A Fourth "Minority Report": Film, Literature and the Foreseeable

A Fourth “Minority Report”: Film, Literature and the Foreseeable In analysing adaptation, the first rule is to look for equivalencies between the “original” and adapted text, the book represents an event this way and the film another, but this is only the beginning of the analysis. For the difference between the texts is not simply one of directorial or authorial choice, it is also determined by cultural value, technological changes and, most importantly, the nature of the medium itself. In this article, I take as my subject the adaptation of the short story Minority Report into film and use this to speculate on the limits of each medium. I do not limit my analysis to the adaptation of the story but to those concepts embedded in the story which have themselves been adapted into narrative form. This is central to the understanding of science fiction texts, which often speculate on the future through exploring the limits of scientific and philosophical concepts. The works of many science fiction authors are generated by the concept itself rather than character, plot or setting. In Minority Report, the concept is precognition and its use in law enforcement. The examination of how precognition is adapted into film and book is further complicated by the fact that science fiction itself functions as a form of precognition. There is a certain reflexivity involved in the representation of precognition, where we are shown images of the future within a medium that is itself creating a future world. In following the representation of precognition from one medium to another we also have cause to reflect upon the medium itself and how it delimits the precognition. Each medium develops different techniques for speculating upon and articulating a conception of the future. Film adapts the literary description of events into a visible world. In Minority Report, the broad meaning of precognition in the book is restricted to the concept of foreseeability, where the future is visualisable, rather than predicted or foretold. To highlight the cinematic function of the foreseeable, I adopt Henri Bergson’s criticisms of the belief in a foreseeable future. Bergson’s critique allows the experiential aspects of foreseeability – what does it mean to experience an actual future – to be contrasted with the structural features of cinematic narration. Through examining the experiential aspects of future prediction, the article broadens its scope to include an examination of the expressive limits of cinema, unlike logico-scientific examinations of precognition where the emphasis is generally on the 1 practicality of time travel. Bergson’s work will not be used to simply point out the insufficiencies in the application of science fiction concepts in Minority Report, but rather to act as an alternative, third person point of view through which to understand modes of representation used in the film and, to a lesser degree, the story. In understanding the boundaries of the term precognition, we also understand the problems inherent in filmic representations of an actual future. Central to the plot of Minority Report is a process that allows law enforcement bodies to prevent a crime before it is actually committed. This process is called, aptly enough, “precrime” and involves the precognition of future events rather than the analysis of current criminal behaviour The future is brought into the present through the unnatural abilities of three humans called “precogs,” an abbreviated reference to precognitives. Precognition generally signifies the knowledge of an event before it has happened, which could be used to describe any number of predictive processes including prediction, foreseeability and prevision. In Minority Report precognition is an extrasensory process by which the precogs mentally inhabit the future and bring back with them evidence of future crimes. The precogs provide information on the crime, including the names of potential perpetrators and victims, and this information is used by a police unit to secure an arrest and prevent a crime. In the film, the precogs provide additional visual information that is interpreted by the principle investigator, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), to determine the location of the upcoming crime. He actively interprets and reassembles a collection of moving images (similar to film rushes) to ascertain the location. The film is derived from a story by Philip K. Dick of the same name and contains the same basic premise. The film adaptation introduces many new plot elements but also represents the process of precognition in a way that differs significantly from the short story. In the story the precogs are described as idiot savants whose precognitions largely consist of incoherent data on the future in general. They are attached to a computer that makes sense of this data and constructs a criminal narrative prediction from the incoherent babble: In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling. Every incoherent utterance, every random syllable, was analysed, compared, 2 reassembled in the form of visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards, and ejected into various coded slots. All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps. Their physical needs were taken care of automatically. They had no spiritual needs. Vegetable-like, they muttered and dozed and existed. Their minds were dull, confused, lost in shadows. But not the shadows of today. The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened. (Dick, “Minority” 3) By contrast, in the film, we are introduced to the precogs through a crime of passion where one of the victims, Sarah Marks, is shown in close-up with an expression of horror on her face. She is aware that she is about to be killed by her husband, Howard Marks, who has just discovered his wife in bed with a lover. The camera moves from a close-up of Sarah Marks’ face to