believe in Precrime.” Significantly, this last exchange between them
takes place with the Washington Monument il uminated at night
in the background behind Anderton. The titanic obelisk is shown
repeatedly, for emphasis, and cal s to mind other ancient Egyptian
religious symbols adopted by the Masons who founded America,
such as the All-Seeing-Eye of Providence shining in the pyramid
capstone. The All-Seeing-Eye appears painted onto the forehead of
the knowingly laughing old woman in the lobby of Leo Crow’s hotel,
as her visionary third eye. Agatha’s ominous question, repeated
throughout the film, is: “Can you see?!”
From the opening scene with the Marks family, through to the
end where Lamar is awarded a Civil War pistol, there is a recurring
reference to Abraham Lincoln, the place of God and the sacred in
the constitutional order of the United States, and the bloodiest battle fought to save the soul of this country supposedly founded on the
God-given liberty of the individual. Sarah Marks is helping her son
memorize a Civil War era speech by Lincoln, which includes the
words “remember what was sacred” and “that this nation, under
God, shall not perish from the Earth.” The mother is thoughtlessly
reciting these words while her son cuts out a paper mask of Abe
Lincoln, whose eyes are gouged out, and while Sara lies in response
to questions asked by her suspicious husband – questions and
answers that intercut the Lincoln speech that the mother is helping
her son mindlessly memorize. The meaning of this scene is fairly
clear. It asks, in light of the overall concerns of the film, whether
the founding ideals of this country still mean anything anymore –
the ideals enshrined in the Bill of Rights and grounded above all
in that pronouncement of the Declaration of Independence that all
people are “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,
that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.”
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Specifical y, Minority Report poses the question of the sacred and the god given character of the individual liberties threatened by
the Precrime program. With particular relevance to the increasingly
strong surveil ance state of our own time, it compares technological
violations of privacy and individual liberty with the psychical
violation of free will that the precogs are being used to perpetrate. The Precrime team searches the sprawling district with infrared sensors
and robot spiders that crawl into private homes and bedrooms, eye
scanning people in the middle of having sex, or in the middle of a
heated argument, and terrifying little children. One smirking and
gum-chewing unnamed Precrime cop, played by Patrick Kilpatrick
is often depicted with the expression of an eager animal and reminds
one of the hoodlums turned crooked cops in Kubrick’s A Clockwork
Orange. During the spider-led raid into people’s homes this guy answers an indignant mother with the line: “If you don’t want your
kids to know terror, keep them away from me.” It is no wonder that
a society where such an invasion of privacy is tolerated is one that
would harness a validated psi ability in a way that poses an even more profound threat to individual liberty. Ultimately, Burgess shoots
himself with the Civil War revolver gifted to generals at the war’s
conclusion and whose five accompanying gold plated bullets were
meant “to represent the end of the destruction and death that had
rent the country apart for five years.” This choice of suicide, rather than the murder of Anderton, ends Precrime and so yet again the
Precrime experiment and all it represents is compared to the Civil
War on the scale of its challenge to the American ideal of liberty.
The deepest question that is being asked is whether free choice is
something that an Almighty God can endow us with.
When Anderton is trying to buy the designer drug he’s addicted
to in the sprawl, under the pretext of a late night jog, the dealer takes off his glasses and reveals his empty eye sockets as he says: “In the
land of the blind, the one-eyed man sees al .” This is paradoxical,
because he does not even have one eye. The reference to the one
eye is metaphorical. It concerns, yet again, the All-Seeing-Eye or
the third eye of clairvoyance. (The drug that Anderton is buying
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from him is the new and improved “Clarity”.) It is also a reference
to the Oedipus tragedy of Sophocles, where King Oedipus develops
the keen psychical vision of a sage after putting his own eyes out
in response to his discovery that he has unwittingly committed
incest. The specific reference to Oedipus is not as important as the
general significance of Sophocles who, together with Aeschylus, is
considered among the purest representatives of Greek literature
from the archaic age when tragedy was still considered the highest
art form and, as of yet not matched by any worthy comedies, the
art form most expressive of the archaic Greek religious worldview.
This is a worldview wherein Fate, sometimes equated with the will
of Zeus, is taken to be iron clad and the hero is condemned to a
tragic death insofar as he attempts to valiantly resist an inevitable
but unjust end. Minority Report overturns this fatalistic religious worldview, but the implications of this overturning are by no means
restricted to Greek fatalism.
