Films of the space horror genre, as an attempt to imagine a world–not–for–us.

Prokudin Gleb Andreevich ORCID: 0000-0002-4682-7092 Postgraduate student, GITR Film and Television School 125284, Russia, Moscow, Khoroshevskoe highway, 32A ya.law-pro@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Films of the space horror genre, as an attempt to imagine a world–not–for–us.

Introduction

The question of the relationship between man and the world is so fundamental that it can be considered a question that defines philosophy as a whole. Each direction and each generation of philosophy offers its own answers, but the point in the discussions has not yet been set. The situation became even more confusing with the development of scientific thinking in the age of Enlightenment and the gradual strengthening of the positions of materialism. As thinking developed, man step by step lost solid ground under his feet: first there was a world created by God for man, then a world where man fell through his own fault, and so on, until scientific consciousness declared that the world was created by no one and for no one. Man has moved from the epicenter of existence to the very edge of it, into the category of unlikely accidents. The way out of the crisis generated by such a transition occurred through the transfer of the very concept of "Peace" into human consciousness. But this same transition has created an entirely new problem: if the world that we know exists in our consciousness, then what is our relationship with the really real world, not colored by human perception? This is the problem of the Kantian world–in–itself, which scientific consciousness and positivism solved by creating a system of scientific methods and models that describe the world in a single way out of connection with human perception. This problem has not been solved so far and is mentioned in modern studies, for example, A. Shaparaka in his article, reflecting on the topic of research in the field of sociology, addresses more fundamental questions of the science of philosophy, pointing to the fact that "for traditional epistemology, sensory experience does not have much weight" ^{[1, c 4]}. Another article by A. Malo Larrea turns to epistemology to "suggest one of the ways to overcome the nature-society dichotomy" ^{[2, p. 1]} in the field of ecology and economics. But behind all this ideological complex there is a thought that thinkers of different eras came to in different ways, which is most vividly expressed in Wittgenstein's "Logical and Philosophical Treatise": our models of the world actually say nothing about the world, except that it can be described by such a model ^{[3, pp. 120-121]}. It may seem that there is not a single chance to imagine this dark and vague world–not–for–us, but perhaps some films in the genre of space horror can help here.

The history of the problem

The cognizable world in which a person lives and about which he makes his judgments is not a reliable representation of reality. This idea was most clearly crystallized in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who separated things as we empirically know them from the so–called "things–in-themselves" ^{[4, p. 70]}. The thing–in–itself is inaccessible to empirical knowledge, as is the world–in–itself, consisting of such things. Subsequent generations of philosophers offered various ways out of this epistemological impasse, one of which – research by scientific methods – was actively promoted by positivists. However, the use of rigorous methods and devices for modeling the world only at first glance solves the problem of the closeness of the world–in–itself. Wittgenstein, in his "Logical and Philosophical Treatise," compares mathematical and scientific models of the world with a "dimensional grid" that overlaps with the picture of the world ^{[3, pp.119-120]}. This metaphor clearly illustrates his thesis that any models of the world do not actually report anything about the world, except that it can be described in a chosen way. So how, then, can one imagine the relationship between man and this incomprehensible world–in–itself?

You can turn directly to the horror genre, where you can find examples of films that use an artistic interpretation of this topic as an attempt to think of a closed world–not–for–us. We will mark all phenomena belonging to such a world with the term "inhuman" ^{[5, pp. 15-17]}, borrowed from Dylan Trigg's research "Something". In the book, this term describes aspects of the world that exclude the possibility of knowing them from any anthropocentric perspective. Another term suitable for this phenomenon – "Creepy" – is borrowed from Z. Freud. Despite the fact that Freud's notes on the subject of the creepy are more than 100 years old, this term continues to be used in the same meaning. Even modern research indicates that the roots of this phenomenon are "structural deviations that cause the effect of an ominous valley" ^{[6, p. 2]}. This term is aptly described in an article by Lucy Haskinson, in relation to the space around us: "Creepy spaces differ in the discrepancy between our expectations and reality. ... They reveal that we do not have as much control over the environment as we think" ^{[7, p. 39]}. Perhaps the two clearest examples of the development of this topic are the films "Through the Horizon" (dir. Paul Anderson, 1997) and "Hell" (directed by Danny Boyle, 2007).

"Through the Horizon"

The events of the film "Through the Horizon" unfold in 2047. The crew of the rescue spacecraft is sent to the orbit of Neptune, from where a distress signal was received from another ship that went missing 7 years before the events began. A physicist scientist who created a missing ship called the Event Horizon is flying with a rescue team. On the way to the destination, it becomes clear from the conversations of the heroes that the missing ship is not ordinary. As an engine, he uses an artificially created black hole, using its incredible energy to bend the fabric of space–time to such an extent that the starting and ending points of the journey coincide. Then the ship moves through the formed tunnel and thus gets the opportunity to cover any distance in a negligible amount of time. The theory of relativity does allow for the possibility of such trips under special conditions.

