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Impossible Monkeys / Possible Imps

an analysis of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys

by David Colosi



............I first went to see 12 Monkeys because the advertisements, like coded graffiti messages, attracted me. So I followed my consumer instincts. At the same time I happened to be reading Umberto Eco essays about possible worlds and self-voiding fiction. Coincidentally, the two met in the theater as the conclusion of 12 Monkeys beckoned me back to the beginning. More out of anger and frustration than interest, I had to see if the unanswered questions I had been left with had been answered, only I had missed them as a first-time viewer, or if they hadn't been answered, but, instead, had been used strategically to baffle me.
............So the next night, in the spirit of analysis, I followed the film's directions--it calls for multiple viewings--and put on my consumer shoes and fell back in. Pretending my eyes were Eco's, I carefully watched the narrative to see if the film had called me back to reveal its own mastery or to simply extract another eight dollars from my pocket. I reentered with little faith in Hollywood films (but some faith in Terry Gilliam ala Brazil). Looking with the eyes of the optimist, I hoped to find an interesting case of self-disclosing metafiction. I set out to see if the narrative world created within the film was a Possible one or not.
............Narrative works, regardless of how Impossible they are in the "actual" world, can maintain a self-contained logic making them Possible for the intention of the narrative. That possibility is the point at which viewers/readers put their trust in the work enough to suspend their disbelief in order to benefit from the results of the work's hypothesis. In some cases, the impossibility of the narrative can be and is used as the intention of the text, although the text warrants it. But if a Necessary Possible narrative accidentally becomes Impossible, then the Intention of the text too becomes impossible (to decipher).1
............This analysis concerns Possible Worlds as they relate to a theory of fiction, not physical science. Therefore I will not tell the reader what he or she already knows: that time travel is not possible in the "actual" world, therefore 12 Monkeys is an Impossible World. Instead I will work in conditionals, accepting premises from the narrative: If I believe A, is B possible? And, if B is not possible, then is its impossibility possible within the context of A?
............From the beginning, I admit my pursuit is absurd: 1) 12 Monkeys is Science Fiction, not self-disclosing metafiction; 2) Self-disclosing metafiction is too complicated for Hollywood. Therefore my attempt to view 12 Monkeys with the eyes of Umberto Eco, and by doing so, mix scholarship and Hollywood, is generous. But I urge the reader to see that 12 Monkeys disguises itself in the tropes of self-disclosing metafiction (whose tropes are they really?). I also hope the reader understands that my eyes had been trained to find what I was looking for, whether it was there or not, due to the timeliness of reading Eco's texts.
............Having said this, I put on shoes larger than those of the model viewer and hope my overinterpretation of 12 Monkeys can be more than simply an exercise in absurdity. This would not only be a waste of my time but of the reader's as well. Instead, I hope to use my analysis as a testing ground for exploring the differences between Hollywood Science Fiction and Scholarly Self-Disclosing Metafiction.
............In order to map my analysis I will designate the following symbols. The dates, when not specifically stated in the film, are based on estimates (e.) around those that were (sp.). Many of the following are postulates (p.) on which to base the discussion. Having given or taken a year, month, week, or day, in most cases, wouldn't have made a difference. What matters is establishing a frame of reference.


J1 - James Cole as child 8 yrs. old in winter 1996 (sp.) born 1988 (e.)
J2 - James Cole played by Bruce Willis 35 yrs. old (p.) born 1988
L1 - Life 1 (of J1)
L2 - Life 2 (of J1)
R - Katherine Railly played by Madeline Stowe (approx. same age as J2)(p.)
TP - Time Present: 2023 (e.)
VTP - Viewer Time Present: 1996 (the film's first showing)
JG - Jeffrey Goines played by Brad Pitt
AN - Apocalypse Nut (coined by R)
x - equals 0 or any positive integer


