Techno-wizards (or, in the case of Adjustment Bureau, grey-suited “Angel” figures acting like corporate operatives) colonize the heroes for profit, technical/strategic advantage, or the so-called greater good. Instead, these characters are ruthlessly exploited, by cold, distant, military industrialists. Watching Source Code and recent SF films like Moon and The Adjustment Bureau, I am struck by the angst of the straight white male characters who should benefit from the current set-up, who should, with intelligence, physical beauty, heterosexuality, and economic access, be basking in deep privilege as the premier subjects of 21st century societies. Imagine Gyllenhaal dropping into the body of an old Chinese lesbian. He must live the explosion-death of another body - a body similar to his own, straight white middle class male. Again and again, the protagonist-body, the person, the decorated, severely wounded white male soldier must ride a train about to blow up. Steven’s shattered being is not under his control. A tangle of wires feed in and out of his body, providing breath and sustenance, but also offering access to other bodies in parallel universes, where other (alternate?) realities play out. Actually Stevens’ body is a legless torso with stubs for arms and an injured skull… the barely living remains of a helicopter pilot shot down in the Afghanistan war. Stevens’ pain, joy, exploitation, triumph fill the theatre of my mind/body. Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is someone I know intimately for 93 minutes. This image comes from the fiction film, Source Code, but works as “real” to me. I am haunted by the blasted body of a once handsome white male soldier encased in/attached to an iron-lung-like black box. As I sit down to write about selfhood and distant techno-information replacing local wisdom, about the mono-cultural imperatives of colonialism and global capitalism, I am bored with despair.

Mindscape by Andrea Hairston