Thursday, October 13, 2005

There's a psychiatric syndrome -- I forget what it's called -- in which the sufferer becomes convinced that a loved one has somehow been replaced by a simulacrum (a theme acutely captured in the 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers").

Could there be a related disorder in which the victim is convinced that he himself has been replaced . . . ?
Posted by at

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

But even if you thought you were somehow a clone you would still be, well, you.

There is a movie comming out where in a near future there is a addictive drug that often causes split personalities. A detective has the job of tracking down a bigtime dealer of said drug. The hook is that he is addicted to the drug and the dealer he is trying to track down is his alter ego. The down side is the movie is supposed to be starring Keanu Reeves.

'Dude, I know kung-fu'

9:37 PM
Anonymous said...

Well, there's another condition where the person believes they are dead...

We really do have some interesting ways to come unscrewed, don't we?

4:54 AM
Gerald T said...

The Gnostic belief is that the universe was created by a deranged breakaway god, and that we are a messed up bungled copy of a human, cobbled together by this mad god, in his corrupted image.
We are a degraded copy of a copy of a copy, far removed from the original Sane God primal vision blueprint for an individual subjective human awareness mode.

But we retain a tiny spark of the Higher Power, and by hyperdimensionaly up and down linking (prayer and meditation), can access this original face, undistorted blueprint and become who we are.
This knowledge is why I cried during the movie blade runner when the woman finds out she is a Replicant, and really cried when the Blade Runner realizes he is one too.

Do you believe this to be true?
I would advise against taking on this concept of existence, far better to be like the traitor in the Matrix movies, who says that he does not care if the steak is not real, it tastes good, so he is going to sell out to the corrupted hologram and live it up.

http://www.gnosis.org/library.html

10:45 AM
Mac said...

MKJ--

The original "Body Snatchers" was definitely a classic of its era, but I don't think it holds up well. The '78 version is perhaps the only remake in history I prefer to the original.

6:39 PM
Mac said...

This knowledge is why I cried during the movie blade runner when the woman finds out she is a Replicant

That's a really poignant, deep moment, and well-filmed. As Tyrell says earlier in the movie, Rachael's "beginning to suspect," so she accepts the bad news with resignation, not shock or fury.

6:41 PM
Mac said...

"Blade Runner" is also an arguable example of a movie transcending the book upon which it was based. I love "Do Androids Dream...?", but Scott's take is absolutely unforgettable.

I'll be very interested to see Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly." That was the first PKD book I ever read and one of my favorites.

1:10 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)