12 Monkeys: An Impossible Narrative

............In order to first unravel the time sequence and to begin where the first premise begins, we must decide on Time Present of the narrative. I have designated the year 2023 as TP and as our frame of reference. This estimate comes from a calculation of the age of J1 in 1996, eight years old (sp.)2, in relation to an approximated age of the protagonist J2 in TP, arbitrarily thirty-five (p.) years old. 2023-1996 = 27. 27+8 = 35. Since J2 is the main character from whose consciousness the viewer enters the narrative world and who says "I", he carries the highest exponent 3, so the viewer joins him in his TP. In the opening scene, J2 awakes from a dream, one presented as memory of the past, in a TP from which he does not know what will happen next. He does not know the mission he is about to be assigned, for he cannot know the future.
............Viewers watching the film in 1996 (VTP) are notified that the story they are about to see occurs in their future. They immediately understand the context of the film as Science Fiction; not only because in VTP Terry Gilliam is not known for his psychic powers, but instead as a film maker who uses the motifs of Science Fiction, but also because in VTP no one has discovered how to enter or know the future. (We will later see also that in the 1996, and the 2023, of the narrative world no one has discovered the secrets of knowing or travelling to the future.)
............We can estimate the Time Span of the narrative as, a postulated, one month. The narrative begins in winter of 2023 (J2 collects insects in the snow in Philadelphia). The narrative ends after J2 is shot in the airport. If we understand J2 as a worker, or a Volunteer, in the year 2023, we can then understand his trips to the past as business trips. From J2's perspective, and for our discussion, a trip to The Past is equivalent to one abroad.
............The postulated one month is roughly based on the following: The film opens when J2 is called for Volunteer Duty. He goes above ground to TP's Philadelphia to pick insects, goes back underground, gets cleaned up and prepares for his mission to the past all in about two days. He takes his first trip to the past and spends about a week in a 1990 mental institution. (We only see him in bed once, but as generous viewers we can assume time passes). He returns to 2023 and spends, maybe, a week relaying his information and recovering. Next he spends only a few minutes in 1917 then goes directly to November 1996 where he kidnaps R and returns to 2023 in a matter of, approximately, three days (the pond scene). In 2023 he spends another week to recover and then goes back to December 1996. He is shot the next day in the airport. So between the opening of the movie and the closing, J2 ages, approximately, a month. So TPs (start of the movie) is November(p.) 2023, then TPf (finish) is December(p.) 2023. The viewer witnesses the last month of J2's life.
............In the narrative, time is linear. The only difference it offers in relation to our "real" time is that it allows for intrusions, or physical returns to the past. In the same way we assume that R ages between 1990 and 1996, and all of the other characters age, we also assume that J1 ages into J2. Eco says, "Everything that the text doesn't name or describe explicitly as different from what exists in the real world must be understood as corresponding to the laws and conditions of the real world."4 Since no other explanation for aging is given within the narrative, the viewer must assume that the characters age as we do, linearly. The film, as all narrative texts do, relies on the viewer's knowledge of the laws and conditions of the real world so as not to have to explain every detail. In 12 Monkeys the narrative world and the "actual" world collide to create confusion.


