Foucault saw the Panopticon as a metaphor for the way the modern state incarcerates us, inflicting surveillance and control over our bodies. .
Ironically, while it appears that no prison was ever built exactly along the lines of what Bentham had in mind, principles embodied in the Panopticon were to have a widespread influence, its key rudiment being inspection. The Panopticon represented a secular exaggeration of divine "all seeing", and the observer was also, like God, invisible. Hence ". . . the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose of the establishment be attained." (Semple 1993:40).
Bentham's central goal of the Panopticon was control through both isolation and the possibility of constant surveillance. A prisoner will constrain his own behavior with the knowledge that some guard may be observing every action, regardless whether anyone is watching at any given time. (Engberg). Much can be said around the actions of celebrities in the public eye. Each one of us takes on the role of the observer, while reading celebrity scandals in tabloids, newspapers, and keeping up with the latest stories on shows such as Entertainment Tonight, where individuals are observed, and their deviations from the norm are recorded and analyzed to ascertain their level of deviancy. (Hills). As a society we have created a structure similar to that of Foucault's view of the Panopticon, surveying celebrities and there very actions in order to acquire the latest and juiciest pieces of gossip. There exists a link between Foucault's use of Bentham's Panopticon, in that the media acts as a ". machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in a central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.(Owen 1994:177). .
Celebrity scandals have become a popular commodity.
