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Article Excerpt
In a way, I'm already dead.
--Opening voiceover, American Beauty
You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?
--Neo, The Matrix
I see dead people. Some of them scare me ... walking around, like regular people. They can't see each other. Some of them don't know they're dead.
--Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense
In the dramatic conclusion of the 1999 blockbuster, The Sixth Sense, protagonist Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis) discovers that he is a "ghost" walking among the living. At first glance, the movie appears to be a clever variation on generic ghost stories, in which the main character--unbeknownst to himself and most viewers--is the restless, haunting spirit in need of peace. However, like a rare class of suspense thriller films such as The Exorcist and laws, The Sixth Sense caused nothing short of a sensation. Eventually grossing $293 million, The Sixth Sense was the second highest-grossing film of 1999, behind only Star Wars: Episode I ("$100 Million Movies," 2002). Most interestingly, The Sixth Sense is one of the 25 highest-grossing films in history, standing out against the "mass market" action adventure movies tailored for children and families that dominate the list (e.g., Star Wars, E.T., Shrek, and Harry Potter). The Sixth Sense is an adult-oriented movie whose dark, complicated, psychological themes would not be considered profitable "family fare." The Sixth Sense received many Oscar nominations, and the images and dialogue of the film have been woven into the fabric of American popular culture. As ABC News stated, "If Shyamalan stopped making films today, the scene from The Sixth Sense where the disturbed little boy says, 'I see dead people,' will forever be etched in movie lovers' minds" (Moran, 2002).
While The Sixth Sense is clearly a financial and popular success, its greater significance lies in its connections to the fundamental fears of our time. To understand its significance, we analyze the film in the tradition of narrative or mythological film criticism (see Rushing & Frentz, 1989), approaching it not only as a popular filmic narrative, but also as a piece of discourse capable of revealing cultural exigencies, doubts, and desires peculiar to its moment (see Rushing, 1985). Through its existentialist concerns and iconic plot twist, The Sixth Sense represents a crisis in reality through such questions as "am I alive or dead?" and "am I real?" As we demonstrate below, the film locates this existentialist crisis in postindustrial America: it frighteningly calls into question a consumer culture that weaves subjectivity more tightly into structures of privilege. Further, a closer look at the film reveals its power in reinforcing a paternalistic, modernist stance toward otherness or difference. As such, this analysis contributes to ongoing concerns related to political agency, subjectivity, and identity in postindustrial culture (Cloud, 1998; Grossberg, 1992; Hardt & Negri, 2004).
The Sixth Sense joins American Beauty, Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, The Others, and The Matrix as recent films that also depict frightening challenges to the protagonists' "real" existence. Academic critics have approached this emerging genre by taking up The Matrix as an important cultural text for study. Critics argue that The Matrix represents tensions in theories of postmodernity, mediation/technology (Frentz & Rushing, 2002), and subjectivity (Rufo, 2003). The film dramatizes the fallout of human interactions with technologies and machines and captures a postmodernist cynicism toward reality (in Morpheus's profound words, "What is real, Neo?"). Based upon these analyses, critics have positioned The Matrix as a film that speaks to the complex questions of our time. We concur with critics of The Matrix that our postindustrial, postmodern culture is wrought with alienation, but we disagree that our cultural moment is defined by the tenuous intersections of humans-machines-virtuality.
With its notable absence of information-age technology, The Sixth Sense suggests that the structuring of everyday experience by consumer capitalism leaves postindustrial professionals estranged from the personal, spiritual, and political dimensions of life. Unlike the spectacular and frenetic style of The Matrix, The Sixth Sense has the deliberate, realistic style of "everyday life," offering unique insights into the existentialist concerns of postindustrial America. Far more than a fear of technology, The Sixth Sense evokes a fear of a "lack of consequential existence." The film thus plays on the classic existentialist fear that we are not fully cognizant of our own experiences, that we are merely "sleep-walking" through our lives--but it situates existentialist concerns in the contemporary moment: Does my life as a privileged postindustrial professional have consequence, meaning, and substance?
This question unfolds as a complex, emotional, and personal conflict between a postindustrial professional subject, Malcolm, and Cole, a figure of the other who holds a dark secret. The Sixth Sense maintains an ironic, dissonant structure that invites both Hegelian and Derridean thought to help sort out the dramatic action and political implications of the film. As we demonstrate below, Malcolm is a contemporary manifestation of the Hegelian subject--a unique being who does not yet fully realize his potential as part of a collective consciousness (Hegel, 1979). Cole's presence as a mysterious other who holds a dark secret calls into question this professional subject's self-certainty. As Derrida (1995) conceives, the secret is an unknown, unknowable remainder that challenges the Western subject's self-consciousness. However, by the film's conclusion, the painful encounters between Cole and Malcolm resolve in a Hegelian transcendence: all of the chilling differences and self-doubt are swept away as Malcolm ameliorates Cole's secret and ascends to an enlightened consciousness. We conclude that the narrative's transcendence has critical consequences, particularly as it aids capitalist regimes in the discursive constructions of "the everyday" in American life. A key cultural text of our time, The Sixth Sense positions professional subjectivity as the means of understanding existence, all the while reinforcing the alienation and vacuous political agency of consumer capitalism.
The Subject and the Secret in The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense blends cinematic genres, drawing on the technical elements of the thriller, domestic drama, and classic horror film to create both tension and pathos. Producer Frank Marshall describes the film as follows:
It has elements of horror and drama and a spiritual nature that comes alive in very distinct and well-drawn characters. [Director] Night refers to it as "Ordinary People" meets "The Exorcist" and I think that's an appropriate description. It's a story with vulnerable characters to which an audience can relate. (Secrets of Sixth Sense, n.d.)
The movie takes place in Philadelphia, where Malcolm Crowe is an acclaimed child psychologist whose professional drive has often strained his marriage to Anna. After a traumatic, violent confrontation with a former patient (Vincent Gray), Malcolm encounters Cole Sear, a troubled boy whose parents have recently divorced. As the film progresses, we learn that Malcolm sees Cole as an opportunity to make amends for his inability to counsel Vincent, who shares with Cole the "same mannerisms, same expressions, same things hanging over their heads." As we explain below, Vincent and Cole both appear as others to be treated by Malcolm-as-subject.
Cole appears to have psychological or behavioral problems, including disrupting his grade school classroom, drawing disturbing images of death, writing "upset words" during free-writing sessions, and experiencing "delusional" encounters with ghosts. These problems have made his relationship with his mother, Lynn Sear, difficult. By the film's conclusion, the tensions in Malcolm's relationship with Anna, as well as Cole's relationship with his mother, are resolved. In a surprise ending, Malcolm discovers that he has been dead since the film's opening scene--revealing an entirely new layer of the film to the audience. Our analysis focuses on Malcolm's literal lack of "existence" or life (and the audience's shocking discovery of his lifeless presence in the film), which proceeds in a more detailed examination of the film's narrative below.
The Sixth Sense introduces audiences to a dark, urban, postindustrial scene that is home to the movie's protagonist. Like many other Bruce Willis characters, [1] Malcolm Crowe is a filmic middle-class "everyman," who provides an early and lasting point of identification. [2] The movie opens in the Crowes' home and depicts an intimate celebration between the slightly inebriated Malcolm and Anna. The home Malcolm and Anna inhabit, as well as the tensions they feel, are marked by their privilege as middle-class professionals: though surrounded by the domestic comforts of a wine cellar, flickering firelight, and antique furniture, there is a sense that something is missing. As the film progresses, the tension between Malcolm and...
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