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Date Posted: 13:14:44 06/11/07 Mon
Author: Dina Costa (Literature and film)
Subject: Task Four

UFMG – FALE
ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS
Professor: Adriana Tenuta


Narcissus and the narcissist Alfie:
The View of the myth and the role of Nemesis in the twenty-first century

By Dina Fernanda Costa
June 2007

“Myth is thought of as an autonomous form of the human spirit and hence is not reducible to the play of empirical-psychological forces governing the production of representations (…) but will seek to apprehend the subject of the cultural process, the human spirit, solely in its pure actuality and diverse configurations whose immanent forms it will strive to ascertain.”
David Bidney
(in Myth: a symposium pages 6and7; 1974)






Introduction

This paper examines the view of the selfish and self-esteem role in modern men who do not want to develop a real relationship with women but only use them for fun with no care about their feelings. In the Myth of Narcissus he hurts the people that fall in love with him avoiding them because of his high self-esteem and his selfishness. Therefore the film character Alfie is the typical modern male who does not want to get involved but wants to enjoy as much women as possible and he says that New York is a garden full of different flowers and that he wants to smell all of them. This poetic comparison is also something full of prejudice, when he says smell it is the same as taste but not getting involved, and he hurts the women he tastes or better saying, uses. Obviously, Alfie is a womanizer and Lasch (15; 1983) says are sexual permissive and greedy, but the way he treats women is almost the same as he was dismissing them like Narcissus does to the nymphs that fell in love with him.
Nemesis role in the myth of Narcissus is to revenge for the nymphs Narcissus rejected. Then, Nemesis cursed Narcissus to fall in love with some impossible love (in some versions) or with the first one he could see, when Narcissus went drinking some water in a spring or a river, he saw his own reflection into the water and fell in love. Narcissus could not move away from the vision of the beloved figure and died trying to catch it, which was himself, so he drawn himself into the water (Ovid’s version). Nevertheless, in the film the role of Nemesis is pervasive and subtle, because Alfie only perceive he has been punished when he goes to the Hudson River shore to reflect upon his life and what he is doing with it by rejecting anyone who cared about him and feeling under his own skin what is being rejected. According to Lasch (30; 1983) the narcissist needs the others admiration to validate his self-esteem and he cannot live without an audience that admires him, because the world is his mirror. Otherwise, Narcissus dismisses everyone who falls in love with him but he needs this attention to construct his self-image as someone attractive and desirable.
The myth of Narcissus and the role of Nemesis are actualized by the film Alfie (2004) because both Narcissus and Alfie have admirers and depend on them to maintain their status quo. By means of the analysis of the characters by comparison and contrast in both the myth of Narcissus and the film Alfie (2004) and the comparison of the last scene of the film - in which the main character named Alfie goes to the shore of Hudson river to reflect upon his life style and its consequences - and the tragic end of Narcissus, to prove the actualization of the myth of Narcissus and the role of Nemesis by the film Alfie (2004).
The film is directed by Charles Shyer and is and adaptation of a play of Bill Naughton and was adapted for the screen by Bill Naughton, Charles Shyer and Elaine Pope. The version analyzed is the 2004 version with Jude Law as Alfie, Marisa Tomei as Julie, Susan Sarandon as Liz, Nia Long as Lonette, Omar Epps as Marlon and Siena Miller as Nikki.











