A comparative review of a competitive NMDA receptor agonist and a film by award-winning Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii
First off: spoilers. If this was the future that word would be flashing right now[1].
Some background to set the scene:
Ketamine[I]: it’s a drug best known as “that horse tranquillizer”, and although still employed in human pain management it is no longer employed routinely for reasons including (but not limited to) its ability to elicit dissociative-hallucinatory reactions in individuals. The reason for its effects on perceptions is not clear, although they undoubtedly stem from ketamine’s ability to temporarily boost the activity of a certain group of receptors in the brain called NMDA receptors[2]. One theory is that …. It’s magic[3].
The Sky Crawlers: the latest film by Mamoru Oshii – the director probably best known for his Ghost in the Shell movie a while back. The movie was released earlier this year and won… if you want more historical context, well, Wikipedia’s not far[II].
The connection: where the fuck do I begin? I mean, how can I claim that a movie is like a mind-warp? Obviously, we sometimes claim that a movie was “trippy”, or that it changed the way we “see” things. I might claim that Fight Club changed the way I view obedience to consumerism, but what I mean is that it shed light on a desire I sometimes have – namely to beat the daylight out of my standard self, metaphorically speaking – not that it showed me something novel. Similarly, I might tell my colleagues after a few shots of J Daniel’s finest that [etc[4]]. All I’m saying here is that normally a movie does not do novel showing, and conversely what The Sky Crawlers does do is just that. The Sky Crawlers not only presents us with profound ideas, it shows them to us in a unique manner. How so? My “contention”[5] is that The Sky Crawlers demonstrates the two-way interplay between objectivity and subjectivity and that it presents this interplay to us by our very mode of being observers of the film. These features are similar to the ketamine experience [6].
“So, what’s it like?”, seems like the most understandable approach to ketamine as an unknown, and it’s a difficult question to answer. You know that scene in The Matrix wherein the suave gap-toothed man tells that “You cannot be told what [it] is; you have it see it for yourself.” That turned out to be bullshit – it’s not that hard to explain the movie’s premise, but in this case, it’s not so far from the truth. For starters, it’s hard to put into words, kinda like a Lost in Translation thing but with less potential for engrish jokes. More importantly, there’s something to be said for existence. Reading Lord of the Rings might make you hungry[7] but thinking about “hunger” after an all you can eat curry is so far removed from the real thing. So I’ll try to put into words one particular trip; be aware that “the map is not the territory”[8].
You remember being twelve, going to IMAX, and seeing for the first time that 3D dinosaur coming out of the screen? Ketamine doesn’t start anything like that. For some reason for me, it starts with this distinct taste at the back of my throat, a bit metallic. Then things start to feel a bit strange, not clear why, maybe similar to what you get when you stand up quickly and get a bit lightheaded, but also with a sense of foreignness. This is the “ascent” part of the trip, a transition period, and although I remember it to be recognizable, it’s difficult to attribute any important particulars to it. That stereotypical “woah man, look at my hand” might be applicable, but if so it’s not important. There’s a peak period, not sure how long it lasts for, but it’s where all that’s interesting happens. Approaching this peak is like going through a kind of existential-tunnel-vision thing. All those things we assume at every moment without even realizing are no longer assumed. Right now, as you read these words, you’re assuming that the words were written by someone else, that there are other people, that those people are aware of you, that you came to here from somewhere else (from home maybe) where you did something else (eat a nutritious breakfast maybe). So approaching this peak means no longer seeing all those things so clearly. It’s not that you forget things, it’s just that you stop building everything on top of them, and instead see just now. I found it to be freaking terrifying – all those things we don’t realize form our identity (like breakfasts[9]) slip away. The peak doesn’t last long, but it’s like experiencing existence. If all our lives were pieces of paper with writing on them – describing the details of our life – then ketamine would not only show us the way the writing flows or the way the paper looks, it makes us realize that there’s something more primary than the paper… Anyway, the entire trip doesn’t last much more than an hour, after which you’re about as sober as a corpse[10]. There’s some other cool shit that goes, things to do with perception of space and embodiment, but they’re not pertinent here. I’ll discuss a bit more below, but first a summary of The Sky Crawlers.
