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.

Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Gothic and philosophical novel written by Oscar Wilde, was first published in 1890. The first motion picture, taking the same title, came out in 1945. Relative to The Secret of Dorian Gray (1970), the initial adaptation of the book can seem quite restrained, or Victorian, even though the novel had been controversial in its day. The 1970 film is awash in the sexual revolution, and is thus also affected by its times. The next film adaptation, Dorian Gray (2009), goes back to a classy nineteenth-century Dorian. The emphasis is on sexual immorality, albeit different than in the sexual revolution in the next century. The film largely departs from the plethora of religious symbolism and language in the 1945 film, though unlike in the 1970 film, a spiritual realm is not presumed to be an antiquated notion. Instead, the 2009 film substitutes supernaturalism for religion, especially in the climax.

Regarding the salient element of religion in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), the film goes back and forth between ancient paganism and Christianity. The tension between the two goes through the film. Basel remarks refer to the gods, which immediately disassociates the story world from the monotheistic religions. The gods, he says, give us good looks even though we suffer from them. Henry disagrees, quipping, “There is only one thing in the world worth having and that is youth.” Not yet realizing the power through the painting on aging, Basil vaguely intuits a transcendent aspect of the painting in remarking, “There’s something I can’t quite understand—something mystic about it.” As he is working on a sketch of the cat already pictured in the painting, he adds, “It seems as if a power outside of myself was guiding my hand. It’s as if the painting has a life of its own, independent of me.” Later in the film, Basil tells Dorian, “Perhaps you’ve seen the same mysterious quality in it. Have you noticed something curious in the painting? Something that at first did not strike you but that subsequently revealed itself suddenly?” Dorian replies, “I saw something curious about the painting. You’re right; there can be something fatal about a portrait.”

Because the transcendent lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and feeling according to pseudo-Dionysius (St. Denis) and others in the Middle Ages, a portal itself can be expected to have a vague mysterious quality. In his text, The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto ascribes mysterium to the holy. In antiquity, the term simply meant “unknown.” It is fitting that a way to transcendence would also have the air of the unknown.

Unless anyone misses the connection between the mystical quality and the cat in the film, Dorian is shown posing next to a statue of the cat. Between them, Dorian and Henry make the connection explicit. For the first time, Dorian is conscious of his youth, and that he would someday lose it “If it were that I would stay young and the picture would grow old,” he wishes. Henry cautions him, “You wouldn’t express your wish in the presence of that cat; it is one of the 73 great gods of Egypt and perfectly capable of granting your wish.” A relationship exists between Dorian and the cat through the medium of the painting. This is the transcendent axis that runs through the film. The statue of the cat is also involved, as Sybil remarks while she is at Dorian’s house, “It’s that cat; I thought I saw its eyes move.” Dorian replies, “Perhaps you did. . . . It is one of the 73 great gods of Egypt.” He then reads a passage to her: “Hideous cat . . . you make me what I would not be. You make my creed a barren sham. You wake foul dreams of sensual life.” This gives us an indication of how the transcendent relationship would affect Dorian. The reference to the creed suggests Christianity, which Dorian will abandon in favor of sensual pleasures.  “What a strange poem,” Sybil remarks, “Who wrote it?” Dorian answers, “Oscar Wilde.” Wilde himself cast aside Victorian moral norms and laws to pursue sexual pleasure wherever it would lead him. In contrast to Wilde’s pleasures, Dorian’s, such as sex and drugs, are deemphasized in this film, whereas his harm to other people, such as breaking Sybil’s heart and killing Basel, are highlighted especially in how they change the painting.

