The remaking of 'La Jetee''s time-travel narrative: 'Twelve Monkeys' and the rhetoric of absolute visibility

Through a comparative analysis of the mise-en-scene of time travel in La Je tee and Twelve Monkeys, this article explores the differences between Holly wood cinema's reliance on full visibility and presence--a rhetoric of space and light--and the film's use of a wide sensorial spectrum that destabiliz es the metaphysical equation of representation with vision while putting fo rth a rhetoric of time and darkness. Using Heidegger's critique of metaphys ics and Foucault's theory of panopticism, the article argues that Twelve Mo nkeys reproduces the metaphorics of vision and power at work in the ontothe ological tradition of Western representation. Twelve Monkeys' rationalizing discourse transforms the anxiety of being in time into a game of illusioni st realism. Second, the film substitutes technological instrumentality for the inherently transporting capacities of the psyche. And third, while pote ntially dislocating, the film's time travel narrative ends up coercing temp orality (and death) into a manageable, stable, and redeemable picture.