The meteor does not land in the yard; it lands in the libidinal economy of the high school party, a jagged, glowing stone of the Absolute Outside that serves as the "object small a" for a generation of teenagers already vibrating with the frequency of their own obsolescence. To watch +1 is to witness the collapse of the molar individual—that neat, packaged "Self" sanctioned by the State and the Church—into a molecular soup of overlapping temporalities where the "I" is no longer a sovereign subject but a glitch in the software of the pastoral. We are not dealing with a "time travel movie" in the sense of a linear journey; we are dealing with a "time-leak," a hole in the Body without Organs through which the past pours like a septic backflow, forcing the characters to confront the most terrifying monster of all: the fact that they are replaceable by themselves.
I. The Party as a Desiring-Machine
The American suburban party is the ultimate site of stratification. It is a rigid grid of social expectations, gender performances, and alcohol-fueled "becomings" that never quite achieve takeoff. As Deleuze and Guattari (1983) observe in Anti-Oedipus:
Everything is a machine. Celestial machines, the stars or heavens in the projection of the astronomer's fingertips... the breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it; the mouth-machine is coupled to the anorexia-machine.
In +1, the party-machine is coupled to the angst-machine. David, our protagonist, is a component of a failing romantic-assemblage. His "mistake"—the kiss with the girl who merely resembled his girlfriend, Jill—is not a moral failure in the traditional sense, but a failure of faciality. He reacted to a signifier (the face of the beloved) without checking the coordinates of the signified. Jill’s reaction is a sudden "deterritorialization" of her own identity. She realizes that she is not "The One" in a unique, metaphysical sense, but a variable in David’s sloppy equation. She is "dead weight," he is "dead weight"—they are both barnacles on the hull of a sinking social strata.
Then comes the meteor. The meteor is the "miraculating machine." It disrupts the power lines, causing the party to flicker between "is" and "was." This is the introduction of the n+1 logic: for every subject, there is a surplus, a "plus one" that exceeds the capacity of the room. The teenagers are suddenly confronted with their own doubles, moving through the house twenty minutes behind them. This is the schizo-moment par excellence. The "I" is split. The "me" that just took a shot of tequila is watching the "me" that is about to take a shot of tequila. The social field is no longer a collection of persons; it is a "swarm" of temporal slices.
II. The Moral Imperative of the Meat-Clock
What happens to morality when the timeline is no longer a line? In the traditional State-form of ethics, murder is the ultimate crime because it permanently deletes a unique soul-data-point. But in the world of +1, David discovers that the soul is just a record on a loop. When he sees the "past" Jill—the one who hasn't yet discovered his betrayal—he doesn't see a person; he sees a save point. He sees an opportunity to "re-territorialize" his relationship by deleting the "present" Jill, the one who has already begun the process of becoming-independent.
David’s logic is a predatory form of "becoming-child." He wants the innocence of the past without the consequences of the present. He knocks out his past self—an act of literal self-sabotage—and proceeds to hunt the "correct" version of his girlfriend. This is the cannibalism of the Ego. As Wilhelm Reich (1933) argued in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, the authoritarian personality seeks to crush any flow that threatens the rigid structure of the self. David is a micro-fascist. He decides which Jill "deserves" to exist based on which one serves his libidinal needs.
The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." (Foucault, 1975).
But here, the oppressor and the oppressed share the same DNA. David’s knife in the gut of the "present" Jill is a ritualistic sacrifice to the god of the Status Quo. He kills the woman who has grown, the woman who has seen through him, to secure the woman who still looks at him with the vacant eyes of a pre-betrayal idol. He is not "saving" a relationship; he is "editing" the footage of his life to ensure he never has to face the "Outside."
III. The Schizophrenic Out for a Walk (in the Backyard)
Think of the "schizophrenic out for a walk" described in the opening pages of Anti-Oedipus. He does not distinguish between the sun, the grass, and his own internal organs. Everything is a flow. In +1, the partygoers lose this distinction. They begin to blend into the scenery. The "ratchet up" of angst is a molecular agitation. The screaming, the vomiting, the sweating—these are the "discharging" of the social strata.
The film captures the "time-image" as Bergson and Deleuze might describe it: a "crystal-image" where the past and the present coexist in a single, terrifying reflection. The party becomes a "smooth space" where the walls no longer contain the "self." When David searches for the past Jill, he is moving through a "rhizome" of possibilities. He bumps into versions of himself that are no longer "his." This is the horror of the double: not that they are different, but that they are the same. If there can be two of you, then "You" are a factory-produced commodity.
