Prospectus

The Code of Time / The Source of the Loop

For my final paper I would like to focus on the visualization of the concept of time within Science Fiction, and especially in relation to identifying several “codes of time” in addition to draft the source of a repetitive loop of time, as explained through the narrative resemblance between the film Source Code and the first season of the science fiction Western television series Westworld.

[!!I need to come with a stronger thesis, but I am still constructing the most valid points to be made by comparing both fictions through their means of visualizing their narrative on Time!!]

I hereby list the arguments I would like to verify more closely in order to create an understanding of multiple concepts which are visualized within both of them.

• The original timeline of the code. The narrative within Source Code considers a “simulation” of a maximum 8-minute stream, which captain Stevens revisits each time after he dies. As for Westworld the narrative is considered the loop of a day, as the hosts within repeat their multi-day narratives anew each cycle. However, in both fictions, the loop is considerably determined through death. But within Westworld the beginning of each new cycle (typically following the host’s “death”), each host has its memories of the previous period erased. This continues hundreds or thousands of times until it is decommissioned or repurposed for use in other narratives.
• Time-travel paradox. Both fictions take place within an unspecified time in the future. However, Source Code depicts the ability to re-live the time of an event within the future that is yet to happen, as Westworld relives the time of the old Western within the future.
• The definition of a source code, defined as the fundamental component of a computer program that is created by a programmer. In questioning both fictions in terms of the actual “computational” code that is being used in the narratives. As on the one hand, the “mind” of captain Stevens is visualized through the code of computer messaging within the control room he is able to communicate with captain Goodwin. Ever as the presuming concept behind the code within Source Code, as it envisions the thought of being “inside” the source code. However, the main question for the spectator remains to be unresolved when arguing the entering of the actual “loop” of the source code within the film. As discussed in class through the post-human-panoramic-view within the opening sequence of the film. However the narrative within Westworld consists of the concept of actual code to program the “hosts”, as for the Staff, situated in a similar control center as seen within Source Code called “The Mesa”, which is connected to the park through vast underground facilities, oversee daily operations, develop new narratives, and perform repairs on hosts as necessary. Ever so in addition to the thought of the “entrance” of the park itself, as for being a simulation of the source code.
• Both fictions tend on the concept of “simulation”, as both worlds take place outside of the “real” world, a parallel reality. To add that both fictions start with the concept of the train, as a vehicle to either take place or arrive at the destination within the “code” of the narrative. However, both Source Code and Westworld remain to be contained within the “real” world within the control rooms and the “outside” world to be the simulation. But Source Code seems to be visualized on a more “micro” level, as Westworld shows the actual borders of the park through the sculpted model of the park.
• The depiction of the alternate-reality universe to be continuously displayed through a visualization of the film itself, a mind-game. Within Source Code considerably the Cloud Gate in terms of a gateway between individuals and the cityscape/sky above, a binary expressing the essence of sublimity, ever as the visualization of the “maze” within Westworld, a narrative structure as for the goal of the plot to solve the maze, a means to achieve sentience envisioned by the creator of the park.
• The “time freeze” in the train scene within Source Code and the “freeze all motor functions” of the hosts within Westworld.
• Additional codes to argue within the source of both films;
  – The actor Jeffrey Wright playing similar characters within both fictions. As to be characterized as Bernard Lowe, the main character in Westworld, in which at first he is to be perceived as the head of Westworld Programming Division, but later on disguised to be a host himself. As within Source Code, he has a similar function in status as he is characterized as Dr. Rutledge.
  – Timeline of the medium of a film – beginning and an end, versus the timeline of a tv series – multiple episodes and seasons. In addition to the thought of chronological, linear and the continuity of time.

I envision both films to be seen as a contemplating spiral of one another. As the concept of source code within Source Code contradicts itself in another timeline within Westworld, as both narratives are similar but they seem to contribute ever as contradict one another. Almost a visualization of a string of DNA, two chains that coil around each other to form a double helix carrying the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning, and reproduction of the film, which ever so to me resembles a train track, to begin with.

So what? Goal? [!!To be more precise!!]

Bibliography

Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011)

Westworld (TV series) Season 1: The Maze (Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Jo, 2016)
An American science fiction Western television series. The story takes place, within an unspecified time in the future, in Westworld, a fictional, technologically advanced amusement park, allows guests to experience the American Old West in an environment populated by “hosts”, androids programmed to fulfill the guests every desire. The hosts, who are nearly indistinguishable from humans, follow a predefined set of intertwining narratives but have the ability to deviate from these narratives based on interactions they have with guests.

W10 Michael Blouin. “Tarrying with Sublimity: The Limits of Cinematic Form in Duncan Jones’ Source Code”.
This essay examines Steven’s enclosure within the cinematic form of the capsule and what this enclosure reveals concerning our post-modern condition. A trend in mainstream cinema of portraying protagonist trapped within narrow perspectives. Characters fight to move part limitations and outward into enlightened spaces; once outside, the audience wonders whether they have really escaped or if they are still enclosed within fantasy. In relation to the enclosure and the escape of the hosts within Westworld.

W10 Rosi Braidotti. “Chapter 3: The Inhuman: Life Beyond Death”
A notion of the inhuman as super-human that posed technology as a transcendent other after death. The repetitive “death” of Captain Steven, who still remains to be seen as “human” consciousness, in relation to the death of the hosts, and the prevented “not-possible” death of the guests within the park of Westworld.

W12 René Thoreau Bruckner. “Why did you have to turn off the time machine?: The Spirals of Time-Travel Romance”.

• Especially in relation to Bergson; “when we make the time a homogeneous medium (clocks) in which conscious states unfold themselves, we take it to be given all at once, which amounts to saying that we abstract it from duration. This simple consideration ought to warn us that we are thus unwittingly falling back upon space, and really giving up time.” As within Westworld the hiding of “outside” time, as pictures from the outside are witnessed by the hosts, however, they are programmed to not be able to decipher the idea of homogeneous time as they answer; “it doesn’t look like anything to me..”.
• Repressed memories of the hosts within Westworld; The placement of chronological order onto experiences emerges only in the working of the system Freud calls perception consciousness. The repressed memories are not ordered temporally, are not altered but the passage of time; they have no reference to the time at all. In dreams, Freud claims, adults sometimes perform “a translation of time into space”, as for the unconscious state of dreams, spatialize time even when we are sleeping.
• The spiral and the interval are not two distinct times; they are two aspects—views from two distinct positions—of time “defined as the measure of movement.” Moving along on a spiral of time, one passes close by past moments in a never-ending near miss. This can be called repetition with a difference, or more precisely, return at a distance. As to be seen in both Source Code as Westworld.