Identity-related crime in films IDENTITY-RELATED CRIME IN FILMS

Identity-related crime in films

Roles and identities in history

Roles and identities, as well as the changes these have undergone have existed ever since the earliest forms of society. Without doubt roles and identities existed in tribal societies and developed in response to the challenge of communal living and due to every member of society striving in their own way to avoid becoming deviant and thus excluded from society. Archetypal roles were those of the hunter, the gatherer, and more especially that of the fire-maker. Changing these identities did not use to be as easy as nowadays. In fact, in the Middle Ages, for example, it did not even occur to people to change their roles and identities in the way modern people do. On the contrary, their life strategy was to build a stable identity within their social environment. Living up to one’s role in society meant one and the same thing as a safe life. 

In his work on medieval man, Aron Gurevich provides a detailed analysis of the forms of medieval thinking, and reveals that the world for the people of the time was a narrow and transparent one, and, more importantly from a modern perspective, it was more ordered; “everything” found its place. With the exception of the very lowest strata of society, everybody recognised and found their assigned place in the hierarchy almost naturally, which was ideologically reinforced by religion. In the Middle Ages, the concealment of identity and the “casting off” of traditional roles existed in regulated forms – one such social safety valve was the classic carnival. In his study on Rabelais, Mikhail Bakhtin gives a detailed analysis of the valve function of the carnival by showing how the 2-3 days of madness, when the world is turned upside down, is in fact extremely regulated, and how important this period is for surviving the rest of the mundane grey days of the year. In this period, the donning of the identity and the identifying features of The Other were seen as a merely temporary event. However, in western European thinking, significant changes have taken place over the past 100 years. One of the most important signs of such change is that 20th-century man has tried to break out of the greyness of an alienated world by demonstrating his individualism, constructing his own idiosyncratic identity to achieve this, with the help of numerous roles and the necessary props to play them out. At the same time, he has insisted on traditions, old established roles, and ancient forms of identity. Of course, this outbreak was contradictory because of the rising human alienation in the past decades and the strengthening consumer capitalism: individuality also became a commodity and a tool of marketing.

Identity change in history and films

Identity exchange and identity takeover – assuming another identity – have manifested themselves in human cultures from the earliest times. It was an inexhaustible source of humour, but it was also important in fairy tales with a moral message to teach – even though nowadays it is becoming an increasingly determining factor in crime facilitated by technology. These days, illegal or non-illegal identity takeover as a source of humour have not been pushed into the background, although this has taken place in the case of its moral teaching element (it has been preserved in its most pure form in Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and the numerous film adaptations of the story). However, identity change as a possible source of crime is increasingly coming in the limelight. This approach has been intensifying in the period of digital reality and digital identities, now it has become easier than ever before to assume another person’s role, or rather his rights (property), whether it be through plastic surgery (Face/Off), the use of the other’s data (Filofax), or the use and misuse of his account. In the past, complete role swapping was bound by certain restrictions: the impersonator had to bear a certain similarity to the one being impersonated, or an exceptional situation occurred (e.g., twins who had never been aware of each other), and in more rare cases outstanding acting abilities were required. More typically, however, it was blind luck that determined the success of such an undertaking. It is very important to note that in accordance with the thought patterns at that time, there was the constant risk of deception being uncovered. In contrast, in the case of modern illegal identity takeover, this is becoming increasingly difficult. The main reason for this is that a person’s complete physical transformation is achievable, even within a short time (e.g., the agents of Mission: Impossible, who change their rubber mask faces from one minute to the next). Moreover, it is even more difficult to detect if somebody expropriates a digital identity (bankcards, entry codes), since this is physically independent of the individual. The more important our digital identities become, the more we fear losing them – and the stronger the desire on the part of others to procure them.

In light of this development and the importance of media as a source of information and education, it is interesting to make a classification of films which, through a fairly wide selection, demonstrate how the rearrangement of identity linkage occurs in these works. Of course it is not possible to compile every single work on the theme – our aim was rather to strive for variation by using stories that clearly show how the opportunities for role swapping and their expropriation are almost unlimited. 