The pleasure obtained from harm is arguably worse morally than that which experienced sensuously, especially in ancient paganism wherein morality is not as tied to religion as in the Abrahamic faiths, which risk obfuscating morality and theology. Yet Christianity is again implied when Dorian states his wish: “More than a painting, it is part of myself. . . . If only the picture would change and I would stay the same. For that I would give everything. . . . I would give my soul for that.” To lose one’s soul is typically related to the devil, as in to the case of Faust, who makes a pact with the devil to regain youth. Dorian may be an incarnation of the Foust character, though in this film at least without the devil character. Henry brings us back to the basis in ancient Egyptian polytheism, saying of the gods’ perspective of humans: “They worship us and keep bothering us to do something for them.” Interestingly, Henry’s version of pleasure is sensual nonetheless. “Pleasure is nature’s sign of approval,” he states. “When we are good, we are not always happy.” Dorian is admittedly affected by Henry’s philosophy, though notice sensuous pleasure follows from hurting Sybil. After she flunks the test that Dorian had gotten from Henry (i.e., she stays at Dorian’s house), Dorian tells her, “Now you are nothing to me. Henceforth I shall live for pleasure. I’ve been living a life of illusion.” This illusion is that happiness can come from being faithful even though it involves resisting sexual temptations.  The picture changes in that “a touch of cruelty” can be seen in the mouth. The cruelty refers back to hurting Sybil rather than living for sensual pleasure. In other words, the painting shows Dorian’s bad conscience from harming other people. When Henry tells Dorian of Sybil’s suicide, Henry observes, “She killed herself for love.” Dorian reacts with, That’s not my fault! He has an air of indifference toward his bad conscience. Sensual pleasure is merely a byproduct; Dorian says, “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions; I want to use them, enjoy them.” Again distancing the film from Abrahamic morality, Basil gives Dorian a book on the Buddha, which Dorian predictably dismisses—but he is not now turning against his creed, at least explicitly, and yet he is. He has a moralistic faith (i.e., Christianity) and yet the transcendent basis in this film is an ancient Egyptian god that presumably wants Dorian to keep the pact rather than behave morally.

The narrator then invokes Christianity implicitly as Dorian hides the painting. “He would have eternal youth while the portrait bore the burden of his shame. He was caught in an evil destiny.” That is, destroying the painting would break this destiny off by his death; he had said it is “a part of me.” As if recalling the worst sin according to Augustine, the narrator says, “Prideful individualism is a work of evil.” Here, selfishness is evil. Admittedly, both harm to others and unrestrained sensuous pleasure can be byproducts of the evil vice of selfishness. When Dorian shows Basil the painting, which is now in color, the narrator says, “It was as if some moral leprosy were eating the painting away.” Immorality is thus evil, presumably even when no one is getting hurt.

Even Basil’s view of the painting has changed from mysterious to monstrous, from a sense of a transcendent element to something supernatural. The starkness of the latter typically dwarfs any subtle mysteriousness that is also a quality of transcendence itself. In contrast, monstrous points to something in our realm. Looking at the painting, Basil declares, “This is monstrous, beyond nature, beyond reason.” Basil is conflating supernatural with the transcendent—a category mistake perhaps arising out of Deism—namely, that God not only set up nature’s laws but also intervenes outside of them. Is such intervention supernatural in that it is an alternative to the natural sciences? If so, the domains of science and religion blend so much that category mistakes can be made—one example being that Zeus is present when a storm has lightening. If the domain of religion is unique, and thus qualitatively different than science, then just because a phenomenon does not fit within known science does not mean that the phenomenon is religious in nature. In The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Others (2001), for example, the paranormal is not associated with anything religious.

The use of the supernatural (or paranormal) as a litmus test or even as proof that a spiritual realm really exists involves a category mistake; rather than being the standard, the basis ought to be tossed out; the transcendent is wholly other and is thus not within our cognitive or perceptual grasp. Even trying to grasp revelation is like looking through a smoke-stained dark window, according to Augustine. Hence belief rather than knowledge is as far as we can go in trying to cognitively penetrate anything transcendent. Hence we yearn for transcendence, as in striving for communion with God. Whereas the transcending experience of yearning can be known in as much as it is in our realm, attributes of the divine object, which lies beyond our reach (i.e., is transcendent) can only be believed through faith. Even our collective imagination, which has come to inexorably fit the validity of religion through the gates of supernaturalism, draws on stuff in our realm rather than anything beyond the limits of cognition, perception, and sensibility.

Nevertheless, Dorian comes to view the monstrous painting in Christian terms by invoking Oscar Wilde’s poem. “The painting has destroyed me,” Dorian states, “Each of us has heaven and hell inside.” Basil does not miss a beat, replying, “The prayer of your pride was answered; perhaps a prayer of repentance would be too.” Basil’s book on the Buddha is nowhere to be seen! The story has gone far from the original amoral paganism of an ancient Egyptian cat-god to the morally and soteriologically redemptive god-man of Christianity.