Upon arrival at the scene, rescuers discover that the Horizon's crew has disappeared, leaving only traces of blood and an ominous recording consisting of screams and a phrase that stands for "liberate me" (free me) on the ship. This ends the introductory part of the picture and events begin to occur that can be interpreted as a collision with the inhuman.

The inhuman is always hidden and not amenable to direct investigation or description. It manifests itself indirectly and can be investigated through indirect manifestations. This is how it manifests itself in the film. First, the mechanic accidentally activates the engine, making the core active, and falls inside. He gets out again, but immediately falls into a comatose state, and then tries to commit suicide, before telling about the "darkness inside".

This series of episodes is designed to raise questions from the viewer, fueling interest in the causes of what is happening, but from the point of view of the study of supernatural horror, it is self-sufficient. From this position, he depicts the collision of human perception with the world–not–for–us. This world is located in another dimension, usually closed and inaccessible to us, and can be considered as an analogy to the world in itself, which also contains the source of the knowable world, but is still closed and unknowable for us, manifesting itself only as a mystical experience similar to Levinas' il y a ^{[8, pp. 53-54]}. This other world of another dimension also cannot be understood and analyzed by sensory or rational human perception, it is on a qualitatively different level in relation to human existence. Therefore, the hero Justin, having been in this other dimension for only a few moments, can only talk about darkness. It is darkness not in the sense of the absence of light, it is darkness in the sense of the impossibility of thinking itself. In another dimension, Justin is confronted with something that should not exist within the framework of our worldview, but exists, thereby undermining the foundations of our worldview. Such a crisis of thinking is the reason for the subsequent state of the hero, his madness and suicide attempt.

Returning from a creepy other world, the mechanic unwittingly brings to himself what is there. It gets into the real world of the screen work and begins to undermine its reality. It can only act this way because of its inhuman nature, and as the events of the film unfold, the rest of the expedition members begin to feel it. Here, the film takes on a more traditional tone. The supernatural manifests itself in the form of hallucinations. This is partly due to the peculiarities of the plot structure within the genre: the hallucinations of the characters simultaneously reveal their past (Captain Miller, played by Laurence Fishburne, sees the ghost of a friend who was his subordinate and died on the ship that Miller once commanded) or the inner world (Dr. Weir sees his wife who committed suicide after she found out that she has cancer. These visions shake the psyche of the hero, driving him into madness), and separate them, leaving less chance of salvation; partly with how Eugene Tucker characterized the features of supernatural horror in his book "Tentacles longer than Night". Tucker writes, referring to a study by critic Tsvetan Todorov, that "the supernatural exists in a brief moment of doubt. When a person is faced with something that cannot be explained, he finds himself at a fork in the road: either accept that the phenomenon in question really breaks the laws of the known world and is supernatural, or it can be explained based on our understanding of the world, and then it is not supernatural" ^{[9, p. 13-19]}. But this fork already belongs to thinking, and the truly inhuman cannot be assessed by means of thinking, it only vaguely hints at its presence by barely perceptible movements in the shadows, in which the otherworldly is seen, or, as in the case of the film "Through the Horizon", in hallucinations and inexplicable horror caused by someone's incomprehensible and impossible by presence. In any case, Tucker writes, the supernatural exists only in that brief moment of doubt, instability, a fleeting feeling that something is wrong. And few works, whether literary or screen opuses, are able to keep this unresolved throughout the narrative ^{[10, pp. 18-19]}. In an article with the telling title "To see darkness, to feel darkness", H. Sun writes that staying in a place that has the character of the supernatural "has a noticeable effect on human sensory perception" ^{[11, p. 3]}. Another article, authored by E. Farkich, says that ""dark places" are able to awaken thoughts in a person about the purpose and meaning of his existence" ^{[12, p. 2]}. Being in a place that has a "reputation for the supernatural" ^{[13, p. 8]} can even cause objective physical stress, as shown by the medical study of A. Escola-Gascon.

The subsequent events of the film return to the mainstream of the study of the inhuman. The team, after discussing what is happening, concludes that there is some kind of entity on the "Event Horizon" that manifests itself as a living thing. In this way, events are interpreted in terms of materiality, non-human existence. The living "it" of the ship begins to resist the human self, just as the human body resists the virus that has penetrated it. The world–not–for–us resists the presence of the human self.

