{"id":190,"date":"2015-11-16T07:09:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T13:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=190"},"modified":"2021-05-18T15:08:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T20:08:58","slug":"in-conversation-with-the-crow-by-erin-wisti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"“In Conversation with the Crow” By Erin Wisti"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I watched The Sixth Sense<\/em>, I blinded myself. I was nine years old and an anxiety-prone child with an acute faith in and fear of all things paranormal. Upon the film\u2019s completion, I wrapped my head in a knit periwinkle blanket that smelled\u2014like most relics of my childhood do\u2014of dried cat urine and stale cigarettes. This odor was worth suffering through for the protection provided. In fear, I\u2019d fallen back onto the comforts of certain infantile misconceptions. That is, life is easier through the cracks. What we cannot see cannot hurt us. I spent the remainder of the day stumbling from room-to-room, feeling my way around the house with my feet. My hands were occupied holding my makeshift blindfold in place, that blessed threadbare garment protecting me from wayward spirits.<\/p>\n

It would be 2013 before I revisited the film. I was 23 years-old, a hardened horror fan and a thorough skeptic. By this point, my belief in the paranormal (responsible, I think for the staying power of my discomfort with The Sixth Sense<\/em>), had vanished. There was no God. There was no afterlife. Any fear I felt during a horror movie lasted only for the film\u2019s duration. I re-entered The Sixth Sense<\/em> unafraid only to find that fear was not so much the film\u2019s goal. The biggest twist in The Sixth Sense<\/em> is not\u2014spoiler alert!\u2014Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time. It is that the film is not a horror movie at all.<\/p>\n

Horror is a genre that exploits existing fears of death, seeks to terrorize by loping around the unknown long enough that\u2014if the story and visual effects are successfully executed\u2014the audience squirms in profound discomfort. The Sixth Sense<\/em>\u2019s central message, conversely, is one that discourages living with an overabundance of fear. It\u2019s the story of Cole Sear slowly opening up to Dr. Malcolm Crowe. If one pays attention to surnames here, Malcolm\u2019s nature seems almost obvious. Sear points, of course, to the fact Cole is a seer, a psychic, a medium, one who perceives what others miss, and crows have been\u2014in much of European mythology\u2014portrayed as harbingers of death. Cole is initially frightened of Malcolm. Given his gift, we can assume that he sees Malcolm bearing the gunshot wound that killed him. Malcolm\u2019s benevolent nature, however, wins Cole over. He opens up, he talks, he comes to share his secret. What does the seer learns in conversation with the crow? That the best means to cope with tortured spirits is to talk, to listen, and to understand. A horror film reinforces existing fears. The Sixth Sense<\/em> seeks to deconstruct the nature of existing fear to highlight its shortsighted nature. That is, the film shows us what we need not fear: the very sick, the mentally unstable, sufferers of abuse and neglect, one another, hauntings themselves. The hauntings here, really, are no more than a metaphor.<\/p>\n

Weeks after my grandfather\u2019s death, my younger brother swore he saw our grandpa seated in the lounge chair in my grandmother\u2019s living room: a transparent vision that vanished within moments. Seeking a logical explanation to this apparition, we discovered an online study which theorized that ghosts could be explained through dust. The study proposed that people leave imprints of themselves on the spaces they occupied in life. When they pass, the dust\u00a0remains parted in the air, as if it were waiting for their return, and creates what appears to be an outline of a person.<\/p>\n

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I do not believe in God but I do believe in metaphor.<\/p>\n

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The Sixth Sense<\/em> resonates with such metaphors, objects and spaces which harbor echoes\u00a0of their histories. The film is aptly set in Philadelphia, a city which retains deep imprints of its\u00a0past. The film emphasizes, however, that there is a disparity between these imprints and the\u00a0stories people tell about them, the origin myths of American exceptionalism. This disparity is\u00a0illustrated in a scene wherein Cole\u2019s teacher asks what the schoolhouse was used for 100 years\u00a0ago. \u201cThey used to hang people here,\u201d Cole responds. \u201cThey pulled the people in crying and\u00a0kissing their families bye . . . People watching would spit at them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole\u2019s teacher immediately shuts down this story, choosing to instead emphasize the\u00a0school\u2019s former status as a legal courthouse filled with respectable lawyers, politicians, and\u00a0lawmakers. Whoever told Cole about the hangings, she says, was just trying to scare him.\u00a0Both stories are equally true but only one story is presented as factual by the powers that\u00a0be, the more gruesome tales witnessed only in a bare, spectral form.<\/p>\n