an extreme close-up of her dilated pupil clearly indicating the terror she feels. The image then segues to the clear, watery, blue eye of the precog Agatha (Samantha Morton)1 an image reminiscent of the opening sequence to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The camera soon zooms out to reveal the face of the precog who utters, in a distant, echoey voice, the word “murder,” which is accompanied by the ambient sound of water. Her illocutionary utterance establishes the future crime as a fact and is soon transformed into a physical form, a ball fashioned from a piece of wood that passes down a series of transparent, blue tunnels until it is left in a transparent holder entitled “victim.”2 Engraved on the side of the ball are the names of the two victims, Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin. The precogs in the film are immersed in water, which we are told is both a nutrient and a means of amplifying the precognitions. They are still 1 Agatha has a central role in the film plot and is singled out for both her greater ability and gender. The three precogs have the first names of crime writers, Dashiell (Hammett), Arthur (Conan Doyle) and Agatha (Christie). 3 connected to a computer network but the amount of wiring is reduced and the information is not transformed into punchcards. Instead they relay visual images to a screen that is used by the head of Precrime, John Anderton to secure a conviction. Technological Periodisation One means of understanding the logic of such a change in representation is to examine the different periods in which the film and story were created. The SF future is often created through the extrapolation of current states of technological development and is consequently tied to the present. It serves as a critique of the present rather than a means of providing models of the future.3 For example, in contemporary film and literature, there is a preoccupation with techniques of visual reproduction, simulation and information networks. This can be contrasted with science fiction before the rise of the Internet, which more commonly examines material modes of reproduction based on production line technology.4 The film Minority Report was made in 2002, almost fifty years after the publication of the story in 1956. The technological future of the story is an extension of 1950s technology and if reproduced faithfully in the film would conflict with the actual present of the contemporary viewing audience. The film would be seen to have the connotations of pastness rather than futurity. In both the film and story versions of Minority Report, there is little explanation of how the precogs generate their predictions of future events, which remain invisible as an inherent capacity. However, each film has its own technological iconography. The precogs are presented in the physical conditions in which they make their predictions (lying in water, sitting in a highbacked chair) and the apparatuses through which their predictions are extracted. In the story, the precogs are attached to a network of wires and a punchcard system, but in the film, the three precogs are immersed in a watery fluid and connected to the precrime 2 The sequence bears some resemblance to televised lotto games, where numbered balls are selected randomly. The balls are wooden to indicate their authenticity, for each ball has its own particular grain and is, consequently, unique. 3 Frederic Jameson argues that through imagining a future, the present, in its complexity and multiplicity, is rendered understandable. The technological ideal or future image is a means of “apprehending the present as history” (152-53). 4 Jean Baudrillard outlines the shift in technology from the production of imitations of nature, through production line technology to production of signs unhinged from a concept of nature (51-85). This process is mirrored in SF with the progression from Verne, through Asimov to Gibson. 4 team by a visual interface. This difference in representation could be explained simply by advances in computer technology and the move from large, complicated looking computer systems that produce single strings of encoded data, to the Personal Computer, where the information processing is so minute as to be largely invisible, and information is presented via a graphic user interface (GUI). If the film had followed the story and used punchcards, the outdated technology would have left many contemporary viewers unconvinced of the futuristic setting of the plot. This process is used to deliberate effect in retro science fiction. The film Steamboy, for example, is set in the nineteenth-century age of steam, but speculates on the future of steam technology with the invention of steam tanks and flying machines. However in most science fiction, the future can be said to extend from our present, where the possible future is made continuous with current beliefs and technological forms. In Minority Report, this explains the resemblance between the colours used for the precogs and the design of the early Apple’s i-Macs. However, the change in technological iconography in an adaptation is not only a matter of the consistent and functional representation of current technology. Indeed, there are major structural differences between film and literature that serve to limit the representation of future worlds and concepts of futurity, such as precognition.5 From Verbalisation to Visualisation In the short story, the precogs’ premonitions are embedded in incoherent utterances. This babble is fed into a computer, with recording device, that transform it into coherent streams of “visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards” (Dick, “Minority” 3). We are given little explanation of how the precogs are accessing future events as the story is primarily interested in the information provided than in the mechanics of precognition. We do know that the “prophecies” are somehow extracted from the babble by the computer; we are told that “as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened.” It is an odd idea that a machine is “listening” to the precogs, but it places emphasis on the word as the key unit in understanding and the voice as a principal mode of information delivery. In addition to this stress on Landon argues that the major shifts in the SF film are “actually generated in significant part by technological rather than narrative choices.” It is the visual technology of the cinema that promotes changes in the diegesis, such as the recent interest in CGI animation (147). 