essay

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SHI LYU

Kelly Morimoto & Paige Andersen

SELF AND SOCIETY 2

4 MARCH, 2020

The Sixth Sense

The topic that I chose for this essay is one of my favorite movies, ​The Sixth Sense​. I am

further pairing it with Virginia Woolf as an author to write a critique about this movie. ​The Sixth

Sense is an American film which was released in 1999. It is a psychological thriller film that

covers a story about a boy who is able to see and speak to dead people who is being helped by a

child psychologist. I chose this movie because it fits well with the writing style of Woolf. This is

because Woolf had mastered the writing style which was called the Stream of Consciousness.

The film is made up of flashbacks of memories, time montages and free association of images

that show the past, present and future of the boy’s story that intermingle to form the

consciousness of the boy. The feelings and thoughts of the boy are shown uninterruptedly

forming a stream of consciousness just how Woolf does in her literary work. Therefore, I

believed as Woolf’s writing style was mainly focused on caching the technique of stream of

consciousness, it would be better to critique ​The Sixth Sense​ by using Woolf’s writing style.

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The Sixth Sense is a psychological thriller film that is a genuinely thrilling masterpiece. The

movie is about a boy named Cole who can see dead people as he narrates to his psychologist

that, “I can see dead people. They want me to do things for them.” (Shyamalan 01:33:24) This

film covers an important aspect that only innocent children can see dead people, things that

cannot be seen by adults. The film describes the thoughts and feelings of Cole throughout. He

fears darkness because he is afraid to see dead people there just like how every individual fears

darkness. It is as if the world has gone into a black hole and his heartbeat can be heard even from

miles away. Cole feelings are transferred into the audience like a river being poured inside. In

my point of view, this film brings out the reality of life before the audience and while evoking

feelings of Cole, thus the audience feels thrilled and understands how the dead soul do not find

peace until justice has been done in this world to their culprits. The film uses a classic narration

of only Cole as the main character while the entire film revolves around him. The main focus is

placed on the boy who is assumed by doctors to be suffering from a disease where he

hallucinates images. Whereas, in reality he actually sees another dimension of this life where

dead people live and communicate with Cole to complete their unfinished tasks in this world.

This is kind of like how the book “a room of one’s own”. She wants to learn more things, but

during that time no one understands her like this movie no one understands Cole.

The film probes into the mind of the characters and shows their imagination. It is about the

internalities of life rather than externals of personality of the character. In one of the scenes, Cole

is sitting in his classroom when he starts getting flashbacks of how his school once used to be a

courtroom where people were hanged. He sees crying families that are being departed from their

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loved ones. He conveys it to his teacher saying, “they used to hang people here.” (Shyamalan

00:35:36-39). Cole can see the injustice that has been done to people in the old days. The

perceptions of Cole create a feeling of fear in the viewers’ mind as they can relate to the mental

consciousness of Cole. For him, a normal day is not like us, rather he sees dead people walking

while their cries echo in the buildings, rooms or roads. The film is an art of magical realism

where the characters are put at the best of their constructions to bring the realistic images out.

Another interesting thing to be noticed in the movie is the magic sleight that the

psychologist performs on Cole. The psychologist uses a penny to perform a magic of hand

routine on Cole whereas he says “That’s stupid.” (Shyamalan 00:41:45-47). However, the magic

trick works well for the plot of ​The Sixth Sense where the audience is tricked to watch the entire

film through one long sleight of the magic trick. At the end, the audience realizes the doctor, who

had come to help Cole, was himself a dead person that Cole had been seeing all this time.

The review of the film, ​The Sixth Sense​, has been written in the writing style of Virginia

Woolf. Firstly, the main style of Woolf that is her famous writing style is the Stream of

Consciousness where Woolf uses the continuous flow of mental thoughts, feelings and

perceptions of the character. She comprises long passages of introspection of the minds and

thoughts of her character in a narrative method. . Similarly, in my critical review of the film, I

have written showing the stream of consciousness of Cole where it was described that “Cole is

sitting in his classroom when he starts getting flashbacks of how his school once used to be a

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courtroom where people were hanged. This shows the stream of consciousness of Cole that is

coherent with the writing style of Woolf. Woolf used symbolism as an important tool to

present her work in a distinctive manner. “I must ask you to imagine a room, like many

thousands, with a window looking across people's hats and vans and motor-cars to other

windows and on the table inside the room a blank sheet of paper on which was written in large

letters WOMEN AND FICTION”, ( A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. part 2) Similarly, in the

review above a symbolism has been used to show the magic trick as sleight for the audience

because they only see the movie through one lens where psychologist is actually an alive man

who is helping Cole. Thus, the magic trick is a symbolism for the psychological trick that is

being played on the audience throughout the film.

I chose this film because it is important for people to consider the issues of children

seriously rather than ignoring them. In our society, most of the things that children say are

ignored or unnoticed because we do not value their views or stories. However, it is important to

give consideration towards their feelings, thoughts and perceptions because they may be

suffering. Therefore, it is important to be considerate towards children and give them the time

they need for their stories to be heard. This movie and this book are all related to our class topic:

self and society. This movie shows how children impact this society. The book kind shows that

woman and that society, woman cannot have their own room, woman cannot study. The movie

and the book all show their society.

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Works Cited

The Sixth Sense​. Dir. Shyamalan. Perf. Haley Osment. 1999.

Woolf, V. A room of one’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929.