It gives their acts meanings and values beyond their personal knowledge or control. How radically and profoundly at odds this is with the traditional Hollywood film, grounded in its sentimental post-Romantic exaltation of the autonomous ego, needs no comment. Capra's layered visual field reminds us one final time of all of the layers of technological and bureaucratic packaging that contain and control discourse in this world, from the radio announcers looking down on the stage from their sound booths above the crowd to the public-address system that strips the intimacy from the tones of one's voice. Capra's layered sound track and contrapuntal editing demonstrate that the technologies of knowledge and understanding are as completely in place in the field as they were during his speech in the radio studio earlier. The technology that allows Doe's voice potentially to reach thousands of individuals by the same virtue necessarily robs him of a personal presence.
Every technology is precisely as repressive as it is expressive.
Doe makes his way through the crowd in the stadium to the stage, only minutes ahead of Norton's men, who are determined to stop him. That is one of the things it means to say that experience is always repressively mediated in this world. The alternation of close-up shots with shots from the radio booth and the use of a layered sound track remind us that these contents are always contained. Both the visual and the acoustic effects are presented as layer after layer of packaging and merchandising. We are reminded of how the human figure and voice exist here only insofar as they are transmittable by a technology of information processing.