The concept of “changing destiny” is at the core of the most
religiously charged scene in the film. Danny Witwer, warrant in
hand, demands to be taken into the temple, which Anderton has
explained to him is off limits to cops: “We keep strict separation.”
This, in addition of course to its name, demarcates “the temple” of
the precogs as a sacred space. The architecture of the vast oracle
chamber also emphasizes this. Once inside with the Precrime team,
the following exchange ensues when Anderton tel s Witwer that
it’s best not to think of the precogs as human. While handling his
rosary, Danny replies: “No, they’re much more than that. Science
has stolen most of our miracles. In a way they give us hope. Hope of
the existence of the divine. I find it interesting that some people have begun to deify the precogs.”
Later on, we see examples of this when Rufus T. Riley, the hacker
and computer designer who runs the virtual reality parlor, bows
down reverently before Agatha in awe and terror of her knowledge
of his sinful thoughts. We also learn that the precogs receive more
mail than Santa Claus, who is already replacing Jesus Christ as the
focus of the most important holiday or holy day in our culture.
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Anderton attempts to quash this religious sentiment on Witwer’s
part by referring to the precogs as nothing more than “pattern
recognition filters”, whereupon Danny objects: “Yet you call this
room ‘the temple.’” Final y, when John tries to dismiss this by saying that it is “just a nickname”, Witwer reflects on the fact that: “The
oracle isn’t
where the power is anyway. The power’s always been
with the priests, even if they had to invent the oracle.” Anderton is
annoyed that his colleagues appear to all be nodding in knowing
approval of this observation, especial y Jad, the black cop who goes
on to say: “Wel , come on, chief, the way we work, changing destiny
and al , I mean, we’re more like clergy than cops.”
Anderton sends them back to work and then listens to Witwer
apologetical y explain that this theologizing is an old habit formed
during three years at Fuller Seminary before he went into law
enforcement. His father was shot and killed when he was 15 on the
steps of his church and he claims to want to help Anderton prevent
crimes like that, and the one that cost John his son, from ever
happening again. Anderton takes to calling him “Father Whitwer”.
Later, this philosophical y minded theologian begins to respect
Anderton’s conviction of his innocence despite the precog prevision
and he eventual y vindicates Anderton by discovering how Ann
Lively’s murder was staged by taking advantage of precog “echoes”
only to wind up being martyred for his dedication to the truth. He
clutches and kisses his rosary as he is shot dead by Lamar Burgess
while the precogs are blind.
What does Witwer mean about the relationship between the
oracle and the priests and how is this connected to his conviction
that there must be a human flaw in what appears to be a perfect
system? The oracle consists of the three precogs, and we learn from
the tour guide’s inane propaganda speech to visiting school children
that the public is made to believe that the precogs each have their
own bedrooms, televisions, and weight rooms and that “it’s real y
wonderful to be a precog.” The reality is that they are prisoners who
are being terribly used and abused for their “gift” – a situation that cal s for reflection on the German meaning of the word gift, namely
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poison. In an exchange with Anderton when he first drives her out
into the real world, Agatha asks “is it now”. We see him still treating her as if she is a machine and she responds, in great pain and sorrow, that she is “tired of the future”. The precogs are being drugged up
and used against their will and moreover, being used to make people
believe that they have no wil . The chief priests of Precrime are not
the cops who recognize themselves as something like clergy. Burgess
and Hineman founded Precrime by distorting the precog abilities,
concealing the minority reports, and deceiving people into thinking
that the previsions are perfectly accurate. They created a quasi-
religious system that suggests we have no free wil . The doctrine of
this system is reflected in Witwer’s initial exchange with Fletcher
and Anderton who recite this catechism to Danny in response to his
concern that someone might decide not to go through with a crime
that the precogs have foreseen. Here is the dialogue.
Witwer: “We are arresting individuals who have broken no law.”
Fletcher: “But they wil , the commission of the crime is absolute
metaphysics. The precogs see the future and they are never
wrong.”
Witwer: “But it’s not the future if you stop it. Isn’t that a
fundamental paradox?”
Anderton: “Yes, it is. You’re talking about predetermination,
which happens all the time.”
He rol s one of the inscribed bal s towards Witwer. “Why did you
catch that?”
Witwer: “Because it was going to fal .”
Anderton: “You’re certain?”
Witwer: “Yeah.”
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Anderton: “But it didn’t fal . You caught it. The fact that you
prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was
going to happen.”
