Narcissistic Facades | What Makes Amy Dunne SO Disturbing

foreign this is Amy Elliott Dunn in the words of her husband Nick she's a calculated murderous psychopath to the outside world Amy's the ideal wife taking every box a husband could ask for she's the attractive supportive loving wife all packaged up and ready to be adored much to the dismay of her husband Nick all of these admirable traits have been carefully crafted and manipulated to fabricate Amy's perfect persona Nick is an unassuming writer and teacher from Missouri he's an imperfect protagonist on which we can project ourselves relating to his flaws and shortcomings he makes choices that sometimes you can understand empathize with and then things start to happen I'm not sure that I would do that exactly and and he's sometimes obtuse and sometimes astute and and what's interesting about that is that I think the audience is forced to project himself onto a more honest protagonist because that's then one that is conveniently manufactured to um you know sort of reassure us of our own virtue to a fault Nick insists on being forthcoming and polite on several occasions this appeasing disposition jeopardizes his Public Image ironically things start looking up when he abandons the truth in favor of a more carefully crafted appearance from the start the couple's relationship is founded on lies and deception from the first time they met Amy knew the kind of girl Nick wanted and finding him attractive and Charming she was willing to try to be that girl a new version of Amy was born cool girl Amy I'll let her explain what that means Nick loved a girl I was pretending to be cool girl men always use that don't they cool girl is hot cool girl is gay cool girl is fun cool girl never gets angry at her man she only smiles in a Chagrin loving manner you know she's like a sort of sophisticated machine who who can just tune up different elements depending on what's required by the situation you know she goes into a sort of hipster party in New York she's going to suppress certain elements of her personality tune up other things she'll say she likes a different type of music she'll say she's reading a different book than perhaps she is it's just it's just all the fine tunings which I think you know when Gillian Flynn wrote this book and came up with the notion of the cool girl which kind of got into everyone's veins and people thought God I recognize that or I've been that at some point and sure it [ __ ] up my life for a while but you know I've played that game I've tried to be someone I wasn't in order to attract a maid but it's not necessarily saying you're creating a lie you're just skewing your personality in someone else's favor which ultimately leads you to resent that person because you're not being true to yourself living an insincere life for an extended duration of time try five years gets exhausting but Amy has incredible endurance so long as her partner in crime is willing to play along in this insignificant little game of marriage she will remain steadfast yeah sets up this couple for narcissistic reasons of their own have slightly shifted their true selves to sort of slot in with who they'd like to be perceived to be by the other person the suggestion is that any couple could be this couple they could go this way and that these Tendencies are at the root of marriage along with all of the love and the Purity and that stuff there's also this underbelly that could be potentially quite toxic Nick was glad to do his part at first to a lesser extent he too was exaggerating or even fabricating his personality inevitably the excitement of the honeymoon period Fades and Devotion to upholding the Persona wanes exacerbated by both spouses losing their jobs Nick's parents declining in health and various other stress testers turns out the marriage wasn't as shatterproof as the pair thought slowly resentment Creeps in and fills the air that conversation once occupied and before long that resentment snowballs into hatred before you know it the facade has been dropped altogether to punish Nick for not acting the way he should all Amy has to do is drop the cool girl Persona because in the inside Amy's true self is cold narcissistic controlling and vengeful this slip from Flawless Hollywood movie Marriage interrelational turmoil culminates with Nick cheating with one of his students Andy he had no idea who his wife truly was or what she was capable of and he couldn't bear the misery anymore this should look good as a headline catching him red-handed with Andy one snowy night Amy begins fabricating a master plan to destroy Nick taking his life in the most socially humiliating way possible she frames him for her murder seeking Vengeance for the har he cost her the plan takes a full year of preparation if she's going to ruin his life she's going to be thorough seven years of fake diary entries a faked pregnancy boosted life insurance credit card debt and an elaborate treasure hunt to keep Nick occupied when she disappears every scenario thought out every step perfectly calibrated to irrevocably destroy Nick and Amy she'll end up a hero just an innocent pregnant woman who escaped the clutches of her lazy selfish abusive husband Gone Girl directed by David Fincher was released in 2014 as an adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel of the same name Flynn worked closely with Venture on the screenplay resulting in a movie that tracks very closely with the source material the book excels in Nick and Amy's internal monologues spending more time delving into the complexities of their psyche another area where the book excels is Flint's captivating writing style just as a director like Fincher has a very identifiable visual language in his films Flynn's use of structure and dialogue is unlike anything I've read before both Fincher and Flynn are masters of their respective mediums and it's up to