............The film suggests that J1 had always seen J2 shot in the airport and that J2's memory of himself, recognized only as a man, being shot was an authentic, or "real," memory. The gimmick of the dream memories suggests this to the viewer, as well as the cyclic gimmickry of previously seen Science Fiction films and stories.
............12 Monkeys takes Eco's idea one step further by suggesting, "Everything that the text doesn't name or describe explicitly as different from what exists in our previous understanding from Science Fiction worlds must be understood as corresponding to the laws and conditions of previous Science Fiction worlds:" 1) That a person can exist twice in the same time period, although of different ages; 2) That travel back in time will result in drastic changes of history; 3) That since time travel backward is possible, forward time travel must also be.
............If the dream memories are not supposed to be authentic memories, then the film also asks the viewer to assume that premonition of the future, in detail, is a viable possibility in the narrative world created. But since the notion of premonition is not explored, delineated, or defined in the narrative world, the film begs us to use our knowledge of the "actual" world to fill the definition. The notion of premonition in the "actual" world, though, is still considered science fiction. A common knowledge of premonition as an ability is not included in the Universal Encyclopedia.5 By contrast, linear aging and linear time are included in that Universal Encyclopedia. This is not to suggest that other theories don't exist or that the Universal Encyclopedia is true, but it is the one that informs the viewer's frame of reference. If we are asked to pull from the actual world, we rely on a world that does not possess an ability to preminisce.6 Coincidentally, the word doesn't even exist in the American Heritage dictionary. Like all science fiction, although I can create it as a word (as a verb), I cannot create it as an ability.
............A further examination of the film will show that in the narrative's first or original 1996, a J2 must not have ever been shot in the airport. But instead, a J1 walked through the airport without experiencing the psychological trauma. He walked with his parents to their car in the parking lot as if it were any other day in an airport. This I will call the Smooth Airport Scene (SAS).
............In 1996 J1 is eight-years-old. J2 is not in existence. In order for J1 to become J2 he must go through the natural process of aging. According to the "actual" world in which the viewer lives and experiences, no one can be eight years old and then jump to thirty-five years old, nor can anyone be eight years old and thirty-five years old at the same time. But in the world of Science Fiction and the world of Film, both of these instances are "possible". The history (all a fiction anyway) of Science Fiction has shown that time travel is possible for characters of stories. And viewers have agreed to an understanding that within a narrative, characters can, and have, travelled in time, or that time can be, and has been, displaced, repeated, layered, paralleled, etc.
............Although this knowledge may exist in the viewer's Universal Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, within the particular instance of the Small World of 12 Monkeys, an authentic possibility is not created. J1 cannot be both eight and thirty-five in the same instance in the same initial instance (later we will go beyond the initial instance).
............At no point in the film do any characters travel into the future. All motion in time occurs either backward or forward to TP. The scientists in the film's TP have not discovered the ability to send someone forward into the future. And it isn't until the 2020's that they discover how to send someone backward in time or back to TP. In this respect, Temporal Science in the Narrative World is underdeveloped.
............As further evidence, the psychiatrists in 1996 show they don't believe time travel is possible, in any direction, by not believing J2's story. They consider him insane for believing the opposite. Then, if J1 is eight years old in 1996, the only way for him to see himself as a thirty-five year-old, to have J1 and J2 be alive in the same instance, is for J1 to age to thirty-five years old, naturally, so J2 can travel back. After time travel is invented in 2023, J1 can experience the first sighting of J2.
............In the narrative's 1996, we don't know of any scientists who exist in, or have access to the future. Scientists from the narrative's 1996 cannot make J1 jump from age eight to age thirty-five and then from thirty-five back to eight. (In the same way, the scientists in the narrative's 2023 have not shown us they can make J2 jump from age thirty-five to age seventy-five). Nobody in the narrative has the ability to send J2 to meet J1 before J1 ages into J2. (In another section we will discuss how the film maker can).
............Furthermore, there is no reason for their meeting in 1996. The scientists of 2023 have a specific reason for sending J2 back. First of all, in 1996, the scientists who later invented time travel were also around eight years old (give or take ten years). Secondly, they had no way of knowing a virus was going to wipe out the planet. Not only is it impossible because of the natural process of aging that J2 could not have been in the airport in 1996, but there was no reason for him to be there. In order for the scientists to have the need to send J2 back to 1996, they also must age to their present ages, an Apocalypse Nut (AN) must board the plane unnoticed, his virus must destroy 99% of the world, and J1 must walk with his parents to their car in the parking lot without witnessing his older self being shot. The viewer can then, using his or her log of information of Science Fiction, invent other scenarios to try to find an answer, but this is play unauthorized by the narrative.7



............"The Keys are lovely this time of year."


