Pseudohauntology: How Netflix's Cecil Hotel Docuseries (Freudo)Marxpilled Me

 In my reflections on the Netflix original adaption Hill House and Blye Manor I wrote 

"if a good ghost story has ever demonstrated anything it is that reality is much scarier than any ghost story...the patients staying at the mental ward I work at would stay up late, playing with Ouija boards, claiming they saw or heard ghosts...Meanwhile, their bones were hollowing out, their heart rates dangerously low, their skin torn up by razor blades, their throats eroded from vomiting, etc. Despite my bosses wish to take away the Ouija, I did not intervene. This was an escape for them, and a somewhat healthy one. This did not stop me, however, from quietly thinking 'the real horror is not the ghost, but what these people have been through, what traumas they've been subjected to, and the significance of their mental anguish.'

The real horror is quite mundane..."

This truth is again confirmed in the recent Netflix original docuseries on the Cecil Hotel. 

A smart, talented, young girl goes missing in a hotel with a dark past. Eerie CCTV footage is released of her last moments in an elevator where she appears to be acting strange, out of character.

With such a set up - one that follows all the horror, mind-bending psychological thriller tropes to such an extent that it ends up perfectly mimicking a psychological horror thriller called Dark Water! - its no surprise that internet sleuths begin to uncover a number of bizarre connections - some of which are completely consistent with my own occultist/hyperstitional research in my own piece Canada Connections: Demon Machines - that border on the eerie and absurd (just watch the documentary, I'm not going to get into them here).

And it's no surprise that from this a number of supernatural and conspiratorial theories developed. Was she demonically possessed? Was it a ghost who is responsible for her strange disappearance (or murder, as is it is later discovered)? Or was it not a ghist but a Satan Worshipping Black Metal musician? Is this all part of a government funded psyop? 

It appears there is a good case to be made for each, but as it turns out the answer is both much more mundane and horrifying - and much more immanent: she suffered from Bipolar II, better known as manic depressive syndrome, which can have psychotic-like symptoms during the manic phases, and she was off her meds. 

Wait, wait! Don't stop reading! We don't have to reify or commit to psychiatric or medical models here at all (I sure don't, and I work as a mental health professional!) to extract the point!

Yes, We don't have to buy into psychiatry, nor do we have to pathologize at all, to acknowledge that some people's 'mental states' - for better or for worse, whether right or wrong - do not map as easily onto the outside world as others' might. In fact, you don't even have to believe that meds are good or effective or any other mental health discourse to acknowledge this. What is clear here is that this young girl had an episode where she became disoriented and at odds with the shared world in a way that caused her to make decisions which most would consider more or less dangerous, and which likely lead to her death. 

She wasn't possessed, tormented by a ghost, or - despite the interesting hyperstitional resonances - a pawn in a gov't psyop (well, maybe this last one...). She was immanently unwell in her body. As I have written elsewhere on my own ghost sightings, the ghost was her own projected, unintegrated bodily experiences, and a symptom of our own lack of understanding. 

But what about the hotel's dark past? The famous serial killer known as the Nightstalker had residence in this hell hole! So many people died there! So many people committed despicable acts! etc.! We can't overlook these facts! It must surely point to something other-worldly! 

Yes and no. Mostly no. It's interesting that people's first reaction is to ascribe some sort of supernatural, transcendental evil or spiritual malady to the hotel rather than simply acknowledge that the hotel is in not just any bad part of town, but perhaps the worst part of town in the entire country, and that the hotel had - both in order to survive and to comply with state law - significantly loosened its standards on who could stay in the hotel, and what the hotel could do remove unruly or dangerous residents and guests. 

That is, inhuman(ist) Capitalist greed on the part of the owner (hiding the danger and marketing the place as safe for tourists) and humanist progressive legislation on the part of the state (laws preventing the eviction of unruly, often criminal guests) lead to a collision of naïve, middle and upper-class people and desperate, zero-sum lower class people; a perfect storm of sexualized murder and libidinal torture on a grand scale; hardened 'super predators' (in a non pejorative sense) and hapless prey. 

In short, its not ethereal demonic forces at play in the building and person, but economic and psychological ones. Or rather, the real demonic forces in the world are economic and psychological ones - material bodies and their incorporeal aspects; collective and individual maladies of bodies, not abstract spiritual sicknesses. 

