Revisionary metaphysics in Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980): on the ontological subversiveness of psychedelic sequences

ABSTRACT

This article explores the ontological subversiveness of psychedelic sequences in Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980). Exposing the viewer to a mode of experiencing the world that radically deviates from his/her standard mode of experiencing, these sequences call into question the foundations of the viewer’s ‘folk ontology’. Distinguishing between two levels of subversion, the article’s first section explores the notion of an experiential field that is the outcome of a subject-object interaction, opposing the common-sense view that the perceiver is separate from the perceived. Building on but also deviating from this reading, the second section introduces a second and more radical level of subversion. Specifically, the article suggests that the psychedelic sequences expose the viewer to a ‘subject-less’ experience not anchored in any perceiving entity. By maximizing the incomprehensibility coefficient in both the characters and the interpreting viewer, this second level of subversion exposes us to our folk ontological fallacies more directly than the first level does. In this way, Altered States potentially facilitates a process of revisionary metaphysics in the viewer.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychedelic cinema
• film philosophy
• Deleuze
• altered states
• Ken Russell
• Merleau-Ponty

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. One could object to this that the SF/horror framework would make it easy for the viewer to discard the real-life ontological implications, which is indeed possible, but this would entail being blind to the film’s explicit thematization of consciousness, truth and self, and, moreover, to miss Jessup’s genetic changes as a possibly metaphoric means to illustrate the genuine impact that altered states of consciousness can have on the individual. As Anna Powell writes: “The film Altered States does not just depict Jessup’s mental alterations. It literalises alterity as physical transformation” (Powell 2007, 54). This notion is elaborated on in a subsequent section.

2. I will continue to use phrasing in accordance with our folk ontology only for the sake of rhetorical clarity. These sentences should be seen as pure conventions and not as reifications of the subject-object distinction.

3. By “equal to” I do not mean to imply identity. The difference will become clearer below.

4. Subversive cinematic experiments with non-ordinary ways of seeing are indeed much more common in the avant-garde tradition (see Vogel 1974). What makes Altered States even more remarkable is that its narrative framework, typical of commercial features, contributes to the ontological subversion rather than detracting from it. This powerful synergy is rare not only in narrative films, but also in the avant-garde tradition, which tends to be averse to traditional narrative frameworks.

Additional information

Funding

Holder of a grant fundamental research of the Research Foundation – Flanders. File number: 11J8321N.

Notes on contributors

Vik Verplanken

Vik Verplanken is a PhD candidate at the University of Antwerp. His research project, entitled ‘Rendering the Body’, explores image-embodiment in the context of digital visualities. He has master’s degrees in English and Scandinavian Literature and Visual Studies and has guest lectured on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and autoethnographic research methods.