Using the simulation depicted in the documentary film, “Full Battle Rattle”, I will explain the straightforward ways in which the sociality of the virtual bleeds into our relationships in the physical world.  Sociality moves between breaks in these two spaces, and virtual simulations can seem more real than the real.  This realistic simulation is present in the film “Full Battle Rattle” when the US soldiers shape shift from the real world into the simulated one of Medina Wasl, a staged Iraqi village in the California desert.  The US Army funds this simulation to prepare soldiers for any situation or obstacle they could potentially face when deployed to Iraq.  This wartime simulation accounts for all possibilities and ignores the fact that there is an inevitable breakdown of the machine through difference.  The inconsistencies in the space and time of the simulated world of Medina Wasl and the real Iraq produce difference between the virtual and the real.  The soldiers themselves are “becoming” these new social roles when they are immersed in the simulated world of Medina Wasl.  They become Iraqi soldiers while on US ground.  In turn, the future selves of these soldiers manifest in their present selves.  To be more clear, all of the figures present in the Medina Wasl simulation shape shift as a result of various encounters with different people.  The simulation bleeds into and influences the real.  A clear example of the virtual simulation world overpowering the real is when a soldier (whose role is an insurgent) chucks a basketball over the Middle Eastern actors (whose roles are Iraqi natives of Medina Wassl).  This soldier initially observes the Iraqis kicking the basketball like a soccer ball and is angered by their ignorance of American culture.  He knows that the Iraqis kicking the ball are only actors in real life, but the simulation is so powerful that it succeeds in transforming social relations in the town.  

*Full Battle Rattle. Dir. Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss. First Run Features, 2008. DVD.