This is where the the paranoid conspiratorial thinking gets it half right. It correctly attributes significance to the building, the structure and the space it occupies and the way it brings varied people together into that shared space. It goes wrong is when it avoids the inhuman forces of harsh reality that create these situations, and displaces any real, meaningful understanding of the girl's death, the hotel, the history of violence into the mystical, paranoid, religious realm thereby - in a strange twist of irony - making the detectives and their methodologies of investigating, critiquing evidence, and following material clues to their end the ones most in touch with the materialist and scientific realities of classes and society. 

In other words, if here's a reductive bullet point to extract from Marx and all the derivatives projects is that we gloss over real material conflicts and instead substitute grand theoretical abstractions. To harken back to my opening statement about the horror of reality and the mental patients - as a therapist I see this glossing over reality in favor of abstract theory everyday on the ward and in my outpatient private practice: people concoct the most interesting fantasies to explain away why these things keep happening to them, why they keep getting themselves in the same situations, and they wonder aloud about the answer when the answer is always so clear, and they make no inclination of wanting an answer from me.

For example, take the vignette I mentioned in my Entry 28 of my psychoanalysis blog: 

Patient: "I keep putting in job applications and not getting calls back - - I bet they.." [patient devolves into a paranoid theory of how the job hirers must be hiring people with money or connections over him, etc.].

Me: "Have you tried calling back?"

Patient: "No, I haven't"

Me: "If you'd like to test your theory that you are being neglected due to not having connections or money, then you might want to try calling back and seeing if you can't get an interview" 

Similarly, later in the session:

"All my friends are successful in [job field]. I'm in the same field and I can't seem to be as successful as them. It must be because [patient devolves into a paranoid theory of how and why these people have achieved success, etc.].  

Me: "Have you tried asking them what makes them successful instead of theorizing to me about it? You have these people as a resource - - they are your friends, they will answer you, why not ask them?"

It's important to note that I have been working with this fellow for 4 years and we have a good rapport which allows me to be this forward, and its time he challenge his own fantasies and do something if he wants more out of his life. It's time to face reality - test your theory, talk to people who aren't just ideas in your head, and face the fact that - not unlike Occham's Razor - it is often the simple mundane reasons not the complex ones that explain why things happen. 

Tl;dr: whether its ghosts and conspiracies around a murder, or not receiving a call back for a job, the truth of reality is painful and mundane. It's much easier to turn to fantasy (see The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan by Samo Tomsic who documents the link between the thought structure of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxism). 

This is why horror set in the realm of realism - what is often Locvecraftian - is so effective. A detective or someone in a similar role (not unlike the cops in the Cecil docuseries) must uncover an ever deepening plot, following a string of grisly clues that leads them deeper into a harsh reality. John Carpenters In the Mouth of Madness - an ode to Lovecraft - follows this trope, along with the video game Call of Cthullhu. 

More generally, it can be seen in films such as Jacob's Ladder, The Shining, or the creepy homeless guy who consumes the Puzzlebox at the end of Hellraiser. Or, in slightly different flavors, in Texas Chainsaw Massacre or House of 1000 Corpses / The Devil's Rejects, or Hostel where the tone of cultural transgression - the naïve city folk or tourists (not unlike the young girl who went to Cecil hotel) overstepping or misunderstanding the country cultural norms - permeates the film and sets the stage for our cast of characters to be punished through slaughter for their thoughtless deeds.  

We this again in its more refined, 'high-culture' art-house form in Ari Aster's recent films Hereditary and Midsommar (the latter of which shares the 'cultural transgression' trope) in which - not unlike The Shining - the most horrific moments of Aster's films are the breakdown in group social dynamics that lead to very real, traumatic violent ruptures in otherwise smooth, trance-like experiences; family or friends act in ways that unsettle us or unground us, distort our common reference points, lead to horrific accidents, or suicides. For Aster, not unlike the point I made above, and at the start, that which is most horrific is that which is most real and also most mundane, that which ruptures our sense of continuity - mental and somatic traumas.

The trauma of the real. 

Paranoia brings manic libidinal energy, but manic libidinal energy needs to be reigned in by scientific method. This is what is attempted - and often failed - with 'scientific socialism' or 'scientific materialism.' It is also, as Tomsic writes in his work, the connection between psychotherapy and social activism: helping people have access to the real in a way that the real informs their collective behaviors.  

Solving Epicurus' Trilemma: An Immanent, Emanating God

I was reading Bill Bryson's 2003 A Short History of Nearly Everything recently. 

