Maybe that's what draws me to all films based on Dick's stories. That central theme of being able to see a reality that nobody else sees.
As I'm listening to the podcast I start wondering if Philip K. Dick was an ACoN. You pick up on different threads once you know about Narcissism. There were a lot of clues in the things they were discussing about Dick's life even if they themselves weren't picking up on them. They spoke about Dick's relationship with his mother. For some reason this made me think of that scene in "Blade Runner" when Mr. Holden is running a VK test to see if Leon is a replicant:
Mr Holden says: "Describe in single words the good things that come into your mind about your mother."
Leon replies: "My mother? Let me tell you about my mother" and shoots Mr. Holden.
Well, if that doesn't reek of ACoNhood I don't know what does.
I've never read him or seen any of his movies, but I admit I laughed when I read this.
ReplyDeleteHaha you know it only occurred to me that this scene was funny when I was listening to the podcast, all the times I'd seen the film before I'd missed the irony entirely. Now I wonder how many people will see this film and never know about this subthread.
DeleteOh cool! Thanks for the recommendations! I can't believe I've never seen Blade Runner (it is definitely in my 'genre' of films!), especially because of my feelings on Harrison Ford (decidedly positive!). ;-)
ReplyDeleteJust like the "recommended reads", I'd love to have an "ACoN Cinema" recommendation list (from all genres of films, not just action, which is what I prefer!). There are so many great movies out there that have that familiar "ACoN" feeling to them!
It would be cool to do a list of artwork that speaks to ACoNs, too. :-)
That would be really good Quercus, particularly if people actually contributed why the films, books or artwork speak to them from that point of view. I went to an exhibition of Van Gogh's letters last year and it was fascinating. I wish I could see all the material again, I bet there would be a lot of clues too.
DeleteThe only films I have preconceived notions of are ones that have put a book into a movie. And then, sometimes, I feel let down. But other than that, like you, I just go where the story takes me. I know so many people who only watch films based on what's popular or someone else's opinion and that annoys me. Or people who will discount a whole movie as bad because it was too graphic or violent or whatever.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the movie suggestions!
Yes, I am the same with books that are made into movies. They always seem to change the story and if you've read the book it's very annoying.
DeleteThe Matrix had that effect on me. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Unplugging from FOO felt like that. I also loved Alien (the first one, Ridley rocks!). I do think there's resonance for ACoNs with these films. Mos def.
ReplyDeleteCS, your comment got me thinking about the Scott brothers. I remembered reading about Tony Scott' suicide a couple of months ago. Since so many ACoNs have suffered or suffer from suicidal ideation, it does make you wonder. In the wikipedia page on Ridley Scott it also said this: "He was raised in an Army family, so for most of his early life, his father — an officer in the Royal Engineers — was absent." I think the "absent father" whether physically or emotionally is a common thread with ACoNs even if it's not discussed as much as the Nmother.
DeleteHi Kara,
ReplyDeleteI also liked this film since childhood (though have never read the book - keep meaning too but I can never find a copy :P) In a creepy sort of way that's hard to explain, I identified with both the replicants who were unaware of their true nature as well as the replicants who were being hunted down.
I also loved that Phillip K Dick story about the man who begins to hear insects plotting against him. Can't recall the name of it, though.
I don't know any ACoN films (besides ordinary people, which I've never been able to watch all the way through - too triggering) but there are lots of novels with NP characters. They make great villans, I suppose! :p
Have you ever read anything by Diana Wynne Jones? She mainly wrote young adult fantasy novels. I discovered her books as a youth, and one of the things that felt so relatable about them is the mother characters were usually either detached, uncaring, covertly malicious or occasionally out-right malevolent. It was rare to find such depictions of mothers in young adult novels in the 80's.
I later read an essay Jones wrote about her early life and the things she described about her parents smacked of pure N's through and through. It makes sense this would have influenced her writing. For my part I was glad that she wrote such characters. It reflected my own reality, where not all mothers were nice and kind. It's things like this that makes an ACoN not feel so alone.
Hi Elena,
DeleteNo, I hadn't heard of Diana Wynne Jones. I checked her bio on wikipedia and I found this: "In 1943 her family finally settled in Thaxted, Essex, where her parents worked running an educational conference centre. There, Jones and her two younger sisters Isobel (later Professor Isobel Armstrong, the literary critic) and Ursula spent a childhood left chiefly to their own devices." Children left chiefly to their own devices, yep I can relate to that too.
There's a photograph of her on the article. I thought her smile was interesting: most of the ACoNs I know in real life smile that way too (including me) and I've noticed that same smile in the photographs of the bloggers who have posted photos of themselves.
I know what you mean about the film "Ordinary People", someone mentioned it in a blog, I went to check the trailer and I felt the same as you. I don't know that I could watch the whole film, just watching the trailer felt really painful.
Hi Kara,
DeleteI found the Jones essay I mentioned online here:
http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/autobiog.htm
It's interesting in and of itself, but some parts really jump out now, knowing something about N's.
Like how she describes reuniting with her mother after staying with her grandparents, when she was still very young:
"Looking back, I see that my relationship with my mother never recovered from this. When she arrived in Wales, she had seen me as something other, which she rather disliked. She said I would grow up just like my aunt and accused me of taking my aunt’s side. It did not help that, at that time, my hair was just passing from blond to a colour my mother called mouse and I looked very little like either side of the family. My parents were both short, black-haired, and handsome, where I was tall and blue-eyed. When we got back to London, my mother resisted all my attempts to hug her on the grounds that I was too big."
