Sublimity and Posthumanism in SOURCE CODE

The sublime simultaneously eludes and evokes the human. The sublime motions in qualities of the extraordinary, the intangible, and the metaphysically aligned. The word itself carries a superior connotation, capturing in its two syllables a moment of exemplary testimonial. By affording the human experience with the opportunity to embrace the glorious, the sublime subsequently elevates the anthropoid’s quotidian enterprise. Expressions of the sublime have been achieved across many mediums since the advent of time, from the writings of the Bible to William Wordsworth’s poetry to the visual evocations in the Romantic landscape paintings of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. Cinematically, the sublime is represented when the film makes a conscious effort to supersede its formal limitations, to open the airways of a filmic world with exalted interpolation. In the 21st century, cinema is wielded as one of the foremost tools for human expression, and the film market has reached a point of saturation with attempts to deliver sublime truths to large audiences (Blouin 104). In Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (2011), the sublime is displayed as a colored, shifting presence toward the close of the film, after countless sequences of landscapes and outer space have been held rapt on the screen, a rendering of an abstract image is shown: red, orange, yellow, and green come together in a swirl to move like an angel, slowly and meditatively, standing out with its hued kinetic sentience against a black frame. This moment gestures to the spectator that there is a more ideational life force beneath it all, and Malick depicts that force as this unspeaking, alluring vision of vividness and sway. 

On a singular level, the sublime can empower an individual to break free from the shackles of their lot. This is seen in the 2011 Duncan Jones film Source Code. Main character Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is trapped within the Sisyphean struggle of the Source Code, which is a simulation of reality reconstructed from the memories of deceased people’s final moments. A commuter train has been bombed, and a second terrorist attack is impending for the city of Chicago, so army officials Dr. Rutledge and Colleen Goodwin use Stevens as a soldier and a guinea pig, repeatedly putting him in the Source Code to live through eight fateful minutes and attempt, each time, to find the bomber in order to prevent the second attack from happening in real time. 

In this plot, there are three spaces. The first is the space of the train, which is akin to a video game, since Stevens takes on the character status of Sean, a schoolteacher, and can die each time he enters the Source Code, even injure other commuters, but every person returns again and again, completely renewed and unmaimed, since they are virtual, pixelated reproductions of real people. In the simulated, nonhuman Source Code, the past is never consequential. The second space inhabited in this film is Stevens’ capsule, where his mind remains, actively conceiving of himself since his physical body has been ravaged by war. This is an imaginary space which expands and contracts according to Stevens’ thoughts. The third space of the film is the control room operated by Goodwin and Rutledge, which is in Chicago, where half of Stevens’ body remains, and this space occupies a part of reality. Presenting a Russian nesting doll set of spaces, this film deals with enclosure and confinement, and demands movement in the Source Code, the first space, in order to change the state of the greater spaces at hand, specifically Chicago. As aforementioned, if the sublime is at work in a film, there is an attempt to overthrow cinematic limitations in order to represent loftier concepts. Source Code’s plot is defined by confinement––considering Stevens’ strictly allotted eight minutes in the realm of train, then his mind caged in a Cartesian trapping, he cannot exercise any freedom. Michael J. Blouin examines the moving parts of this film’s efforts toward the sublime by breaking down its “yearning for (post)cinematic expression” (104). Blouin argues that encountering cinematic constraints is oppressive, yet Source Code attempts to upend those constraints which are typical of mainstream cinema by crafting such an abstract plot (107). One of the instances this is achieved is once Stevens has successfully achieved his mission, and he brings together the people on the train exclaiming “All this Life!” When the bomb is supposed to go off, the frame freezes, capturing a still tableau of a happy community, which a form of Deleuze’s cinematic sublime, as “Cinematic form momentarily falters” for this frozen time-image which is a departure from mainstream cinema’s fast pace (115). This moment indicates the presence of the sublime beyond the constraints of the cinematic frame.

Not only does film suffer from moments of enclosure within the medium, but the form of Source Code is defined by the theme of entrapment, as Stevens is caught in the snare of America’s military arm which further introduces the themes of exploitation, suffering, and resistance. The dictums of the military’s operative utilitarianism disregard Stevens’ wellbeing for the sake of the greater community, which presents a utilitarian ethical dilemma. The ending of the film transcends the mess of this dilemma, with Stevens living on in the Source Code, which for him has become his continuous reality. The notion of a man finding fulfillment (communal, as he saves everyone on the train and countless Chicago citizens; familial, as he reconciles with his father; and romantic, as he cinches love with Christina) in a virtual world, an alternative reality which allows him to break from the fetters of his merciless employers who exploit him for the greater good, carries the essence of the sublime. 

The trauma Stevens repeatedly endures in the Source Code and in his mind capsule are part and parcel to the process of him “becoming subject,” as the Hegelian phrase outlines how a “human being truly becomes a subject––that is, separated from the animal––in the struggle and the work through which he or she confronts death” (Mbembé 14). Held captive and forced to confront death by his enforcing officers, Stevens’ only option is to attempt to complete his mission. Exercising this level of biopower upon a subject by pressuring them to experience violent death on an endless cycle displays a profound amount of control. This is inherent to being human, as Rosi Braidotti claims “The concept of human has always been associated with relations of power.” In this instance, Stevens evades inflicting power only by electing to remain in the Source Code. By the end of the film, after he has derailed the bomb’s detonation and captured the bomber, reality and the Source Code begin to parallel each other, allowing Stevens’ virtual space to take on a semblance of a self-enclosed, real world.

The worlds presented in Source Code are posthuman in their construction. The film begins with an opening sequence which is keenly posthuman, featuring cross cutting from Lake Michigan to the quickly passing train to the arched city skyline. These shots move from left to right and then right to left, disorienting the spectator in their shifting angularities. Filmed from a drone, this point of view is not human, it is mechanically conceived. Additionally, the dehumanizing aspects of the Source Code tarnish the unified concept of a sacred, fragile, secured humanity. Evidently, the film’s vision of labor is dark and disturbing. The American government does not care about Stevens' PTSD or welfare, instead they exploit him for their own favor. Moreover, all of the visuals in the Source Code are coded. Pixelated representations of people creates a nonhuman diorama. It aligns that this film presents a vision of life which is affixed to experiences definitively beyond the human realm. The film’s posthuman undertakings allow it to incorporate such a sublime final gesture, with Stevens leaving his stark, torn existence behind and reincarnating himself as a new man, and a schoolteacher, entirely removed from fighting the war on terror.

Works Cited

Blouin, Michael J. “Tarrying with Sublimity: The Limits of Cinematic Form in Duncan Jones' Source Code.” Terror and the Cinematic Sublime, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013, pp. 103-118. NYU Brightspace.

Mbembé, J.-A. and Libby Meintjes. "Necropolitics." Public Culture, vol. 15 no. 1, 2003, p. 11-40. Project MUSEmuse.jhu.edu/article/39984.

“‘The Concept of Human Has Always Been Associated with Relations of Power.’” YouTube, CCCB, 17 Mar. 2022, https://youtu.be/mb2_a-UX1OE.