{"id":929,"date":"2007-09-10T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-10T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=929"},"modified":"2007-09-10T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T23:00:00","slug":"the-cinematic-otherworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=929","title":{"rendered":"The Cinematic Otherworld"},"content":{"rendered":"

About three weeks ago, I dreamt I was sitting with a group of people around a table in some sort of parapsychology lab. It was sort of like a s\u00e9ance, only instead of contacting spirits, we were trying to “make something happen.” <\/p>\n

After one session, I went into an adjacent room full of computer equipment, etc., and found a a group of electronic cables had all fused into a big ball. Somehow this was significant — and somehow the affect of the dream was such that my unconscious dream controller pressed the “Abort!” button, and I woke up suddenly.<\/p>\n

On some level, the dream reminded me of the 1990 movie Flatliners<\/em><\/a>, in which a group of medical students try to create their own near-death experiences. There is Kieffer Sutherland<\/a> as the bold leader (“Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it’s time for medical science to try.”), Oliver Platt<\/a> as the over-intellectualizing Jew (“I did not come to medical school to murder my class mates no matter how deranged they might be.”), Kevin Bacon<\/a> as the angry but good-hearted skeptic, and Julia Roberts<\/a> as the girl who is one of the guys.<\/p>\n

Sutherland’s character is actually expressing a very 19th-century notion, but let’s set that aside. Set aside too why some demented set designer felt that Bacon’s character should drive an Army surplus M751 truck<\/a> — in Chicago.<\/p>\n

All of the medical students who “flatline” find themselves in an Otherworld where they must confront people whom they wronged. On some intuitive level, I always felt that the movie might<\/em> have captured a sliver of the after-death experience, just as The Cuckoo<\/em><\/a> has an interesting shamanic sequence.<\/p>\n

Or am I kidding myself? Is it possible to portray the Otherworld realistically on film? And what does “realistically” mean in such a context?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About three weeks ago, I dreamt I was sitting with a group of people around a table in some sort of parapsychology lab. It was sort of like a s\u00e9ance, only instead of contacting spirits, we were trying to “make something happen.” After one session, I went into an adjacent room full of computer equipment, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[36,11],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-movies","tag-shamanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-eZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1993,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1993","url_meta":{"origin":929,"position":0},"title":"The Dream Philosophical Academy","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Three night ago, I was dreaming that someone was lecturing on some sort of gnostic philosophy. \"Gnostic\" was the term used in the dream, although it might not have been appropriate. The lecturer drew a distinction between the Pagan view of \"remembering\" the soul's perfection, versus a Christian approach of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4996,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4996","url_meta":{"origin":929,"position":1},"title":"Russian Seasonal Dream Rituals","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I missed Orthodox Christmas by\u00a0 a day, but here is an article on Russian Pagan dream practice. \u00a0Here I'll try to give the \"taste\" of the authentic Russian tradition of dream work that has very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\u00a0 Mainly the Russian tradition tells about highly practical dream incubation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreaming\"","block_context":{"text":"dreaming","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4665,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4665","url_meta":{"origin":929,"position":2},"title":"A Dream, a Dog, and a Forest Fire","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Monday, the 22nd, I came home from a week-long trip. On Tuesday, I was temporarily homeless, a condition that persisted until Friday. Tuesday's weather was warm and windy, with the highest gust in the area clocked at 79 mph. Somehow \u2014 I still have not heard the definitive story\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-dV57BkoZQRQ\/UIgi2vbiO8I\/AAAAAAAABdc\/_ixQl3ANtJA\/s400\/volcanofire.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=936","url_meta":{"origin":929,"position":3},"title":"The Dream and the Job","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the dream last night I was at some kind of Protestant Christian youth camp, headed by the stereotypical big, extroverted, 30-something youth minister.A teenaged girl was supposed to be baptized, but the minister had to leave suddenly, so he asked me to baptize her. His request presented two problems:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teaching\"","block_context":{"text":"teaching","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teaching"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":655,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=655","url_meta":{"origin":929,"position":4},"title":"The Unsettling Wisdom of Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"As some of my readers know, my oldest sister died in February. She was living in Lithuania, and I had not seen her for two years, although we were in touch by letters and email until just a few days before the end. In fact, one thing keeping me from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreaming\"","block_context":{"text":"dreaming","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=986","url_meta":{"origin":929,"position":5},"title":"After the Witch Queen Steps Down: Maxine Sanders’ Fire Child","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 1960s, when Pagan Witchcraft started to gain widespread media attention, Maxine Sanders (b. 1948?) was one of its visible faces. A tall willowy young woman with bleached blonde hair, she was married in 1965 to Alex Sanders (1926-1988) for whom the Alexandrian tradition is named.He was older, charming,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0919345174","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}