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What I find remarkable about my grandfather is that, despite his alcoholism, he achieved\u00a0the increasingly tenuous American Dream. His was the tale of a man who grew up on a potato\u00a0farm, put himself through through seven years of school, and started a law firm on a wing and a prayer. It\u00a0was a mythology, the triumphant epic of one man pulling himself up by his proverbial bootstraps\u00a0to surpass the confines of childhood poverty. In reality, my grandfather\u2019s success was a\u00a0combination of dumb luck and\u2014given he was born a white, heterosexual male\u2014a great deal of\u00a0preexisting privilege. His life was not a manifestation of American possibility. It was an\u00a0anomaly. I think my grandfather might have known this, given his lack of romantic notions about\u00a0America. He was consistently disappointed with the unacceptable gap between what should be\u00a0and what is, the crushing dissonance between reality and the ideal.<\/p>\n

In her Mythology<\/em>, Edith Hamilton writes of Dionysus, god of wine, and how imbibing\u00a0booze made Greek men feel like they\u00a0held more within themselves than they knew, that they\u00a0themselves could become divine. Anyone who has ever been drunk recognizes the sensation of\u00a0becoming awash in a sudden self-aggrandizing glow, overcome with a hunger to chase that\u00a0feeling and forget all insecurity. There is indeed something Godlike about drunkenness,\u00a0something strange and mythical about intoxication that makes you feel bigger than yourself.\u00a0Perhaps that\u2019s why my grandfather drank. When drunk, he could reach a place where he felt\u00a0deserving of the pedestal on which he was placed.<\/p>\n

His drinking was an ugly part of his history, one that was never quite public knowledge.\u00a0But in its bare and spectral form it poisoned the family tree.<\/p>\n

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Before Haley Joel Osment auditioned for the role of Cole, his father read the screenplay\u00a0twice. He informed his son the film was not a horror movie. It was a story about communication.<\/p>\n

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The turning point of The Sixth Sense<\/em> comes when Cole speaks to the ghost of a child\u00a0named Kyra. She appears in his red tent, shaking and vomiting, and Cole flees at first in fear.\u00a0Then, after a moment\u2019s recollection, he returns. He pulls the blanket off Kyra and asks, \u201cDo you\u00a0want to tell me something?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole learns that Kyra\u2019s mother, likely suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy,\u00a0was slowly poisoning her. When Cole attends Krya\u2019s funeral, guests whisper how her sister is\u00a0growing ill as well. Cole reveals the truth about Krya\u2019s death to her father who, devastated,\u00a0confronts his wife and in doing so saves his other daughter from the same fate. It is a moment\u00a0that is tragic, but also a relief, a victory even. Kyra is gone, which is devastating, but at least the\u00a0deadly cycle has ended. There will be no more bodies dead from this disease.<\/p>\n

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Alcoholism is a force of obfuscation. Fights, confrontations, proclamations of love and\u00a0fear, expressions of raw and honest emotions in all their varied forms more often than not occur\u00a0in a brain-space that does not really exist. By morning, emotions dissolve into the realm of\u00a0intoxication, a space where fact blends into memory\u2019s fabrication. The deadly cycle is never\u00a0quite broken as it\u2019s never quite addressed, at least not with any great success.<\/p>\n

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I have held within me, my whole life, a desire to confront fear through communication, to\u00a0combat the unknown by pulling it into the realm of the living. Such a thing is, in my family,\u00a0simply not an option.<\/p>\n

