WarGames
WarGames, a 1983 film starring Matthew Broderick, is a Cold War set thriller about a young hacker who inadvertently instructs an AI programme to proceed towards nuclear war. Bookended at the start and end of the film is a shot of the tunnel leading to the heavily fortified NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex, with the scene showing vehicles first exiting and later entering the facility. This large access tunnel emphasises the scale and importance of the setting and reflects the binary nature of machine decision making shown throughout. It is a dark, damp and grey, low-lit vehicular corridor; anonymous yet significant, showing the dichotomy of in/out choice. How can we view these two particular corridor scenes as the foundation for the larger fictional locations they inhabit and their importance as ‘connecting’ scenes within broader narrative beats?
The notion of the corridor can be used as metaphor or allegory and represents a process of change or transformation. They show that there is a framework in place which is needed in order to travel through the fictional space of film. In WarGames, we can deduce that the aforementioned vehicular tunnel represents the link to the entire rest of the world (ROW), upon which decisions made at NORAD have a potentially devastating and cascading effect.
GridGames
NORAD CORRIDOR ROW
NORAD CORRIDOR ROW
NORAD CORRIDOR ROW
This framework of supposed corridors, linked together (theoretically) in a continuous chain that supposes a larger, implied narrative is shot through the figure of the grid. That is, corridors of infinite connections that can be drawn upon to provide context. The grid, as a readymade, is perhaps not a work of art in itself but a means of creating one. Krauss stated that, ‘by virtue of the grid, the given work of art is presented as a mere fragment, a tiny piece cropped from an infinitely larger fabric’ (1986: 19). So, only a small section of the grid is ever visible at once, everything else is merely speculation. The amount of information we are given is what the brain will use to construct a complete picture. If all of the information is not forthcoming, a complete picture will be constructed nonetheless, leading to bias and distortion regarding the truth of the matter at hand. In fact, the tunnel used in the film is actually in Los Angeles, rather than Colorado’s real-life NORAD access tunnel.
Corridors, like systems, function both as restriction and guide. As put forward by Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow, ‘things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable’ (1973: 36). There are only two ways to negotiate a corridor, a space for getting from A to B, with each being a reversal of the other. One is neither inside nor outside when in a corridor and it acts as a node connecting two or more spaces. The use of a corridor requires a user to relinquish some control over their environment. They are fragments of a hidden grid, revealed only at opportune moments to show that it is there, a guiding hand and structural crux on which to place our faith. The corridor is a liminal space of encounter, without which we have little information on our place in the world and where we are heading.
Notes
1 Anderson, Martin, (2009), In praise of the sci-fi corridor: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/313130/in_praise_of_the_scifi_corridor.html (accessed 6 December 2016).
Bibliography
Krauss, Rosalind E., (1986), The Originality of the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths. The MIT Press, Cambridge.
Pynchon, Thomas, (1973), Gravity’s Rainbow. Vintage Books, London.