The story ends with the theme of redemption. When Dorian destroys the painting, he dies. Is he redeemed or did he pay the price for having sold his soul by having a short life—albeit a short, constantly youthful life? A Christian preacher says, “What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world but lose his soul? . . . The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold. It can be poisoned or made perfect. . . . The wretched creature whose soul is filled with vile thoughts and foul deeds must dwell in darkness. Even though he walks under the noonday sun, he carries his own vile dung around with him.” The soul, it turns out, is capable of transcendence, and can therefore be heaven or hell.  A bad conscience has its own weight, which eventually catches up with and drags down Dorian. Vile thoughts and foul deeds can pertain both to engaging in sensual pleasures and making a deal with the devil. The derived pleasure can be outweighed by a bad conscience. Dorian tells Henry, “I would do anything if I could change and get older like other people.” Once again, the narrator supplies a Christian interpretation: “A life of humility and denial, he would restore the painting, but it would tire of him.” Dorian asks God for forgiveness, the portrait breaks, and he looks old. The ending shot is of Wilde’s poem, propped up in front of the statue of the cat. The poem in part: “I sent my soul through the Invisible, my soul returned to me. And answered:  I myself am Heaven and Hell.” So the film ends with this curious mixing of ancient Egyptian religion and moralistic, Victorian, Christianity. Perhaps the tight morality of Victorian times—Wilde having published the story first in 1890—had an influence on the story itself and even on the 1945 film version. on the 1945 film version.

Similarly, the sexual revelation going on in 1970, when The Secret of Dorian Gray came out, can be seen as a major influence in the film, which is even set in its own contemporary day. In the opening scene, for example, Dorian is with friends in a gay bar watching a drag queen. Dorian and Sybil have sex on the day they meet. Posing for the painting, Dorian has his shirt off, has a loose tie on, and wears rugged jeans. He looks like a male prostitute. What the camera shows is much more revealing than in the 1945 film. After a posing session, Dorian is shown in an outdoor shower; that he is wearing a swimming suit seems foisted on the film by censors. Basil refers to Dorian as being “entirely sensuous,” to which Henry adds, “What is vice anyway—pleasure in chains.” His sister attributes this view to Oscar Wilde. Regarding sex and marriage, Henry recommends, “Ideally, one should enjoy everything and possess nothing.” Yet religion, and specifically Christianity, is not brought in, given the secularity that was gaining ground even in 1970. To be sure, Dorian invokes his soul when he says, “Why should I get old while this [painting] stays young? Why can’t it be the other way around?” . . . “I would give anything to stay like that; I would give my soul to stay like that.” Basil’s reply is more psychological than religious. “You see, I’m right; he is in love with himself.” Narcissism! Even in Dorian’s reply that the painting is “part of me now. I don’t know which part,” the allusion to a mystic element is missing. When Dorian takes a sample of the picture’s paint to a chemist, it is clear that belief in a spiritual world is something of the past. The chemist asks Dorian, “You mean, can the seen world be changed by what used to be called the spiritual world?” I submit that regarding the notion of the spiritual world as being in the past reflects the secular culture that was coming of age when the film was being made.  The only allusion to religion is made by Dorian when an older Henry asks someone, “How does Dorian look so young?” Dorian replies, “You should know that Henry, I sold my soul to the devil; you introduced me to him.” Henry’s philosophy was one of acting on temptations for sensual pleasure.

Whereas allusions to religion are rare, commercialism can clearly be seen in the film, which was made after at least two decades of the commercial hegemony of the U.S. in the world after World War II. For instance, Henry buys the painting for Dorian, observing as if it were a fact, “Painters must be paid.” In the 1945 film, Basil gives Dorian the painting out of friendship. Commercialization, it seems, had made inroads since the end of World War I. Although the dominant theological take on profit-seeking and wealth had long since shifted from anti-wealth to pro-wealth, thus reducing Christianity’s force as a constraint on greed, secularization is a fertile bed for a commercial society.[1]

Both commercialism and secularity privilege the exterior to a person’s interior. In viewing a spiritual world as an antiquated notion, the 1970 film cuts off an interior realm (e.g., the kingdom of God is within). Similarly, in a commercial context, the exchange of money means that how people are inside doesn’t matter. Dorian tells Sybil, “Inside? Who wants to know what filth is inside? Beauty is what we see—nothing else.” Henry will tell a friend, “Today beauty is more important than genius.” What is exterior is more important than what is interior. Also, Dorian gets money for having a picture of his face in a magazine. This holds even in the case of the painting, which represents Dorian as a gigolo. At the very least, Dorian lacks internal substance; he can be regarded as a fucking machine.

