CHRONOS SICKNESS: DIGITAL REALITY IN DUNCAN JONES’S SOURCE CODE

he advent of digital technologies unquestionably afected cinema. he indexical relation and realistic efect with the photographed world much praised by André Bazin (2005) and Roland Barthes (1986) is just one of the afected aspects. his article discusses cinema in light of the new digital possibilities, relecting on Steven Shaviro’s consideration of “how a nonindexical realism might be possible” ( Postcinematic 63) and how in fact a new kind of reality, a digital one, might emerge in the science iction ilm Source Code (2013) by Duncan Jones.

his article analyzes how the recent science iction ilm Source Code (2013) by Duncan Jones has been shaped by new theoretical concepts in what critical theory has called the post-cinematic (Steven Shaviro, 2010), the pseudo-postmodern (Alan Kirby, 2006), the supercinema (William Brown, 2013), the new new Hollywood (homas Elsaesser, 2009), the post-ilmic (Garrett Stewart, 2007), or even the post-postmodern (Linda Hutcheon, 2002).Contemporary science iction ilms appear to have a distinct approach to postmodern aspects as nostalgia, dystopia and emphasis on space, as Fredric Jameson (1984), Linda Hutcheon (1989) and Andreas Huyssen (1986) argued.Previous science iction ilms focus on a notion of the present period and emphasize concepts of time in their narrative construction and cinematic resources.New digital possibilities appear to be its main cause.
In analyzing Source Code, I expect to demonstrate how its representation of time relects on the ontological relation between reality and digital reality, as it constructs a diferent concept of time within the science iction genre.Such duality is possible through the elaboration of a virtual world, which allows existence beyond one's own body, time and space.Captain Stevens, the main character, confronts his disabled condition and dystopic world, reconiguring the digital, and not the future, into a utopic possibility.
Shaviro explains that in post-cinematic ilms, "plot is no longer stabilized by temporal progression … the 'new cinema'-as innovative as it is involuntarily caught up in historical change-has arrived at a point of temporal crisis where 'chronos is sickness itself '" (Postcinematic 166-7).Chronology becomes a disease.Chronos sickness emerges in an iterative present, which is haunted by the past and deies the future, while a malleable and multiple space predominates.he consequences of this sick chronos is a mind-game story (Elsaesser 19), which reiterates Garrett Stewart's argument that the digital form has afected the narrative content (Framed 173).his article begins discussing space, moves to the portrayal of technology and how it relates to our contemporary digital world, and inishes with the subject of time.

Data Worlds
Source Code tells the tale of the American soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is trapped in what seems to be a spaceship cabin or a training room.Within this room, he talks to his instructor Captain Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) through a video chat; she puts him in a virtual simulation (sim).His mission is to discover the bomber of a train before it explodes.Every time he fails, the bomb explodes, and Goodwin sends him back to the beginning of the simulation.But Captain Stevens is not comfortable in this apparent training section, he wants to leave it, and soon discovers that, despite being virtual, its consequences can still be real.
Diferent layers of virtuality compose space in Source Code. he narrative reveals three main layers of existence, which superimpose and fold into each other; they correspond to the diferent realities Captain Stevens inds along the ilm. he irst is Captain Goodwin's control room. he second is where Captain Stevens is locked in what looks like a spaceship cabin, the capsule.he third is the simulation where the latter travels to, the train.his convoluted space tricks our understanding of what is real in this ilm. he virtual worlds of the simulations challenge the characters' and the viewers' mapping of reality. he control room is where "reality" seems to be manifested, since this is the supposed real world.Captain Goodwin is part of a USA military program that invented a kind of time travel machine, the Source Code.his device is further discussed in the next section.Captain Goodwin's space looks more like a surveillance room than a scientist's laboratory, as the many screens behind her show.he idea of surveillance pervades the ilm as she is constantly watching and monitoring Captain Stevens, applying memory tests and exercises on him.
Interestingly, Captain Stevens's perspective predominates in the beginning of the ilm, which means that we only see Captain Goodwin through the small screen on the capsule.We are watching her, instead of the other way around.his inversion is the irst foreshadowing of this ilm's mind-game construction.
