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In Ken Russell’s 1980 movie, “Altered States,” a young, smug Bill Hurt—pursuant to his ingestion of a murky brew of organic hallucinogens south of the border—has a series of life-altering experiences. First of all, after a vigorous session of campground coitus (bless their hearts, the young, in the urgency of their rosy-cheeked lust, never seem to notice the grit and the sand flies), his lovely, honey-haired girlfriend, Emily, slowly morphs before his dilated pupils into an iguana! ("Whoa! Get back Mama!" thinks Bill.) A really big, meaty one with long, snakey tongue and fat, spiny tail. Luckily, no locals happened by, because rural Mexicans really appreciate a nice, plump, fresh iguana--which they call "pollo del desierto" (desert chicken)--and in her current state, Emily, even after being skinned and cleaned, could easily have filled the tacos, chalupas and enchiladas of a large campesino family for several weeks to come.
Come morning, the mystery deepens when Emily vehemently denies turning into a reptile.
Oddly encouraged by this initial, possibly hallucinatory event, Bill buys up several plastic gallon jugs of the mystic liquor from the local sun-wrinkled shaman, and embarks upon a steady regimen of enquiries into the "true self" back at home. Coincidentally or not (the film, and indeed my own personal history, implies a causal link), this parallels his own regression from pompous, pedantic graduate student into capering, meat-eating chimpanzee, and our leading man eventually wakes up in the monkey enclosure of the local zoo with an antelope ear hanging out his mouth. At this point, once he's been bailed out, de-loused and had his teeth brushed, Mr. Hurt becomes convinced he’s on the trail of something big, perhaps publishable along the lines of Carlos Castaneda or Shirley MacLaine. Emily, however, is starting to get petulant over what she calls his “childish shenanigans.”
So far, so good: to this critic, it all rang achingly true. But where most directors would now shift gears into a conventional Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore, "He says, she says" romantic comedy, Ken Russell bites down to perform a frightening dissection of the human psyche. Now comes the climactic series of scenes for which the movie is famous.
Disregarding Emily's growing peevishness, Mr. Hurt proceeds with his experiments. He also stops eating nutritious foods; neglects his household chores, personal hygiene and PhD dissertation; and leaves the toilet seat up after using the bathroom. Finally, under the influence of a mega-dose of mojo juice taken in a sensory deprivation tank (which looked a lot like an ordinary Maytag washing machine), Bill shockingly devolves into a large, electrified blob of protoplasm which plops out of the washing machine door to shriek and flop around the laundry room floor like the Pillsbury Dough Boy doing "Flashdance." In this last altered state, Mr. Hurt viscerally experiences the epiphany that the prime-mover permeating all biological life is not pure, bright-light, God’s-love, transcendental consciousness, as so many of us had hoped in our youth, but is instead nothing more than throbbing, hysterical, all-pervading terror.
Have you ever sat in a theatre where every throat opened in unison to wail "No!"? I mean, besides the sequence in "There's Something About Mary" in which Ben Stiller gets his "frank and beans" caught in his zipper?
Now, just as in "Mary," the door opens on a scene of excruciating nightmarishness. Emily stands on the threshold, staring with great revulsion at the flopping, electrified blob: Christ! How the hell did this get in the house? She pokes it tentatively with a mop; she stamps her feet. “Shoo! Get!” she urges. But when this powerful display of female ire and irk engenders no response other than a higher tone of shrieking, it belatedly dawns on her that this writhing man-sized gob of protoplasm is nothing more than her own ever more exasperating sweetheart himself. Sigh. “Oh, for fuck's sake, Bill, what next?” After transferring the wet clothes into the dryer and stuffing a second load into the washer, Emily gathers the crackling, pulsating blob into her arms and through the healing power of a good woman’s love returns Bill to human form.
Bill clasps his darling fervently to his chest and exclaims, "You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit...I don't want to frighten you, Emily, but what I'm trying to tell you is that moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and growing within me now..."
Wow, that does sound like bad boogie. A chastened Mr. Hurt flushes the last fruity half-gallon of daddy's bad medicine down the toilet, finishes his degree, finds a job in Defense and impregnates Blair with a baker's dozen of curly-tailed babies (drug damaged genes). The Reagan era begins. The End.
When I saw the movie almost twenty-five years ago, I thought, “Bummer, Billy boy, but we all have bad trips—I’ve had some doozies, oh boy, let me tell you—you just have to get back on the horse.”
But as the decades passed and I continued to ponder the movie's lessons, it crossed my mind that a more realistic denouement might have had the Giant Gila Monster of Female Disgruntlement doing epic battle with the Quivering Blob of the Male Fear of Adulthood. (We could also squeeze in the Carnivorous Chimpanzee for a bestial three-way of socio-political metaphors. And let's add in a mysterious space obelisk for that eerie space-obelisk ambiance.) As the primordial struggle rages back and forth against the backdrop of spinning, shuddering, sloshing appliances (and the dark obelisk)—just picture the thrashing of tails and crackling of electricity, the trumpeting of rage and squeals of fear—we let the credits roll, allowing each viewer to project that future he or she finds most satisfying.