5 5 vocalisation, the information is finally presented as a written narrative, in the form of a series of reports, each of which includes the name of the victim and perpetrator.6 In the film, the precogs foresee the crime and produce the names of the protagonists and the exact time of the murder but the focus shifts away from spoken and written information to a process of visualisation. The precog Agatha may pronounce the murder in the opening sequence of the film but we find out later that such utterances are an aberration and that the precogs are almost entirely mute – they do not “babble” like their counterparts in the story. The precogs in their pool are fully cut off from the immediate physical world, make no attempt at verbal communication and are largely regarded as incapable of it. The names of those involved in the precrime are engraved on the wooden balls, but these utterances are the result of information transmitted directly from their minds of the precogs without any form of externalised speech. In a long scene by the precog pool, the various members of the precrime unit explain to Danny Witwer, an FBI agent inspecting the operation, how precognition works. He is told that the information extracted from their minds takes the form of visual images. Wally, the precog caretaker, states that the technology is such that “we see what they see.” There are also numerous references to “prevision” and seeing and we are left in no doubt that precognition is the capacity to see into the future rather than to predict what will happen. The images are not reconstituted by the machine, which does not translate the babble like the computer in the story, rather, in concordance with the aesthetics of realism these images actually issue from the future. The precogs bear witness to the future and the audience, and precrime team, join them in this endeavour. The adaptation of the story to film is more than a translation of the verbal into the visual. It is also the transformation of literary sequence of events into a cinematic spectacle. Nowhere is this more in evidence than when we are introduced to John Anderton and shown his role in interpreting the direct visions provided by the precogs. In his office, Anderton speaks to two legal “witnesses,” via video link, about a crime that was "previsualised by the precogs.” These legal representatives certainly function as 6 It is revealed in the story that each precog produces a report and the guilty verdict of precrime is dependent on a majority decision. If two or three precogs deem a criminal guilty, then they are prosecuted. The minority report is the single dissenting precognition. 6 witnesses in a legal sense, confirming the legality of the arrest based on the evidence, but they are also cinematic witnesses, who are asked to “preview” the images and validate the construction of a cinematic narrative. The images appear like the disjointed sequences in a movie trailer. This emphasis on the cinematic, above the purely visual, is confirmed in the subsequent series of events. The lights go down, Anderton stands before a transparent screen and a soundtrack (a section from Schubert’s unfinished symphony) begins.7 Anderton then raises his arms in the stance of a conductor and the camera tracks around the screen so that we are facing him through the screen. The moving images of the murder, introduced in the film’s title sequence, are shown again in short bursts of forward and reverse motion. Looking through the screen forces the viewer to recognise the actions of Anderton as he conducts the show before us. An orchestral conductor organises the sections of orchestra into a coherent temporal framework. Anderton’s role is similar in that he organises the visual fragments of precognition into a coherent spatial and temporal narrative. He also functions as a film director or editor recomposing and shots for an audience seeking narrative coherence. There is also reference to the digitisation of filmmaking where films are edited and organised on a screen without the cumbersome mechanisms of processing, editing and splicing found in analogue film. Anderton is wearing black leather gloves, with luminous blue sensors on each fingertip, to manipulate the images before him. He frequently toggles sequences backwards and forward, loads new files and moves images from the screen, which now functions like a computer desktop. This iconography does not originate in Minority Report but derives from the film Johnny Mnemonic, where Johnny (Keanu Reaves) also manipulates data using a virtual reality mask and data gloves. The gloves were chosen for this film because the designers required a cinematic, visual construct to connect the world of live action to the informational network of The use of famous orchestral pieces is reminiscent of Kubrick’s films, including A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is not absolutely clear if this music is non-diegetic because, in a subsequent section of the film, music again accompanies Anderton’s actions. Characters also take note of the event and relish the spectacle, which is heightened by the music. However, when Fletcher uses the precrime visual apparatus, similar music does not accompany his actions. This uncertainty between diegetic and non-diegetic reinforces the cinematic aspects of the precrime visualisation. 