you to determine which telling of the story most resonates with you I think the cast is incredible in the film and paired with Fincher's Creative Vision it's nearly a perfect work that said reading the book forced me to spend more time with the characters over multiple days and I became engrossed in the story in a way that never could happen over just two hours but enough comparison on the surface Gone Girl is a mystery of solving an alleged murder but at its core it's a story about a dysfunctional marriage and the motivations that elicit each spouse's actions you know this was uh you know a murder mystery but marriage was the mystery you know if you to solve the murder you have to solve the marriage and and figure out who these two people really were and and that idea you know especially in this very media saturated world you know how much are we ever really our true selves Nick was not Amy's first victim in fact he's the third in line of a series of relationships gone wrong with each relationship Amy refines her life wrecking skills Nick just happened to be the grand finale this pattern of increasing severity has to draw its origin somewhere to explain this we need to meet the parents Rand and Mary Beth Elliott like their daughter Amy's parents are writers since Amy was a little girl her parents have converted her life events into a children's book series called amazing Amy Amazing Amy did more than just recount Amy's ears growing up it improved upon her shortcomings crafting the image of a perfect daughter living the perfect life her parents inadvertently created an identical twin for the real Amy to compare herself to Superior in every way this had a serious impact on Amy's outlook on life relationships and self-image being paraded around at Book Fairs and events as amazing Amy in the flesh she was taught to construct an inauthentic facade of the life she was expected to have with so much reinforcement and praise given to appearances and Impressions and his true self got swept under the rug in favor of performance this is where feelings of inadequacy inferiority and unwantedness gradually build up and seep into adult life I think that's the hardest thing is when you're under the media Spotlight for something you didn't earn through your own merits which is what Amy's had from a tiny little girl she's had to perform at these book functions I think she doesn't know who she is I think she's got a fragile sense of self because you've got this this amazing Amy character who you know excels everywhere every point at every point that the real Amy failed or gave up you know whether it's sport or music or Academia or whatever um and yet she's meant to sort of go out there and parade herself as a sort of you know as the Prototype um and I think it's meant her mate which is probably very sort of inward looking because of that and also a sense of sort of entitlement coupled with inferiority or inadequacy which makes a very unstable person so you translate that little girl into a an adult woman who's in New York on the dating scene where there's Freedom as you say in New York to sort of keep Reinventing yourself perhaps not so if you do live in a small town because your circle of friends can just shift and she'll just be whoever she needs to be to get the best out of that situation and this issue doesn't just affect Amy this way of thinking becomes applied to everyone around her varying in severity depending on the closeness of the relationship for the majority of people Amy's judging and belittling is unnoticed it's all mental the women at the bar are parading their dancing monkeys the cool girls buzzing with their lazy husbands the idiots who can't make their marriage work but for Nick the man who unwittingly married this irrational woman he became her project Amy required that their marriage work just the way she wanted blow after blow pounding her black Smith hammer on his red-hot person forging crafting shaping refining this unseemly man into her perfect husband how dare he change from The Glory Days in the beginning Amy's never at rest she's got a Persona to uphold an image to maintain and most of all a husband to keep in check there's never a sort of she's never a resting Soul you know she's never someone who just is authentically herself I just think if Amy could be like that she would have been so much better off but she had no there was no hope that Amy was ever going to be that girl because of her upbringing before taking to husband forging Amy wrote personality quizzes the book expands on this concept a little more A key component of the Amazing Amy books is the multiple choice questions at the end of the chapters what should Amy do in this scenario well easy just choose the perfect answer Amy never does anything that isn't perfect for Amy it would hardly be a jump to then enter a career based on personality quizzes a job that enables others to find some identity in a ready-made persona I'm sure we've all taken those online quizzes before tweaking our answers here and there to fit the ideal image of ourselves in our head yeah I'm definitely outgoing in Social settings I would never sit quietly on the outskirts and watch what am I an introvert yes these quizzes make it easy to assure ourselves that who we want to be is who we really are life for Amy is one big game of perception each input and output of her day a question with a perfect answer maybe it's a or no D so we know that Amy has an extremely low tolerance for any deviant behavior from Nick particularly the kind that might reveal their true selves to the outside world and by deviant I actually mean a return to the authentic self dropping the ACT I think it's easiest to understand this nuclear relationship by breaking it down into periods the first period we'll call the honeymoon phase period Begins the moment Nick and Amy first meet and continues until festering internal resentment