All language subtitles for Home.Invasion.2023.1080

In 1966 Marie Van Britten Brown a black
nurse in New York woke up from a nightmare

A recurring dream of her
home being invaded

Her house had been
frequently burgled

When she would call the police
they would take hours to respond

And when they did they were
potentially racist and violent towards her

If they even responded at all

Feeling unsafe in her own home and
increasingly scared of the outside

She invented something
to stop her nightmare

A new type of technology

A new type of doorbell

Drilling 4 peepholes into her
front door each at different heights

In order to better
survey the outside

She installed a motorised video camera that
would move from peephole to peephole

Capturing everything
happening on her doorstep

Transmitting it via radio signals
to every television in the house

Images of the outside
streamed into her home

Installing a screen next to her bed
she became obsessed with this feed

Staying up all night watching what
was happening on her doorstep

Losing the sleep she had
been trying to protect

The finishing touches were a 2-way
microphone for communicating with the outside

An audio recorder that would
document every encounter

And finally an alarm that upon her
touch would silently alert the police

Granting the authorities access to the
video signal from her doorstep

For them to react to
as they saw fit

Marie had invented the systems
of modern home security

The instruments of
domestic surveillance

She had reinvented the doorbell

Patenting her invention with an
illustration of a white woman in bed

Awoken by working
class men at her door

She sold her plans to
various architectural firms

Largely those building
gated suburban housing

Homes that she would
never be allowed to live in

Interviewed decades later

Marie was asked is she was
proud of the legacy of her invention

Her answer was decidedly mixed

Asked if her invention
had made her feel safer

She did not answer

By shutting out
the outside world

She had welcomed something
much darker into her home

Into our homes to come

The future had become
her nightmare

Her home had been invaded

Everyone evacuate the
fire is coming up!

It’s okay girls.

Take your dogs.

In 2004 Jamie Siminoff
woke up from a nightmare

A recurring dream in which
he never became successful

He had started many
businesses but all had failed

In the months since his last venture
he had become increasingly depressed

Unable to get back to sleep her would post

quotes on his blog from
the people he admired

Bezos, Gates, Jobs

He wanted to be a disrupter

To change whole industries
with his inventions

When he really couldn’t sleep
he would buy random things off eBay

By the time they arrived he had
forgotten about his nocturnal purchases

Oh my god, why is he
not answering me?

Cloistered in his garage searching for
the thing to make him a success

He would often miss
them being delivered

Seeing a problem he could solve

He invented a new
type of doorbell

One that would notify his phone
when someone rang his door

Showing him a live video feed of
what was happening on his doorstep

While he stayed safely
inside his home

He named it

Doorbot

You are fucking welcome!

Fucking heat index of 110

A few year later Doorbot was invited
onto reality business T.V show Shark Tank

Where businesses argue for the
financial backing of experts

Jamie’s pitch was
based on convenience

It didn’t go well

The experts rejected Doorbot
saying it was too niche

Hello?

UPS - Hi, I’m not home
right now can you leave it?

Too tech focused

That they couldn’t
see the potential

Yeah these are both for Bart
but Bart wasn’t home.

Just leave them I’ll
be home in just a minute.

Okay I’ll just put them
behind the planter up here.

Okay, awesome, thanks.

Depressed again in his garage his
wife Erin tried to cheer him up

Remarking how much safer she felt
with Doorbot in their home

Jamie never planned on
creating a surveillance network

But that’s exactly what he did

This girl left this door unlocked.

Hi Mary.

- Rose?
- I can see you.

- Rose?
- Mary. Turn around, turn around.

Turn around?

- What!?
- I’m in the doorbell, I can see you.

- You gone crazy!? Whatcha doing!?
- I can see you.

- Hello!
- Hello?

This is Dominos.

- Yes?
- Dominos, did you order food?

Actually hang on one second, the
guy who ordered it will open that door.

- Hello?
- Oh, okay

There we go.

- Whose there?
- Dominos!