7 7 cyberspace.8 Likewise, in Minority Report, the internal process of precognition is made intelligible for the audience through its externalisation and condensation as a set of cinematic shots. The shots themselves do not require much interpretation; there is an image of two lovers kissing and close-up images of a murder, which leaves little doubt that it is a crime of passion. What the viewer expects is a description of the relationship between murderer and victims, an exact causal sequence, and an understanding of these shots/events in terms of the overall narrative. Of course, these aspects of the narrative are provided, but through an overburdened interest in the location of the imminent crime. After a preliminary viewing of the murder, Anderton looks into the screen at an image of Howard Marks and asks, “Well, Howard Marks, where are you?” The location becomes the principal focus of this scene, and the film in general, because it most easily accommodates a cinematic depiction of precognition. Location is constrained to a cinematic, visualisable future which does not sit easily with the empathetic, watery representation of the precogs or with the depiction of precognition in the short story. Anderton finds Howard Marks through a process that sits somewhere between identikit and isolating a location on a map. He gathers the images of the precrime and then attempts to reconstruct the location through correlating visual details. Parts of images are matched with others and Anderton looks for particularities that can be used to specify the scene, which are exhibited in a manner similar to the highlighting of visual evidence in forensic television programs. In contrast, the precogs in the story reveal the protagonists’ names and the sequence of events without any accompanying visual images. The difference in the representation of precognition can be partially explained using Seymour Chatman’s distinction between bestimmt and unbestimmt modes of narration. In the cinematic articulation of a narrative event, the details of setting and character cannot be separated from the action. This is unlike written and spoken narration, which allows for the description of an action without detail (Chatman 30). For example, the precogs could reveal the crime in the form of a simple sentence: “Howard Marks will kill Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin.” This statement would be unbestimmt because the reader does not require the exact physical description of the protagonists or 8 In the film Swordfish, the cracking of a security code was also shown as the integration of simple threedimensional objects. 8 action to understand the event. The reader might have a vague image of Howard Marks or might attach the name to the image of someone they already know, but these are secondary processes. The utterance is still intelligible without them. Film narration also makes unbestimmt statements in the form of speech, voice-overs and other verbal utterances but generally film uses visual forms, displayed concurrently with the verbal forms, as the space of the frame cannot remain empty.9 The bestimmt image may represent an utterance in the story, for example, the wooden balls displaying the protagonists’ names. The viewer cannot read the names without acknowledging the colour, form and texture of the visual object but the visual properties are not central to understanding the event; the balls are simply a concretisation of a verbal utterance. The visual search for the location is not an adaptation of a scene in the story but an addition to the plot, where the logic of visual representation overrides the logic of precognition. The names of the killers have already been provided by the precogs and one would assume that a simple search through the phone directory, cross-referenced with the victims’ names, would be sufficient for locating the murderer. Howard Marks’ crime is to be committed in his home, which should further simplify this process. This search for a location is not integral to the short story but in the film the killer must be verified through visual means. The precog images are matched with Howard Marks’ licence details, and when the police squad is about to leave, we are told that there is a problem with the location. This necessitates another scene where Anderton searches through a range of images, looking for a detail that would be sufficient to establish a location. In the end he finds it in the form of a child, who appears twice in the image, in forward motion and reverse. Anderton surmises that the child is on a merry-go-round and this leads him to identify the location of the park outside the killer’s house. This visual search is always a search for particulars, for the details of an image that will distinguish one object or one place from another and it is the detail of the bestimmt image that generates the movement of the narrative. The viewer is also asked to participate in the process of looking for details, “scrubbing the image,” but always through the guiding, directorial hand of Anderton. 9 The voice itself may be bestimmt as we hear the particular texture, tone and pitch but what is stated is unbestimmt. 