Film Summary
The film Alfie (2004) starts by showing Alfie, who is the main character, wandering in New York and admiring it as a garden full of flowers, but the flowers are the women he wants to have. Then, as he is the narrator, he presents his love affairs describing those ladies as if they were people from whom he gets out something he needs, but none of them are complete enough for his expectations. He has an only friend, Marlon, who dates Lonette and wants to marry her. But the lovers are not together because of an argument they had.
It is then Alfie tries to help them getting back by going to talk to her. During the conversation Alfie and Lonette get really drunk and have sex, thence she gets pregnant. When she tells him she is pregnant, Alfie asks her to have an abortion and she tells him she will do so, but she does not. Lonette tells Marlon everything that have happened and they get together again moving to the countryside to raise the baby. Because of this, Alfie loses his only friend, but he does not care.
Another of Alfie’s affair is Julie, a single mother of a boy. She’s very sensible and amorous unto Alfie. In this while the narrator – Alfie – tells us Julie is a quasi-girlfriend with whom he has good food and good bed. During this relationship, he is also seeing Dorie, who comes to be a lonely wife who hasn’t been touched by the husband. Julie finds a panty of Dorie’s in Alfie’s coat pocket and parts with him. After that, Alfie dismisses Dorie because she is getting dependant and it annoys him.
When he meets Liz he gets completely interested for “she’s an elder woman in very good shape”, according to him, and she will not request anything from him but sexual pleasure, even though they don’t see each other for a while. In this lack of time, Alfie meets “the perfect woman” as he says “that one anybody can take the eyes of her, she stops the traffic”. Nikki is just like him but female. They start living together and little time after he notices that she is not that perfect, he says she is just like those beautiful sculptures at the museums, they seem perfect from a certain distance, but if you get closer you can see the ruptures in the stone. Meanwhile, he meets Liz again and starts an affair then he knew that Lonette had his son. Liz’s return serves to destroy Nikki’s relationship with Alfie. Then again, Liz is also just like Alfie himself, she does not care about anyone’s feeling and substitutes Alfie for a younger boy. Because of his carelessness, Alfie loses both women. At this point he decides to see his son, but his ex- best friend tells him that he is not allowed to get close to them again.
After all, he goes to the Hudson River shore to reflect about what he did of his own life. So he meets Dorie and tries to get her back, then she says to him that he was nothing for her and that she has been very happy with her husband since Alfie had dismissed her. The film ends with Alfie perceiving that he could not have that lifestyle back and not even his peace of mind back.























Narcissus Myth Summary

Narcissus is a very handsome young man who despised love. There are a lot of versions for this myth, but the most known is Ovid’s version in his Metamorphoses, in which Narcissus was the most beautiful mortal that have ever been born. He was the son of God-river Cefisus and the nymph Lyriope. Because of her worries about his son’s rare beauty, she wanted to know for how long he would live and asked the prophet Tiresias who answered that her son could live a long life if he never knew himself.
The wild, pretty and proud young man remained insensible to the nymphs and to the girls who continued falling in love with him. One of them was the nymph Echo that was so deeply in love and was so hurt by his refusals that she disappeared but her voice remained repeating the last word of what anyone says. The other nymphs were so angry that they asked Nemesis for revenge and Nemesis cursed Narcissus to fall in love with someone he could not have.
One day, Narcissus went hunting and got thirsty. So when he went drinking from a river, he saw his reflection in the water and felt desperately in love with his own image, with himself. Since this moment, he could not go away from that beloved vision and died by starvation in the river’s shore. A flower was found in the place where the body was lying, which was called narcissus in his memory.







The Characters Analysis
The women characters in the myth are flat and are there just to support the main character Narcissus, except Echo and Nemesis, which are really representative in the myth. Echo is the incarnation of suffering by a beloved dismissal and Nemesis is the one who gives Narcissus what he deserves by contradicting the order of things, or better saying, by neglecting the love in his life. Nemesis makes Narcissus pay with his own life to realign the order of things.
In the film, the women characters are flat in the beginning of the story, but from the middle, or since Liz appears they grow stronger in the plot and act to make Alfie suffer, but what really makes him suffer is Liz’s rejection. According to Lash (61; 1983) when the narcissist is rejected, something is very wrong in his expectations of life. Despite Alfie is a womanizer, the way he treats women is much more as he was dismissing them just like Narcissus does to the nymphs that fell in love with him. Alfie uses the women just to have sexual pleasure or to compose his image; he says that the perfect woman has to stop the traffic, so he is only looking for beauty to show out. In the last scene he perceives that he is so empty that his own beauty does not mean so much as he saw in his relationship with Nikki, who was gorgeous but only this and anything else. The character of Nikki functions as a mirror where Alfie was able to see his own lack of personality in another person.
The role of Liz in the film is almost the same as Nemesis role in the myth; Liz is the strongest figure who destroys Alfie self-esteem by initiating his reflection process upon himself and his consequent falling. Alfie is the modern Narcissus, because he has many of Narcissus’s characteristics like prettiness, carelessness for other people feelings, selfishness and high self-esteem. These are what give them structure as characters, but when they both face the reality of not having what they want, they both ruin themselves.