The movie starts off somewhat conventionally with a dogfight between two pilots resulting in the death of one pilot. A few minutes later we see a young man walk into an airfield. He looks a lot like the other character, but this is anime, so everyone looks like everyone[11], and anyway, he’s here to replace the pilot who just died. Stuff goes on, they’re pilots in some war; everything’s a bit vague. The boy gets taken out on the town, nothing too titillating. There are heaps of scenes that don’t seem too significant, (where “significant” is taken to mean “promoting the advance of a plot”). One of the other pilots gets shot down by an unknown pilot, who’s importantly (it’s said) is an adult. Oh, I forgot to say, the pilots are all distressingly young, apparently called “kildren” who are made for fighting the war. Anyway, you might notice soon that a new pilot arrives who really looks like the old one, but no one comments on this, so you figure why go against the flow[12]. The movie goes on, there’s no Moment Of Revelation, where everything becomes clear and the great evil is destroyed. Instead, there are a few scenes where some clues are provided, and then eventually the movie ends. What you sort of come to realize is that they’re all just fighting in this kind of bubble. They die and are replaced by identical “copies” (for want of a word), and oblivious to all change, keep going. They’re in this play-war which is occurring in the midst of another otherwise normal (ish) world, all for the sake of bringing meaning to the world. Ostensibly the “normal” world has the better perspective, being able to see everything, but in truth, they are bested by a third perspective, namely the viewers. The viewer sees the kildren’s world almost from within, from within their dreamy bubble, but can also by the movie’s end see the bubble from without, and what it is that separates the inside from out. Unlike the kildren the viewer has a sense of continuity, and unlike the outsiders, the viewer has a sense of the “now-ness” which defines the kildren’s existence.
You can probably see where I’m going with this[13]. Kay is about experiencing existence, the fabric of everything, and by offering this timeless-personless perspective, it not only readjusts our perception of objectivity but also readjusts what it means to be a subject within this fucked up matrix. You might have thought that this plain/plane perception might be antithetical to the sense of “I”, but that’s not the case. Quite the opposite: ketamine allows for a better[14] appreciation of what it means to be a point of view, an experiencing point within that indescribable something which is existence. Similarly, The Sky Crawlers is not merely an illustration of egos being made afresh; it’s a celebration of existence from the first person. Both the movie and the drug show us that subjectivity can only be made sense of from some sort of more basic, more outer, world and that only from within this outer non-descript world, is it possible to gain a full appreciation of subjectivity. That’s quite a mouthful so I’ve made a table to try and make the parallels clearer:
“A” can only be made sense of from “B”, and although “B” appears to be the opposite of “A”, it is only from “B” that “C” can be appreciated.
| A. (subjectivity) | B. (objectivity) | C. (subjectivity) | |
| Ketamine | Me | The ego-less state | Experience |
| The Sky Crawlers | Kildren | “Normal” world | Meaning |
It’s almost impossible not to quote Blake here: If the doors of perceptions were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.
Oh shit, before I forget. Ratings. I’d give ketamine 5/5 with the caveat that it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea[15]. And I’d give The Sky Crawlers 4.5/5. It loses half a mark: partly for some scenes where things are s-p-e-l-l-e-d out a bit much, but more-so because Bruce Willis isn’t in it.
[1] Incidentally, if you are reading this in the future: man, I’m sorry about the environment; time’s a bitch
[2] If you think of your brain as a complicated tangle of wires (here neurons) that send messages from one part to another, then “receptors” are what allow different wires to connect, and hence send information across from one wire to another. There are heaps and heaps of different types, which is useful for example for developing psychotherapeutic drugs; “NMDA” is just one class of receptors.
[3] Admittedly this is my theory.
[4] I had more, but the hard attempts at wit feel like just that
[5] To quote a Yr.12 English essay I once regurgitated
[6] Anecdotal evidence obviously, but “objectivity” is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot by those trying to describe their K-trip, so I doubt I’m all that special
[7] Is it just my memory, or were Frodo and Sam complaining about food through 90% of that?
[8] Yeah, that’s right, I just blew your mind. But seriously, caveats: individual use (and uses) vary, notably “set and setting” remains as true today as it ever did. Erowid.org is a great source for those seeking more information. Information is vital.
[9] Incidentally, I kid not. (Said the baby goat).
[10] Yeah, I’m not sure what this exactly means either
[11] Normally I’m just thankful if there’s no blue hair
[12] And reason #6 for why you’d make a shit salmon
[13] “Semantic manipulation”, cries the heckler. Maybe.
[14] I dare say
[15] Would be some cup though. In seriousness: I’ve been frivolous throughout this piece, but ketamine’s a serious experience, I would recommend against its use in a party environment, and although I used words like “peak” it’s not euphoric in the sense that opiates or amphetamines are, so don’t look to it as access to some high. This isn’t me getting last minute pangs of morality, just ensuring that I’m not presenting some sort of false advertising. We may joke about it, but recreational use of special K is illegal. Fuck over the system. Just don’t fuck yourself over at the same time.
[I] Ketamine, sold under the brand name Ketalar among others, is a medication mainly used for starting and maintaining anesthesia. It induces a trance-like state while providing pain relief, sedation, and memory loss. Other uses include for chronic pain and for sedation in intensive care. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine.
[II] The Sky Crawlers is a 2008 Japanese anime film, directed by Mamoru Oshii. It is an adaptation of Hiroshi Mori’s novel of the same name. It was released across Japanese theatres by Warner Bros. Japan on August 2, 2008. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sky_Crawlers_(film)
