I teach a philosophy of film class, and have for years now. It is a fun class, I get a lot of students, and I like talking about movies and philosophy. However, every year I wonder if I am talking about an art form that has a future or even a present. Do people even go to movies. I have contemplated switching it, for a few years I thought of replacing film with television, with shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, etc., but time moves fast, and those seem as dated as Hitchcock or even Tarantino. I cannot imagine teaching a class on TikTok or other short form videos. However, just as I am about to relegate film to something from the past, to part of the history of media, there is a sudden revival of interest in movies, even going to the movies. Years ago it was Barbenheimer. This year, it has Obsession and Backrooms.
I still have not seen the former, but I did see the latter. Not only that, but I found myself drawn into the world of short videos explaining or discussing. I am not sure how popular these are, part of the weird algorithmic warp of social media is looking at some particular kind of content, cat videos, dog videos, or discussions of a particular movie means you see more of the same. One of the things that the videos focus on is the fundamental ambiguity of the film. In order to explain I have to offer a brief summary of the film for those who have not seen it, spoilers ahead. The film deals with a group of four friends Bear, Nikki, Sarah, and Ian, in what seems like their early twenties, and as is often the case this friend group is practically defined by its unrequited crushes. Bear has a crush on Nikki, Sarah has a crush on Bear, and Ian seems above it all until we learn that he and Nikki are sleeping together because they do not really have any feelings for each other. As something of a follow up to what I wrote earlier about Disclosure Day, Obsessions works because its social dynamic feels lived in an believable, even if many people online had questions about how a bunch of people working at a music store could afford to live without roommates.
Much of the writing about Obsession is putting forth different "theories" about the film. The word "theory" has taken on a particular meaning in online film writing. It does not, as I have hoped, involve people developing their own analysis of the cultural unconscious, the moments of utopia in the most refied films. Theories are primarily tied to the machines of Intellectual Property, in which every film is an advertisement for the next, or as they like to say "builds a universe." Much of these theories are really just a matter of finding some carefully placed easter egg, a map in Iron Man offers a hint of Wakanda. In other words, all theories are in universe explanation.
In Obsession the theories are framed around two questions. The first, does Nikki (Inde Navarette) have feelings for Bear (Michael Johnson), and the second, the one that takes up more space is just what is happening to Nikki after Bear makes his wish. With respect to the first one I do not so much want to offer my answer as to say something about this question, something that gets to how Obsession works. It starts from a basic premise that is almost tautological: relations between people are relational. How we feel about others depends in part about how they feel about us, or, more to the point, what we think about how they feel about us. Our knowledge in this case is always partial, incomplete, and skewed by how we feel about them, and ourselves. I think that is what is playing out in the first scene in the car. If I had to answer the question, and I am more interested in the question than the answer, I would say that it seems to me that Nikki could be romantically interested in Bear, but he would have to act differently, be bolder and more confident. Which raises the question, would a bolder Bear, one who would put his feelings out there, still be Bear? Would the Nikki that loved him still be the Nikki that Bear was in love with? Or was Bear just involve with an idea of Nikki? I am reminded of Robert Pippin's remarks in his book on Vertigo, of just how many "people" there are in a relationship, even when there are just two people. Although in this case it is less about who we pretend to be, than who we perceive others to be. We are always dealing both the person we perceive and the person who is there, and in turn that person is acting a particular way in relation to us. That is at least six.
This gets into the second question, just what is going on with Nikki after the wish, after Bear wishes that she loves him more than anyone in the world. When I first heard about this film, and its basic plot, I thought that it was perhaps going to be a "careful what you wish for" story, like something from a Twilight Zone episode in which a wish is undone by the proverbial fine print, perhaps Nikki's particular obsession would be too much for Bear to bare. There are elements of that, elements that go back to the first point, wishing that someone loves you means that they are going to want to be loved in turn. People are relational, after all. What is happening to Nikki is not just that she is doomed to love even if she is not loved, however, she truly seems to be another person, or persons, one who seems unmoored from a life and a personality, one who has been reduced to one obsessive feeling.
It occurred to me in watching Obsession that it reminds me a lot of Get Out, not just because they big hits by new directors. The horror in each case is the same. They are both about being betrayed by someone one trusts. They are also about the nightmare of losing autonomy and control, to being reduced to a body. The differences are just as significant. Get Out is primarily told by the perspective of Chris, the one who will lose his body, while Obsession is told from the perspective of Bear for the most part. The other difference has to do with the ambiguity mentioned above. We are very clear on what is happening to Chris, the role of hypnotism, the sunken place, and so on. There is something horrifying in how impersonal and methodological it is. Chris is not just reduced to a body in the end, but is treated as a thing all along. This is underscored in the scene after he is taken to the basement, Rose can be seen searching online for the next body like she is shopping online. Obsession is fundamentally unclear on how the magic works, and what it does. Why can Nikki sometimes gain control? Why does other Nikki, or whatever is controlling her, sometimes walk backwards or act in other uncanny ways?
What the two films reveal is that the same premise can be dealt with differently. Get Out almost seems more along the lines of a certain definition of science fiction, Dark Suvin's, which stresses both estrangement and cognition. As alien and unnerving as everything is, there is an explanation. Obsession seems more mysterious and magic. Although a magic that comes with customer service hotline. This different expositions reveal different aspects of horror, Get Out is frightening because we clearly see how indifferent the Armitages are to Chris, Obsession is frightening because it takes us awhile to fully comprehend how indifferent Bear is to Nikki, to the real Nikki, and because we never quite now how she will act.
I think that these differences of exposition, of narrative, can productively be related back to the "social demons" they deal with. Get Out is a film about race, a film written during the illusion of the post-racial America. The clarity it brings to its fantastical premise is an attempt to bring clarity to a situation that has been obscurred. Obsession is, or at least can be read, as a film about patriarchy, or, more to the point misogyny (in Kate Manne's definition). Bear's indifference and cruelty towards Nikki, is by definition murkier because, as is often the case with such sexism, it is more intimate, more intertwined with at least the appearance or pretense of love. The genius of Obsessions ambiguity and uncertainty can be seen in some of the ways it is memed online, some have even shared scenes of Nikki, like the famous "I thought we were having a nice date" scene, a scene that makes more than a passing nod to Get Out, as an example of a "crazy girlfriend" or "ex-girlfriend."
One could the film that way, but in doing so one reveals in a fundamentally different way the partial and relational dimension of our perspectives, to put it bluntly, seeing Nikki as a crazy girlfriend reveals how much one is not considering the conditions that she is reacting to, that Bear is the nightmare. What is interesting about Obsession is the "in universe" theories, theories about what is happening to Nikki, ultimately move outside of the universe, to ask the question not just what does Bear want from Nikki, and what does it do to Nikki, but what do we want from each other, and what is that doing to us. What mundane wishes can be seen beneath the horrors of the One Wish Willow.
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