Love me, love my bruised ego: what the narcissist-artist film tells us about the fear of ageing
Bitter Christmas, Late Fame and The Christophers all depict geniuses aware of their waning acclaim and terrified it will end Entertainment culture is so preoccupied
Bitter Christmas, Late Fame and The Christophers all depict geniuses aware of their waning acclaim and terrified it will end Entertainment culture is so preoccupied with nowness that last month we were inundated with speculation about how directors under 30 topping the box office would change the industry. The flipside of a youth obsession is the conviction that age will increase irrelevance, and this is something that a new crop of films about ageing artists is zeroing in on.
Specifically, Bitter Christmas, Late Fame and The Christophers are films in which artists – all male – indulge in selfishness, vanity and spite, and egotistical behaviour and a loss of creative (and masculine) virility are part of the same phenomenon. None of them is dislikable – they might be catty, pathetic or abrasive, but they’re always entertaining – but they all bend to the ego whispering in their ear, believing it will shield them from the pain of their fading art.
It’s no surprise to discover that an artist is an egotist: in fact encountering a narcissistic creative type may be joyless in the moment but it’s also an affirming – if petty – way of feeling better about ourselves. Plenty of classic films give us a close-up view into what makes an egotist artist tick or self-destruct. But decades on from Sunset Boulevard, 8½ and All About Eve, a sadder, bitterer crop of films has emerged in which self-absorption flourishes to protect an ageing male artist from self-sabotaging fears of his mortality and legacy.
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