The medium of film has great potential in playing with ontology, the branch of philosophy that asks (and tries to answer) the fundamental question: What really exists? Put another way, what does it mean for something to exist. The being of “to be,” as opposed to not-be may be thought of, can be labeled as existential ontology. Whereas in the Hindu Upanishads, being itself is Brahman, which pervades everything in the realm of appearance, the Abrahamic religions posit the existence of a deity that creates existence and thus is its condition or foundation. Creation ex nihilo (i.e., from nothing) is another way of grasping why the Abrahamic god is not existence, or being, itself, for that which brought (and sustains) existence into (and as) being cannot logically be existence itself. Fortunately for most viewers who lead normal lives, the film, Presence (2024), does not hinge on such abstractions; the salience of ontology, or what is real beyond our daily experiences (in the realm of appearance), is merely implied in there being an entity that intriguingly is only a presence. It is real to both the main characters in the film’s world and to viewers of the film because of the inclusion of supernatural effects that the entity is able to register in the perception of the family living in the house. Crucially, such effects do not overwhelm the subtlety in how the presence is known to exist (i.e., be real). In this way, Presence succeeds where Poltergeist (1982) and Ghost (1990) do not: Presence is more philosophically intriguing and thought-provoking than the latter two films, and is thus a better example of the potential that the medium of film has in engaging viewers in philosophy. Being less oriented to visually titilating supernatural effects, Presence can better engage the mind philosophically.
Presence can be regarded
as instantiating an innovative approach to the horror genre. At the film’s very
beginning, Chris (husband to Rebekah and father to Chloe and Tyler) corrects
Rebekah regarding Chloe’s shock at the apparent drug-overdose of her best
friend: “It’s not life; it’s death.” The tenuousness of the line between the
two conditions—existing and not existing—is a leitmotif throughout the film. The
film challenges this dichotomy itself, for in that story-world, people really
do exist non-materially after the body dies. The modern default of medicine (and,
more specifically, psychiatry) is evident in the film as Chloe’s parents grapple
with Chloe’s sense of a dead girl’s presence in the house, but the supernatural
eventually manifests even to Chris, Rebekah, and Tyler. Their notions of what
is real—or, what really exists—is widened to include the existence of ghosts.
Ironically, it takes manifestations that register in physics, such as books
moving visually on their own, for the family to accept as a fact that reality includes
entities that reside beyond the limits of (living) humans’ perception and even
cognition. The modern assumption that natural science must be impacted in a
supernatural way for the reality of an entity that lies beyond our realm to be
accepted is erroneous yet it is accepted by the filmmakers and their characters
in the film; the ghost need not act in ways that burst through into being
perceived by the family for the ghost to exist, or even be known to exist. The
psychic who visits the house is proof of there being sensed/known to be a
presence even though no supernatural effects are witnessed. In fact, she knows
that the ghost exists before Chris, Rebekah, and Tyler do.
The extension or deepening of
reality to include entities that are in another realm from that of living
people is “the reality” that the film presents. The very subtly of the presence
(putting aside the supernatural events) invites philosophical reflection
perhaps even more than reading a book on ontology does, for film engages sight
(into a story-world) more tangibly than can the imagination) and hearing. The
Matrix (1999), for example, does the human mind a great service in
manifesting the philosophy of solipsism, the view that our brains are really in
vats such that all that we perceive is an illusion, in a way that no one can
get by reading a book. The human mind is such that when presented with vivid
visuals and distinct tones of voice, the staying power is arguably longer than
are sentences in a book. In Presence, the psychic describes the entity
as “a presence that does not want to be forgotten.” Ideas can be like that too;
hence it is a shame when a scholar dies before or without having published one’s
knowledge, and that films perish before having been preserved.
Presence is especially
ripe for philosophical reflection in furnishing the psychic’s description of the
realm unknown to us wherein ghosts exist; it is not just in there being such a realm
and thus an extension or depth of reality beyond appearance that the film
furnishes to audiences. Whereas Chris can only admit, “There is mystery in this
world,” the psychic describes the entity as suffering and being confused, for
the past and present can be simultaneous for it. The entity can even anticipate
the tragic accident that will occur in the house and even sense that there is a
role for the entity itself to play in the incident. That the role is to protect
Chloe even though the psychic says that the entity is not Chloe’s dead friend
expands the viewers’ archetype of ghosts being angry and harmful. That the
entity in Presence was not Chloe’s friend when alive renders the helpful
nature even amid the anxiety of being in a realm that is qualitatively
different from that of living humans all the more foreign to viewers, and thus
intriguing philosophically. In short, going on to describe rather than merely
stipulate the existence of a realm that is real and yet has very different
dynamics than does the realm in which we live out our lives makes the film more
philosophically interesting and idea-stimulating. Even though the viewers do
not get the psychological payoff in being able to enter that realm vicariously
by being shown it in the film, the point that reality is not exhausted or completely
known to us comes through loud and clear.
Kant’s nominal realm of
reality as distinct from his phenomenal realm of appearances may in fact be the
basic paradigm on which the film and its story-world is founded. The philosopher’s
theory that the human mind structures perceptions of space and time along
rational lines is itself on the level of a paradigm. So too is Einstein’s
theory of physics in which gravity can bend space itself and effect time,
slowing it in proximity to a great mass. The film depicts space not as inert or
static, as the entity can emit energy of such intensity and force that ripples
in space are visible. As for time, I have already mentioned the observation of
the psychic that the past and present are perceived as occurring simultaneously
by the entity in the realm in which it found itself suddenly to be in at death.
The line between living and death may be slim and thus easily and even accidentally
crossed without notice, as the theologian and early-modern philosopher Jonathan
Edwards sermonized to young people in an age in which they died in
disproportionate numbers, yet the two distinct realms in Presence are
very different—the paradigm in which the entity exists challenging and
stimulating commonly held assumptions that we have from the world in which we
live. Rendering the relativity or situatedness of our lived-in paradigm
transparent to us is a great contribution that film-makers can make (and some
have made) to the Hegelian progress of our species in coming to know itself in successively
greater freedom. For being freed ideationally from our innate paradigm in being
cognizant of its basic assumptions relative to others is indeed of value.