............Since the past is changed, it must change from a version A to a version B. We'll call these L1 and L2. L is the life of J1. If L1 includes the SAS for J1, then L2 includes J1 witnessing the shooting of J2. In this sense, L1 only has one "playing out," while L2 permanently erases L1 and then plays endlessly to infinity, L2-. (unless the scientists in TP again try to change the past).
............L1 is such for J1 and all of the other characters who exist in the present of 1996, including R, AN, JG, etc. L1 for J2 is only different in that, in 2023, he has no memories of a shooting in the airport. L2 for J2 is a life where he has memories of a shooting in an airport. But his death in L1 is the same as that in L2. There is no SAS for J2 (at least not yet).
............L1 for J1 could be described this way: J1 walks through the airport without the psychological trauma of experiencing a murder, survives the virus miraculously with the 1% of other people, goes underground at age eight, ages to thirty-five at which point scientists, who apparently went underground at the same time he did, call him for Volunteer Duty. His services include being sent back in time to trace the path of the virus. From Nov. 2023 to Dec. 2023, at the age of thirty-five, J2, who is J1 aged, spends the final month of his life in 1996, on a business trip where, unfortunately, he dies in the line of duty.
............R, in L1, never sees J1, who is her contemporary. R is thirty-five(p.) years old in 1996. J1 is eight. J2 is thirty-five years old in 2023 but he appears in 1996, approximately the same age as R. If J1 experiences the SAS, R must also live L1 where she never encounters J2 (in 1990 of L1 J1 is two years old, J2 does not exist yet). R must also not appear in the airport, at least in the capacity that she does in L2. For if J1 doesn't see anyone shot in L1, then he also doesn't see a woman crying over a shot man. In L1, R apparently dies from the virus never having met J2. Only after J2 reaches age thirty-five (R is twenty-seven years dead) does he revisit the past, thus creating L2 for J1, R and the people living between the years of 1917-1996 and beyond.