And this, when her parents were running a school:
"Neither had time for us. For a short while the three of us children shared a room at the top of the house; but my parents were so dedicated to making a success of the centre that they decided that room was needed for additional guests. We were put out into The Cottage. This was a lean-to, two-room shack across the yard from the house. The mud floor of the lower room was hastily covered with concrete and our beds were crammed into the upper floor. And we were left to our own devices. Looking back on this, we all find it extraordinary; for damp climbed the walls and, almost as soon as we had arrived in Thaxted, I had contracted juvenile rheumatism, which seriously affected my heart; and Ursula also contracted it soon after."
And lots more as well. Classic N behavior, IMO
I did think of another ACoN film - Black Swan. I liked it, but it gave me nightmares for a week! A little too close for comfort. Not that I was ever *quite* that insane, but still...:p It was a good illustration of what an anxiety disorder feels like and the split of black and white thinking.
I've tried to watch ordinary people three different times, once on the advice of a therapist but it was impossible to take it. It didn't help that my Nmother closely resembled the actress in the film.
Ordinary People was terrifying to me when it first came out. I think i was in high school, and it was so painful watching the character, Conrad, try to get some love out of his mother while his father just enabled her. I understand now why I found it so impossible to take. But my father wasn't even as solicitous of me as "Connie's" father was in that movie. In fact, my father ignored me, and let my mother just passive aggress away.
DeleteElena, thanks for the link to Jones' bio. What an account, so many common threads: children being left to their devices, taking refuge in books, being told that she would grow up to be like her aunt (I was told this too-but my mother was referring to my aunt's personality not her physical appearance), a father that never spoke to them unless he was angry, illness being seen as a nuisance... I'm sure there's more, these are just a few I've picked up from the story.
DeleteI haven't seen Black Swan. The film came out before I knew about narcissism. I watched the trailer and found it harrowing. In an interview with Natalie Portman, they discussed the dual nature of the swan character in the ballet story. Swan Lake is one of those stories that I've grown up hearing about but then I realised that I didn't really know what the story was about. I meant to research it further but never got around it.
I wonder if some storytellers were AcON; I get how we can look at films differently and it makes me wonder with some stories - were they talking about narcissism? T
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of storytellers were ACoNs, and they were definitively talking about narcissism but I'm not sure that they were aware of it. xx
DeleteYour post connected some dots on a part of a dialogue from a movie. It stuck out in my head for a long time and it makes sense now. xxT
DeleteI agree with Kara. And remember the oldest fairy tales are about it. Zeus eating his own children out of fear of competition; the evil stepmother; the Snow White story. Narcissism and its malignant forms are ever present in story telling. But for me what's most interesting is that so many writers feel the need to write precisely because they were ACoNs, as kara points out, whether they realized it or not.
ReplyDeleteGreek mythology! Yes, of course! I was fascinated with it as a child; read "The Odyssey" when I was 11 yrs old then I moved on to the section on the subject on the 12 volume encyclopaedia at home, and then "The Metamorphoses" by Ovid. It's like I couldn't get enough of it.
DeleteThat's just weird Kara. I was addicted to Greek Mythology at the same age. The stories spoke to me. Probably tapping into unconscious structures. But I never could've read The Odyssey at that age! You are a prodigy! Zeus would've felt pretty threatened by you. :-)
DeleteHahaha, I don't know about Zeus but the look on the Literature Teacher's face, when she saw it on the cards she'd made us fill with all the books we'd read the previous year was priceless ;) (At the time I didn't realise why she looked surprised, I wasn't aware that it was meant to be difficult, to me it was just a book about adventure; no different from "Treasure Island" or any other.)
DeleteIn a recent interview, Vanessa Redgrave said that she'd read "The Merchant of Venice" when she was 4 years old, I think that beats me hands down :)
OK, reading Merchant of Venice at 4 beats everybody hands down. But I didn't read the Odyssey until college. I think that we're taught in high school that some of these classics are "harder" than they would be if we'd read them earlier in life, unfiltered through the selling of "the canon." But I still say the Odyssey at 11, man you be precocious.
DeleteThanks CS. You're right, the Odyssey at 11 is pretty amazing. I really struggle accepting credit for things and always feel the need to minimise it. Something that I need to work on.
DeleteHi Kara,
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating thread. One of my college professors, Larry Sutin, wrote a biography of Philip K. Dick. Dick was a fascinating person, who struggled much of his adult life with either mental illness or fantastic spiritual experiences; it's hard to know for sure which. I haven't read sci-fi in years, but good sci-fi can make profound statements about the human condition. So thanks for this: I'm going to read some of Dick's novels, starting w/the autobiographical ones. Also going to re-watch Blade Runner...
Yes, I think stories abound with narcissistic characters, esp. mythical stories, which are really allegories about the internal human struggle. And isn't art--the best art, anyway--the result of people trying to make sense of their worlds? So it would make sense that narcissism is a common theme, I think. I wonder if any of you have seen Boss, the show on Starz with Kelsey Grammer playing the mayor of Chicago. It is, IMO, a stellar portrait of malignant narcissism and all the damage it does. His daughter is also a great depiction of a really messed-up ACoN. If you haven't checked it out, you should. But it can be hard to watch. I've been thinking about doing a post on it...
Anyway, thanks for the thread. I'm going to give some thought to narcissists in films and see if I can come up with a halfway decent list.
Kitty
Hi Kitty,
DeleteHow interesting to hear about your professor. I'll have to check it out when I get a chance, since in the podcast you only really get glimpses of Dick's life. A biography would have a lot more detail.
I agree with you that the best art is the result of people trying to make sense of their worlds. I haven't heard of the series you mention, I think it's scheduled to be broadcast in the UK next year. I'll have to keep an eye on it. I hope you do a post about it, it'll be interesting to hear your perspective before I watch it and see if I pick up on the same things. Look forward to see your list of narcissists in films too.