We once had an intervention for a family member. During a preliminary meeting, the\u00a0interventionist\u2014a former pill addict with over 15 years of experience running\u00a0interventions\u2014pronounced, a note of shock in his voice, \u201cThis family . . . needs work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The tragedy of alcoholism is not just that it brings out the ugliest, rawest, most unlovable\u00a0aspects of the addict. An equal tragedy is how those around the addict lose their capacity for\u00a0empathy, how loving an addict teaches you that feelings of genuine kindness, concern, and love\u00a0do, actually, have a finite value and, yes, it is possible to reach the limits of that value. It is\u00a0possible, when baking banana bread alone in your studio apartment in Chicago at 10 o\u2019clock at\u00a0night. It is possible, when in the midst of mashing the soft yellow of the bananas into the brighter\u00a0yellow of the butter and the egg yolks. It is possible that, in this moment, a phone call will come\u00a0from your cousin, a phone call detailing some unsettling news about a relative\u2014here\u2019s the latest,\u00a0she\u2019ll say, taking on an inappropriate tone of nonchalance, the tone of one who has made far too\u00a0many phone calls of this nature in her 22 years\u2014and it is possible then to realize your\u00a0compassion is gone.<\/p>\n

When it came, this revelation was much like losing faith in God. It came suddenly and\u00a0yet must have been building somewhere on the periphery for a while. The feeling that followed\u00a0was, for the briefest moment, also akin to losing faith, that sense of liberation at no longer having\u00a0to force it. Following the momentary elation, however, came a crushing guilt.<\/p>\n

I am not a believer but, for a while, I would pray some nights. I started out praying for\u00a0that particular family member but then prayed for myself. I asked God to make me a kinder and\u00a0more patient person. I asked Him to help me reject feelings of hatred, disgust, and anger, feelings\u00a0that had long ago lost the cathartically self-righteous gleam that made them feel acceptable, even\u00a0fun, to indulge and were now just plain, naked ugly. Such emotions could derail me. I could\u00a0spend whole days going over past wrongs, seething in a silent rage that robbed me of the ability\u00a0to function. All I could do was pray. I had no hope these prayers would be answered or even\u00a0heard. I was no more a believer then than I was that Tuesday afternoon at 16. It was just that I\u00a0hoped the declaration alone\u2014asking to be more than I possibly could, owning up to my\u00a0inadequacy\u2014would somehow reverse the problem. That\u2019s the first step, isn\u2019t it? Admitting\u00a0you\u2019re powerless, that your life is unmanageable due to addiction.<\/p>\n

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In Alcoholic\u2019s Anonymous, Step 8 is to make amends. One is supposed to apologize to\u00a0anyone they wronged when drinking.<\/p>\n

After the intervention, for months, I waited for my apology. I\u2019m not sure what I was\u00a0expecting. Did I want this family member to apologize for never seeing me on my birthday\u00a0because it fell after Christmas and therefore he would still be sore about whatever drunken\u00a0disagreement he had with my father that year?\u00a0Did I want him to apologize for sending me an\u00a0angry, incoherent e-mail in the middle of midterms my senior year of college, while I was both\u00a0<\/span>finishing off my degree and applying for graduate school? Did I want him to apologize for the\u00a0late March afternoon when he left me six angry voice mails regarding a photo I posted of him on\u00a0Facebook? Did I want him to apologize for, later that same afternoon, posting a status on his own\u00a0Facebook page saying I was a disgusting pig? There were other wrongs, worse wrongs, that I felt\u00a0warranted an apology but they involved my father, my siblings, my grandmother. The\u00a0interventionist had told us when we were writing our letters it was very, very important we only\u00a0focus on the wrongs done to us, that indulging feelings of indirect outrage and offense was time\u00a0wasted as we could not adequately express or even imagine the pain of others.<\/p>\n

I fantasized about an apology, but the imagined scenario never got further then a phone\u00a0call and the words, \u201cI\u2019m calling to apologize for\u2026\u201d I\u2019m not sure I wanted an apology for any\u00a0one, specific thing. I just wanted my pain acknowledged. I wanted to know he understood that he\u00a0hurt me, and that my self-esteem and self-image were bruised because of it.\u00a0The apology never came.<\/p>\n

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I talked to a friend who is married to a recovering alcoholic. I mentioned this family\u00a0member and how I never got the apology promised by Step 8.\u00a0\u201cHe may not have gotten to that step,\u201d she said, \u201cOr he may not think he needs to do that\u00a0step with you. Which is sad. But it\u2019s not your fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he believes in God,\u201d I said, \u201cI wonder if that\u2019s why he stopped going to\u00a0AA. Maybe he felt alienated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be God-God,\u201d she said, \u201cIt\u2019s a \u2018god of your understanding.\u2019 Which is\u00a0easier for me. Mine is nice and manifests itself as a tiny pink wing-ed elephant. Wing-ed, not\u00a0winged.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I was struck by this because, I shit you not, when I was born the family member in\u00a0question brought me a plush pink elephant in the hospital. I know it sounds absurd, the future\u00a0alcoholic, at 15, bringing a newborn a pink elephant in a rare gesture of familial kindness, but it\u2019s\u00a0true. I still have the elephant, and it is still that same shade of grapefruit gut pink.<\/p>\n

