'Marty Supreme' and Perfectionism's Degradation of Spirit |
The new film Marty Supreme is, at once, the embodiment of perfectionism, narcissism, greed, moxie, passion, genius, and cultural degradation. The protagonist, Marty Mauser, elicits all of your feelings because you can’t make sense of how you should feel about him. Is he the problem, or is it the culture? Is he just surviving and playing by the rules imparted to him by the real culprits? Or is this just human nature, and he’s an exemplar? And is morality meaningful when it’s so frequently sacrificed for success, which, in turn, is cheered on as the pinnacle of existence? The film leaves you with so many questions, about Marty and yourself.
As a perfectionist, I easily saw myself in Marty: the inability to lose or take responsibility, the tantrums and pain of feeling inferior to anyone, the grandiosity in believing you’re innately special (even if only because you are in some domain), and the sense that others in your life are merely secondary characters acting as ornaments for the main attraction. Marty sacrifices any semblance of humanity in pursuit of glory, which he notes is life-defining—evident in his comment to his........