culture

This page highlights the representation of biometrics in film and popular literature, of significance in shaping uptake and resistance to biometrics.

It covers -

• introduction
• studies
• examples

The Digital Environment elsewhere on this site highlights utopian and dystopian visions of digital technologies, along with pointers to literature about futures and forecasting.

    introduction

Inclusion of biometrics in film and literature, whether as a plot device or as decoration, reflects the range of anxieties, hype, acceptance and misunderstanding explored in preceding pages of this note.

Fingerprints as a forensic mechanism appeared in short stories and novels at the turn of last century, both as a way of advancing the plot or demonstrating the author's modernity. Their appearance in fiction arguably reached its peak in US pulp literature during the 1920s and 1930s. Fingerprints thereafter became so unremarkable, such a routine part of what readers (or merely writers) imagined to be standard policing, that they were mentioned in parentheses ("dust the room for prints") or in connection with identity theft and other literary twists and turns.

Radio Age fascination with the print - or with the guru who wielded the magnifying glass - has been superseded by our contemporary reliance on DNA as the silver bullet for identifying wrong-doers. Coverage in films and television series such as Crime Scene Investigation typically understates the difficulty of collecting and processing truly usable forensic DNA; it also overstates the speed with which information can be matched.

Use of other biometrics has often had a distinctly grand guignol flavour, with recent films for example featuring circumvention of verification devices through stolen eyeballs and hands.

Sensationalism has been attributed to the low exposure of most people to biometrics other than fingerprints, to the credence placed in 'new technologies' (or merely in forecasts of new technologies, with low levels of scepticism perhaps unsurprising given the track record of some experts) and to the spin used by some marketers, notably implausible claims of high performance.

Arguably it is just as much a reflection of the desire to have a good time - in the words of one associate to "just sit back, relax, not worry about the implausibility or inconsistencies". Biometrics in sci-fi has thus been both a signifier of modernity and a deus ex machina that serves to move along the action.

    studies

There have been no major studies on the depiction of biometrics in literature, film or popular culture. That is in contrast with the proliferation over the past two decades of specialist and general works on forensics, such as Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000) by Ronald Thomas - arguing that forensic science helped create a new literary form - and Chemistry & Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Today's Courtroom (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1983) edited by Samuel Gerber.

    examples

Representations of biometrics, positive or otherwise, feature in the following films, novels and stories -

Fingerprint and hand

• Mark Twain's The Tragedy of Puddn’head Wilson (1894) - fingerprints as indelible and "unquestionable evidence of identity in all cases"
• R. Austin Freeman's The Red Thumb Mark (1907) - fake prints
• The Three Fingerprints (1940)
• Fingerprints Don't Lie (1951) - fake
• The Mad Magician (1954) - evidence
• Diamonds Are Forever (1971) - fake
• The Andromeda Strain (1971) - handprint
• Les Spécialistes (1985) - fingerprint
• F/X (1986) - fingerprint
• Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) - fingerprint
• La Femme Nikita (1990) - fingerprint
• Presumed Innocent (1990) - evidence
• Island on Fire (1990) - fingerprint
• Body Parts (1991) - fingerprint
• Interview with a Serial Killer (1993) - fingerprint
• The Specialist (1994) - palm
• True Lies (1994) - access
• GoldenEye (1995) - access
• Judge Dredd (1995) - hand
• Outbreak (1995) - access
• Seven (1995) - evidence
• Mission Impossible (1996) - access
• Face/Off (1997) - fingerprint
• Men in Black (1997) - removal
• Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) - fingerprint
• The Creeps (1997) - fingerprint
• Double Team (1997) - fingerprint
• Enemy of the State (1998) - fingerprint
• The Siege (1998) - evidence
• The Bone Collector (1999) - evidence
• The 6th Day (2000) - access
• Along Came a Spider (2000) - removal
• Antitrust (2000) - evidence
• Charlie's Angels (2000) - access
• Dracula 2000 (2000) - evidence
• Hollow Man (2000) - fingerprint
• Frequency (2000) - fingerprint
• Planet of the Apes (2001) - access
• Ocean's Eleven (2001) - access
• Hannibal (2001) - evidence
• Die Another Day (2002) - access
• The Bourne Identity (2002) - access (PDA)
• Nightstalker (2002) - evidence
• Crazy as Hell (2002) - evidence
• X-Men 2 (2003) - access
• The Bourne Supremacy (2004) - PDA access
• I, Robot (2004) - access
• Loser Takes All! (2004) - evidence
• Benjamin Gates et le trésor des Templiers (2004) - fake

Retina and Iris systems

• Blade Runner (1982) - verification
• Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan (1982) - access
• Never Say Never Again (1983) - access
• Demolition Man (1993) - stolen
• True Lies (1994) - access
• GoldenEye (1995) - access
• Barb Wire (1996) - access
• Mission Impossible (1996) - access
• Gattaca (1997) - identification
• Entrapment (1999) - fake
• Charlie's Angels (2000) - access
• Dracula 2000 (2000) - fake
• Mission Impossible 2 (2000) - access
• X-Men (2000) - access
• Bad Company (2002) - laptop access
• Minority Report (2002) - access and fake
• X-Men 2 (2003) - access.

Voice

• Star Trek III - The Search for Spock (1984) - access
• Sneakers (1992) - fake ("My voice is my passport")
• GoldenEye (1995) - access
• Mission Impossible (1996) - access
• Critical Decision (1996) - recognition
• Face/Off (1997) - recognition
• Charlie's Angels (2000) - access
• Dracula 2000 (2000) - access
• The Hollow Man (2000) - access
• Mission Impossible 2 (2000) - access
• Mission to Mars (2000) - access
• X-Men 2 (2003) - access
• I, Robot (2004) - access

Face

• Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) - recognition
• Enemy of the State (1998) - recognition
• Mission Impossible 2 (2000) - recognition
• Replicant (2001) - access

DNA

• Gattaca (1997) - access and fake

Other

• Alien 4 - Resurrection (1997) - breath.
  
  

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