used to label and exclude criminals and otherwise "undesirable" elements to its deployment as a generalized disciplinary function within the entire social body. Foucault describes the application of the panoptic schema in the following manner:

It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposing of centers and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power . . . . Whenever one is dealing with a multiplicity of individuals on whom a task or a particular form of behavior must be imposed, the panoptic schema may be used (205).
  The Panopticon defines power relations in everyday life through characterization and classification. Once generalized, its function is to discipline the social body and ensure a certain code of behavior. The efficacy of the panoptic mechanism is guaranteed through the omnipresent threat of irregular and constant inspection of its subjects. In this way, those being surveyed are in a state of conscious and permanent visibility that guarantees the automatic functioning of the disciplinary power structure. While the panoptic schema is capable of making everything (and everyone) visible and surveyable, it remains virtually invisible--a sort of "faceless gaze" which sees everything without being seen--while the subject is totally seen without ever seeing.

According to Foucault, the prison system serves as a model for power distribution because it combines in a single figure both architectures and discourses: the visibility of prison and the statements of penal law have been inextricably

 
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