9 The Monistic Universe The adaptation of Minority Report raises a number of issues concerning the relationship between precognition and narration that the story alone would not. It also provides a foundation for the analysis of prolepsis in film and literature. Is the flashforward in film of a similar nature to a presentiment of the future in literature or the use of the future tense? One way to examine this question is to place the two representations against a third, philosophical narrative and to ask if the inherent logic of the story is retained in the adaptation to film. I have chosen to use the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson here because he makes a distinction between prediction, as a form of limited causality, and foreseeability, where the future is seen or experienced. Bergson also uses, and critically examines the use of, cinema as a metaphor for temporal movement in general. Before introducing Bergson’s philosophy, it is fruitful to return to the representation of the precogs in the film outlined in the first section of this article. The precogs are shown immersed in a large pool of water, which is said to amplify their experience of the future. The use of water as a medium for precognition differs greatly from the story with its punchcard technology. This change in representation can be attributed, as I have already stated, to technological changes, but there are other important connotations and implications in the use of water as a medium. On one level, water serves as the marker of a gender division between the overly masculine Anderton and the feminised precogs. Two of the precogs are male but they are given scant attention and it is Agatha who metonymically represents the group. There are numerous close ups of her body and face immersed in water, a science fiction version of the Ophelia myth. The film also introduces a relationship between Agatha and Anderton, using this heterosexual bond to sharpen the contrast between masculine and feminine modes of action. In the first half of the film, Anderton is depicted as a man of action whose authority and decisiveness is undermined only when he is named as the precrime murderer. He is responsible for puzzle solving, that is, rationally ordering the pieces of the future he is given. The feminised precogs, by contrast, have little control over the future they see, they passively receive and empathetically respond to a future crime. 10 Water, in this sense, is a medium of resonance. It is the perfect metaphor for an empathetic relationship because it transmits the movement or emotion in the form of touch. The perturbations in one part of the pool of water will be felt in another through the ripples or pulsations in the medium. There are no gaps in water, if a figure moves, water rushes in to take its place. To extend the metaphor to the universe as a whole, any movement anywhere in the universe can be felt at any other point if we are sensitive to the perturbations or vibrations. To use Leibniz’s terminology, the precogs function as monads sensitive to the affective changes of all other beings in the universe. In the film, the precogs are not just sensitive to the universe but to the fears and desires of the killers, both in the present and the future. At one point, we hear Agatha cry out in empathetic pain the name of Howard Marks, in stark contrast to Anderton’s “Howard Marks, where are you?” This representation of precognition assumes that the universe is absolutely interconnected and gestures to the metaphysical belief in a process universe,10 where there are no thoroughly distinct boundaries between objects. The image of water is used by many process philosophers, because it allows for the existence of a material objects without giving them primacy as a mode of explanation. For David Bohm, quantum physics and the general theory of relativity have undermined the atomistic view such that even particles should be described and understood through watery metaphors: The best image of process is perhaps that of the flowing stream, whose substance is never the same. On this stream, one may see an ever- changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes, etc., which evidently have no independent existence as such. Rather they are abstracted from the flowing movement, arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow. (Wholeness 48) This conception of a universe without parts has begun to make its way into popular culture, and the precogs in their watery bath embody some of these principles. It is also attached to ecological models of the universe and the concept of Gaia. We cannot reduce the universe to a set of unchanging laws of movement or to a single substance or particle; 10 There are a variety of processual accounts but they generally agree on the notion of interconnectedness, the concrete nature of time, and in the confluence of mental and physical systems. 11 we must widen our consciousness to the spirit of the movement of the universe as a whole. Of course, we cannot conceptualise the whole in the same way that we can compare the movement of physical bodies; it requires a different approach to epistemology. Bergson’s philosophy is also monistic11 and he claims that knowledge begins with an apprehension of the whole. The first object of knowledge is our own consciousness and from that we extend outwards to an intuitive understanding of other forms. Intuition proceeds from within, without mediation, as a continuity of interiority (Creative Mind 36). In this philosophy, perceptual knowledge is always secondary to a sympathetic coincidence between consciousnesses. Knowledge is too often reduced to the evidence from the senses, sight in particular, which only reveals the material surface of objects rather than their purpose, meaning, or direction. Bergson argues that we would have the capacity to intuit the interiority of things through processes such as “psychological endosmosis” if our attention was not restricted to recognising the material qualities of objects (36). The only reason we see the world in terms of objects with fixed qualities and boundaries is due to the action of the brain, which filters from our attention what does not directly serve the practical needs of the subject (Evolution 7). Ostensibly, these ideas suit the representation of the precogs in the film where their fluidic interconnection is coupled with a new mode of thinking that borders on the spiritual.12 The precogs are ciphers with an immanent understanding of the whole universe and their knowledge is not restricted to the perceptual, physical boundaries favoured by the physical sciences. The precogs are aware of the upcoming crime because of their connection to the mental state of the person who will commit that crime, hence Agatha’s cry of pain when uttering Howard Mark’s name. In other words, they have an awareness of the murderous inclination that will lead to the crime. Interconnection means the precogs can transport themselves into the intentionality of the act, a form of “psychological endosmosis” where they feel the ripples – to again use a watery metaphor – of a heightened emotional state. The relationship between the present and future Bergson’s philosophy is not strictly monistic but has the qualities of both pluralism and monism. He still adopts the idea of absolute interconnection but it is moderated by his arguments on durational or temporal difference. 