- Did you order food?
- No I didn’t order any food!

Hey Mum, did Mac order food?

- There’s someone on…
- I’m sure Mac did

Mum! Ma Ann Emily!

Hi Mum!

- Hang on bud, we’ll figure this out.
- It’s my son.

My son Mac is upstairs, probably.

Hi Mum

- Yes?
- Hi, we can see you.

Hey! Get out of there!

Get your butt out of there boy!

Go! Get out of there!

Vámonos! Vámonos!

I’ll kick your butt,
I’ll kick your butt boy!

Little José,
I’ll kick your butt boy!

Yes you! I see you!
Get out of my plants!

Changing the marketing strategy Jamie
rebranded his reassuring Doorbot

In came language around intruders, thieves
and potential threats on your doorstep

His website changing from smiling
families to men in balaclavas

He renamed his company

Ring

Two years later Amazon bought Ring
and Jamie became a multi-millionaire

The doorbell he made in his garage became
a key node in Amazon’s interest in security

Of providing the visual infrastructures
needed for mass surveillance

He had become a success

He had conquered his
nightmares by profiting off ours

Hello?

Hi, can I help you?

What’s up?

- May I speak to you for just 30 seconds?
- No.

He ran into the neighbours house.

Reinventing the doorbell Jamie
updated Marie’s Innovation

Replacing her constantly streaming camera with
one equipped with motion and object detection

He wrote a new chapter in
the history of the doorbell

Acting as a guard
between the inside and out

A boundary between
self and other

Through its tied-in app Ring reports the
disturbances it perceives back to the owner

Flashing on their phone
an ominous notification

Motion detected at your door

Upon opening a fish-eyed live stream
of the outside fills the owner’s screen

A prompt below asking how
they want to respond

Talk to the intruder?

Ignore the threat?

Save a video of this
encounter and post it online?

The interactions Ring facilitates
are never contained to the doorstep

They are meant to be shared

For the owners the images produced by their
doorbells are a compelling reason to own the machines

For Ring they are
its side effect

A visual by-product that
produces the real commodities

Get away from the door!

The data the owners create

The access the doorbell grants

Part of the history of
smart home devices

Technology that disrupts basic functions of
living turning them into extractive sites of data

Ovens that inform your fridge when
you’ve been eating too much

Fridges that tell your toothbrush
to brush extra hard tonight

Toothbrushes that livestream the inside
of your mouth to your dentist

Ring is the latest turn
in these technologies

But unlike devices which promise
internal convenience for the owner

Ring is explicitly about the owners
fearful relationship to others

The threat of the outside

Ring is not a doorbell company

It’s a data company
who produces doorbells

Its real customers are the companies
it provides the owners data to

From the tech companies Jamie posted
quotes about when he couldn’t sleep

Google, Facebook, Amazon

To the analytics and
marketing companies such as

Mixpanel, Branch, Appsflyer

Providing them a wide
spectrum of digital fingerprints

IP Addresses, Locations, Sensor Data

All gathered from Ring doorbells

But these tech companies aren’t
the only ones interested in Ring

Hello, what are you
doing in my house?

Can we keep everyone inside your house? We
need to go to your backyard, if that’s alright?

So hold on a minute.
Can we open the back gate?

I know I’m not who you are expecting.
But your driver got arrested for speeding.

- So I’d figure I’d complete the DoorDash order for you.
- Thank you so much!

- Take care.
- Thanks!

- Okay I’m sheriff’s department, Detective Bush.
- Yes Sir.

We had a little incident where someone was found
hiding out in a trashcan out in front of your house.

- Okay.
- And I just wanted to touch your door and make sure it’s locked.

- The backdoor is not locked.
- Okay the backdoor is not locked.

- I don’t know if somebody…
- We have the one person we are looking for.

But I don’t know how long he was in
the trash can or if he went somewhere else.

I do have a motion camera inside the house and
I’ve been looking and have not seen anything.