breaches the surface Amy has selected the person she wants to be this time around carefully tuned her personality to suit Nick and commits to it this stage is full of romantic gestures passion and the appearance of good communication any warning signs for the future are quickly ushered away in favor of ignorant reassurance Nick and Amy flippantly dismiss serious issues that require intentional discussion they pretend to be above all the other couples who labor in their relationships and still can't make things work flawlessly you never have to worry about conflict if you sweep everything under the rug marriage is so easy no conflict Allowed no disagreement this probably won't be an issue in a few years time the couple's Exodus from hot and exciting New York City to Southern drawl Frito casserole Missouri likely marks the end of the honeymoon phase the second period occupies the majority of the relationship the trick-or-treat stage [Music] good faces are put on when leaving the house but at home it's another story Amy resents Nick for uprooting her popular energetic life in the city trading it for Suburban Housewives and shopping malls past their Glory Days as this stage progresses each spouse becomes less and less recognizable to the other Nick becomes lazy in the aftermath of unemployment and Amy begins dropping her cool girl act over just a few years the old Amy the girl of the big laugh in the easy ways literally shed herself a pile of skin and Soul on the floor and outstepped this new brittle bitter Amy she becomes antagonistic towards him and in response Nick goes further off the deep end compartmentalizing and seeking extramarital fulfillment it's a toxic cycle of marital degradation where both Nick and Amy are to blame throughout this period moods fluctuate pretty drastically sometimes even trending back towards the Romantic Amy might reignite some displays of passion however these gestures shouldn't be taken at face value remember Amazing Amy always chooses the right answer with roughly one year remaining in the trick-or-treat stage Amy catches Nick cheating on her with Andy and gets to work on her journal and Myriad other tasks to seal his fate the third period is what we witness unfolding in the film The Gone Girl stage thank you his master plan has been set into motion and Nick is desperately trying to remain afloat amidst the mental and external torment he doesn't know how to act in the new situations he finds himself in police interrogations search parties news broadcasts it all reminds him of a movie but he can't think of the right lines his strange Behavior secures him as a prime suspect in his wife's Disappearance in reality you'd have to be a sociopath to act normally in this situation his whole life he's been the honest boy the polite Missourian seeking praise and affirmation from others his life has been characterized by conflict avoidance and polite smiles in the wake of his wife's tidal wave disappearance the ever condemning media coaxed out a side to Nick that abandoned those qualities no more nice Nikki he became manipulative and lying became commonplace he played the game and he was good at it he does have these kind of Midwestern values that she talks about of like good manners and earnestness and friendliness and honesty and every one of those gets him in trouble and he doesn't become successful until he abandons all that stuff and starts to be like okay I'll become manipulative and you know like cagey and um slightly disingenuous in terms of how you know plan how I come off in the media and that stuff pretty soon he circled all the way back to donning the perfect husband Persona once more the one where he loved every bit of Amy the one that would bring her back the final period out Dub the aftermath [Music] Nick and Amy are back in the same house Amy's elaborate plan succeeding with only a few tweaks one involving the murder of Desi Collings Desi was Amy's High School boyfriend who she took advantage of for his wealth and unwavering affection when her plan took a bad turn making his murder look like an act of self-defense Amy prance is home to the newly rekindled love of her life and I just love I love the idea that Amy has kind of for her for her purposes has reignited the Nick that she first saw oh yeah you know he is now performing he is now you know reflecting he is now in her narcissistic mind sort of worthy of her because he's not you know this love in his boxes playing video games he's back to presenting a public facade to performing to playing the husband incredible Nick lives a life of fear but ironically this fear of what his wife may do to him motivates him to be the best husband he can be as well as the best father Amy secretly kept Nick's sample from the fertility clinic waiting for the perfect moment to adhere him to herself permanently Nick is trapped and there's nothing he can do Amy has thought of everything the child was the final nail in the coffin Nick would never abandon his son and he knows that there's no one else in the world who's fit to match Amy and bring her down for the foreseeable future Nick and Amy have permanently sealed their masks of perfect husband perfect wife back on I wonder how long Nick will remind himself that his wife is a murderer before giving up the fight and succumbing to Amy's numbing embrace to try unpacking this match I want to address the lies that doomed this marriage and I'm sure many others from the start the first marriage is only worthwhile if both spouses are always happy we were the happiest couple we knew and what's the point of being together if you're not the happiest after reading the book I was pretty astounded by how frequently Amy talked about being happy as the ultimatum for marriage as with so many other aspects of life people default to the path of least resistance in fulfilling their needs and in this case that need is to be happy the issue