12 The room where the precogs reside is called the “temple” and Witwer argues that the precrime team function as priests interpreting the information divined by the precogs. 11 12 follows emotional rather than material laws of action and is held together in the singular form of the criminal intention. However, there is no explanation in the film as to how the emotional cause leads to an external effect, as rage does not necessarily lead to murder – a tendency is not sufficient grounds for a conviction. Anger and intention must be linked to the material conditions of existence because it is only in this arena that a crime can be committed – we cannot rely on the theological premise that thought and deed should be judged equally. The precogs in their awareness of the protagonists’ intentions would not necessarily know the means by which the intention is actualised. For example, the desire to kill would depend on the objects at hand, notably weapons such as a gun, knife or scissors. A Creative Future For Bergson, the future is unknowable because we cannot separate an event from the complexity of its environment. We cannot predict what an author will write because the text cannot be separated from the experiential framework in which it is written. If we are to imagine the text, we must recreate all the events, experiences and connections to the world that led to the production of the text, which in practice means to inhabit the body of the author (Creative 121).13 To predict an event or text without such a framework would be like predicting the exact form of a wave without understanding the movement of the ocean as a whole. Bergson compares the process of foreseeing the future to that of an artist drawing sketches for a yet to be completed painting – each sketch leads towards the completed painting but each sketch has a particularity that distinguishes it from the “completed” form. Indeed, if the completed sketch is truly foreseen in these preliminary sketches they would fail to serve a purpose (Creative 108). The creative effort, including the preliminary and the completed painting, are all part of For example, to predict or imagine Hamlet also entails imagining a “predecessor” who “finds himself thinking all that Shakespeare will think, feeling all he will feel, knowing all he will know, perceiving therefore all he will perceive, and consequently occupying the same point in space and time, having the same body and the same soul: it is Shakespeare himself” (Creative 121). Bergson is not reinforcing the concept of authorship with this argument because the author is not defined by their individuality but by their degree of interconnection. The author is a monadic subject reflecting and inflecting all other movements in the universe. 13 13 the unbroken process of becoming.14 In the short story, the precogs are not attributed any level of subjectivity and consequently their mode of reasoning only deals with externalities, the murder and the actants involved. Indeed, the story is only interested in the subjectivity of Anderton and the uncertainty he feels when confronted with the inassimilable facts about his own future. He does not know how to connect the facts of his future to the becoming of his present. In the film, through privileging the subjectivity of the precogs and their relationship to the killer, we are transported into the creative act of the murder. There is a sense in which the precogs are living in the time (becoming) of the murder. They are joined to the uncertainty of the event hence the sudden change in the expression on Agatha’s face in response to events she has just “seen.” In the film, despite this level of uncertainty, some aspects of the future must be known before the precogs respond to or see the future event. The precogs must know it is a murder before they enter into the emotional fabric of the event. In one of the many expository scenes, Fletcher (one of the precrime team) informs Witwer that the precogs can only predict one type of crime, murder. If they simply went through a process of “psychological endosmosis” they would be able to predict any crime committed by the subjects they inhabit. Fletcher confirms the monistic vision of the universe when he presents the reasons for these limits on criminal foreseeability: “There is nothing more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the untimely murder of one human being by another.” The notion of absolute interconnectedness is again invoked and it is only through the removal of a subject (in murder), that the “metaphysical fabric” can be ruptured. This unusual argument is primarily serves to support the view that the universe is a continuous fabric of emotional resonance. The story does not limit the precogs to the foreseeing of a particular type of crime. They simply gather information from the future and this information is then collated with only useful data retained – in this case data about crime but there are other precogs who provide military information (“Minority” 4). There is no presumption of “psychological endosmosis” and no explanation of how this data is generated. 