They have not activated. Good if you were to come home and find
something askew call over to the sheriff’s department okay.

- Yes Sir.
- And like I said my name is Detective Rick Bush.

- And you guys did find the suspect?
- He was in your black trash can out front.

- He probably smells of dog poop.
- Well we just get them how we get them Sir.

I like this Ring thing, super cool.

- Police! Search warrant!
- Police! Search warrant!

Ring has become the all-seeing
eye of contemporary policing

The doorbell owner’s its
unwitting informants

When confronted with something
happening on their doorstep

A notification flashes on the owners screen
asking them if they wish to share this interaction

Connected to hyperlocal social media
apps such as Nextdoor and Citizen

As well as Ring’s own social
networking service Neighbours

Hello!?

What’s up!?

These apps allow users to share local
knowledge to protect their neighbourhoods

In reality they function as breeding
grounds for racist and classist paranoias

Digital town squares
for mob justice

The images produced by Ring are
disseminated on these apps

Tagged with words such
as invader, criminal and threat

With a Facebook-like comment section, neighbours
share their thoughts about these doorstep encounters

These networks are
riddled with police

Both verified accounts and
undercover operatives

Who directly contact users asking to
view the data collected on their doorbell

Ring and the police claim they always
ask for consent before doing this

Though that permission has often been secured
through intimidation and harassment tactics

If the owners refuse to actively
collude with the police

The police departments who have
partnered with Ring can sign a form

A document that bypasses the owners
wishes on the vague basis of public safety

It is unlikely that any police
request has ever been rejected

And…

Bitch. I’ll break your
fucking camera bitch.

You’re going to
break your hand. Stop.

I’ll break that bitch. Watch me.

Ring is not a doorbell company

It’s a surveillance company
who produces doorbells

While police actions have been
aided by Ring’s proliferation

There is no evidence that
Ring makes anyone safer

No crime statistic to justify
its invasion into communities

And while there can be a
legitimate need for home security

Ring has co-opted these concerns

Offering solutions rooted in racist
and classist extractivist technologies

Counter to the marketing in a
recent survey of Ring owners

Many claimed they were more anxious
since they installed their doorbells

They felt like they knew too much
about their neighbourhood

The trivial things that had
never bothered them before

Kids running around

Cars passing by

Packages being delivered

Now those things scared them

With the buzzing of their phone
they could see everything at any time

And with the associated apps they could
know what their neighbours really thought

It had brought out
everyone’s darker side

They had become customers
rather than neighbours

Terrified consumers of
each others fears

Asked if they would ever get rid
of their doorbell most weren’t sure

It had become embedded
into their daily lives

It had become a part
of their houses

Jamie’s solution to his
nightmare had invaded their homes

In 1906 in a Boston boarding house
D.W Griffith work up from a nightmare

Someone was banging on his door

Pushing aside his copy of Oliver Twist
which he had fallen asleep reading

He opened his door to find
his landlady screaming

Someone was on the phone for him

That morning in San Francisco his fiancé
Linda Arvidson had woken up in a panic

Hey!

Her home was shaking around her

Who can that be?
Hendrix, quiet down.

Rushing outside she found her
neighbourhood had collapsed

Her horizon was on fire

- Can we not have this conversation.
- What is that you don’t believe?

Now she was on the phone telling
Griffith that she was unharmed

She was safe from a disaster
he had no idea had happened

Griffith felt like he was
in two places at once

Paralysed by his inability
to physically help

Sandy?

Yet emotionally present
on the phone

- Alfred.
- Yes Mrs. Harris.

I heard the alarm. Lights on.

Both inside his
bedroom in Boston

And with Linda among the ruins of the
largest earthquake in American history

What did you say?

I want to know who I’m talking to.

- That’s not what you said.
- What do you think I said?

In the days to come Griffith
was reminded of Oliver Twist

Hello?

Hello!?

How scenes could cut back-and-forth
from one peril to another

With the reader maintaining what was
happening in both places at once

That if connected through technology
spaces could talk to each other

James?