............L2 begins in 1917 with the altered WW1 photo. The lives of everyone living at that point and beyond have changed. Most of the changes the viewer knows occur between 1990 and 1996. L2 for J1 could be described this way: J1 sees J2 killed in the airport. J1 also sees R, as does R see J1 for the first time. It is possible for J1, in his life before the airport scene, to have seen J2 on the news in 1990 and as being wanted for kidnapping in 1996, for the stories of Ricky Newman and J2 are shown back to back. The viewer assumes that R still dies from the virus. L2 becomes the only existing, new, version of 1996.
............J2 is chosen by the scientists in 2023 because he "remembers things." But the viewer finds, at the end of the film, that his memory is selective and that many of his "memories" are impossible. J2's memories and flashbacks are explained as coming from his childhood. His memories reveal themselves to the viewer in dreams. By layering "actual" events from J2's childhood (Ricky Newman possible in L1) with uncertain events (an airport murder not possible in L1), the film portrays the dreams as authentic memories, and expects the viewer to take them as such.
............J2 remembers the story of Newman vividly, and as the "first time he was ever scared as a kid." But in each dream he cannot recognize or see clearly the face of a man who is killed in front of him. J2, through the eyes of J1, watches the death of J2. J2 recognizes the viewpoint as J1's but doesn't recognize the vision as J2. This is due to the costumes and the angle at which J1 views the scene (which also becomes a decoy for the viewer). If he had recognized J2, then he could have prevented his own death.
............In trying to answer the unanswered questions, the viewer goes to the laws and conditions of the "actual" world. For the sake of playing the viewer with doubts, let's suggest the following, even though the text doesn't authorize it. The question: "How come J2 remembers the Ricky Newman story, but not the James Cole murder?"
 ............Memories are fickle, yet the shock of witnessing a murder, one would have to ask a professional psychiatrist, seems to be a memory that would be hard to forget. If the missing Ricky Newman story constituted the first time J1 was really afraid, what was the second? If J1 remembered the Newman story its seems difficult to believe he forgot the Cole story, especially when J1 and James Cole shared the same name.8 A novelty like that, one could suspect, would have a profound effect on an impressionable eight-year-old boy. The coincidence would also not go unnoticed by his parents. The witnessing of the murder of a man, whom later turned out to be James Cole, might instill in that same eight-year old the second time he was afraid. Possibly the psychiatrist would suggest that these kinds of memories could be blocked by shock. "The Keys are lovely this time of year." Let's come back to the film's narrative.
............If we determined that the story we are watching cannot be L1, then the question of where the viewer enters the narrative is worth trying to answer: Is it at the point where L2- runs for the first time, L2-1, or is it L2-7 or L2-1,000,000? For the viewer it appears to be the first time, for, to the first-time viewer's experience, it is. But J2 has no sense of which generation it is. And his, as has been determined, is the consciousness from which the viewer is watching. The viewer, again, tries to desperately answer the question: "How does J2 have memories of an event that never happened?" This question leads to our purpose in being strict in determining the existence of the SAS of L1.
............The next question then becomes, "Is it possible or not for J2, in L2-7 or L2-1,000,000, to recognize himself in the dream, as a memory from L2-6 or L2-999,999?
............It is impossible for J2 to have memories of an airport scene that never happened, or that would happen in the future, unless J2 is in fact in L2-7, at the time the viewer is watching the movie, having memories of L2-6. Only then one wonders why J2 remembers fractions of "reality" from previous generations, but doesn't remember the most important part.
............Here we have a flashback of our own: We are in Hollywood. The unresolved, or unanswered, "Why" or "How" to suspend one's disbelief, by relying on dramatic cinematic effect rather than the construction of a Possible World, instead of making the film complex and interesting, relies on gimmicks to make the film appealing to first-time viewers (the majority). Yet it throws the complex potential of the film into the waste basket for second-time viewers whom the film beckoned back. Like the game of Ricky Newman falsely calling from the bottom of the well, 12 Monkeys beckons us from the bottom of the wastebasket only to reveal to us that a trick has been played.
............But we should travel back in textual time to remember exactly why the possibility of memories is impossible in the Small World that the film creates. For a person to have a memory, in the "actual" world and in the world 12 Monkeys relies on, the original course of events must have occurred. This could be contrasted with premonition or a theory of deja vu, where a person experiences an instance of the future. J2's flashbacks appear to the viewer to be memories, a recurring dream, of something that actually happened. When J2 is finally in the airport in 1996, he says he remembers the place, "I was here as a boy." Strangely enough, R also remembers it, when in fact she has never been there before in this capacity, nor has she ever had the dream before. (Her "memory" is also only possible if she's remembering from L2-).
............But L2- is more fractured than it first seems. L1 ends and L2-1 begins for J1 at the point where J2, from 2023, first steps into the past (1990). (At this point to infinity, is where all of the generations of L begin and end). In L2, J1's life differs from L1 only after age two. Later, J2 enters 1917, and all of L1 is erased.
............First let's suggest the film opens at the very end of L1, from when J2 awakes in his bunk in 2023 to when he first sets foot in 1990, from which L2-1 runs through the rest of the film. If the viewer, J2, J1, R and all the characters in the film begin L2-1 here, then it is still impossible for J2 to have a memory of the airport scene, because it has not happened yet. It will happen for the first time before a narrative month is up. R, too, cannot have any memory of J2 in disguise. She impossibly says, "I remember you like this. I feel as if I've always known you." (Throughout the film she is asking J2 if they have met before. If she is in L1 or L2-1, this feeling is impossible). Essentially, if the viewer experiences the narrative at this point, then these "memories" have to be seen as premonitions. But if we try to understand the airport scene as premonition, we have to then decide if J2's Ricky Newman "memory" is authentic or premonition.
............J2 tells R the outcome of the Ricky Newman story before it has happened in her sense of real time. He knows the outcome because it is a "real" memory from L1 (the man shot in an airport may not have occurred in J1's childhood, but the story of Ricky Newman could have). The viewer has to distinguish between "real" memories from L1 and premonitions for L2-1.
............But instantly the premonition theory dissolves when the viewer remembers that J2 goes back to the past for the very reason that he knows what happens. The scientists and J2 know that a virus will destroy 99% of world. If J2 was always having premonitions and didn't know what happens to the characters after 1996, then he wouldn't know what to look for. He would have had no sense of the mission he needed to carry out in 1996 and therefore would have been a poor choice for a Volunteer.
............Therefore, it is impossible for the viewer to experience the film from the vantage point of the period between L1 and L2-1 because, 1) J2 cannot have memories of an airport scene that is about to happen; 2) J2 cannot have premonitions of an airport scene that is about to happen; 3) R cannot have memories or premonitions of an airport scene that is about to happen, or of a man she only met for the first time in 1990 (although she may remember seeing him in a picture from 1917).9
............The film can only begin in a generation of L2-, any time other than L1. So if the viewer enters the film at the site of J2's bunk in TP at the very end of L2-(x+1), then the first time J2 sets foot in the past (1990), L2-(x+1) switches to L2-(x+2), for J1, yet J2 must finish L2-(x+1).
............If this is true, then we may be able to consider a Cumulative Memory Theory. But we must ask why certain characters, J2 and R, have the power of cumulative memory while other characters don't. None of the other characters have deja vu-like memories, especially AN, JG and the police officers who shoot J2. This suggests that some people are going through the airport scene for the first time, when J2 and R have gone through it before. The commonality between these characters is that they are contemporaries in 1996. The exceptions are J1 and R. The attribution of their memories of J2 and the airport scene, next to the denial of those memories in the other characters, complicates the entire narrative.
............J2 returns to the past to begin L2-1 before his death in the airport takes place. J2's childhood memory of a shot man can only be created after L2-1 is completed. Then it can exist for ever after. J1's memories from L1 are erased, J1 can now witness J2 being shot in L2-1, and then J2 in L2-2 can have memories from L2-1. If we accept this, then J1 and R have different consciousnesses after the completion of L2-1. Maybe they'll be able to prevent the airport murder in L2-2 a narratively ridiculous proposition (yet possibly useful for the sequel with Michael J. Fox).
............If we make believe that some characters can have cumulative memories yet others can't, then we have to ask why the characters with this trait remember some things but not others. One would think that J2's dreams would gradually become clearer in each generation. Eventually he could prevent his own death. Or if R is in a generation of L2-, one would think the memory of the man she loves being shot down at the moment he is trying to save the world from total destruction would be difficult to forget. Again we must either call our psychiatrist or suspect the film maker.
............Finally, in order to further consider both the idea of cumulative memory and the point at which the viewer enters the narrative, we should examine the voice mail that can be read from 1996's future, the narrative's TP. Although it is impossible that R's phone call, and J2's, existed in L1 , it is possible to have existed in L2-(x+1).
............The scientists play R's recorded message for J2 in 2023 (TP). They have just finished "doing that reconstruction thing" on it. R, apparently, made the call in Dec. 1996. The recording of R's phone call exists in TP, but it is impossible that it could have existed in L1 because J2 didn't exist in L1's 1996 and therefore R had no reason to make the call, nor could she have gotten the number because she hadn't met J2 yet.
............The scientists first play the recording in TP for J2 after his return from 1990. At this point, because J2 has stepped into the past, and therefore changed J1's future, L2-1 has begun. But since J2 has not yet visited 1996, there is still no way R can have made, nor the scientists can have, the phone call. It cannot be made until J2 enters 1996 and gives R a reason to make the call. The phone number first appears in 1990 of L2-1, but R doesn't think or need to use it again until she meets J2 in 1996. The events witnessed in the narrative, ending in J2's death in the airport, are playing out for the first time. The narrative hasn't progressed enough to include R's phone call. (The viewer can assume that if J2 stops his time travelling Volunteer Duty at this point, J1 and R, although experiencing a different L than L1, would live through a SAS without seeing a man get shot.)
............For the scientists to have the recorded phone call after J2's return from 1990, the viewer must be witnessing this portion of the narrative from L2-(x+2). Since the entire narrative has been played out once J2 appeared in 1996 in L2-1, and R made the phone call in 1996 of L2-1 TP's scientists can then have the recording after J2 returns from 1990 of L2-2 even though the phone call hasn't happened again yet.
............Even though other things within the narrative may have been Possible if the viewer entered at L2-1, because one thing is Impossible then the possibility of entering at L2-1 is rejected. For everything to be Possible we must move the viewer's viewing time frame to L2-2.
............Taking that the viewer watches the narrative which includes the transfer point from L2-1 to L2-2, making the bulk of the narrative in L2-2, next let's examine J2's phone call to the voice mail. When is the first time it could have Possibly existed as a recording? Unlike with R's phone call, J2 never has the opportunity to listen to his own message. The scientists haven't reconstructed it until after J2 makes the call from 1996. What L2 is he in when he makes his call?