The drama unfolding further increasingly shifts and disperses the very foundations of the concept of life in the human understanding. Dr. Weir, after several more visions, finally goes crazy and becomes, one might say, the voice of the ship. At this moment, the concept of life is inverted. Weir says that the ship visited another, incomprehensible dimension and, returning from there, brought Something with it. The ship itself has become a living organism, which makes no sense in our familiar picture of the world. What is a pile of inanimate metal should not manifest itself as living, because this contradicts the human definition of living. But this living thing is at the same time not humanly alive, but an incomprehensible contradictory form. Such a form of life, which is possible only in another dimension, inaccessible to human cognition or perception. No wonder the doctor, who went mad and tore out his eyes, explains to the captain, starting the Horizon engine – "Where we are going, you don't need eyes to see." This mysterious phrase hints at the impossibility of knowing that world by the methods we are used to. And if the ship acquired the properties of a living organism, Dr. Weir, on the contrary, lost his human essence, one might say his soul. He becomes a mirror image of the ship in relation to our world – if we use human definitions of life, then he is alive: he speaks, moves, performs conscious actions and bleeds, but despite all this, he is no longer a living human being. He became what Dylan Trigg called anonymous materiality in the book "The Phenomenology of Horror" ^{[5, pp. 57-59]}. The body, the matter in itself, which is closed to knowledge by human experience, which has also lost its subject. If the ship, being matter, acquired the features of a living thing, then Dr. Weir, being alive, lost the properties of a living thing and became an anonymous matter belonging to another world. It is this horror of the collision of the cognitive potency of human consciousness with the radically unknowable materiality of another world, the irreconcilable conflict of life as we imagine it and life in ourselves, that is the main source of horror in the film "Through the Horizon". Faced with this horror, mechanic Justin tries to commit suicide, unable to withstand contact with the partially opened darkness, Dr. Weir loses his human essence, merging with the inhuman life in himself, and the original team of Horizon, as we learn from the inserts, falls into a bloody madness, which is understood as a real hell. A fragment of a phrase in Latin, given at the beginning of the film, turns out to be a replica of a mad captain, which reads "liberate tute me ex inferis" – save yourself from hell. Within the framework of this study, this phrase can be interpreted as a warning against attempts to know what is closed to human cognition and what resists cognition. Another world, placed in another dimension, can be considered as a metaphor for the real world in itself, separated from us by the limits of our knowledge. In the last moments before the denouement, Dr. Weir, resurrected from the dead by the ship (thereby losing the last human features), tells Captain Miller, who called the dimension the ship visited hell, that "hell is just a word, and reality is much worse."

Thus, "Through the Horizon" can be considered as an exploration, albeit in terms of horror, of the limits of human thinking and its impotence in a collision with a radically inhuman world inaccessible to knowledge.

"Inferno"

A similar topic is raised by the film "Hell" by Dani Boyle. The action also develops on a spaceship, but in a different setting. In the center of the story is the crew of the ship "Icarus 2", which is towing a huge nuclear charge to the sun. "Inferno" depicts the world of the near future, in which the sun began to fade and the Earth began to freeze, as a result. To save the situation, a huge nuclear charge is being created on Earth, which, with the help of a manned spacecraft, must be delivered to the Sun and dropped on it, hoping that the explosion will normalize the processes of thermonuclear fusion in the core of the star, extending its life cycle. Some time before the events of the film, the ship Icarus 1, similar to Icarus 2, was launched, but for unknown reasons it did not fulfill its mission, and also has no way to communicate with Earth and is considered dead.

The mission has been going according to plan for 16 months, but the team suddenly receives an Icarus 1 distress signal while in the area of Mercury's orbit. A decision is made to visit the missing ship, which turns into a tragedy – due to an error in calculations, the protective shield is damaged, the greenhouse that supplies the crew with oxygen burns out and the captain dies. These events have the character of elements that push the development of the plot, which force the team to make difficult decisions. The events that are of interest to this study begin to occur after the two ships dock. The heroes discover the team of the first mission burned alive in a kind of ritual scene (The ships have a hall with a transparent wall and a light filter that protects those sitting from powerful solar radiation). It looks as if the crew voluntarily sat down in the hall with the protection turned off and burned out from direct radiation near the Sun. The ship's control panel also turns out to be damaged and a gloomy recording made by the ship's captain Pinbaker is discovered. In it, he reports that the team has abandoned its mission. "Our luminary is going out, all scientific achievements, all hope, all our dreams, everything is nonsense. In the face of this, we are just dust, nothing more, and we will turn to dust when he appoints death for us. And we should gratefully accept this death. It is not good for a man to challenge God."

These words reveal the horror of man's collision with the incomprehensibility of the world. The collapse of rational thought in the face of reality. From further dialogues, it becomes clear that the recording was made when the ship was already ready for the task and was out of range of communication with Earth. That is, the reason for the conscious refusal to perform a task that should save humanity was a collision with Something. Something that is incomparably greater than man and humanity should have been revealed to the crew of the first ship.