It is no accident that the exterior-oriented Dorian socializes with other people who are live on an exterior level. In the film, such people are not only the sexually promiscuous, but also the wealthy of the commercial caste. Dorian tells Sybil that he is going to a party with rich people who may be filthy inside but beautiful on the outside. Wealth, it seems, is a shield. In a secular world, appearance is what matters. Business is discussed at the party. Perhaps commercialization, or an encroaching business culture over society, can act as such a shield. Sybil values what is on the inside of a person, whereas Dorian does not; he intends to please himself by turning outward. This is not to say that he is a business type. As if to distinguish himself from all the business talk, he says, “We rich people don’t care about money.” So it is not greed that Dorian suffers from; his vice is lust.

Dorian tells a woman, “I think, if you want something desperately, it’s worth whatever you’ve got.” Rather than having religious overtones, such as in making a pact with an Egyptian cat-god or the devil, the meaning is sexual. Dorian goes off and kisses (and has sex with?) a younger woman. Later he takes her and friends to Sybil’s performance. Because she is an awful actress, Dorian calls her a bore, slaps her and leaves her on a city bus. The harm element is de-emphasized, while sexuality is anything but. “It’s funny how somethings you once thought were significant are not really at all,” he remarks about his past relationship with Sybil, and then he has sex with Henry’s sister. The de-emphasis on harm is visible in just a very slight change in the painting—just in the expression of the eyes—from having hurt Sybil.  When Henry informs Dorian of Sybil’s suicide, Henry says, “We are responsible for our own lives and nothing else.” Dorian has more sex, and then two women have sex. Dorian swims with topless women, and seduces a newlywed by taking off his clothes. 

It is as if the film were soft-porn. The character resembles a porn star even as represented in Basil’s painting. In this way, the sexuality in this film differs from how sexuality is portrayed in the 2009 version, which, while it includes orgies, is less driven by sex. Regarding Dorian having sex with married women in the 1970 film, Basil says, “Dorian, there must be some limit; you corrupt and destroy anyone who comes in contact with you.” Unlike in the 1945 film, the harm is a byproduct of Dorian’s unrestrained lust. Even Henry touches Dorian while he is showering. In the next scene, Dorian is checking out gay men. Later in the film, Henry watches Dorian swim naked. Henry’s facial expression is creepy; this is also a way in which this film differs from the next one. Meanwhile, the painting is being affected mostly in the face and fingers—not nearly as dramatically as in the 1945 version in which the painting is in color when seen from the point of view of a character. The message in the 1970 film reflects Oscar Wilde’s own life, wherein sexual wantonness had long-term consequences (i.e., he was imprisoned for homosexual acts with Bosie, and died in middle age from a medical condition due to the imprisonment). In the 1970 film, the pact with the Egyptian cat, or the devil, is absent; instead, social immorality is at the fore. Even in the midst of the sexual revolution, sleeping with married women went too far. 

Sex, with drugs added in, is also salient in Dorian Gray (2009), though not as much as in the 1970 version. The orgies and visit to a whore house do not give Dorian the look of a porn star.  Rather, he is portrayed as enjoying life as a wealth young man. Although the story is set in the nineteenth century, the change reflects both the surge in high-end party drugs and the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, both of which had had an effect on the world by the time the film was made. In other words, the sexual revolution had long since ended.

Also, more allusions to Christianity suggest that the West was no longer so hostile to religion by 2009, though the religious references are much fewer than in the 1945 film. At one point, Dorian tells Henry, “Perhaps I should nail myself to the devil’s altar.” At the end of the film, Dorian admits to Henry, “I have lived the life you preached.” Yet the very word preached seems an over-reach, as Henry’s philosophy was one of unlimited sensual pleasure, without any transcendent basis. Although the dichotomy of sensual pleasure and having a heart can be taken as having a religious aspect (e.g., God is love), Henry, like the philosopher Nietzsche, who in the last half of the nineteenth century, is oriented to eschewing modern morality.