here is that your spouse will always fail to provide lasting happiness it's a fruitless Endeavor pretend you and your spouse are two cups filled with water the water in your cup is the happiness you have to give in the beginning of the relationship things are smooth sailing you're both delighted in each other and can pour your water into each other's cup without any loss but eventually the road gets a bit bumpy maybe your cup gets punctured and your water starts to Splash onto the ground within a few years time you only have a few drops left and you desperately want to hold on to it yourself it's all the happiness you have now both spouses are unhappy and unwilling to sacrifice even a drop for the other by relying completely on your spouse to bring your joy without a true source to keep your cup full the relationship will become dull with Jesus my cup over close he's the only inexhaustible source the emotional high at the start of any relationship is exciting and joyous but it's quick to fade without a more permanent Rock to build your foundation on people want to skip the lifelong journey featuring hardship sadness confusion regret and so much more expecting to reap the same rewards that come with walking each step of the way with your spouse after say 30 Years of Living Out For Better or For Worse loving each other unconditionally there will be a closeness and joy that can never be replicated by two newlyweds this is how couples decades into their marriage can authentically say their love for their spouse only increases as time goes on on my deathbed I hope to love my wife more than I ever had before on this train of thought it naturally follows that I should ask if happiness is not the ultimate purpose of marriage then what is as much as I'd love to delve into that topic I've never been married myself and while I have a pretty good idea I'd like to have some first-hand experience also we've abandoned our star couple Nick and Amy for far too long let's hope they haven't killed each other the second lie or rather misconception I want to talk about centers around love more specifically how do you show love and what does it mean to fall out of love the LIE is that love is a completely emotional response that naturally should be felt for your significant other at all times in reality loving someone is a choice Nick's twin sister go is a phenomenal example of this in the book The Two provide reassurance of their care for the other by recalling a game they played as children they would pose extreme scenarios asking would you still love me if dot dot dot fill in the blank after hearing that Nick is going to continue living with Amy in the aftermath stage go is heartbroken it's the first time Nick has ever seen her cry eye at that moment go reminds him that she still loves him regardless no matter what comes after the if this is the kind of permanent unconditional love that's completely absent in Nick and Amy's relationship as a result look at how Nick behaves he retreats to go when he's overwhelmed needs someone to talk to or just needs someone to sit with in silence unfortunately Nick's brother sister Bond fills the Gap that should be occupied by his wife Amy could never love Nick unconditionally in this way she goes out of her way to mock the very idea of it he actually expected me to love him unconditionally in the book Amy's even more disparaging of unconditional love she says quote if love has no boundaries no limits no conditions why should anyone try to do the right thing ever if I knew I'm loved no matter what where's the challenge she goes on it makes me think that everyone is very wrong that love should have many conditions love should require both Partners to be their very best at all times end quote Amy has never been the recipient of nor given unconditional love to someone else ever neither her parents nor Nick ever cared enough in their relationships to truly love all of Amy not unconditionally so without any role models for this kind of love along with an unrelenting perfectionism and superiority complex it makes sense that Amy would dispel the idea of loving unconditionally Amy has an incredibly narcissistic transactional perception of love she requires a guarantee of unending adoration from Nick only rewarding him when his actions serve to benefit her image and what does narcissism mean for relationships in marriage it means that instead of just being who you are in in a selfless way you're requiring the other person to project the image of yourself that you want to put across and that is very very different in Amy's World success has only come when she's living out her perfect fabricated life while Nick does the same in this robotic dance that she calls a perfect marriage playing house with her parents money mouthing off the correct words kissing her husband for exactly three seconds this is as good as it gets everyone else is foolish for even trying to actually sincerely love someone and love who they really are not just the mask they put up somehow Amy gets enough satisfaction in this game of deception to keep it up indefinitely I guess that's why she's a psychopath so all of that to say love is a choice stripping away all the giddy excitement and romantic anticipation the feeling of being in love looks incredibly different in the moments when couples feel least in love the most dangerous thing they can do is to stop loving the other person by choosing to love someone day after day regardless of how you feel the actionable steps become internalized feelings a deeper connection forms and a spouse you are once apathetic towards is now the most important relationship in her life Love Done Right only increases with time the individuals that refuse to lay down their pride and love their spouse when the Halo Fades and the Sparks are gone those are always the ones to admit they've fallen out of love really they just got bored when