More interesting is that the capsule where Captain Stevens is trapped is not real, being a virtual reality created by the program Source Code.Another inversion is that the real world where Captain Goodwin is located appears only on the virtual image of the screen in the virtual reality of the capsule.
he story is that Captain Stevens is actually in a coma.His body is incubated in a machine, while his mind is projected into the capsule by the Source Code, and then again in the train.A virtual simulation inside a virtual simulation.In this third space, he has to discover the bomb and the bomber.But as he says "his looks so real" (00:12:05), that it is hard for him not to get involved with the characters and events of the train simulation.his notion of reality is relevant because the fact that the capsule is also virtual is only revealed much later in the story.he viewer and the main character believe that the capsule is real while the train is virtual.
Comparing these two simulations leads us to a diferent understanding, another inversion in which the train looks real, while the capsule looks odd. he train's aesthetic is very realistic.he only uncanny feeling is the repetitions, since Captain Stevens always awakes in the same situations, as Phil (Bill Murray) in Groundhog Day (1993).Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) is talking to the Captain, the ticket collector comes and a woman spills cofee on his shoe.He is also a diferent person, as he embodies a man named Sean Fentress (Frédérick De Grandpré).In the train sequences, the Hollywood editing concepts studied and deined by David Bordwell predominate, lighting is realistic, shots follow the main character's perspective, and establishing shots orient us; some cuts are fast but they are recognizable within the space.he characters are on a moving train.
On the other hand, the capsule is surreal.He wakes up upside down with Captain Goodwin's voice already giving him instructions.A lack of medium or establishing shots contributes to the viewers' disorientation, while a close-up on his face and a dark lighting do not allow us to discover the surroundings.We receive as little information as he does about this second space.A ilter makes the colors paler and bluish, because the main light source is Goodwin's screen.As the sequence proceeds the camera itself seems to be entrapped in this capsule, and cannot ind the distance to open its lens and reveal more.
his diiculty in distinguishing the virtual and the real complicates space.As much as the main character, we are cheated into believing that the capsule is real, even though it looks odd, and that the train is a simulation that looks too real.But ultimately, neither is real. he twist of this mind-game ilm is to transform the ontology of these two virtual worlds into possible realities, as when Captain Stevens dies in the control room but survives in the train world by the end of the ilm.
he capsule goes under a transformation that relates to the instabilities of Captain Stevens's mind. he director Duncan Jones explains that at irst "we designed the pod to resemble a helicopter cockpit.It's a small, intimate environment where he has this bright white screen in front of him that he can't really see through" (qtd. in Fordham 54).In this irst instance, he is belted to a chair as a pilot.As he starts suspecting the nature of this cockpit, it starts collapsing as well, a lot of luid is leaking and the heating stops working.When Captain Stevens discovers that the capsule is a virtual projection of his mind, it expands around him into a big, although restrictive space.
Duncan highlights that "at that point, the pod environment is supposed to resemble a medieval prison cell with a window up at the top throwing light on him, like something out of an old Errol Flynn movie.Colter [Captain Colter Stevens] ends up thinking of himself as being in a kind of virtual prison" (qtd. in Fordham 59).In this scene, the camera begins with a close-up on his face, and opens the frame going upwards as the cell grows, enhancing the mentioned prison feeling.A single light beam focuses part of his body, which works as a foreshadowing, since later we discover that he is disabled in the control room world, and the light emphasizes exactly what remains of his real body.Exposed wires, rust, and dirt makes the capsule look unstable and unsafe, which also recalls Captain Stevens's disabled body and comatose state.his transformation of the space exposes its connection to the character and his body, being as malleable as his understanding of reality.
When Captain Stevens discovers that he is trapped in these layers of simulations, he asks Captain Goodwin to disengage him from the Source Code.He wants to die, so that he would not be manipulated again, he says "Any soldier I have served with could say that one death is service enough" (00:51:32).Touched by his appeal, she confronts her superior, Dr. Rutledge (Jefrey Wright), and disengages Captain Stevens from the machine.But she does this while the latter's mind is attached to the train reality because he wants to have a last 8-minutes with Christina, with whom he fell in love.When he dies in the control room, his mind survives in the train in Sean's body.