Producing tension
through each other

Zoey?

Zoey?

Mr. Sandin, you home?

Would you like to
play a game? Tara.

Years later Griffith found
himself on a movie set

He had become a film director

He was shooting a scene that cut from
a terrified woman locked in her home

Terrorised by menacing vagrants
outside that threaten to break-in

Solid.

To her husband on the
phone in another part of town

Who will rush to save her

The film will be the first
home invasion movie

Through its horror he could show off
a new invention for organising space

Parallel Editing

After it the inside would
never be inside again

It will always be in conversation with
what is happening outside of itself

The threats waiting beyond sight

The technology which facilitated such
horror was the telephone

It was a lifeline to the outside

Hello. Hello. Hello?

To the police or the victims
husband who will come to the rescue

Operator.

Operator!

Operator.

Please Help!

But it was also a lifeline that
could be cut off or interrupted

No!

Oh no! No! No!

Griffith’s invasion was inspired by the Parisian
horror theatre of the turn of the century

One act plays about
the terrors of the day

Car accidents

Outbreaks of diseases

Science experiments gone wrong

Miss Bradford?

Jill? Jill!

A recurring motif in these plays
was the husband away at work

Leave me alone!

Jill, this is Sargent Sacker.
Listen to me.

We’ve traced the call, its
coming from inside the house.

A squad car is pull up right now.
Just be of that house.

Listening on the phone to something
terrible happening at his home

Jill!

- Casey!
- She’s here!

Oh my god! I can hear her

It was the destruction of
the bourgeois family

Where is she?

Technologically witnessed by the father
who is incapable of intervening

Tormented by the sounds of
unimaginable violence

And finally deafening silence

A nightmare of masculine impotence

Alright signal, c’mon!

And a shaken belief in the
the power of policing to protect

Alright. Go fuck yourself!

When these plays found their way across
the Atlantic the impotence had vanished

In cinemas eyes technology would
save rather than torment

Connect more than it separates

From the 1960’s the calls
came into the house

Who is it? Whose there?

Sam! Gloria! Somebody!

The outside came in

You were never truly
alone with a phone line

Noooo!

Your home could be
invaded through technology

A sinister voice on the
other end of the line

Phyl! Pat! Please Answer Me!

Please Answer Me!

Reminding you of
your own fragility

Hey! We’re not finished yet.

That technology could
be used against you

Final Question. Are you ready?

Earlier in the century Freud had compared
the phones ability to overcome distances

Of making inside out
and outside in

Get the hell out!

To the magical powers bestowed
upon people in fairy tales

- Do you see anything?
- There’s nothing.

The bedtime stories we tell
children to get them to sleep

Why won’t you give
us the homeless man?

No-one will miss him
when he’s gone. Pretty please!

Powers that seem
good on the surface

But by the end reveal unforeseen
consequences for those who desired them

Teaching us to be
careful what we wish for

I shouldn’t even be here.

And to remember there
is no place like home

The images produced by Ring
doorbells were born from this history

The latest remake in a long line
of home invasion cinema

Operational actualities haunted by
Griffith’s narrative innovations

While potentially
open for other uses

This is my house.
I have to defend it.

As counter surveillance strategies

Or as evidence to be brought
against those in power

These doorbell
images are tainted

By-products of data collection
and surveillance cultures

Their gaze is encoded
with violent logics

That render every
encounter a potential threat

As evidence of a crime
about to take place

A horror film waiting
on your doorstep

Please, I’ll tell you anything!

Please, no. No!

What is to be done with
machines that don’t work for us?

It weren’t one of yours.

With systems that
hinder radical futures

Oh fuck.

- Dad.
- Yes Ralph.

That profit off convenience and
use our fears against us

Sammy!

What good can be produced
through our nightmares?

What strength can we
gather from past struggles?

81st and West End Avenue. Three bedrooms,
spacious living room. Cathedral windows.

You need all that space?

How about this? West 83rd,
two bedroom, doorman building.