At the very start of our research into the film world, we ran into one of the classics among early films, Charlie Chaplin’s Hitler, which represents humour as one of the key forms of identity “theft” – laced with drama as it naturally would be in the case of a high-standard comedy. Looking at the other end of the time line, the film entitled Filofax (Taking Care of Business) can be regarded as an outstanding work, because despite it having been made at the beginning of the spread of the digital world, it bears all the hallmarks of later films, the only exception being that the data carrier is paper-based. This comedy starring James Belushi and Charles Grodin was shown in cinemas in 1990 and in every respect bears the distinctive features of comedies from the 1980s, while at the same time identity “theft” is the focus throughout the entire film. Out of prison and on his way to the final of the baseball World Series, small-time criminal Jimmy Dworski finds a mislaid filofax organiser with all the data of its owner, on top of a telephone booth. From this point on, the road is paved to role swapping: registration, credit card and ID card. His find allows him to faultlessly take over the role of his victim in every aspect of his life. The injured party, who is an advertising expert, sums up the dangers and opportunities of keeping data in one place, and thus its potential expropriation, when he says: “My whole life was in there.”

Examples of identity-related crime in mainstream films

Identity takeover and other identity changes are more frequently seen in cinema and television productions reaching millions of people than in the news. Below is a table of these worldwidely released films, classified by the type of rearrangement of identity linkage, with a main focus on films from the 1980-2000s.

Analysis of identity-related crime in mainstream films

Our selection is somewhat arbitrary but fulfills our aim of illustrating the occurrence of various forms of identity-related crime in films. It shows that the part of “a hero assuming someone else’s role” must be added to the suzhets and structure outlined by V.Y. Propp in his morphological analysis of folk tales, although it might only be such a determining factor in Western culture. Journeys from body to body, fitting into the lives of unknown people, winning someone else’s love, murders after putting on someone else’s face – all this is possible in films. In the beginning, assuming another person’s identity always appeared in the context of assuming no responsibility and remaining unpunished. Later, dictated by the twists and turns of the storyline, identity change sometimes led to tragedies or an endless series of comical situations. Considering that here we are talking about the world of celluloid, it might come as no surprise that with rare exceptions, these stories always have a “happy” ending. This goes for more serious productions too, in which the fraudster falls, the trickery is uncovered and it is seen as betrayal by the environment, yet the conflict is generally nicely resolved. In one of the classic films dealing with digital identity, The Net, the protagonist eventually manages to win back her true identity.

Smaller tricks of crime appear in films in a rather different light: everything is possible here, but the fall of the criminal is not at all evident. There are no unbreakable codes, no unhackable computer systems, retina- or iris-scans, and even fingerprints and thermo images can be easily deceived in the world of master thieves. The positive image rendered to negative heroes has become stronger and thus their tricks more effective. It is no longer true that the bad have to fail. The element of rejecting technological means is a new phenomenon in films, too: every film including this element is a blow to trust in the concept of infallible technology that grew out of the sci-fi literature and films of the seventies and eighties. 2001: A Space Odyssey with HAL2000 going haywire can be regarded as one of the first of such films. Uncertainty is in the air: digital existence heavily makes its presence felt in all aspects of life (money, identity, etc.), but at the same time it can be changed or deleted with a single press of a button. No matter how false this statement is in terms of technology or regulation, this is the message communicated by mass media and this message is thus gradually ingrained in society.

After watching a movie like The Net, a beholder without knowledge of real technological and regulation circumstances of, e.g., illegal identity takeover has doubts whether is it real or fictional. It is not clear which parts are real and which are not. The Net suggests that identity takeover is possible and easy to carry out in an electronic (internet) environment by computer experts; hence, we live in permanent danger. Laymen without interest in computers can hardly distinguish between real and fictional pieces of such stories.

Everyday news of stolen account data or the leaking out of confidential information only deepens such fears. This duality will keep the theme of identity “theft” popular in films – no matter how far technological progress, trust and security may take us.