Witwer: “You ever get any false positives? Someone intends to
kill his boss or his wife but they never go through with it. How
do the precogs tell the difference?”
Anderton: “Precogs don’t see what you intend to do, only what
you will do.”
Witwer: “Then why can’t they see rapes, or assaults, or suicides?”
Fletcher: “Because of the nature of murder. There’s nothing more
destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the
untimely murder of one human being by another.”
Witwer: “Somehow I don’t think that was Walt Whitman.”
Anderton: “It’s Iris Hineman. She developed precogs, designed
the system, and pioneered the interface.”
The word “metaphysical” is deployed twice in this conversation.
Witwer’s sarcastic reference to Walt Whitman is related to it, since
Whitman was the advocate of a poetic “New World Metaphysics”
that could not be further from this official doctrine of the Precrime
system. The metaphysics in question here is deterministic. Intention
is deemed irrelevant, as is the conscientious inner struggle to change one’s intended action, and the human individual is analogized with
a wooden ball – an object mindlessly following a simple trajectory.
Yet Hineman herself, who is the source of the statement that
Fletcher cites as if it were scripture, later explains to Anderton that this veneer of determinism was a deception implemented by her and
Lamar Burgess. Some people have alternate futures that result in
“minority reports” wherein one precog, Agatha, disagrees with the
other two. Technicians like Wal y, the caretaker, are deceived into
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thinking this vision of an alternate future is an “echo” and they erase the record of it. Anderton is horrified that he may have sent innocent people with alternate futures into the limbo of Containment. There
is no “chain of events” that leads “inexorably” to murder, or for that matter any other deed. Even in the case of people who do not have
an alternate future or a minority report, such as Anderton himself,
knowing your future in advance affords you the chance to change it.
Two powerful examples of this are given in the film. The crux of
the first comes across in the exchange between Agatha and John just
as Leo Crow walks into his hotel room. Anderton says: “You said
so yourself. There is no minority report; I don’t have an alternate
future. I am going to kill this man.” Agatha, who has been repeating
pleadingly that he should leave and he can choose for a long time
now, final y explains: “You still have a choice. The others never saw
their future. You still have a choice!” After wrestling with Crow and
then holding him at gunpoint, Anderton hesitates – apparently in
response to Agatha’s plea – and his watch timer runs out and beeps
before he pul s the trigger. He decides to read Crow his rights
instead of killing him, after which he discovers that he has been set
up and Crow is a patsy. Although Crow grabs Anderton and forces
him to pull the trigger, this is not the murder that the precogs saw.
Stil , it’s close enough that we need a better example, and the film
ends with one. Here are Anderton’s final words to
Burgess. Notice
how he emphasizes now, which brings to mind Agatha’s question “is
it now?” during her first car ride out in the world and Anderton’s
reply, “Yes, this is all happening right now.”
Lamar, it’s over. The question you have to ask is: What are you
going to do now. No doubt the precogs have already seen this…
You see the dilemma, don’t you. If you don’t kill me, precogs were
wrong and precrime is over. If you do kill me, you go away. But
it proves the system works. Precogs were right. So what are you
going to do now? What’s it worth? Just one more murder. You’ll
rot in hell with a halo, but people will still believe in Precrime.
All you have to do is kill me, like they said you would. Except,
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you know your own future, which means you can change it, if
you want to. You still have a choice, Lamar. Like I did.”
This also confirms that the first example is one where Anderton does
defy the prevision, even though Crow still winds up dead. Lamar
chooses to shoot himself instead and, as he col apses while asking
John for forgiveness, the Precrime team sweeps in to see that the
prevision already recorded on the red bal s was wrong.
Moreover, it is not simply that John or Lamar had alternate
futures that are also predefined, so that it is a matter of choosing
between two fixed patterns of action or predetermined versions
of the future. John is clearly told that he has no alternate future
that the precogs could have seen but he can choose to make one
for himself regardless. Once a decision such as this is made, what
happens to what would have been? It melts away. This is suggested
in the most moving scene of the entire film, when Agatha, sitting
in Shawn’s room, channels the life that John and Lara could have
had with their son but that was melted away by the man who stole
him away from the public pool. Lara is in terrible agony towards the
end of this mediumistic trance because she feels the truth of it down
to the core of her being. It is not a hypothetical life that Agatha is merely imagining, or an alternative future that is going to be lived
out by another Shawn in a parallel universe. It is a stolen life. It is what William James would have called an “ambiguous possibility”
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