Park block, partial views, bright and
cheery flat, high ceilings and wood floors.

Yeah, that one.

- Hey!
- Wait, Sam! Sam! Sam!

Well you’re not going
anywhere without me.

Don’t worry. I’m going to
hold your hand all the way there.

What is to be done when our homes
and our dreams have been invaded?

In 1811 Mary Molyneux, a textile
worker from the North of England

Woke up in a panic
from a nightmare

A recurring dreams of the cotton mill
she worked at being invaded

Not by people but by technology

By machines that would half the
labour and half the skill to operate

That granted
convenience over quality

That would worsen the material
conditions of her community

But this wasn’t her nocturnal
subconscious running wild

This was reality
knocking on her door

She was only 19 but in her few
years major changes had occurred

Gone were the days of working
at home amongst her family

Setting their own schedule

Crafting textiles with
precision to sell to the mill

From now on if they wanted to work
it would have to be inside the factory

Selling their home to
move closer to the mill

Mary’s family moved into a
smaller home with another family

In a time of great
abundance for the mill owners

Her home had been invaded

Inside the mill out went
the mechanical looms

Those that she had learnt on

Those that required
technical expertise

An experience that
resided in her body

And in came over 200
steam-powered looms

And with them
dramatic pay decreases

Unable to sleep in her
now cramped home

Mary would go out at night

Wandering the town she was guided
by the new invention of gas lighting

That extended to night
the security of the day

As well as the potential to
work through the evenings

Craving the darkness she would
walk the outskirts of the town

There she discovered other
people who shared her nightmare

Looking over the illuminated town
they would talk about their lives

Hatching plans to
reimagine the future

One in which they could live in
dignity alongside these new machines

That would work with them

Not against

When they demanded this from the
mill owners they were met with derision

Writing to parliament
got them nowhere

And the Crown busy fighting
Napoleon had no time for them

They were exhausted

Their futures felt snuffed out

Until one night they heard of
other people across the North

Who like them couldn’t sleep

Who in order to stop their
nightmares had taken action

They were called

Luddites

They had invented a new way
of resisting technological violences

A new strategy of
collective bargaining

Through smashing up the machines
that facilitated their oppression

That through the
threat of their actions

They could secure better living
standards from their employers

Deterring others from
installing these machines

And by politicising technology
encourage others to resist

By attacking the
symbols of their alienation

Their actions became symbolic

The spanner in the imagination
of the burgeoning tech classes

Like Mary they were highly
technologically advanced workers

Thrown to the side by progress

The experts blowing the
whistle from the inside

The call coming from
inside the house

They showed Mary how to
disrupt whole industries

To resist the logics which
had invaded her home

By the time word of these
actions had reached Mary

They had also
spread to parliament

Though unwilling to assist in
the plight of the textile workers

Parliament enacted a law

Making machine wrecking
punishable by death

Sending out over
twelve-thousand soldiers

To arrest anyone they believed
to be connected to the Luddite actions

The government attempted to break a
social movement by force of arms

On behalf of private property

But this lawmaking only made the Luddite
actions increase in frequency and scope

One night in April

Mary and her new
friends armed themselves

They were going to
invade the cotton mill

The one they had been
having nightmares about

Picking a rare night when
the mill would be empty

They were going to destroy the machines
which had stripped them of their labour

As they marched into the illuminated
town they gathered supporters

By the time they reached
the mill they were 200 strong

But there seemed
no way of getting in

Tipped off by a government funded
spy who had infiltrated the Luddites

The mill had been fortified

Doors barricaded to stop
them being broken open

Most windows boarded
up from the inside

Not to be deterred Mary
threw the first stone

Smashing a side window

Using the pick from her
loom she climbed inside

Mary was alone for
the first time in the mill

The steam powered
looms stood silent

When as if in a dream she heard the
muffled screams of the crowd outside

They were shaking the mill door

Using all her strength she
moved the barricade aside

The door flung open

The workers flooded in

The mill had been invaded

Grabbing their weapons the
crowd swung at the machines

Mary screaming
“Come on Lads!” to the workers

But the haphazard instruments they
had brought with them were of no use

They had neither the tools

Nor the power to dismantle
technology so complicated

Gathering straw
from a nearby barn

They set fire to the low quality
fabrics produced on the power looms

Combusting with the
gas lighting inside

The mill burned beautifully

Returning home Mary fell peacefully
asleep for the first time in years

The steam powered looms didn’t
return to her town for another 30 years

The next morning the military
spread through the town

Knocking on doors and
breaking into people’s houses

Demanding information
on the mill burning

Woken in a panic Mary’s
home was invaded by soldiers

A known agitator she along
with 14 others were rounded up

When questioned Mary
pleaded her innocence

Claiming she was sound
asleep when the mill burnt

All 14 others did the same, keeping
to the secret oaths they had pledged

It was reported that
they were all executed

As a warning of what happens when
you resist technological progress

But the literature passed around
by fellow Luddites at the time

Along with parish records

Tell a different story

In reality no one from the town
came forward to identify the Luddites

Mary and her fellow
workers were acquitted

Only 4 of the 15
were found guilty

Doomed by the letters they had
written to the government funded spy

Though the spy themself never
came forward for fear of retribution

The 4 luddites were
hanged in the town square

By most historical
accounts the Luddites failed

The labour saving
machines were here to stay

Those who practiced
their tactics executed

And any record of their
successes suppressed

But for a brief moment they
had invented a different future

A better relationship between
technology and people

Between progress and community

Decades later Mary was said to sing
Luddite protest songs around the home

Lullabies to help her
grandchildren fall asleep

In 1817 in the suburbs of Birmingham
William Murdoch woke up from a nightmare

A recurring dream of a factory
being invaded by workers

He was sleeping alone in a large
home that he had designed himself

Built from the profits of his invention

A method of using gas for lighting

He felt like there was
someone outside looking in

Decades earlier he had been a
patent inspector on the Cornish coast

His job was to go into factories
using steam powered machines

Checking if his bosses’
patents had been infringed

One day in the summer of 1812
he was inspecting a tin smelting factory

When suddenly the
doors were bolted shut

Outside were hundreds
of rioting tin miners

Food prices had reached a
new high and they were starving

They were there to demand
better wages for their labour

Inspired by the Luddite
revolts they took action

Banging on the door it
reverberated around the factory

The sounds of the
outside echoing inside

William barely escaped before
the factory was invaded

Sitting up in bed listening to the wind
he thought he heard someone outside

Was someone trying to break-in?

Were the miners coming
to invade his home?

Or was someone trying
to get his attention?

It was not unusual for him
to receive surprise guests

Fellow inventors that had come from
far-off places see his new home

To see the new technologies
he had installed in it

If someone had knocked he wouldn’t have
been able to hear them from his bedroom

Especially with weather
so wild outside

Listening intently he
heard nothing but the wind

Concluding that it was
neither a guest nor an invader

He tried to go back to sleep

But his mind raced from the
panic he had awoken to

Seeing a problem he could solve

He invented something
to ease his nightmare

That through passing compressed air
through the pipes inside his walls

Pushing the outside through
the architecture of his home

At the press of a button his guests could
alert him to their presence at his doorstep

No matter the weather

No matter if he was in bed

This device placating any rioting
workers by focusing their anger

Reducing their gestures
to the push of a button

Stripping them of the physical
action of pounding on his door

The potentially violent escalation
from knocking on to breaking-in

His eyes grew heavy and he could
see the dawn break behind his curtains

The storm has passed, the night
was over he could sleep again

Dreaming in the knowledge that his
device would keep him safe in the future

He had invented a
new type of technology

He had invented the doorbell

So here we are in front
of Jamie Siminoff’s garage.

That’s where, next to the bin here.
That’s where he invented…

Doorbot - Doorbot