Source Code

I went last night with friends to see source code, a new American sci fi movie showing in Wuhan. Sicifi films are often parables about complex social issues that cannot be addressed head on. This film was no exception, hard to miss the references in this one.

It was about a military project to tap into the lingering memories of recently killed people, in this case victims of a terrorist bombing of a Chicago commuter train. The military built a virtual reality simulation of the last 8 minutes before the bomb attack to locate the bomber with its own semi-dead agent.

The film is a series of replays of those eight minutes as the miltary agent becomes aware of his own semi-dead status and his mission. He was recently killed in Afghanistan, each time he runs through those 8 minutes, he tries different approaches to locate the bomb and bomber, and ultimately resolves to do the impossable and save all the lives lost on the train. 

The film includes a positivist and inhumane scientist running the program, untroubled by ethical issues, a sympathetic handler that becomes our protagonist`s accomplice. In the end he does save all the lives, and alters the future, the only character who realizes the truth is his handle, who keeps it a secret.

All the hot buttons were there Afghanistan, terrorist bombings, gender, and race issues, and issues about informationization, virtuality, science, and what we would do over if we could. It was unsettling but suspenseful in a myoptic way, since it was just replays of the same scene over and over, with different twists, and  the train exploding into a fireball of destruction, until the final replay.

It was the perfect foil to the upcoming ten year anniversary of September 11.I have been reading some of the commentary, on this subject.  I am glad that an archive of televison footage has recently become available. Since I am from DC, it was a very traumatic event, maybe not as traumatic as those whose lives were destroyed both literally and figuratively in NYC or at the Pentagon, but I was laying in bed that morning and heard the impact through my open window. My area of the city became a beehive of activity, and then was deserted for over a week.

At the time, I thought the best response would have been to treat the event as a criminal action, not as an act of war. But, that point of view did not prevail, and ten years later we are still emeshed in war and economic stagnation. The replay metaphor in source code captures that feeling of missed opportunities to stop the war before it started. If only the global justice movement had not collapsed, if only the anti-war movement could have been more vigorious.

At this point, I wonder what country will be next on the list for subversion and attack and how much social and physical decay Americans will tolerate before they say enough is enough. I think there is a long way to go before that point is reached.

Sitting here in polluted Wuhan, and reading China bashing diatribes leaves me pessimistic since instead of focusing on strutures of international trade and military dominance in the context of neoliberal global restructuring more often a populist lens is applied and racialized causes and solutions are proposed  in the USA.  When the tipping point is reached, my hunch is that it will not be very pretty, organized, or effective. Another world is possable, but I am afraid the post-capitalist world will look alot like Somalia, not an utopian anarchist world of mutual aid  and veganism.

The pollution here is intimately connected to there, as neoliberalization is path dependent and adaptable. The neoliberal world order is inescapable, a seamless  hegemonic universalism that can be resisted but not avoided. At least for now, as long as Pax Americana is enforced by the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

I notice the orientalism in discourses about China, always a coded racialized critique-if not of communism, then of free market capitalism in  China. Lots of noise about  environmental degradation in Tibet under alternately Chinese communism or capitalism. A recent article in the AAG journal suggested however that those claims might be overstated and actually incorrect based on new data. I might not be the keenest scientist on the block, but it certainly seems that rationality, actually- critical reason- is on the decline. The Souce Code movie scientist was the bad guy, the man of action dead, but a hero living a second live in the source code.

I suppose the keystone pipline will be approved, nuclear power rejuvenated, offshore drilling allowed while renewable energy is unfunded along with infrastructure, trains, mass transit, education, or any other social consumption. I am positive that war funding will continue to increase, keeping the world safe for military contractors in the DC area. I have learned to expect little from an institutional liberal left more concerned with building enclaves of nuclear free zones, coops, and bike lanes-practicing a politics of evasion rather than resistance through collective action. Coming to terms with that and accepting it  means peace of mind and serenity.