Henry encourages Dorian to smoke, for instance. Nothing irreligious is inherent in smoking. Regarding the castigation of morality, Henry tells Dorian, “Conscience is just a polite term for coward,” and the “only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” In his writings, Nietzsche advises overcoming instinctual urges by mastering them. Henry does not mean a religious temptation; in fact, he takes Dorian to be with several prostitutes at once. Unlimited sexual pleasure, rather than harm, is the main antagonist. Sybil’s suicide causes only a cut on a hand in the painting (and a small worm coming out of one eye). Dorian then says, “A toast to intoxication.” Then he has sex with a woman at a party, followed by sex with her mother with the daughter is hiding under the bed. “There are no limits,” Henry says. Then Dorian is with many women. He wants sex with men too. Reckoning all this as evil, Basil tells Dorian, “There is good in your heart; I’ve seen it. You’re not this devil.” Is sexual promiscuity really evil? Immoral? Basil would have an easier argument were he able to point to Dorian stabbing him several times, and yet even such a horrific act translates only to a subtle change in the painting—the mouth having just a few teeth opens a bit! After Dorian kills Basil, we see Dorian at an orgy. Even though murder is worse than attending an orgy, the emphasis of the film is on Dorian’s sexual activity. For instance, after that orgy, we see Dorian at another, this time with violence involved.

Many years later, Henry’s adult daughter, Victoria, speaks with what may be considered religious undertones. Dorian tells her, “Love is an illusion,” to which she later says, “They say you devote yourself to pleasure.” But I know “you do have a heart.” Pleasure is dichotomous with love. Reflecting the interior/exterior dichotomy that is so strong in the 1970 film, Dorian replies, “Perhaps below the surface.” Pleasure, however, is felt inside, just as love is, whereas sexual activity is external. Also, no reference is made to God being love; rather the love is of the romantic type, which can be swayed by lust.

Not even the climax of the film can be taken as distinctly religious unless the supernatural is assumed to be indicative of something religious. Both when Dorian tries to kill Henry and when Dorian stabs the painting, the latter moves and growls. When the painting is being stabbed, the head leaps forward at Dorian, who dies in the fire that Henry started. Although visibly apocalyptic, the climax contains no religious language and no hint of the devil. Rather, the painting itself is portrayed as a supernaturally “living” entity distinct from Dorian. In other words, the 2009 film is a horror rather than a religious film. Rather than a pact with the devil, pleasure without constraints (including conscience) is the problem.

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1. Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, available at Amazon. 

Rosemary’s Baby

The film narrative centers on Satan impregnating Rosemary, a married woman in New York City. According to Roman Polanski, the film’s director, the decisive point is actually that neither Rosemary in the film nor the film’s viewers can know whether it was the devil who impregnated her. Beyond the more matter of being able to distinguish a psychosis from a more “objective” or external religious event, the importance of the supernatural to religion is also, albeit subtly, in play, according to Polanski.

“Nothing supernatural is in the film,” Polanski says in an interview that comes with the DVD, so the intrusion of religion into Rosemary’s pregnancy could all be in Rosemary’s head. Given the paranoia “over the safety of her unborn child [that] begins to control her life,” Rosemary may unjustifiably fear that the Satanic couple in the next apartment hosts a coven that plans on sacrifice her baby; Rosemary may hallucinate the devil’s face during the sex scene and the devil’s likeness in her baby after his birth. As for the first hallucination, however, Rosemary does not eat much of the drugged chocolate dessert furnished by Minnie Castevet from next door. Whereas the sequence through the boat scene looks hallucinatory, the fact that Roman Castevet’s painting red lines on Rosemary’s naked chest and abs as she lies on a bed is in the same scene as the sex, which crucially includes a camera shot of part of the devil’s body—a shot not from Rosemary’s point of view—followed by a very brief shot of the devil’s face from Rosemary’s point of view, the supernatural presence of the devil is indeed in the film. A dream or hallucinatory sequence in life as in a film does not maintain a “scene” for long, yet the one of the painting and intercourse is sustained long enough not to be dreamlike. So I cannot agree with Polanski’s claim that nothing supernatural is in the film. He later admitted to being an agnostic, yet he did not keep to his personal beliefs in the making of the film—which is a good thing.