After talking to my friend, I prayed more, prayed while thinking of the wing-ed-not-winged pink elephant, but nothing changed. No matter how many nights I prayed for the serenity\u00a0to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to\u00a0know the difference, I still felt angry, confused, and wronged. I felt no restoration of empathy lost.<\/p>\n

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Joan Didion says in her Blue Nights<\/em>, speaking of her daughter\u2019s adoption, that there\u00a0comes a point where a family is, for better or for worse, finished. She\u2019s speaking to the fact that\u00a0some relationships cease evolving and exist, instead, in a homeostatic state of dysfunction or\u00a0discontent. We have to, with time, accept that our mistakes and the mistakes of others will not be\u00a0fully rectified or even acknowledged. I will never get my apology. Step 8 is a privilege that will\u00a0always be withheld.<\/p>\n

Blue Nights<\/em> is a memoir true to life in that it\u2019s utterly unsettled. Herein, Didion recounts\u00a0the death of her only daughter, Quintana. There are no silver linings in Didion\u2019s world, no\u00a0proclamations of the restorative powers of memory to ward off unbearable grief.\u00a0On bad days, on those mornings I wake up to find the world has a funny angle to it that\u00a0makes everything look stupid, I hunger for catharsis. I can love and respect a work that, like Blue\u00a0Nights<\/em>, refuses to tie up loose ends but need the occasional gratification of a work that does. The\u00a0ending of The Sixth Sense<\/em> is why I came to love the film, why I come back to it during spells of\u00a0unfurled dissatisfaction.<\/p>\n

I need to believe in a world where fear can be defeated.<\/p>\n

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The Sixth Sense<\/em> is perfect storytelling. It eschews the mysterious, sequel-prepping\u00a0<\/span>endings typical of many blockbuster hits marketed as horror or suspense. Instead, it offers a\u00a0Chekhovian finale that leaves no guns unfired and grants the characters as happy an ending as\u00a0can be expected. Cole\u2019s relationship with his mother improves as he opens up, sharing his gift\u00a0with her by delivering a message from his late grandmother. Malcolm realizes he has died and,\u00a0after bidding his wife a tearful goodbye, at last passes on to the other side.<\/p>\n

I quiver thinking of this ending, feel the fluttering of elation that often accompanies\u00a0experiencing a particularly well done bit of art. I have an uninhibited affection for the film.<\/p>\n

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Didion famously wrote that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. \u201cWe live,\u201d she wrote,\u00a0<\/span>\u201centirely . . . by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the \u2018ideas\u2019 with\u00a0which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

We tell ourselves stories in order to live because stories provide comfort when life fails to\u00a0do the same, when our experience becomes unacceptable to us. We mold it, unfairly, into a story,\u00a0into hasty justifications coupled with some romanticizing of the past, false nostalgia and a dash of\u00a0imagination to boil our most difficult moments into digestible terms.\u00a0Sometimes the narrative is broken and there is no frame in which to neatly fit our\u00a0experience.<\/p>\n

There are some hauntings that remain un-exorcised and some ghosts that will never, never\u00a0talk back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Erin<\/span> Wisti<\/span> grew up in Houghton, a small and unusual town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where John Oliver once did stand up and was suitably baffled. He still talks about Houghton in his routine from time to time. Erin<\/span> left Michigan immediately upon finishing college, moving to Chicago where she got her MFA in nonfiction from Columbia College. Her writing has appeared in The Butter<\/i>, Role Reboot<\/i>, Fanzine<\/i>, Bayou Magazine<\/i>, Ampersand Review<\/i>, and other places. Erin<\/span> started writing around the age of 3, where her father told her that her previous career goal of becoming a potbelly pig was impossible. She currently lives in Los Angeles and serves as senior editor at Entropy Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I watched The Sixth Sense, I blinded myself. I was nine years old and an anxiety-prone child with an acute faith…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}