14 Bergson derives this argument from his belief that time cannot be separated from memory. It is memory that holds the past and present together into a meaningful whole. Without memory, each moment would be 14 Prediction or foreseeability? Bergson does not rule out prediction in his philosophy, only foreseeability. He argues that we can predict future events in “closed systems” where the future is only a rearrangement of parts that already exist in the present (Creative 121-22). We could predict the next move in a game of chess because there is an array of clearly defined actions from which to choose. Likewise, the future movement of an object in space, such as a planet, could be mapped because we are only concerned with one aspect of the event, the displacement of the object relative to other discrete bodies. Bergson refers to prediction as the “not-impossible” because it is constituted through imposing increasingly tight limits of the object under observation (Creative 120). Bergson uses the example of a gate that determines a future event through exclusion: “If you close the gate you know no one will cross the road; it does not follow that you can predict who will cross the road when you open it” (Creative 120-21). To return to our earlier categories, prediction is unbestimmt because the object is not placed within a precise future moment complete with all the details of the environment. We do not need an image of a gate to know that certain objects cannot pass.15 Bergson states that there is another way of conceiving “possible” future states, which he calls the “ideally pre-existent” (Creative 120). The “ideally pre-existent” future is foreseen and, because all the details of the future are included in its articulation, it is bestimmt. The film, however, contains contrasting and contradictory presentations of precognition. It is both imagined as a processual form of universal interconnection and as a foreseeable future. The precogs directly witness the future – it is pre-existent – rather than making a judgement as to what could occur, as is the case in prediction. To forsee, as opposed to predict or foretell, conveys the future from a particular perspective. There is always a spatial relationship between visible, physical objects that is recounted from a fixed point of view. On the other hand, the precogs seem to exist in a world of pure interiority in that they are linked to the emotional states of the murderers. This a discrete form, as argued in logical atomism, with no necessary connection to subsequent or preceding moments. 15 There is another sense in which we impose a limit, when asking the question, who will pass, we have already rejected a range of other things that could pass through the gate, including animals, the wind, grass pollens, etc. We only detect that which we have sought, limiting the future through the restrictions on our expectation, rather than opening it up to radical novelty. 15 internal empathy could only provide knowledge of a murderous tendency (mens rea) but not the witnessing of a future act (actus reas). The internal perception is always absolute, as there is only one perspective from which a subject experiences an event. External viewpoints are manifold in that there is no limit to the number of positions that can be taken with respect to a visible event. Each viewpoint might reveal the same basic fact, such as a murder, but will do so through providing a completely different array of visual information. The inconsistencies in the film’s representation of precognition cannot be attributed solely to a lack of consideration of these issues in the adaptation of the story. The film and story approach such a problem differently due to the structure of each mode of representation and not because either is more faithful to the principles of prediction or foreseeability. In accord with the medium, the story presents the future in the form of a verbal prediction which specifically states who will kill whom. Like all verbal modes of description, this statement is unbestimmt in that we do not know exactly how that person will be killed. The lack of detail is integral to the plot because it leads to speculation, on the part of the reader, as to how and when the murder will be committed.16 In the following passage we learn little about the nature of the murder or even the name of the victim: “On the card was his name. Line one – an already accused future murderer! According to the coded punches, Precrime Commissioner John A. Anderton was going to kill a man – and within the next week” (“Minority” 6). The murder is here is expressed as a function of Anderton and the expression “was going to kill” refers to both the tendency to commit murder and the actual act of committing murder. The use of the “past continuous” tense connects the present tendency with the future act – the act itself is in the future but it is attached to Anderton’s present state – and it can only do so because it is unbestimmt. Seeing the crime would shift the narration to a present moment situated in the future or to the actual present. 16 The difference between the three minority reports depends on a certain latitude as to how and why the murder is committed. 16 In the film, the future, as shown on Anderton’s screen, is bestimmt with all the details of the murder provided. We see Howard Marks holding the scissors and preparing to kill his wife, the blood as it overflows the bath, and the lover’s body in that bath, Anderton holding the gun, and so on. We see each act from a particular visual perspective that does not directly reveal the killer’s motive. We may infer from the character’s demeanour or expression the motive, but this is always unreliable. The images Anderton manipulates are disconnected from the precogs’ empathetic relationship with the killer as they are not produced as expressions of individual motive or the emotional “metaphysical fabric” spoken of by Fletcher. The fragmented images of the murder are themselves disruptions of the continuity of intention and memory that connects the present to the future. It would make more sense if we saw the murders from the killer’s actual point of view (through their eyes) rather than in a third person perspective. This representation is limited by film’s visual discourse,17 