the honeymoon phase ended and backed away when the going got hard maybe love will last you with the next person love is self-sacrificial yes but at the same time it makes us better versions of ourselves throughout the story Discerning what emotions are real and fake can be a challenge we know that at various points in the relationship both Nick and Amy actually loved each other and not just in the honeymoon phase this reveals that even though much of their lives are a fabricated Persona pretending to love the other person eventually morphed into genuine love right under their nose I'm not you married the only time you liked yourself was when you were trying to be someone this might Nick was his best self when he was pretending to be the man that Amy wanted if that's the case then where do you draw the line between acting out a life that's not your own and an acting constructive change in the way you live this question may be absurd when applied to Amy because her motives are completely narcissistic and controlling clearly she's not trying to instill new healthy change into her life however Nick might actually experience an improved Quality of Life by enacting some of this pretend Nick in the confines of a sane normal marriage consistently living as you ought to will eventually result in changed Behavior obviously the presence of a psychopathic murderer seeking to destroy every fiber of her husband Alters the application of these ideas in the film however I think it's an important line of thought to discuss as it may surface in our own relationships just as it can be harmful acting like a completely different person it can also be harmful never changing the way you've always lived at what point does the person we pretend to be become the person we really are as Nick discusses his reasoning for cheating on Amy with Andy he brings up an important Point Andy made him feel quote like a worthwhile man she made him feel seen when we love someone we're acknowledging them and reassuring them that despite all their flaws and shortcomings they matter to us Amy deprived Nick of that kind of love causing him to feel insignificant and resent her the assurance that you are seen and loved by someone is such an important experience that Nick cheated on his wife to feel it Nick is obviously out of line but his actions help to show the affirmation and intimacy that would be present in a healthy marriage I think this sort of narcissistic projection is is what really fascinates me about these characters and and you know Amy needs her partner to be exemplary and Nick is fully capable of that and so when you see him on TV and he's doing his performance on Sharon Shiva she doesn't care that it's a performance she knows it's a performance but it's what she wants you know she wants that guy who can be winning charming and esteem her you know love her in the way she wants even if it's even if it's not real she will take that that's the sort of I suppose that's what the narcissist demands Amy's narcissism prevents her from allocating her efforts towards developing a genuine relationship her love is inherently conditional she's inevitably let down every single time when people don't live up to her standards her response never glances towards introspection or self-criticism instead she sets about changing those around her Amy's way is the best no one can tell her differently she must get her way and good luck to anyone who tries to stop her she's a woman with nothing to lose she lives for the Adoration of others and when that doesn't work she lives for their destruction she wants to be happy she wants to be loved Nick may be the only person in the world capable of providing her that finding a match to keep up and sustain her way of life is almost impossible after five years married to Amy Nick knows her better than anyone else and vice versa by the end of the film Nick has become her successful project he got her back saving his life and ending the public scrutiny yet in the process he lost himself the rest of his life will be lived out playing the part of Amy's husband there are only two options left for Nick loving Amy or hating her he can never move on to a normal marriage not with Amy's handiwork branded on his skin infused in every fiber of his being they're addicted to each other Inseparable Nick knows he won't be happy with anyone else he has to stay with her if you think of a playwright as trying to break into the mind of the audience that the plot is basically just the sort of meet you so the guard dogs to distract them while you you get into the subconscious and that's really what's to me what's going on here you know this plot it's not that it's discarded but that it occupies the conscious mind the front brain well underneath this very provocative question is asked which is how much of marriage is lying Gone Girl is an exceptional story that acts as a springboard for Endless discussion on marriage from the individuals that constitute it to Greater concepts of love and happiness Rosman Pike's standout performance fully embodies Amy's intrinsic traits the nuances of her narcissism and irrationality shine through and as an audience we're given just enough pieces to solve the puzzle of her mind thank you for watching I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Soder

Views: 929,609

Keywords: gone girl, david fincher, amy dunne, rosamund pike, ben affleck, gone girl movie, sharp objects, gillian flynn, gone girl scene, nick dunne, gone girl book review, amazing amy, cool girl, cool girl monologue, gone girl amy dunne, rosamund pike gone girl, gone girl villain, female villains, gone girl killer, rosamund pike best performance, gone girl explained, amy dunne character analysis, amy dunne analysis, femme fatale, amy elliot dunne, film analysis, video essay

Id: WJ76FfBZuhI

Length: 28min 7sec (1687 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023