Multilayered narcissism

Sept 21, 2016

AGAINST my better judgement, and with time on my hands, I decided to watch an old DVD commemorating the 50th or 60th or 70th anniversary - it hardly matters, really - of the American Film Institute. Mostly, it consists of a lavish collection of clips celebrating some of the best Hollywood movies of all time, interspersed with some of the most insufferable, humourless, self-regarding, pompous and irrelevant talking heads you could possibly imagine, including some blustering baseball team boss and the preposterous but safely pre-presidential Donald Trump boasting about his property portfolio while supposedly discussing the merits of King Kong. 

Still even in the company of such exalted buffoonery as Trump and Larry King, the actor Dustin Hoffman manages to distinguish himself, feigning to be overwhelmed with emotion as he dabs at his eyes and describes how a “mere comedy” like Tootsie enabled him to pay tribute to all the interesting but ugly women he simply had no choice but to ignore at parties. 

Hoffman holds his fingers in the air as if to summon the false modesty required to beg the viewer’s patience. He pauses, swallows and maintains a rictus grin as he tries far too hard to show us that although he is completely overcome, he is bravely and modestly doing his absolute utmost to try to pretend that he doesn’t want us to know that he is completely overcome.

And so, in the space of just two minutes, Hoffman manages to give a complex, multilayered portrayal of a complete knob who thinks he is talented enough to disguise his own insuperable narcissism.

Sally Field appears occasionally to lean pointlessly on a baluster and stare at the camera with her valium eyes, all the while simpering about the magic and wonder of film. Not only are we in an irony-free zone: we are also surrounded by people who wouldn’t even dream of giving their opinion on an old movie if they couldn’t self-aggrandize at the same time. Worst of all is Ted Turner, who uses the occasion to state categorically that he would not end lonely and unloved like Citizen Kane, no siree.  

For a few moments we return to earth, in the form of Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Martin Scorcese and William Friedkin, who take the trouble to describe a movie without concluding that it was designed expressly to bolster their own eminence.

And it occurs to me: the problem with American culture is that it seems to be always in search of inspiration, rather than the truth.