which is restricted to the explication of the exterior surfaces of objects and characters. The surfaces in and of themselves are tenseless and do not provide a means of distinguishing between future and present. In film, analepsis and prolepsis are symmetrical and, consequently, past, present and future images are differentiated through the use of nondiegetic devices such as dissolves, fades, music and voice-over narration.18 In the film Paycheck, an adaptation of another Dick story, the future is distinguished from the present through its continued representation in a television screen. The use of a frame within a frame automatically disrupts the simple presentness of viewing and divides the present into two possible temporal zones. In Minority Report, we only know that the images are from the future because the narrative alerts us to this fact through the use of indistinct moving borders within the neutral film frame. In general, films use flashfowards, with the emphasis on the word flash, because of film’s lack of an implicit tense. Editing, montage and ellipsis combine to overcome this lack. 19 There is no means 17 Sound (both diegetic and non-diegetic) are important elements in the representation of time but in Minority Report it is the visual structure that forms the core through which the future is made foreseeable. 18 The tension between presentness of an image and is placement in an unreachable past is one of the key features of Resnais’ films, such as Nuit et brouillard. In this film, there is a distance between the voice over and the images which creates a feeling of pastness. 19 Other devices, such as accelerated and reversed motion can be used but flashforwards and flashbacks fit more easily within the editing structure of film. 17 of combining the present and future, as in the future tense, while maintaining the exactitude of the visual image. Conclusion Film and literature use different devices to represent the relationship between temporal periods. This is not necessarily a limitation of each medium, as film, for example, has the capacity to incorporate elements from other media, including photographic stills and elements of the written page. It is more useful to conceive of such limitations as expressive possibilities. In the adaptation of Dick’s “Minority Report,” the director and scriptwriters were obviously keen to exploit the visual properties of the medium and developed the plot such that the precogs actually see into the future. This takes a form analogous to cinematic viewing. In contrast, when Dick states that the precogs “see” the future he does not necessarily mean they actually see into the future, it is used in the more general sense of foretelling. The precogs speak of events to come in that they provide a text that joins the present and future rather than one that calls for a leap into the future, or the witnessing of a future present. The short story is more consistent in its approach, not due to the rigorous application of an idea, but because it does not expand on the mechanics of precognition. The story remains focused on the relationship between precognition and alternate futures, because the presentation of an exact image of a future crime would provide the reader and the protagonist with too much information and undermine the plot. The film must provide greater detail in its explication of future and present states but as a consequence must also provide an iconography of precognition. In this case, the iconography of precogs in a watery substance, the popular images of wireless interconnection, leads to a monistic conception of precognition. However, in following the logic of a processual idea of precognition using Bergson’s philosophy, it appears that the film adopts two radically different conceptions of precognition – one relating to a processual view and the other to a cinematic conception. The idea of precognition in film and literature is worthy of future research because it forces a further analysis of the relationship between the internal, temporal logic of the discourse and conscious experience of viewing reading. The opposition outlined in this article, between prediction and foreseeability, can also be used 18 to contrast the viewer’s relationship to the futurity of the plot – generally based on prediction – with the visual discourse of film, which makes the future foreseeable. This distinction could prove useful in the analysis of other films, especially in regard to the current interest of filmmakers in issues of memory and temporal disjunction – Irreversible, Paycheck, Memento, Donnie Darko. Bibliography Baudrillard, J. "The Order of Simulacra." Symbolic Exchange and Death. Trans. I. H. Grant. London: Sage, 1993. 51-85. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. 1911. Trans. Arthur Mitchell. New York: Random House, 1944. Trans. of L’évolution créatrice. 1907. - - -. The Creative Mind. Trans. M. L. Andison. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Trans. of La pensée et le mouvant: Essais et conférences. 1934. Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge, 1980. Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. Dick, Philip K. “Minority Report.” Minority Report. London: Gollancz, 2002. Jameson, Frederic. “Progress Versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future.” Science Fiction Studies Vol. 9, 1982. 147-58. Johnny Mnemonic. Dir. Robert Longo. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer and Takeshi Kitano. TriStar Pictures, 1995. Landon, Brooks. "On a Clear Day You Can See the Horizon of Invisibility: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production." The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production. Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Number 52, 1992. 145-60. Minority Report. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Writ. Scott Frank and Jon Cohen. Perf. Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, and Max von Sydow. Dreamworks, 2002. 19