The film The Sixth Sense is a movie that many critics would consider a classic. Please describe how the film offers many of the characteristics that Swanson would claim make it a great movie. The themes that make it a complex movie are moral ambiguity and mixed motives. The film also requires that viewers have special cultural knowledge to better understand the film. MIXED MOTIVES: The different desires and reasons that characters in the film do things (for example, Cole sees things but is constantly told that they don’t exist. His mother wants to protect her son, but is also anchored to the reality of being a single mom, Malcolm has died but doesn’t realize it. He wants to help Cole but feels he is neglecting his wife). MORAL AMBIGUITY: How the events in the film make us feel as viewers. That is how we feel conflicted about characters. I want to believe Cole. I want to feel the fear that he has, but I know that ghosts don’t exist. SPECIAL CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE: See death differently than in Western society. Understand psychologists and counseling. Talk therapy to help patients recover from trauma. Mental illness. Single parenting. Childhood traumas and issues. Thesis: The Sixth Sense is a great movie because it forces critics to make difficult choices regarding mixed motives, ambiguous characters and requires special cultural knowledge from viewers. I. Introduction a. Discuss great films generally b. Mention Swanson’s essay c. Mention Bruce Willi and the concept of ghosts d. Thesis II. Mixed Motives a. What characters have mixed motives? i. Cole ii. Cole’s mother iii. Malcolm In the film The Sixth Sense, the mixed motives play themselves out through three characters. These characters are the child protagonist Cole, Cole’s mother, and Malcolm, the psychologist. Cole’s mixed motives extend from his ability to see ghosts. One the one hand, he can see ghosts constantly in his life. Yet he is told constantly, that what he says he sees are not real. For this reason, he is cautious to the point where he does not trust anyone. This caution appears in his relationships as he cannot make friends and is often bullied. This is why he strikes a relationship with Malcolm to help him understand his power. This continues until Malcolm realizes that Cole is not mentally ill. Instead, like Vincent, he hears voices that people cannot hear. Cole’s mother knows her son is special and for this reason wants to protect Cole. Yet she is also dealing with being a single mother that has no family support. She has difficulty believing what her son says he sees. Malcolm has mixed motives because he feels guilty because he is not able to help all of his patients. He wants to help Cole but feels like he is neglecting his wife. Lastly, he is dead and does not know it. This is how mixed motives are portrayed in the film The Sixth Sense. III. Moral ambiguity a. What characters are morally ambiguous? b. List out how they are morally ambiguous i. Same as above Moral ambiguity plays a large role in this movie as well. Moral ambiguity is the uncertainty that viewers experience within the film with regard to certain characters in The Sixth Sense. For example, Cole is introduced to audiences as an innocent trying to cope with his power to see ghosts. He’s scared of apparitions he sees. We don’t know if his trust issues come from his fear of the ghosts or from his own mental illnesses. Viewers have to decide that he is trying to take steps to trust Malcolm in order to move from being a helpless bystander to the ghosts he sees to a braver voice that listens to the ghosts’ plight and helps them come to peace with the world. Cole’s mother is admirable in that she is fiercely protective of her son, yet wonders if he suffers from mental illness or something else. This is compounded by the fact that she appears to be facing all of these issues alone, without a partner or parent to help her make sense of these issues. IV. Special Cultural Knowledge a. Mental Health i. Bullying ii. Stigmas iii. Stress iv. Sickness v. Counseling vi. Navigating/Negotiating Mental Health Special cultural knowledge is required to understand aspects of the movie, Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense is a fantasy ghost story filmed with a noir feel. Yet the film deals a great deal with the concept of mental health and the treatment of mental health issues. For example, one of the protagonists, Malcolm is a psychologist/counselor with a history of treating patients. One must understand that this means he often utilizes counseling strategies such as talk therapy to help his patients deal with mental health issues. Further, Cole’s mother engages mental health in wondering if her child faces mental illness. She must ask herself whether the apparitions that Cole sees are real or imagined. She and her son have to navigate a diagnosis of mental illness. Viewers must be aware that this is a stressful issue and obstacle for the young family. The mother must also deal with the possible stigmas of her son’s visions as well as the repercussions such a bullying. Viewers are required to have this knowledge in order to best understand Cole’s hesitancy to talk about the things he sees at the beginning of the film. They understand the great change that takes place when Cole becomes stronger in recognizing he is not mentally ill, but rather, actually sees ghosts trying to make peace with their deaths. b. Parenting c. Approaches to “seeing” history Viewers are challenged in this film because they must see history differently than before. This requires special culturaal knowledge. Cole’s visions requires us to admit to ourselves that the past is not dead, it’s alive. This is seen by the appearance of those who had passed away long ago, still looking for resolution in their deaths. One clear example of this is when Cole sees the bodies hanging in the hallway of his school. These were the “witches” hung during the with trials of the time. Without the… d. Western approaches to death i. Death and religion ii. Death is weird iii. Death is the end iv. No chance to talk v. The uncomfortable unknown Western culture tends to view death through the lens of religion. These protestant religious and cultural practices tend to make death and life beyond death an uncomfortable topic to discuss and engage. There is often a strange sense of finality when discussing a person’s death. There is the foreclosure of any type of life beyond death. There is no possibility of constructing a world that might have ghosts or an afterlife. This is an uncomfortable unknown that most people find acts like a barrier…. V. Conclusion a. Restate the thesis b. Lead out with general topics.