Ater his immigration from real to virtual, the train is no longer a virtual world but a parallel reality, with another Captain Goodwin and another version of his own body.He actualizes the virtual reality.As a consequence, the control room world becomes just another layer in a complex chain of existence.Similar to the replicants in Blade Runner, if the copy is as real as that which is copied, then they are all real.To turn virtual into real, space becomes malleable; because it cannot constrain as hings to Come's Everytown, it rather has to allow changes.At irst, the virtual scenarios, the capsule and the train are addendums to a stable reality and its hidden layers.Finally, these layers become foldable sheets of space and existence for the characters.
Crucially, this space is not the fragmented postmodern space, as Blade Runner's "synthesis of mental architectures" (Bruno 67) that evokes a collision of cultures.Instead it is malleable, and such trait originates in the digital possibilities.A symbolical frame is when Captain Stevens and Christina are already safe in the alternative train reality.hey stand in front of the Cloud Gate, popularly known as the Bean sculpture, in Chicago.his city does not look diferent, only distorted.he sculpture is a giant globe shaped metal structure with a bean format, which, through its mirrored view, folds the city image, thus making space malleable.And if we look carefully, we can see that the relection of Captain Steve's shows another man, because this is more than another version of the city, it is also a diferent body.

Invisible Machines
he Source Code is in the core of the ilm's narrative, but we never actually see this machine, only its tricks.Such invisibility complies with the digital conigurations of recent technologies, which attempt to look as natural as possible-think about I-pad devices and their interfaces.In the control room, there are plenty of computer screens that monitor Captain Steven, and there is the incubator machine where he is kept alive, but no exceptional visual device stands out.Source Code no longer focuses on the machines, as the female robot in Metropolis, the surveillance eye in 12 Monkeys and the replicants in Blade Runner; rather it focuses on its illusions.
Although not markedly visible, the Source Code still impacts the ilm's narrative.his technology allows the discussed malleability of space, creating two levels of simulation, irstly the capsule, which englobes the second, the train.Its illusions interfere with the main character's identity.Captain Stevens's body becomes as malleable as space.In the capsule, it is not his real body, but a mind projection.Confused he asks: "What about the rest of my body?I can see my hands and my feet.hey still move".But Captain Goodwin reports that "hey are just a manifestation.hey are just a way of making sense of all this" (00:48:45).In the train, he embodies Sean's body, as a ghost.To Stewart, Captain Stevens's body is "a remote control cyberpresence" (Framed 124).He looks at himself in the mirror and sees the passenger.he layers of virtual worlds get confused, and the character cannot recognize or ind himself anymore.Captain Stevens is not simply a time traveler; he travels into a diferent body-almost as a spirit he uncannily possesses somebody.
Such uncanny aspect agrees with Stewart's argument that recent ilms have appealed to time travel narratives with a fantastic twist (Framed 173).his change constructs the digital more as a supernatural form than as a technology, as if this technology is still uncanny for us, similar to the tales in which photographs would trap the souls of the humans.Although this does not seem to be exactly the case in Source Code, there is an uncanniness in the lack of explanation to how we can create a parallel reality and survive in someone's else body.New technologies are indeed science iction's utmost marvel and threat: robot-Maria in Metropolis, the replicants in Blade Runner, the digital/virtual world in Source Code.Furthermore, this desire of projecting oneself and believing the virtual to be real relects the very contemporary technology of role-playing games.
Role-playing games (RPG) as World of Warcrat (WOW) or God of War function by projecting the players into an avatar, a character in the game. he players are physically in a diferent reality (in their rooms in front of their computers), and they project themselves through the character they create into a diferent world. he immediacy in these games lies in their irst-person perspective.hus, despite the necessary mediation of the computer or video game, the individual is able to have a virtual experience that is quite immediate.As Bolter and Grusin argue "the viewer should forget that she is in fact wearing a computer interface and accept the graphic image that it ofers as her own visual world" (316). he media needs to be immersive "which means that it is a technology of mediation whose purpose is to disappear" (Bolter and Grusin 315).
Technology is in fact a strong point in the ilm's hypermediacy.Bolter and Grusin explain that hypermediacy is the heterogeneous characteristic of digital media, the screen within a screen, and the combination of diferent and random media (315).An example is how Captain Goodwin appears through a screen to Captain Stevens, creating the illusion that she is in the virtual reality and not him.And behind her, other screens, that open minor windows, and these screens within the framed screen pose the question of how many more virtual realities can be unfolded in theses frames.
