WEEK 3 – Post Continuity – Lia Lee

One of my main takeaways this week was the idea of Modulation, and how it complicates that claim that post-continuity is simply ‘non-realist’ or technologically deterministic. When watching ‘Source Code’ , it became clear that the film is not abandoning realism but instead updating what realism looks and feels like in a post-millennial, digital context.

Steven Shaviro’s concept of post-continuity is often framed as a break from realism becuase it suggests coherent space, linear tinme, and narrative continuity. Hovever this risks a technologically deterministic reading, where fregmentation is blamed on digital tools alone. What ‘Source Code’ suggests instead is that realism istelf has shifted. The film feels realist not becuase it presents a stable world, but becuase it mirrores a reality experienced as fragmented, accelerated and recalibrated.

This is where modulation becomes key. The captain is not controlled through strict rules or clear endpopints, but thorugh constant adjustment: emotionall pressure, temporal resets and escalating urgency. there is no stable resolution, only continuous tunng. importantly this modulation then extends to the viewer – the repetition with variation trains us to scan, adapt, and repond quickly – rather then reflect deeply or emotionally attach.

As we see here the concept of modulation does not confine to the character (the captain). While the captain is being continously modulated diegetically, we as the viewer experience it non-diegetically. As viewers we are not permitted to settle into narrative confort – like the captain – we must constantly reorient ourselves. The film works directly on out affect systems, producing anxiety, urgency, and hieghtened ettention rather then psychological depth. Arguably this is the brilliance of ‘Source Code’, the combanation and convergence of diegetic and spectatoral modulation. What the systems does to the captain, the film does to us – hance collapsing the narrative control and spectatorial experience into the same post-cinematic logic.

‘Source Code’ ultimatly shows that post cinema is not a move away from realism, but a shift in how realism operates, using post-continuity and modulation to produce an affective experience that feels truthful to a fragmented, accelerated contemporary reality.

bibliography:

Jones, D. (2011) Source Code. Film. USA: Summit Entertainment.

Shaviro, S. (2010) ‘Post-Continuity: An Introduction’, in Post-Cinema: Theorising 21st-Century Film. Winchester: Zero Books, pp. 51–64.