Within the past thirty years, privacy concerns among American citizens are rising with counter-terrorist surveillance going beyond targeting people of interest. These concerns are reflected in American cinema where many contemporary films have explored surveillance in society. The textual analyses presented in the thesis will focus on three such films, Strange Days (1995), Southland Tales (2005), and Nightcrawler (2014). Throughout this thesis, I examine how each of these films offers a unique, reflexive take on surveillance, adhering to generative mechanisms that evoke differing attitudes about surveillance through their form. My analysis draws on Laura Mulvey and Patricia Pisters’ theories on the gaze to understand the politics of looking in contemporary surveillance cinema and highlight how cinematic scopophilia evolved into a networked perspective. My analysis suggests that the politics of surveillance cinema is reflected in these films as their differences mirror the changing perception of surveillance and the gaze over time. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection