Presence

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.

Barbie

In The Wizard of Oz (1939), Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, tells Dorothy at the end of the film that it had been within her power to go home to Auntie Em’s farm in Kansas at any time, simply by clicking the heels of her ruby shoes thrice together. At the end of Barbie (2023), Ruth, who created the Barbie and Ken dolls, tells the traditional Barbie that she can become human herself simply by choosing to feel, and thus to live. The Witch and Ruth occupy similar roles, as do Dorothy and Barbie. But whereas Dorothy is trying to get back to the home she had known and now appreciates from faraway Oz, Barbie is trying to get to what she was made for—something qualitatively different than not being alive. Barbie’s plight is existential, and she discovers that the root of her identity transcends the feminist agenda. As home transcends ideology, what a person is made for transcends even home. Put another way, home is ultimately in being who one really is, hence being transcends location.

Many people who see Barbie undoubtedly fixate on the battle of the sexes between the Barbies and Ken, but I submit that as ideologically titillating as that ideological fix is, the tension between the humans and the dolls is more fundamental. The CEO of Mattel is motivated to close the opening that Barbie had opened between the land of the dolls and the “real” world. Indeed, Barbie does not view herself as real precisely because she cannot feel and is thus not alive. Being something that people pay for is to be of less reality than is someone who is alive and can feel, and thus be happy. To be—i.e., to exist—as what she was made for is not a simple matter with an easy answer for the traditional Barbie, unlike the other dolls. It is only after she has won the battle of the sexes in Barbieland that she goes beyond her gender identity as a woman to focus on discovering her more fundamental identity. It is only at that point that the film becomes sentimental.

In a kind, motherly tone that resembles that of Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, Ruth reveals to Barbie that it is no surprise that the doll is not sure whether she had been made to be a doll or human because Ruth made her open-ended, unlike the other dolls. We too are open-ended, though not with the extent of open-ended freedom of an uncircumscribed horizon that Sartre supposes in his existentialism. Even for an atheist, a person’s upbringing and the culture in which a person is raised detract from complete openness and thus freedom in one’s choices. One’s biology too constrains freedom; aging teaches us this vital lesson. To Barbie, biology is definitely salient in her decision to become human; once she has willed herself to become human and is in Los Angeles, she heads to a gynecologist, for, unlike human women, female dolls do not have vaginas.  Being human rather than a doll involves more than having feeling.

In “being made for” something, it is natural to think in terms of the purpose for which a person was created. Theists believe that a Creator instills in everyone a purpose. In the film, Ruth, a human being, created Barbie and left the doll’s purpose open-ended because Ruth “put some of” her own daughter in that Barbie. Having a purpose, however, can also be viewed as a human construction used to give an ex post facto meaning to what a person (or doll) has discovered to be one’s essence. Hence Sartre claimed that existence precedes essence.

I submit that a person’s biological, psychological, and spiritual makeup gets at what a person “is made for.” Einstein’s brain was “made for” physics—meaning that his brain was particularly well-suited to thinking (e.g. thought experiments) in that field. In coming up with his theories of relativity, he may have said to himself, I was made to do this. “Purpose” could be thought about later, for the aptitude of his mind in particular for physics above all other fields is the key here.

Being a writer was among the last things I thought I was made for, given that the neurological mechanism that fuses both eyes on the same object has never been operative in my brain. Even being a scholar has seemed like something I was not made for. Even if a love for words, ideas, and reasoning reveals what I was made for—in terms of happiness even more than ability—I have wondered whether I have never seen the passion I was made for; such a passion, such as a person says to oneself, I can’t believe someone is paying me to do this, presumably does not suffer from any biological impediments, and so excellence as well as happiness cohere. If only a Glenda or Ruth would say to me that the answer has been right in front of me all along and all I need to do is recognize it—to see it.  In the process in which my brain will die, perhaps I’ll hallucinate a benevolent figure comforting me that I had indeed been made for thinking and writing after all and that my handicap actually made them so. For now, I must admit to wondering if there isn’t something else, something more intrinsic to me, hence the thing I was “made for.” But I am guilty here of reducing essence to function—of thinking about whether there is something I am better at than writing and research because of how I am biologically, psychologically, and spiritually constituted, or “made.”

Barbie decides what she really is. She has transcended functionality by convincing the other female dolls that their innate functions do not reduce to serving Ken dolls. Once she has solved that problem, she finds that she is still in a quandary—still unsettled—for what she was made for goes beyond functions. Beyond even discovering what your passion is lies discovering who you are. Barbie and The Wizard of Oz converge in the mantra that a person is never at home until one is comfortable in one’s own skin. Interestingly, the camera immediately goes to a close-up of Barbie’s now-perspiring skin on her upper chest to show that she has decided to become human. That she had lost the ability to float down to her car and that she had become flat-footed indicate that being a doll was no longer working out for her—meaning that she was really made to become human. Her freedom was circumscribed in that she really couldn’t return to being a doll (whereas Dorothy could return back to the farm in The Wizard of Oz). To be fully alive, and thus happy, is what each of us were “made for,” whether by God or that of the natural sciences. This may turn out to be a false-dichotomy.

To be fully alive is to relish feeling as an end in itself. Rather than keeping up with the Jones, being fully alive is to be at home in one’s own skin. This is more fundamental, and thus more important than discovering the skills at which one excels and one’s proper role in society. Barbie as a movie goes beyond its surrounding marketing campaign and even the salience of the ideology of feminism, for at the end, the film “arrives” at the human condition itself and only does the film come alive in terms of sentiments.

There is no wizard to tell Barbie, as he tells the Tin Man, who wants a heart, “You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable,” though I don’t think this warning would change Barbie’s mind. Had I been a contributing screenwriter of Barbie,  Ruth would also quote the Wizard’s next line to the Tin Man: “And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” Essentially, the message would be that Barbie already has a heart, and that to become human all she has to do is realize that she had indeed been loved. Gloria, the human mother who, with her daughter, accompanies Barbie back to Barbieland, shows love in trying to relieve Barbie’s unhappiness, for Barbie has lost her ease as a doll and "Barbieland" to the Kens. Because Barbie is crying at the time, her existential angst running deeper than her shock in seeing the other Barbies serving the Kens, we can infer that she has feelings, and is thus "real" and human even though she doesn't realize the extent of her transition by then. Even the other Barbies and the original Ken display a slight, or muted, sentimentality when they are waving goodbye to Barbie as she walks off with Ruth, never to return to Barbieland. Therefore, Barbie’s heart can be inferred from not only from the fact that she is crying when Gloria tries to cheer her up with a feminist speech and how kind Barbie is to the other Barbies and even to the original Ken during and after the battle over Barbieland, but also how much she has been loved (by humans) and thanked by the dolls.

Pardoxically, Barbie has no freedom in so far as she transitions in Barbieland; her freedom comes once Ruth has revealed that Barbie need only to will to be human. So there is evidence of teleology in the transition, for Barbie has no control over no longer being able to float and reverse becoming flatfooted, and of freewill in choosing whether to make the transition definitive by being and living with humans or resist it by remaining in Barbieland, albeit in a compromised condition. Theists can point to Ruth and the transition that takes place in Barbieland, and humanists can point to the power that Barbie herself has merely from a realization. Only after Dorothy realizes that she could have left Oz at any time can she leave Oz. Similarly, only after Barbie realizes that she has only to will herself to be human can she leave Barbieland for good.