God Sees You...

French theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault’s work, entitled Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison reveals the truly tormenting nature of the prison and how it estranges and forces the prisoner to become neurotically aware of their every deed and any deviation in or abnormality of, their behavior. Foucault’s theory about the Panopticon, an architectural structure of prisons that let the prisoners know they were surrounded at all times, from every angle, must to their chagrin, by an unknown legion of guards, able to observe their every flinch to a subtle glance.

In numerous Woody Allen films, people are prisoners of thought and theory, of questions and doubt, and the constant guards usually take the form of religion. The Jewish religion, usually scolded to Allen as a child as a way to tame him and his depressing doubts in many of his films, haunts Judah in the same way in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Religion and God takes the place of the obedience-maintaining prison guards in this film, and from the knowledge of an omniscient God, desensitizes Judah for his journey through reckless decisions culminating to a murder. Foucault’s Birth of a Prison reveals the standardizing advantages of a Panopticon, however much alienation the prisoners might undergo. Foucault explains the relevance and connection between religion and preserving civilized society through fear, guilt from the penetrating, all-Knowing vision of God in prisons: “… it is there above all the voice of religion, even if it is never spoken to their hearts…the entire parapenal institution, which is created in order not to be a prison, culminates in all, on the walls of which are written in black letters: ‘God sees you.’”



Judah recollects his father’s words to him and has a nostalgic daydream of a family discussion revolving around a religious moral structure of the world and the substance that it merits to the faithful, law-abiding one. Judah remembers a statement of his father, “The eyes of God see all,” that significantly impacts Judah’s concerns after he fickly decides to off his mistress. Judah is plagued by his conscience and the never-ending presence of God that almost pushes him through the Door of Confession. Surveillance by God and a notion heard from his father’s mouth that “God punishes the wicked” and sees all deeds of man compares to the guilt-raising, fear-inflicting, and mind-controlling character of the Panopticon which profits the prisoners and Judah with the same end-result: the recognition that they, and they alone cannot escape their wickedness, and punished by being surveyed forever by an invisible force.