On Learning to Smile at the CCTV Camera

“Big Brother is watching you.”
— George Orwell, 1984

By Vincent R. Pozon

In another lifetime, we bristled at the idea of Big Brother—eyes everywhere, watching everything we did, tracking where we went. It was a chilling prospect. Even if Orwell’s dystopian classic was written well before CCTV cameras, we saw it as plausible—we knew how authoritarian governments think.

Privacy was liberty. To disappear was a right. But somewhere along the way, we stopped resisting.

Today, crimes on the road, traffic accidents—and more precisely, fault—are settled not by testimony but by video footage. Our faces unlock gates, verify identities. We are preknown. We no longer vanish in crowds. We no longer arrive anonymously.

These systems are the fruit of a government trying to take care of us—like shin guards, knee pads, and helmets made mandatory for children riding bicycles. They may be overprotective, but they mean well. The private sector plays its part: our phones and tablets, upon seeing our faces, brighten in welcome. We’ve come to accept convenience as a form of consent.

In a sense, we’ve lost the freedom to be lost. Or unseen.

When my mother was still with me, I had two CCTV cameras on her: one as part of the house’s security grid, another fixed and zoomed in where she slept—later, her deathbed. She needed oxygen day and night. From upstairs, I could see her. I would glance at the side monitor, watch her chest rise and fall.

There were nights she stirred, trying to get up without waking the people with her, and I would rush down. When she slipped off her cannula, I would go and reattach it.

A few days after she passed, I realized I had a digital recording of the crisis of her dying—and of Mommy and me, at the exact moment she breathed her last.

And so, the eye that sees all becomes not a weapon, but a comfort. The surveillance we feared has become something else: a hand we no longer notice on our shoulder. We have surrendered to it—not from defeat, but from need. From love.

We’ve forgotten what privacy feels like. The young do not know the joy of disappearing. They do not flinch at intrusion, at the idea that no matter where they are at night, there are people in darkened rooms in city halls all over the country whose eyes are trained on them.

Big Brother is watching. The only difference is—we’ve started to smile for the camera.

Vincent R. Pozon

After a year of college, Koyang entered advertising, and there he stayed for half a century, in various agencies, multinational and local. He is known for aberrant strategic successes (e.g., Clusivol’s ‘Bawal Magkasakit’, Promil’s ‘The Gifted Child’, RiteMED’s ‘May RiteMED ba nito?', VP Binay's 'Ganito Kami sa Makati', JV Ejercito's 'The Good One'). He is chairman of Estima, an ad agency dedicated to helping local industrialists, causes and candidates. He is co-founder and counselor for advertising, public relations, and crisis management of Caucus, Inc., a multi-discipline consultancy firm. He can be reached through vpozon@me.com.