|
|
Mac the Nice
Blog
|
|
Sun, 26 Nov 2006
|
 Deconstructing the Cranberry
Had a first chance to see the uncensored cut
of
*Deconstructing Harry* tonight, and I'm still
undecided, though it's pretty interesting to see
NY Times reviewer, Janet Maslin was totally
tickled by it.
Others were not so thrilled, those in particular
who experience a great deal of libidinal distress
upon any mention of the "C-word"--something new
for a Woody Allen movie.
Novel as that may be, there has been nothing in
that to detract from the ongoing, most positive
presence of that certain cult following Woody has
gained among women film fans of an entirely
different sort who experience thrills at each
fleeting film frame showing a shot of Woody's
bald spot. Needless to say, in case this is the
first any have heard of it, this has been
going on only since he lost his toupee down the
back of a movie seat sometime in the early
Eighies.
Back on the negative, or more 'serious' side,
there is yet many a
reviewer that show a penchant, most odd to my
estimation, in making much of Woody's
alleged "narcissism". But truly, by so charging
him, do they not reveal nary a blinking
acquaintance with what that really means? And is
this not to confuse such a darkly obsessive
sexual pathology as that with the mildly neurotic
extroversion (and nothing more) which is the
creative engine driving this artist--
whose ego is, in short, "the eggs" which the
family of that crazy uncle in the Woody Allen
story, "need"?
If you are a woman who makes use, on occasion, of
the "C-word" or doesn't mind overly should she
hear her fellow woman giving breath to it, but
freaks out desperately any time it passes the
folds of male lips--okay, there, don't you see,
is an instance of narcissism.
A bit of study on the matter would show that
clinical narcissism, surprisingly has little to
do with the
ego, and everything going with other deeper,
darker, less well understood regions of the human
personality, as it turns out that most of
the narcissists you'll ever run into will tend to
be the last you'd think to be egotists.
Narcissism lurks in a regressive, defensive mode
as a protective measure--and there is no critic
of egotism more hostile to its appearance than
the narcissist.
Woody is an egotist but not a narcissist. No
narcissist would ever get caught dead on film in
front of the whole world with a big, yarmulke-
shaped bald spot showing--no matter what the cult
following for it, real or ideal. As vanity is
endemic to the complex, Woody would be wearing
contact lenses rather than be seen as the sort
of "egg-head" who wears glasses. Jokes that turn
on self-deprecation are impossible to the
narcissist. The insecurity, sense of inferiority
and self-doubt that Woody suffers, is nothing
compared to the monstrous sort of self-loathing
that plagues the narcissist--plagues him or her
even to the extent that it must always be
concealed from a conscious ego beneath a veneer
that is like a mirror reflecting images of self
taken from without, from elsewhere to stand as a
mask for the detested self within, where a
seriously ill-formed truly personal ego is being
kept in chains and in the dark.
No narcissist ever dares or desires to stand out
in society in the mode of his or her own truly
personal individuality. Rather, this is the
personality that will find its expression, its
talent in acting out a pretended self, whether on
the job, in the club, the professional
organization, the church, whatever the stage, the
role, the expression; by dancing, singing or
doing police work; whatever the setting, in the
office for doing the business of accounting, or
politicking--and it is all done in a mode and
after a style that the narcissist sees as being
the most respectable or otherwise, en vogue, and
recognizable to the rest of society as what's
chic, most acceptable and attractive.
No narcissist is ever equipped to go against the
flow, to revolt (unless it's in fashion) and when
it comes to any sort of identity, per self-image
it is always associated with what the narcissist
*is* at the level of the biological, the
physical, the anatomical, ethnically, as to
nationality, sexually, as to gender, and
additionally, the social, as to class: there is a
world of difference between the person who loves
himself, and the other who is in love with
himself, her own gender, his own nationality, his
race, her social class, his wardrobe, her self
and public image. It is not benignly neurotic to
be *in love* with the furnishings of one's own
apartment, or body, with the appurtenances of
one's own gender or citizenship. It's quite more
pathogenic: all super patriots are narcissists,
every racist and feminist, every immaculately
rigid conformist to a religious creed who is *in
love* with a Bible or a flag, or stridently
partisan political doctrine.
There is something deeply hidden in the psyche of
the Narcissist that he fears and therefore
loathes, and so by much help, as of gender, of
flag, of gun possession, high fashion, the social
register, strict practice of religion; narcissism
constructs a false ego, a brittle, rigid
personality that stands in contrast to a real
personality, as a manikin in a store window to
the artist who designed it.
The narcissist hates the person buried beneath
the veneer, but is so in love with the veneer,
the image, the mirror. The mere egotist who acts
out, as the attention seeking extrovert is
egocentric, consciously--not unconsciously, as
the narcissist whose behavior is controlled by
the darker, hidden demands of his sexual being,
demands (of the libido) which are forever in
conflict with the false personality, the social
person he constructs, the ego he borrows from
without, from expectations of the social ego,
or "super-ego". The mere Woody Allen style
egotist forever has the sense that his own ego is
a nice one, but a persecuted one to the extent
his perception is that others hate him, or sell
him short, or disregard him because he is short,
or Jewish, or Black, or a woman, or because she's
bookish and wears glasses, is lousy at sports,
likes to go bird-watching.
So, there's really nothing to it when Woody uses
the C-word in one of his movie scripts, nor is
there any reason that as an artist he should care
about enflaming the ire of those rigid
narcissists who are so utterly in love with their
own self-image as church-goers or feminists, that
they should feel so shattered by the word, and
thus be so hateful in their reaction to it as to
be utterly blind to the possibility that Woody
has every right to feel a need to strike back by
the C-Word against those very people who would
most object to it; those narcissists who blame
him for living in such rampant disregard to his
own public image; those crazy people who live so
in fear of their own sexual nature that when they
see it on display in Woody's life and art, have
no other desire than to persecute him just as
they do themselves, and make him the scapegoat
for it, to label him as "loser" and "abuser" or
some such, for it all.
Of course Woody Allen loves only one thing more
than having every sort of narcissist for the
object of his satire--and that is having Woody
Allen for it.
So, in spirit of the season, my fellow turkeys;
whatever may be the recipe for that particular
dressing of neurosis, howsoever spicy and/or
exotic that we all got crammed up inside from the
guzzle to the zatch, leave us never forget that
We Need the Eggs right along with the bread
crumbs and the sage.
Happy Thanksgiving to All, and to All a Good
Cranberry!
Generated
by Mp3Realm.org
Posted 00:52
|
No comments
|
Post a Comment:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