After several more unforeseen events and the death of several more members of Icarus 2, we meet Pinbaker again in a hall flooded with blinding sunlight. The main character of the film, a Cape physicist, unable to see a silhouette in the sunlight, asks an unknown person to identify himself. "Who am I? And the world will end, and only one person will remain alive, and this moment will pass, and the person will disappear. There will be nothing left of humanity in the world but stardust. The last man alone with God. That person is me." Next, the Pinbaker attacks the crew members, knocks out the ship's systems. And in the final climactic scenes of the film there is another one of his lines: "I've been talking to God for almost seven years. He ordered me to take everyone to heaven."

The film ends with the success of the mission, and although all the members of the expedition die, the cargo is delivered to the sun and it manages to be ignited with renewed vigor. Nevertheless, there is a deep reasoning associated with the storyline of the Icarus 1 team and, in particular, with the character of Captain Pinbacker. As in the case of Event Horizon, the episodes associated with the team of the first mission are an exploration of the limits of human cognition and human thought. But, unlike the horror of 1997, "Inferno" approaches the issue from a different angle. There are no other dimensions and Lovecraft's unthinkable entities here. Forms of life that undermine and deny the concept of life. In Danny Boyle's film, the horror comes from the indifference of the world to human subjectivity, indifference to the futility of trying to understand it by rational methods. The inhumanity of the world in itself, shown in this film, reveals it precisely as a world–not–for–us. L. Fleischmann describes such an inhuman object as "confusing familiar categories, violating spatial boundaries and undermining the foundations familiar in society" ^{[14, p. 4-5]}. The horror in this film comes from the feeling of hostility of the "inhuman" atmosphere, which is "tied to space" ^{[15, p. 7]}.

The film can be more closely associated with the ideas of a logical and philosophical treatise that hypotheses and theories do not tell us anything about the world, even if they are able to reliably predict the outcome of certain events. Numbers and analogies are not able to give an idea of the reality of the world. From our research, we know the temperature of all layers of the sun, as well as the power of its light and thermal radiation. We know the exact distances between objects in the solar system and far beyond, and we know how empty the space between them is. But numbers are not cognition, they are a dimensional grid attached to a picture of the world. But when a person finds himself face to face with what these numbers hide behind him, he finds himself in front of something that is disproportionately larger than himself, which exceeds the possibilities of his knowledge so much that it turns into an abyss for a person, into absence and darkness. Nietzsche's famous aphorism is appropriate here: "If you look into the abyss for a long time, the abyss will start looking at you" ^{[16, p. 39]}. And being unable to cope with this abyss, a person gets lost.

Pinbaker and his team faced a world impenetrable to human thought and indifferent to it. The predominance of the motif of light in these arguments is symbolic. There is a parallel here with the mystical experience, which is often viewed not only as the light of the divine, but also through categories of darkness. The Spanish mystic of the 16th century Juan de la Cruz writes about the divine light, which "seizing the soul, eclipses its natural light, and thereby deprives it of all natural impressions and predilections that it previously grasped through natural light; and so not only leaves it dark, but also empty, regarding abilities and desires as spiritual, and natural" ^{[17, p. 93]}; "God is nothing but the dark night of the soul in this life" ^{[17, p. 23]}. Georges Bataille similarly believes that darkness is "preoccupation with what is outside" ^{[18, p. 42]}.

Another term applicable to the described elusive matter is the "atsmosphere", as it is understood in his recent article by D. Trigg: "Even if the atmosphere is diffusely distributed in the world and is not perceived, ... it still has a density that can be felt physically." ^{[19, p. 7]}

Pinbaker finds himself face to face with an endless dark and closed world and in this indifferent void he finds God. He is also indifferent to human attempts at cognition, but his emanation can be considered sunlight. A light whose physical characteristics are well known to man, but whose power goes far beyond mathematical constructions. The frames in which the crazy captain is visible look very well within the framework of such reasoning. The light absorbs the entire space, the silhouette of a person is barely distinguishable against the background of the glow. One could say that his human nature has been erased by this radiance. Light manifests itself as a negating darkness, which is thought of as negation only based on the human understanding of the world. In fact, it is an indifferent entity that can be described by Jacob Boehme's term "Ungrund", which translates as baselessness. Boehme uses it to characterize God and the divine: it is baseless because it has no attributes of its own, "it is neither light nor darkness, neither love nor hate, neither good nor evil" ^{[20, p. 149]}. It is a divine Abyss, anonymous and indifferent, but also hidden because it belongs to the world–not–for–us. Pinbacker and his team encountered the abyss and found the divine in it, but the divine is indifferent and radically inhuman.

Conclusion

As can be seen from philosophical works and from the analysis of screen works, discussions on the topic of knowledge of the world–not–for–us are more or less connected with theology due to the similar characteristics of the source material. This connection between the divine and the unknowable can itself become the subject of extensive research, nevertheless, the example of the above screen works traces the possibility of interpreting the world–not–for–us with the help of imagery characteristic of works in the genre of cosmic horror.