He explains early on in the book that to say the 'Big Bang' occurred 'in' space or 'early / prior in time' is a confused statement. Rather, the big bang created space and time, and space expanded as the big bang did, 'filling' it along the way. Unfortunately the book is downstairs in my cold car, and I am upstairs in my warm bed, so I can't quote the book exactly for clarity.

Luckily, another scientific article on the web articulates the same idea:

 "According to modern cosmological theory...the big bang did not occur somewhere in space; it occupied the whole of space. Indeed, it created space...Space is itself infinitely elastic; it is not expanding into anything."

It reminds me of when Nick Land, in some New Center for Research and Practice lecture, reminded his class that 'there is no time in time,' and that to say as much is to contradict Kant and commit a 'transcendental error.' He is referencing the fact that for Kant, space and time are categorical intuitions that without which we could not think or experience anything.

What stuck with me here is that space expanded at the same time this imperceptible singularity event did. The event grew its own space to fill. Self-generated its own sandbox to mess around in. 

Reading this description in Bryson's book trigged a sort of flashback.

It's nearly 9 years ago in my first year of undegrad. My philosophy teacher - a really cool progressive Rabbi who wrote a two volume dissertation on Nietzsche, who first introduced me to Kant by suggesting I read Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics for summer reading, and who would go on to teach me everything from Anselm and Maimonides, to Nietzsche, to Jewish Mysticism etc., - is teaching us the below problem:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

This is known as Epicurus' trilemma. 

It is in part predicated on the problem of free will.

Malevolence and omnipotence can be summed together as omniscience - all knowingness. Epicurus' argument here is 'If God knows someone is going to do something bad, why doesn't he stop it?' So, in other words, how can God be omnipotent and malevolent and still allow bad things. 

So it's a question of 'How can we solve the problem of God knowing of human's evil deeds?'

My answer was that most if not all - including Epicurus' here - understandings of God's omniscience are predicated on the assumption of God knowing in advance the things that occur, and that if we instead assume God knows all things not in advance, but only as they occur in real time, then this trilemma is solved.

That is, God is all knowing - he knows all things the very second they occur - because you cannot know what does not yet exist; you cannot know virtual but unrealized aspects of a process. God knows becomings, and processes of becomings, he does not have advance knowledge of static beings. Like a security guard who watches many videofeeds from many cameras - he knows of things as they occur, but not in advance.

I illustrated this for my professor as a circle emanating outwards. The outer edge of the circle signifies the point at which both the human and God continually gain knowledge at the same time. The significance of the circle is that the area it covers as it expands is equal and infinite. As new becomings continually emerge, so does God's knowledge, in real time. Like ripples on the surface of a lake, emanating outwards. The circle captures unity, and removes temporal linearity, opens up multi-directionality, etc.

Not unlike the modern cosmology of the Big Bang that created its own space while occupying that space with 'substance' at the same time, my circular 'God' is the becomings of the universe manifest in the bodies of the world becoming aware of themselves as they occur in that singular moment. 

"That's kinda like our friend Whitehead's theory of God" my professor cheerfully responded (thus starting my intrigue into Whitehead). 

I've read most of his works and still don't know where this shows up, and I can't remember what he told me years ago, but I believe him.

In this rough sketch of God there are abundant connections to Deleuze and Guattari's Body Without Organs, Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, or Nietzsche's own eternal return of the same, Kabbalah, the CCRU and Accelerationism, etc. which are all recapitulated nicely in Liturgy's theological conceptualizations (she can be found applying the numogram and attending old New Center for Research and Practice lectures). 

I wonder if someone else will - or has already - make these connections...

Anyways, I end with this:

To know everything is not necessarily to know in advance, but to know that immanent, single moment as it unfolds. To the let the immanent and singular know itself. 

Token Humanization: Disney's Foucauldian Hell On Alderaan

Star Wars is not known for its ambiguity, complexity, or three dimensional characters. It's a mystical humanist tale of good and bad, light and dark, etc. 

The bad guys - whether the rather on-the-nose fascist Empire or the cliché corporatist warmongering Droid Trade Federation -  have always been composed of cold, faceless, inhuman copies: Clones, droids, faceless number-for-name identical troops, etc. This is even true for the leaders who are supposed to be unique from the horde! Sure, Vader gets a humanist redemption arc, but the Emporor is essentially faceless, almost formless. 