............For J2 to make his call, he must know that R's call was received and know the content. He must also see zoo animals running free in the streets of Philadelphia. If J2 can't listen to R's phone message after his return from 1990 unless he is in L2-2, then his phone call hasn't happened yet. He must make the phone call in L2-2 while he is in the airport on Dec. 13, 1996.
............If he actually made the phone call when 1996 was time present, and if R made her phone call in 1996 and if J2 was shot in the airport in 1996 and if J1 witnessed his older self's death in 1996, then J2, when he's making the phone call, must think that the scientists in TP had already had the call he was going to make. Then he should suspect they withheld it from him, and that they knew all along the path of the virus. Therefore he should see that there was no reason for him to have been sent into the past. Of course, all of this is Impossible because we have already seen that these other events could never have happened in L1.
............So we have to understand J2's phone call as being first made in TP, from Dec. 13, 1996, in L2-2. The scientists then monitoring the call from the future, received the message immediately, reconstructed it, and came up with a plan to send Jose to the airport, all from the time J2 finishes the call to the time he boards the escalator a total of no more than ten minutes. This is a direct phone call from 1996 to 2023. Time passes at the same speed for J2 and the scientists. Time doesn't have to progress from 1996 to 2023 before the scientists can reconstruct the phone call. They receive it immediately, because they monitor the call from TP.
............If the phone call is reconstructed within the ten minutes it takes J2 to fix his mustache and have a conversation with the voice in the airport restroom, then the viewer wonders why it took the scientists so long to reconstruct R's phone call.
............If R and J2's phone calls were made during the same day, of the same life time, L2-2, then the scientists should have had both at the time J2 first hears R's message. Possibly they worked on R's first and hadn't completed J2's until he was already on Volunteer Duty. The coincidence for J2, that they finished the message reconstruction moments after he completed the phone call, is only coincidence because it actually took them twenty-seven years. And if J2, who is chosen because he remembers things, remembers R's phone call word for word, how does he forget the content of his own phone call, as well as even having made it?
............If the phone call does take twenty-seven years plus the full month minus a day of J2's Volunteer Duty trips to the past to reconstruct, not ten minutes, then we must conclude that the viewer enters the narrative world that spans the period from the end of L2-2 to L2-3. Jose gives J2 the gun for the first time in L2-3.
............Then we have to assume that in L2-2, J2, J1, R, AN, the police, and everyone else in the airport that day pass through the crucial moment without witnessing a death. If we play further, L2-2 has a happy ending for J2 and R because maybe they make it all the way to Key West. Yet, they only spend a few enjoyable weeks before 99% of the population is destroyed by a virus. Maybe J2 and R die together, while J1 goes underground at age eight and must finish out L2-2. "The Keys are beautiful this time of year." Yet, like J2, R, and everyone in the institution, we viewers are never allowed a vacation like this.
............We have already shown that it is impossible for R and J2's phone calls to have been made on the same day during the same life time: J2 could not make his phone call until he knew the details and consequences of R's. Therefore, R's phone call is made from Dec. 13, 1996 to 2023, in L2-1, J2 has a knowledge of it in L2-2; J2 makes his phone call from Dec. 13, 1996 to 2023, in L2-2, Jose has a knowledge of it in L2-3. In order for us to consider the narrative a Possible World, we must understand that we are viewing the narrative world at a point which includes the transition from L2-(x+2) to L2-(x+3).