Only one very brief look at the devil having intercourse and another such glimpse of the baby’s face struck me most in my first viewing of the film. Genius! I thought, as the viewers would only get a glimpse of the central character—and one that is distinctively religious. By showing us less, in other words, Polanski actually raised the significance of the supernatural to religion. This raises the question of whether the supernatural really is so important in the phenomenology of religion. Perhaps supernatural additives have been placed in religions to gain adherents. In Christianity, perhaps it is easier for people to focus on an image of the resurrected Jesus than the invisible Kingdom of God, even though Jesus in the Gospels claims he came to preach the mysteries (i.e., what is hidden) of his Father’s Kingdom. It is easier to call the prince of peace the king in that Kingdom, with not much attention going either to the invisible Father or the Kingdom. In his book, The History of Natural Religion, David Hume argues that the human brain has an innate tendency to posit human characteristics on inanimate objects (and animals). As we do so in a given religion, it becomes overladen, human all too human, such that the original divine simplicity is covered. The human mind has trouble holding onto such divine purity as Plotinus’s the One; it is much easier for us to envision the supernatural. That which catches our eyes is irresistible even to an agnostic director, as well as to the viewers. We crave even just a glimpse of Satan in the film, and the provision of just a glimpse actually validates how important the supernatural is not only in the film, but, moreover, in religion itself. But is the supernatural in religion itself, or do we humans bring the supernatural images to religion?

Virtual Reality: Not Coming to a Theatre Near You

Virtual reality may be coming your way, and when it hits, it could hit big—as if all at once. The explosion of computers and cell phones provides two precedents. “Technologists say virtual reality could be the next computing platform, revolutionizing the way we play games, work and even socialize.”[1] Anticipating virtual reality as the next computing platform does not do the technology justice. I submit that it could revolutionize “motion pictures.” Even though the impact on screenwriting and filmmaking would be significant, I have in mind here the experience of the viewer.

Whereas augmented reality puts “digital objects on images of the real world,” virtual reality “cuts out the real world entirely.”[2] As a medium for viewing “films”—film itself already being nearly antiquated by 2017—virtual reality could thus cut out everything but a film’s story-world. The suspension of disbelief could be strengthened accordingly. The resulting immersion could dwarf that which is possible in a movie theatre. Already as applied to playing video games, “such full immersion can be so intense that users experience motion sickness or fear of falling.”[3] Imagine being virtually in a room in which a man is raping a woman, or a tiger is ready to pounce—or eating its prey, which happens to be a human whom you’ve virtually watched grow up. The possible physiological impacts on a viewer immersed in stressful content would present producers with ethical questions concerning how far it is reasonable to go—with the matter of legal liability not far behind, or in front. Watching, or better, participating in a film such as Jurassic Park could risk a heart attack.

On the bright side, the craft of light and storytelling made virtual could enable such amazing experiences that simply cannot be experienced without virtual reality being applied to film. To be immersed on Pandora in a nighttime scene of Avatar, for example, would relegate even the experience of 3-D in a theatre. The mind would not need to block out perspectivally all but the large rectangle at a distance in front. In short, the experience of watching a film would be transformed such that what we know as going to a movie would appear prehistoric—like travelling by horse to someone who drives a sports car.

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1. Cat Zakrzewski, “Virtual Reality Comes With a Hitch: Real Reality,” The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2017.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

Are Today's Horror Films Hollywood's 'Canary in the Coal Mine?'

In the lackluster box-office summer season of 2014, Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations thought audiences might have been suffering from fright fatigue. “Once something hits big, it doesn’t take studios long to jump on the trend and start churning them out.”[1] Hence, Ray Subers of Box Office Mojo opined that the deluge of films in the “found-footage” subgenre may have already run the well dry by that summer. “Five years after (the first) paranormal Activity, this particular technique has finally wore out its welcome,” Ray concludes.