To this effect, Mark Fisher, responding to the rhetorical question of whether Star Wars 'sold out' by allowing itself to be bought by Disney, framed the film as a shallow, reactionary pastiche that brought nothing new and rehashed the old, while Rick and Morty recently poked fun at how the heroes in Star Wars seem to be able to kill mass amounts of people with little to no feelings, nor any real thought for the consequences of innocents caught in the crossfire. 

Because Star Wars is like the antiquated scientific discussion of the Universe and Entropy - if given enough time, Star Wars will prove these critiques right again (and again, and again...) - Star Wars recently fell into this trap again. 

In Season 2 of the Mandalorian an Imperial pilot takes the moral high ground against a to-be Rebel Alliance / New Republic hero whose innocent family was killed years ago by the Empire. 

"I was on the Death Star...do you know how many millions were killed on those bases as the galaxy cheered?" the pilot seethes, trying to contain his rage. He continues to provoke, she shoots him in the face. The viewer is supposed to be excited, identified with the hero. [1]*

While watching the scene - before going on to see its conclusion of course - I thought 'odd, it is unlike Star Wars to humanize its enemies, and unlike them to incorporate moral ambiguity (except for that very shoddy attempt in Star Wars: The Last Jedi about arms dealers selling to the Resistance the First Order..).' Then he gets shot in the head and it all makes sense again. I realize it's a humanization that is only there to emphasize his ultimate inhumanity; only there to forever result in a satisfying kill for the hero.

This is what I call token humanization. 

We're all familiar with tokenism in media - when something is injected into a book, show, or film out of obligation to moral pressure, or perhaps to clinch a certain audience and boost views, etc. The key aspect of tokenism is that something progressive is featured in an insincere manner. This does not mean that the presentation isn't sincere - no, for Tokenism to work it has to fool you into believing in its utmost sincerity - but rather it means that the motives behind the presentation are insincere. 

On the one hand, this moment of token humanizing the despicable bad guy is a symptom of our postmodern culture and its obsession with psychologism. Everyone needs a backstory, and Disney - the real evil Empire that gobbles up everything it can reach and spits out pastiche after cash-cow pastiche - knows that in 2020 there is some sort of obligation to humanize the bad guy. Or perhaps they realize there is simply a market for it! Disney doesn't believe it, nor is it consistent with Star Wars, but here it is! As quickly as it comes (an attempt to respond to the pressure, the obligation of painting a three dimensional character and a complex world) it vanishes in the barrel-smoke of a blaster pistol (the return to the narrative consistency of the Star Wars world and its corporate masters, Disney).

On the other hand, this token humanization is perhaps indicative of the tumultuous times; indicative of the inability for one side of the conflict to conceptualize the other. Even if it is evil, is it not possible to understand the evilness without encouraging it? Without agreeing with it? The Talmud Scholar Saul Liberman is known to have said 'Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense - that's scholarship!' Could the same not be said for evil - 'Evil is evil, but the history of evil - that's revolutionary!' Probably not, but there's a thought that is difficult to articulate here that is worth pondering...

Regardless, in the end token humanization of the baddies may be even worse than dehumanization of the baddies! What could be more cruel and sadistic than assigning depth and agency to the play thing before taking it away again. Like mad scientists making a frog conscious of itself seconds before its to be dissected by a 5th grade science class. Or, one may recall Foucault's discussion of torture and punishment, and how theologically inspired torturers in the early centuries of civilization fantasized about killing someone and bringing them back to life to kill them again as punishment! Is this not one description of Hell? Leave it to Disney to bring Hell to Earth through through a children's show (TV Demonism anyone?)!

At the end of the day, we're better off with Space Spaghetti Westerns with one dimensional baddies; stupid movies that know their place! Star Wars is not known for its ambiguity, complexity, or three dimensional characters. It's a mystical humanist tale of good and bad, light and dark, etc. And that's OK.

[1]*

See Slavoj Zizek's 1999 article '‘You May!’Slavoj Žižek writes about the Post-Modern Superego'

"It’s as though a neo-Nazi skinhead, pressed to give reasons for his behavior, started to talk like a social worker, sociologist or social psychologist, citing diminished social mobility, rising insecurity, the disintegration of paternal authority, the lack of maternal love in his early childhood.

‘Post-Modern racism’, the surprising characteristic of which is its insensitivity to reflection – a neo-Nazi skinhead who beats up black people knows what he’s doing, but does it anyway."