Thomas Nagel questions ‘each of us lives his own life/lives with himself twenty-four hours a day. What else is he supposed to do – live someone else’s life?’ Well, for a brief moment, you can step into someone else’s life and experience the world through their eyes. But the catch is, it’s not just anyone. The only option is character John Malkovich, played by actor John Malkovich. Guess what film it is. Being John Malkovich.
The concept of becoming a spectator of Malkovich’s life echoes Nagel’s statements about becoming a spectator of one’s own life. He states that (apologies for the long quote):
‘We see ourselves from outside, and all the contingency and specificity of our aims and pursuits become clear. Yet when we take this view and recognize what we do as arbitrary, it does not disengage us from life, and there lies our absurdity: not in the fact that such an external view can be taken of us, but in the fact that we ourselves can take it, without ceasing to be the persons whose ultimate concerns are so coolly regarded.’
In this example, although visitors to Maxine and Craig’s exhibit do not get to see this external view of themselves, while they are ‘being John Malkovich’, they retain their own thoughts and feelings, such as (not included in this clip) Maxine and Craig trying to manipulate Malkovich to get closer to their own sexual/romantic goals. Despite understanding the absurdity of the situation, they continue trying to pursue their own goals even though, as Nagel points out, logically they should have become disengaged from life.
Over the course of the film, but particularly in the scene from the clip, we watch as John Malkovich physically goes through the mental process to ‘self-consciousness and self-transcendence’ described by Nagel. Malkovich experiences falling into his own body to undergo, what is to him, a deeply personal and intimate experience that he has just discovered countless other people have also undergone to become spectators of his life. This, no doubt, causes him to reflect on himself and everything that he has done and everything these other uninvited spectators might have experienced through him. He also sees himself reflected in every other being in the world. This new connection, between him and everyone else, means that for this brief period of time he also becomes a spectator of everyone else’s life as they all mirror him.