Analysis of the End of Both Stories
In the myth of Narcissus, he kills himself in a river because he cannot have his beloved figure, which is himself. Alfie does not kill himself, but a rotten part of his personality. In fact he realizes that his whole personality is rotten. Although Alfie does not die, he continues living with no hope for the future because he faces his own emptiness, which is a worse punishment than that of does not live any longer.
According to Lash (47: 1983) the experience of this inside emptiness is a horrifying feeling that in some existence level this person becomes no one, his self-identity collapses when he perceives that he is really nobody and in his deep there is no one. So the Nemesis role for Alfie is a worse punishment than for Narcissus, being alive but anything is not good, better being dead at all.
When Narcissus dies, a flower, which is a symbol of purity, remains to symbolize that his suffering served to the purpose of purifying himself and the flower is a signal that he had accomplished the task. However, Alfie has to face his emptiness, he shows no sign that he will improve himself, but he also realizes that his peace of mind has gone forever.










Conclusion
Each society tries to deal with the universal crisis (…) – the trauma of the separation from the mother, the fear of being abandoned, the pain for being competing for the mother’s love – (…) this psychological events shape a personality, deforms it psychologically. ( Lash, 58: 1983)

Myths are interpreted “symbolically” for their ideal meaning. (Bidney, 17; 1974)

Myth has a positive value (…) as a record of man’s culture history and as a means of establishing universal patterns of thought (…) but because the plot or theme suggests to us universal patterns of motivation and conduct. ( Bidney, 22; 1974)

What happens in our modern society seems as a repetition of ancient patterns of behavior and thought, but modernized by elements of the age that the story is told. Even knowing that it would be a wrong path, people continue repeating those patterns; women that fall in love with careless men, men that cannot feel love or affection, suffering, tears and sadness. It is as old as the world is, but people continue trying to succeed and hoping for someone to fulfill their romantic dreams.
The fact that the villain, the bad guy, pays for what he did is as ancient as the sea, but this mythological idea of punishment is what gives us some hope and makes the stories being repeated. Thus, Nemesis role as well as Narcissus role will never disappear from humanity because they are intrinsic in the human kind unconscious thought.
The Nemesis role in the twenty-first century is at the same time softer because it does not leave the condemned to the real death, but heavier because it condemns him to live facing his mistakes, crimes and emptiness with no hope of changing.







Bibliographical Sources
Film
ALFIE. Director Charles Shyer. Performed: Jude Law, Susan Sarandon and Marisa Tomei. DVD 2004.

Books
BIDNEY, David. Myth Symbolism and Truth. In: SEBEOK, Thomas A. Myth: a Symposium. Indiana University Press, London, 1955. Seventh Printing 1974 (pages 3 to 24).

BRANDÂO, Junito de Souza. Dicionário Mítico-Etimológico da Mitologia Grega. Editora Vozes. Petrópolis, RJ. 1991 (pages 155,156).

FAVRE, Yves-Alain. Narciso. In: BRUNEL, Pierre. Dicionário de Mitos Literários. Tradução: Carlos Sussekind ( et al.). José Olympio Editora S.A. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 1994 (pages 747 to 750).

GRIMAL, Pierre. Dicionário da Mitologia Grega e Romana. Tradução: Victor Jabouille. 2ª Edição. Editora Bertrand Brasil S.A. Rio de Janeiro, RJ. 1991. (pages 322,323,326,327).

LASH, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: the American life in a hopeless era. Oxford University Press, New York, 1983. (pages 14 to 246).

Internet Researched Websites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie#Plot_and_other_details (16/09/2006)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_%282004_film%29 (16/09/2006)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375173/plotsummary (16/09/2006)
http://www.reelviews.net/movies/a/alfie/html (26/09/2006)

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