Shaviro explains that this relation between video game-also television, video, and digital-and ilm convey the "structure feeling" of the post-cinematic afect.Source Code strongly appeals to the role-playing experience. he players, as is the case with Captain Stevens, become someone else in this diferent reality; in the case of World of Warcrat, you can be a wizard, an orc, a dwarf, an elf, a female or male; in God of War, you are Kratos, a Spartan demigod warrior looking for revenge.In both, the gamers have some freedom to choose their actions; missions and objectives exist but they can be skipped, delayed, or even ignored.he former is called a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG), due to its massive quantity of players, whose interactions with other players may have diferent motivations from accomplishing missions to simply making friends.
he popularity of these games unveils their power in relation to the consuming public.he Guinness World Record gave the record to World of Warcrat as the most popular subscription-based MMORPG in 2010 for having over 12 million subscribers around the world. 1 God of War is not as popular as WOW, but its long saga conirms its popularity-God of War II, God of War III, God of War: Chains in Olympus, and God of War: Ghost in Sparta.Many other names can be mentioned here, as contributors to the popularity of games in which the player assumes a irst-person role in a virtual reality, Doom, Counter Strike, Diablo, Battleield, Fallout, to mention a few.
Besides the relation to the video game mode, Source Code is also a mind-game ilm, as Elsaesser deines it.he spectator within Captain Stevens is immersed in the layers of virtuality, or reality, and has to unveil the secret behind the bomb.Every time Captain Stevens dies, he is revived in the capsule chamber, which is a striking reminder of games like Counter Strike or Half Life, in which every time the players die, they are back to the base, where they can refuel, recharge and go back killing.his repetitive mode illustrates Elsaesser's explanation of "new forms of spectator-engagement and new forms of audience-address" (16).According to Elsaesser, the old forms of voyeurism, in which in classic cinema the spectator only watches passively, are not appealing anymore.Recent ilms engage the spectator in more than voyeurism since they immerse into a corporeal cinema.
hrough a social critical perspective, Source Code portrays the scenario of terrorism fear, which recalls 9/11, as the main character is a soldier who died in Afghanistan.On the other hand, more than terrorism, I suggest that fear arises from the loss of reality, as the main character is unable to distinguish which reality is real, as Stewart writes "hat's the real paranoia now: that there's never been anything really there" (Framed 145).
Source Code's problematization of the Afghanistan War does not relate to space, but to the body.Captain Stevens is kept alive in an incubation room.He only has half of his body, and his body perception is part of the simulation incited by the computer program.He is in a state of a semi-consciousness or coma, which is maintained by this technology from the Source Code.his character is the contemporary hero, soldier, and time travel man.Quite diferently from Cabal in hings to Come and Cole in Twelve Monkeys, Stevens does not have an astronaut suit; he does not even have a complete body, only the fair simulation in a computer projection, which is only part of his own brain.
Claudia Springer describes a kind of new sci-i hero: "rampaging muscle-bound cyborgs were replaced by slim young men and women jacked into cyberspace, inspired by 'console cowboys' in cyberpunk iction of the 1980s" (in Alien Zone II 204).But Captain Stevens is more than a geek specialist; he becomes a virtual ghost.In Source Code, it is not the city that is degraded and hopeless but the person in itself.When the ilm's perspective changes from Captain Stevens to Captain Goodwin, the spectator realizes how mistaken the main character is about his own being and condition.Even his voice is only green letters on Goodwin's computer; he never really spoke in the story.Stevens is a ghost, a shadow of his own past, his consciousness existing in the virtuality of Goodwin's computer.
In this utter video game, digital world, the human transcends the body and transforms the mind into data, which can be transferred and uploaded, as Dr. Rutledge says "let's clear his memory and reinitialize Source Code" (01:12:45). he body, which was copied in Metropolis, replicated in Blade Runner and reconstructed in RoboCop, loses meaning, in as much as space.What remains is the numeral data of Captain Stevens's memory in the digital world.

