John Malkovich musings

What is so appealing about being someone else? If this were possible to be someone else for a time would I want to? These are questions adressed by the film Being John Malkovich. What seems to special about being another person stems from a person's contempt or unsatisfaction with the person they themselves are. For a woman, being John Malkovich is a chance to be a man. For a man, being John Malkovich is the chance to be someone else besides themselves, and inherent in the otherness is a betterness. However, a part that was for me, one of the most interesting parts of the movie was the chase scene through Malkovich's subconscious. All of those stragne strange experiences made up who Malkovich is, but as the subcounscious implies, they are not part of the conscious and so the character's who got to inhabit him were unaware of all of his repressed past experiences. So the attraction of being John Malkovich, by this logic, comes from the chance to be a person with no past traumatic experiences to be bothered by.