............For the viewer, and the reader, this is quite a lot of work. Does the film's Text ask us to do this much fantasizing and suspending? At whose request, other than my own, have I found myself viewing in L2-(x+3)? If I had asked the director or screenplay writers to draw a map of the narrative, would they have spoken of L1 and L2-(x+3)? Would they have given me the very map I have written, in the same way Cervantes, if he could have travelled in time, and spoken to fictional characters, would have given Pierre Menard Don Quixote? Or would they consider my map inaccurate and hand me the actual map with different symbols of fracturing time, place and person?
 ............They would probably either, 1) call me an idiot by saying, "It's just a movie!" or, 2) thank me for being a careful viewer, but tell me to see it again to clarify my reading, therefore boosting their royalties. I can desperately claim, from the bottom of the well, that the film called me back to reexamine the narrative. But I would be foolish to argue that it asked me to do anything more than enjoy it a second time. "Never cry wolf" when dealing with Hollywood Science Fiction.
............Although we could investigate further, we would simply repeat our finding that the Narrative World created is an Impossible one, unless we force it into Possibility. By leaving unanswered questions in the "actual" world unanswered in the fictional world, the film dismantles its own narrative. We search for answers, unguided by the film/text, finally coming to the only conclusion possible: certain things are unexplainable, and anything is possible, in Science Fiction.
............To the first time viewer, offering it the benefit of the doubt, the narrative succeeds in making believe that it is a complicated network of thought-out Possibilities. To the return viewer, after a careful viewing, it exposes its assumed intricacies of design as surface devices. The failure of the narrative to create a valid basis on which viewers can rewardingly, willfully suspend their disbelief takes advantage of the trust of the viewer. It succeeds in calling the viewer back to the theater for an additional eight dollars, even succeeds at entertaining a second time, but fails at exemplifying dexterity in creating a Possible World a failure, albeit, a complicated one.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eco, Umberto. The Limits of Interpretation, Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, First Midland Book edition, 1994.
Eco, Umberto. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1994.
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader, Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, First Midland Book Edition, 1984.
Eco, Umberto. Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, Great Britian, 1992.
Gilliam, Terry. 12 Monkeys, (screenplay by David and Janet Peoples) Universal Pictures, 1995.


