Headcase - Thinner thighs in 30 seconds

When I was in Los Angeles a few months ago, every time I turned around, someone recommended that I see the movie What the #$*! Do We Know!?. One friend described it as the left's spiritual reply to Mel Gibson's gory and fundamentalist The Passion of the Christ. Twice, I was turned away at theaters because screenings had sold out.

The hype only got thicker after my return to Atlanta. I was even invited to participate in a panel discussion, and when I declined since I hadn't seen the film yet, I was treated like I'd just confessed I'd not seen Gone with the Wind. So, finally, last week I went to see this peculiar mix of drama and documentary that was produced independently, promoted by word-of-mouth and then - because of its overnight popularity - was picked up for national distribution by Samuel Goldwyn Films.

A week after seeing What the #$*!, I am still mystified. The shock began with wondering what in the world about this hollow movie had captivated so many people. To those familiar with pop psychology and New Age spirituality, the film offers nothing new. It appears that Hollywood is about to jump on the bandwagon already well ridden by Deepak Chopra, whose mushy-minded message has catapulted him from the psycho-spiritual publishing niche to the role of fundraiser for PBS.

The movie features Marlee Matlin as Amanda, a photographer constantly popping anxiety pills because her marriage to an unfaithful husband has ended. Rolling her eyes cynically, she falls down a "rabbit hole" where she learns - groan - that her misery is entirely her own responsibility. That's the "drama" of the film. The documentary portion features interviews with a dozen experts who continually reiterate that bromide of the New Age: "We create our own reality." And they mean that in a completely literal way.

To validate that notion, the filmmakers, like Chopra, promote a crackpot version of quantum mechanics that people are lapping up as unthinkingly as fundamentalists lap up grape juice during a communion service. New Agers borrow several legitimate features of quantum mechanics. One is the observation that at the subatomic level, particles seem to express all possibilities, such as being in more than one place at the same time. It is the observer's act of measurement - an experiment, for example - that seems to "locate" the particle. A minority argument is that the consciousness of the observer itself fixes the particle.

People like Chopra and the makers of What the #$*! completely buy the minority view. According to their logic, if subatomic particles express endless possibilities that can be influenced by the observer, the entire universe, in all its materiality, is a product of our thinking. Thus the movie ends with an embarrassing scene of Amanda screaming "I hate you" in a bathroom mirror. As she does so, her hips and thighs expand (because, I guess, fat is indicative of self-hatred). Then, as she gets the message - that she creates her own fat reality - she slims back down and we see her in the end drawing flowers on her legs in loving creation of a more shapely reality.

Although it has long been known that a positive attitude can influence our subjective state of well-being, What the #$*!'s use of quantum theory is simply wrong. First of all, as countless physicists have explained (including one in the film who has repudiated the way the interview with him was edited), rocks and bodies do not behave like subatomic particles. At the level of macroscopic reality, classic Newtonian physics more accurately describes the world. Second, contrary to the notion of infinite and unknowable possibility, quantum physics is actually rather predictive. Although scientists cannot predict exactly what will happen in an experiment with subatomic particles, their theory does identify all possibilities and calculates the probability of each possibility's occurrence. So the notion that the behavior of particles can be changed through willful consciousness is very suspect.

The film presents its thesis as uncontested science. In fact, viewers don't even learn until the movie's end that one of the experts is JZ Knight, who "channels" a 35,000-year-old hierophant named Ramtha. And unless you research the film, you won't learn that two of the experts are teachers employed by Knight and that all of the writers and producers are her students.

What is going on here?

What the #$*!, which also enlists brain science and so-called positive psychology, is indicative of a gross paradox in American psycho-spiritual life. On the one hand, the film attacks the material view of the world in defense of a spiritual perspective. But by attempting to utilize "objective" science to validate spirituality, it actually reveals its attachment to the material view. It is not enough to say that there are separate, valuable spiritual and material aspects of existence.

But that has also happened in American psychology. The film is an excellent example of the way a dubious science has developed to treat the mysterious psyche as a machine. I'll look at that next week.

cliff.bostock@creativeloafing.comCliff Bostock holds a Ph.D. in depth psychology.??