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.

摘要

本文探讨了肯·拉塞尔的《变态》中迷幻序列的本体论颠覆性（1980 年）。这些序列将观众暴露于一种完全偏离了他/她的标准体验模式的世界体验模式，这些序列对观众的“民间本体论”的基础提出了质疑。区分两个层面的颠覆，文章的第一部分探讨了作为主客互动结果的体验场的概念，反对感知者与被感知者分离的常识观点。第二部分以这种解读为基础，但也偏离了这种解读，介绍了第二个更激进的颠覆水平。具体来说，文章建议迷幻序列将观众暴露于一种“无主体”的体验，而不是锚定在任何感知实体中。通过最大化角色和解释观众的不可理解性系数，第二级颠覆比第一级更直接地让我们暴露于我们民间的本体论谬误。这样，改变的状态潜在地促进了观众对形而上学的修正过程。