Faced with the herd mentality, the biggest challenge for a horror-movie screenwriter is “coming up with ideas that isolate the protagonist, and still giving audiences something new,” says Eduardo Sanchez, co-director of the original found-footage film, The Blair Witch Project (1999), which made $141 million. If this sounds cyclical to you—that the next “something new” will eventually become as overplayed as an Elton John album from the 1970s—you will appreciate Sanchez’s line of thought here. The horror genre itself may be cyclical, Sanchez continues. “Horror movies are like roller coasters: After the first ride, it’s not as thrilling. You have to build your coaster bigger and faster. That’s what movies are facing: finding that new surprise.” In other words, a sort of inflation may exist in the genre, such that not only innovative story-telling is needed, but also ever increasingly intense emotional punches intended for the audience. Of course, like a shot of pure sugar or caffeine, as in one of those energy drinks, an overly intense story quickly burns itself out, so the addicts demand more and more drinks of more and more of a kick. Meanwhile, deep, thoughtful story-telling is marginalized, and perhaps even forgotten.

Screenwriters who want to distinguish their work as riveting in terms of meaning and being thought-provoking can look to myths (living or dead), literature, and even dreams to gain depth and uniqueness. The narrative above is based on a dream I had in which I could fly (until I found somebody on my back). In the dream, I broke through the natural-looking canopy. Fortunately, I woke up just as I realized that a serial killer was up there, coming after me. Even in thinking about the dream the next morning, I did not make the connection to “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

The lesson here may be that drawing on even well-known fables or myths need not deprive us of crafting unique stories that audiences will not view as formulaic. Put another way, a screenwriter is perhaps most fecund when he or she draws both deep within and on stories that have stood through oceans of time and thus are etched into our collective unconscious. To illustrate this mixture, I provide a bit of narrative here that may seem rather different, yet somehow quite familiar.

Jack has discovered that he has a rather unique ability; the tall, thin adult can fly by fluttering his outstretched arms up and down rapidly. To be sure, the lift is gradual for all the effort he must put into the exercise, and to do it he must be running quite fast. On one occasion, he wanted to show off this ability in front of a couple other college students. One of them had the bright idea of jumping onto Jack’s back, holding on to the two upper straps of his back-pack. Naively, Jack thought he could get air-borne nonetheless—but, alas, he could not. Too much weight. Shedding his passenger, he was indeed able to show off. The others were absolutely astounded to see a human being in the air.

Jack got a little carried away in showing off his uniqueness—his specialness. He gradually made it up to the clouds (something I tried to do with a kite when I was ten or eleven) and kept pumping his arms to go even higher. The mist got thicker and thicker until he ran up against a dirty-cream-colored solidified gel ceiling that from Jack’s vantage point seemed to separate the top half of the cloud-bank from its lower half.

Getting up some slow upward momentum, Jack poked at the rubber-like half-inch of gel until his hand and then arm broke through. He used that hand to pull himself through. As about a quarter-inch of water was on the top of the ceiling/floor, Jack got himself pretty wet. Walking on the surface, he likened it to walking to a slushy iced-over lake in late winter. Like such ice, the mix of water and gel acted to reseal the hole that Jack had made.

As Jack stood in amazement, being careful not to get too close to the “new ice,” he glimpsed a figure running over to him. I can only describe the old man as looking like an international business professor I had as a MBA student. Professor Farmer had a wild theory about trading toilet paper and light bulbs with the Middle East. He had inserted his little theory into a short book of fiction he had written. The eccentric academic reminded me at the time of Hume Cronyn, a movie actor who was married to Jessica Tandy, when he was a short old man with only some hairs on his head. Similarly, the man whom Jack took note of was nearly bald, but obviously did not have a barber up there in the clouds.

As the figure got closer, Jack could make out a machete in one hand; the old man was waving the large knife around feverously as he shouted incoherently. This would not be a friendly visit, Jack quickly concluded. If you have tried to run on an ice rink with a layer of water on top of the ice, you know that running is neither fun nor easy. Yet Jack found himself suddenly running for his life. If there was a silver lining to those clouds, Jack would have to find it and quick, for the “floor” was not so easy to break through from above; it could, after all, support a man’s weight.

This glob of narrative may be recognizable; I picked “Jack” for the protagonist’s name, given the association with “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Rather than having to contend with a giant, my Jack has to deal with a serial killer loose on some cloud. The story may resonate given the fairy tale, even while being fairly unique. I am using the vignette to illustrate the value of, and, indeed, the need to think up new plots and characters especially in the horror genre of film. Put another way, screenwriters who wish to be excellent must avoid the herd-animal mentality, which has plagued the genre.

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[1] This and all other quotes are from Scott Bowles, “Horror Films Falling Under a Frightful Spell,” USA Today, July 16, 2014.