NOTES
<1. For more on this idea see: Colosi, Behind the Door.

<2. J2 explains to R that he never learned how to drive because he went underground at age 8. J1 went underground in 1997, after the virus was first released on Dec. 13, 1996 in the Philadelphia Airport.

<3. Eco, Limits of Interpretation, p. 79.

<4. Eco, Six Walks, p.83.

<5. Although not exactly, see Eco's definition in, Limits of Interpretation, 143-146.

<6. Word formed from reminisce: meaning to precollect or tell of future experiences or events.

<7. Possibly, in the airport, J1 did see a man get shot, a man originally different from J2. This keeps most of the past's history intact, a value attributed to many SF films and stories, including but not limited to the serials: Dr. Who, Star Trek, Superman, Terminator, and Back to the Future. (In all cases the reason to travel back in time is to change something, but the change is always attempted subtly. The case of 12 Monkeys is no different: the scientists don't want to stop the end of the world, they only want to trace the virus and make an antidote.) The scientists in 2023 could have found an article in the newspaper about a man being shot in 1996 (realized that J1 was there at the same time) and sent him back to stand in the place of the man who was shot. But even in this scenario, although the airport scene may not have been smooth for J1, J2 was nowhere to be found in the original 1996. In this second 1996, the one that forever changes 1996, J2 forever appears.
Furthermore, there is no fear on the part of the scientists or J2 that he will run into a previous J2. They didn't express concern that J3 would encounter J2 and J1. Therefore, no one, in the initial sending back of J2 seems aware that he ever existed in 1996. It could also have been a mistake that J1 was there.

<8. We know J2 doesn't change his name to James Cole when he goes underground because J1 's mother, in the final scene of the movie, calls him by name.

<9. It seems also impossible that R knows to look for, and recognizes J1 in the airport, but since J2 says, "I was here as a boy, I think you (R) were here, too," R possibly remembers this tidbit. She is remarkable.

David Colosi is an artist and writer living in New York. He has recently
completed a novel.

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