As Jean Baudrillard (1981) noted in Simulacra and Simulation:
The double is no longer an effigy, a shadow, a mirror-image, a haunting spectrality. It is a prosthetic, a technical double... the transition from a world of original subjects to a world of copies without originals.
In the suburban sprawl of anywhere-USA, these teenagers were already copies. They wore the same clothes, listened to the same music, and performed the same "rebellious" rituals. The meteor simply literalized the simulation. It turned the "uniqueness" of the soul into a technical problem of "who got to the knife first." David's survival is not a victory of the spirit; it is a victory of the most efficient predatory-machine. He is the one who was willing to murder the "truth" (the current Jill) to live in the "simulation" (the past Jill).
IV. The Right-Wing Foundation of the Moral Loop
The prompt notes the "cry of moral relativism from the right." We see this reflected in David’s internal logic. He clings to a "central set of values"—namely, "I must be with Jill"—even when the ontological foundations of his reality have objectively changed. This is the fundamentalism of the Desire. He wraps his "morality" counter-intuitively over the contradiction of his own violence. He kills her because he loves her. He destroys her to save her.
This is the "eye for an eye" logic of the Old Testament, but applied to a temporal paradox. David feels he has "earned" the right to the past Jill because he has suffered the rejection of the present Jill. He performs a "buy-back" of his own happiness. This is a capitalist transaction. He spends the life of one Jill to purchase the presence of another. The "non-linear timeline" acts as a deregulated market where the value of a human life is determined by its utility to the consumer (David).
Lacan (1977) speaks of the "Mirror Stage" where the child first identifies with its image and creates an "Ideal-I." David is stuck in a terminal Mirror Stage. He is so enamored with the image of the perfect relationship that he is willing to murder the reality of it. The ending—the "happily ever after" kiss—is the ultimate horror. The camera checks in on the other leads, but we know the truth: they are kissing in a graveyard. The David who is kissing is a murderer; the Jill who is being kissed is a ghost. They have achieved "stability" only through the total "stratification" of the timeline.
V. The Pro-Life Machine and the Erasure of the Other
The analogy of the Pro-Lifer is striking here. The Pro-Lifer clings to the "life" of the fetus while often remaining indifferent to the "life" of the mother or the "quality" of the life to come. It is a morality of the "point," not the "flow." David is a temporal Pro-Lifer. He is "Pro-Jill" in the abstract, but "Anti-Jill" in the specific instance where she exercises her agency to leave him. He "saves" the life of the "innocent" Jill (the past version) by "aborting" the "guilty" Jill (the present version).
This is the "logic of the grave" that the prompt describes. The "body underneath never graduated from high school." David is a "schmuck" who refuses to grow. Growth is a "line of flight." It is a movement toward the "unknown." David’s refusal to grow is a "re-territorialization." He wants to stay in the high school party forever. He wants the "infinite return" of the same. By killing the version of Jill that moved beyond him, he successfully "stops the clock." He turns Derry—or whatever this suburb is—into a "static machine."
God is dead, but his shadow still looms in the caves." (Nietzsche, 1887).
In +1, the "shadow of God" is the shadow of the Ego. David has become his own God, deciding which lives are "meritorious" and which are "hearsay." The courtroom of his mind has found the present Jill guilty of "growing up," a crime punishable by death.
VI. Conclusion: The Happily Ever After of the Machine
Did David cross a line? From the perspective of "schizoanalysis," the question of "good" and "evil" is replaced by the question of "productive" and "repressive." David’s actions are profoundly repressive. He has crushed a "becoming-other" to maintain a "being-the-same." He has turned a cosmic accident (the meteor) into a domestic utility. He has "won" the game, but the prize is a corpse and a duplicate.
The film ends with a "happily ever after" that is more terrifying than any slasher movie. It is the triumph of the "Molar" over the "Molecular." The "plus one" has been integrated into the system. The noise has been smoothed out. The "angst" has been pacified by the "knife." We are left with a vision of American suburbia where time is just another commodity to be hoarded, and the "other" is just a mirror that can be smashed if the reflection is too honest.
David is the ultimate citizen of the State-form. He has secured his "homeland" (the relationship) through "pre-emptive war" (the murder). He has "made morality up as he went along," and because he is the only one who remembers the "crime," he is the only one who gets to write the "history." The "schizophrenic out for a walk" has been tackled by the "security guard of the Ego." The party continues, the glow of the powerlines fades, and the "happily ever after" begins—a silent, suffocating loop of a boy who refused to be anything more than a "schmuck."
References
Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books.
Lacan, J. (1977). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI. W. W. Norton & Company.
Nietzsche, F. (1887). On the Genealogy of Morals. Penguin Classics.
Reich, W. (1933). The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Žižek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso.
Comments
Post a Comment