But let’s back up and analyze Mr. Hurt’s revelations one at a time.
First of all, as those of us blessed with long-term significant others know, one doesn’t need to chew peyote or datura root in order to experience the unhappy and ill-boding metamorphosis of girlfriend into iguana, though, admittedly, mind-twisting drugs can exacerbate an already uncomfortable state of affairs. Indeed, there are any number of situations and attendant male behavior patterns that almost inevitably precipitate the same female response -- the romantic spring-break camping trip (when she wanted to go to Cancun) is actually one of the more common. For what it’s worth, I’ve personally found, with Jeannine, that if I let her get up first in the morning—brush her teeth, shower, put on a little make-up and have her first cup of coffee before I unclench my own eyelids, and then confine my interpersonal repartee to “Yes, dear, of course, dear, umm hum, whatever you decide dear. Here's some more money, dear”—that the reptilian transformation is significantly ameliorated.
Mr. Hurt’s second epiphany, the so-called chimpanzee identification syndrome, is now classified by The West Coast Association of Psychologists as an authentic “self-knowledge event” for those of us in sales, middle management or politics. For my part, I keep a pop-goes-the-weasel box handy for those times when the weight of self-knowingness is simply too heavy a burden—such as after motivational trainings and sycophantic ass-licking sessions with my VP. On these occasions, when my hysterical giggling threatens to shift into the mouth-gaping, soundless-scream phase, I find it oddly comforting to take off all my clothes and crank the little handle as I caper along to the classic children’s melody. Waiting for Mr. Weasel or Mr. Demented Clown to pop out of its can and scare the shit out of me. Perhaps you too might find some comfort in this odd, little ritual.
And, of course, the fundamental reality of all-pervading terror becomes apparent to almost everyone sometime between enrollment in junior high school and the arrival of one’s AARP card. If truth be acknowledged, aren’t we Americans all going round and round the Mulberry bush of life, gleeful and blithe as innocent toddlers of conspicuous consumption (Free to be me!), until that inevitable moment when the rabid weasel—yesterday’s sex diseases, today’s terrorism and childhood obesity, tomorrow’s mortgage rate hike and President Jeb Bush—turns and shows its sharp, septic teeth? Turning us into squealing, terrified blobs of protoplasm. This occurs with or without substance abuse, though studies have now conclusively proven that certain drugs and cleaning products (such as Tidy Bowl and Janitor-in-a-Drum)--especially when paired with minds of a certain fragility (mea culpa)--not only hasten the insight but enhance it with special effects of especially vivid, gore-drenched dreadfulness. Depending on your taste for such things, this may or may not be a benefit. (Fundamentalists and conservatives opt for a drug-free and more patriotic, faith-and-gun-based gore-drenched dreadfulness.)
I’m not one to belittle the importance of these seminal realizations of “Altered States”—the iguana, chimp and quivering blob are now well established as the inescapable paradigms for humanity in our enlightened times—but, frankly, haven't you found that the thrill of "Knowing Thyself," of "Truth with a capital T," has worn progressively thinner as the years have passed? Especially as compared to the beckoning, anesthetic joys of what I call “the gated community of the medicated, middle-aged mind”? Those of us who have broached the warm, foot-sucking tar pit of our forties must seriously consider making the switch from the intrinsically unpredictable “vision-quest” family of hallucinogenic drugs to a more enabling, age-appropriate cocktail of prescription pharmaceuticals. Such as the fortunate blend of tranquilizers, antidepressants, penis-pumpers, laxatives and diet amphetamines that I swallow, snort, smoke or inject each day at religiously specified times. These modern, miracle “hidey-hole” drugs all carry the FDA Seal of Approval and are easily available from your local HMO or online Canadian pharmacy. (No more trying to chase down the local 14-year-old, backwards-baseball-cap and pants-around-the-knees, rap-gangsta drug dealer: “Hey man, don’t run away! I'm cool, bro! I'm phat! Aw, come on, you fucking ageist punk!”) While this soothing cocktail of benevolent chemicals doesn’t eradicate the panic, impotence and Republicanism that dominate the new millennium, I do find that it generally dampens them down to almost manageable proportions.
And that, my sweet chickabee, may be the most elusive altered state of them all.
"Medicines are nothing in themselves,
if not properly used,
but the very hands of the gods,
if employed with reason and prudence."
Herophilus
By Henry E. Panky
Grab a Club, Dear Friend,
& Dance with Me Around the Mysterious Space Obelisk
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