Abstract
An eye-catching arrangement of numbers glowing red against a black background dominates one of the promotional posters of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (US: Hollywood Pictures, 1999).1 The numbers enumerate the five senses: 1 sight—2 sound—3 smell—4 taste—5 touch. The unlabelled number six, alone, takes the form of a fiery wreath enclosing a child’s silhouette. A laconic subscriptio states: “Not Every Gift is a Blessing.” Although, strictly speaking, the image is not part of the movie itself, it nevertheless provides important paratextual information. In emblematic form, the poster gestures toward some of the central questions the film raises as its narrative unfolds: Which unearthly, burdensome, or cursed gift must remain unnamed? How will the sixth sense, for which there is no other word, be displayed, and what can be perceived with it: both by the film’s main protagonists Malcolm Crowe, child psychologist, and Cole Sear, his patient, whose telling names point to an obscure, dark form of (fore)sight? How do we, the viewers, perceive (with) this sense? And how is the sixth sense related to the camera’s eye, and modes of cinematographic communication?
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Notes
Cf. Katherine A. Fowkes, “Melodramatic Specters. Cinema and The Sixth Sense,” in Spectral America. Phantoms and the National Imagination, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p. 202 [185–206].
Cf. Nils Westboer, Der innere Blick. Zur Konstruktion von Sehen und Wissen in M. Night Shyamalans The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable und Signs (Saarbrücken: VDM, 2008).
Cf. Robert Hurley, “Purgatoire et anagnôrisis dans le film The Sixth Sense,” in Religiologiques 26 (2002): 53–65.
Sabine Bobert, “Auferstehungskonzepte im populären Kinofilm: Matrix I, The Sixth Sense, Alien 4 —The Resurrection, Hinter dem Horizont,” in Systematisch praktisch. Festschrift für Reiner Preul zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Wilfried Härle, Bernd-Michael Haese, Kai Hansen, and Eilert Herms (Marburg: Elwert, 2005), pp. 393–414.
The Christian-dog matic aspects of the filmare exam ined by D. Brent Laytham in: “Time for Hope. The Sixth Sense, American Beauty, Memento and Twelve Monkeys,” in The Gift of Story. Narrating Hope in a Postmodern World, ed. Emily Griesinger and Mark Eaton (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), pp. 69–83.
Cf. Georg Mott, “The Vanishing Point of the Sexual Subject: The Closet, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, L.I.E., The Sixth Sense, The Others, Y TuMamá También,” in Psychoanalytic Review 91.4 (2004): 607–14.
Kathy Smith, “The Emptiness of Zero: Representations of Loss, Absence, Anxiety and Desire in the Late Twentieth Century,” Critical Quarterly 46.1 (2004): 40–59.
On Shyamalan’s film as a typical example for the representation of the psyche of children or women in Hollywood cinema, see Jerrold R. Brandell, “Kids on the Couch. Hollywood’s Vision of Child and Adolescent Treatment,” in Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Movies, ed. Jerrold R. Brandell (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), pp. 19–45
and Marilyn Charles, “Women in Psychotherapy on Film. Shades of Scarlett Conquering,” in Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Movies, ed. Jerrold R. Brandell (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), pp. 67–93.
Cf. Erlend Lavik, “Narrative Structure in The Sixth Sense. A New Twist in ‘Twist Movies’?” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (2006): 55–64.
see Britta Hartmann, “Von der Macht erster Eindrücke. Manoj Night Shyamalans The Sixth Sense,” in Aller Anfang. Zur Initialphase des Spielfilms (Marburg: Schüren Verlag, 2009), pp. 338–57.
Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 32.
Cf. Cynthia Freeland, “Horror and Art-Dread,” in The Horror Film, ed. Stephen Prince (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), pp. 189–205.
Cf. Angela Curran, “Aristotelian Reflections on Horror and Tragedy in An American Werewolf in London and The Sixth Sense,” in Dark Thoughts. Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror, ed. Steven Jay Schneider and Daniel Shaw (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), pp. 47–64.
Christopher Falzon, Philosophy goes to the Movies. An Introduction to Philosophy, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 34.
Cf. Kevin J. Harty, “Looking for Arthur in All the Wrong Places: A Note on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense,” in Arthuriana 10.4 (2000): 57–62. The quote is taken from another context in which Harty reuses his text in a slightly modified form:
Kevin J. Harty, “Cinema Arthuriana: An Overview,” in Cinema Arthuriana. Twenty Essays, ed. Kevin J. Harty, 2nd revised edn. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland 2002), p. 29 [7–33].
Richard H. Lawson, Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, trans. Frank J. Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), p. 237.
Cf. Walter Haug, “Vom Imram zur Aventüre-Fahrt. Zur Frage nach der Vorgeschichte der hochhöfischen Epenstruktur (1970),” in Strukturen als Schlüssel zur Welt. Kleine Schriften zur Erzählliteratur des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989), pp. 379–408,
Hartmann von Aue, Erec, trans. Michael Resler, University of Pennsylvania Press Middle Ages Series (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 125.
Cf. Nicola Kaminski, “Wâ ez sich êrste ane vienc, Daz ist ein teil unkunt.” Abgründiges Erzählen in der Krone Heinrichs von dem Türlin (Heidelberg: Winter, 2005).
Heinrich von dem Türlin, The Crown: A Tale of Sir Gawein and King Arthur’s Court, trans. J. W. Thomas (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
Cf. Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror. Gothic Literature and Film (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).
For the meaning of perception theory for medieval narratives, see Joachim Bumke, Die Blutstropfen im Schnee. Über Wahrnehmung und Erkenntnis im Parzival Wolframs von Eschenbach, Hermaea 94 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001);
Haiko Wandhoff, Ekphrasis. Kunstbeschreibungen und virtuelle Räume in der Literatur des Mittelalters, Trends in Medieval Philology 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003);
Christina Lechtermann, Berührt werden. Narrative Strategien der Präsenz in der höfischen Literatur um1200, Philologische Studien und Quellen 191 (Berlin: Schmidt, 2005).
Cf. Giorgio Agamben, Stanzas. Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans. Ronald L. Martinez, Theory and History of Literature 69 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993);
Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch. Archaeology of a Sensation (New York: Zone Books, 2007).
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© 2014 Andrew James Johnston, Margitta Rouse, and Philipp Hinz
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Scheuer, H.J. (2014). Arthurian Myth and Cinematic Horror: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. In: Johnston, A.J., Rouse, M., Hinz, P. (eds) The Medieval Motion Picture. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137074249_9
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