Chronos Sickness
Source Code's narrative exempliies how Chronos is sick of its own chronological nature, as in Shaviro's argument.Time becomes multiple, the past hunts the present, the latter is an annoying iteration and the future can inally be confronted.he digital as a theme and a technology plays a major role in this multifaced time.
hat the past can haunt the present is no news.Captain Stevens, for instance, hears sounds of war-bomb explosions, missiles, helicopters and radio transmissions (00:02:31)-when awaking for the irst time in the train simulation.But Source Code complicates this statement.To Stewart, this ilm's postwar trauma is resolved through a multiple time in a postmortem environment ("War" 124). he past experience of the Afghanistan war lingers in his present as post-war trauma, one that apparently cannot be forgotten.But the ilm complexiies the idea of past, since the Source Code allows Captain Stevens to travel through a victim's last 8 minutes of memories.Memories work as time travel tickets.In inhabiting Sean's body and interacting with his memories, Captain Stevens makes someone's past into his present, to reconstruct his future.Once more, we can compare him to a ghost possessing Sean's past as his present.
Time is also reconigured from a linear doomed plot, into a utopian alternative reality. he train that Captain Stevens saves in the end of the ilm has already exploded.Captain Goodwin repeatedly tells Captain Stevens that he cannot change the bomb explosion, because it has already happened and it is a memory.She explains that "what you experienced was a shadow, an ater image of a victim on a train.his is real life.Here … the program was not designed to alter the past, it was designed to afect the future" (01:07:15).Nonetheless, he manages to realize this virtual past into a parallel reality, transforming past and virtual into a new dimension, bifurcating time, and creating Stewart's multiple time (Framed 124).
He also gives the past a new ontology.He saves the past; so it seems he changed the past, but this is actually a diferent reality.As he explains "you thought you were creating eight minutes in a past event, but you were not, you've created a whole new world" (01:26:21).In fact, the past is not only not simply virtual, not an image of what had happened, and it is much more than nostalgia; it is somewhen, we cannot only alter, but ultimately inhabit, a reality in itself.Captains Stevens's present is a continuous repetition, as a video game resettling.Trapped in the Source Code, he is repeatedly sent back to Sean's last 8 minutes of memory, until he realizes that "it's the same train but it's diferent" (00:11:42).In this diference, he inds the possibility to change Chronos's linear course, to make things diferent.hrough his iterative present, he saves Christina, discovers about his death in the Afghanistan war, makes amends with his father, and saves the train.
his repetition may initially imply the cyclical boredom of suburban life in the train that is always late and crowded.Christina describes: "they [the passengers] are all so utterly… normal.hat's what's so terrifying about them" (00:22:45), and when the also incredible ordinary looking bomber is asked why, he can only answer "because the world is hell" (01:01:13).
Terror is in the repetition of this prosaic existence, an iteration that explodes and can only be utopic if, as Captain Stevens and Christina-she has just changed her life by quitting a job and boyfriend-one inds a diferent track to the same train.Because this might also be a parallel to the Afghanistan war that has no signiicant explanation or justiication.In this sense, terrorism is inscribed in the ordinary commuters' everyday life from the suburbs to Chicago.
When the present repeats itself, the past collides with the future.Captain Stevens travels into Sean's memories, confronts the future bomber, who has not yet detonated the bomb. he hero of the past is combating the enemy of the future (Stewart "War" 124). he latter trespasses its unreachable characteristic.In the end of every 8-minute memory cycle, for example, Captain Stevens and the train explode, and in transitioning from the train back to the capsule, lash mixed images appear.One of these images is the Bean sculpture, which only appears by the end of the story, a foreshadowing and an anachronism.
he future is no longer a distant one-hundred-years from now, as in hings to Come.It is already contained in the past and the present with no meaning attached to them, as in a computer game.Layers of time equal the digitalized images.As space in the digital world, time is meaningless-what really matters is the sheer sensation of the game, to start over again.
it highlights the video-game intensity of repetition and time constraints.he original title advances a view of reality that can be changed; source code allows a great number of options to be constructed and, if needed, to reconstruct certain sotware.In this sense, the original title reinforces the idea of a possibility of rewriting one's history, of starting again, of reconiguring, and in doing so, tailoring new possibilities.