A Scanner Darkly

The scramble suits worn by Arctor and his fellow agents are a creative narrative invention, but they serve another purpose beyond hiding identities: They symbolize the prioritization of secrecy within the narcotics agency. Lack of transparency is a charge often leveled against law enforcement, and Dick finds a clever technological analog to symbolize this idea. Those who hold secrets hold power, and an agent whose identity is hidden holds a distinct advantage. On another level, the scramble suits, which project “every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure” (16) also suggest a social uniformity, a bland sameness that dopers see in the world of the straights. Social conformity has blurred out any distinctive edges or uniqueness, leaving everyone looking more or less the same, like a blur.

When Donna fires her service weapon into the back of a Coca-Cola truck, she is not just venting her rage at the agency’s treatment of a friend, she is shaking her fist at capitalism and the inequities it has wrought. Dick’s world is divided between the haves and have-nots, the latter looking at the former with both envy and smug self-righteousness—they would rather live in squalor than be a part of the straight world. Shopping malls are secured fortresses to keep out undesirables. Southern California is a bifurcated society in which straights live in well-tended suburbs, and dopers—those who by choice or circumstance don’t participate in the capitalist system—live in substandard and neglected neighborhoods, always at risk of intimidation by law enforcement. Coke, that most American of consumer products, symbolizes the promises and failures of capitalism. A hugely successful corporation for more than a century, it also contributes to a variety of health problems (not to mention cocaine was once an active ingredient). Donna’s destruction of the coke bottles is a statement of protest, a have-not challenging the blind consumerism of the haves.