Control and Identity: What can make us act like animals?

"The idea of becoming someone else for a little while. Being inside another skin- thinking differently, moving differently, feeling differently".

Being John Malkovich explores the difference between first and second order desires, as Harry G. Frankfurt defines in his "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", and the progression of people who begin to only concern themselves with the first order.

Craig Schwartz (John Cusack). is a puppeteer that the viewer spends the majority of the film following. He spends his life concerned with the idea of becoming someone else through his puppets. The viewer becomes increasingly aware of his desire for control, which is a theme that persists throughout the film. The first glimpse of Schwartz we have is as his puppet self, going through a dance meant to inspire the despair that being out of control gives to people. The puppets come back out at key points in the film: when Schwartz feels out of control due to his love of Maxine (Catherine Keener) and when Schwartz is playing puppet-master in John Malkovich's body. Schwartz's character appears to be driven by a desire for control, whether over his own life or others'. However, his obsession with Maxine prevents him from achieving this goal. She is a factor that he cannot control or manipulate. Due to this, Schwartz begins to regress into a state of wantonness. The binds of social constructs such as marriage or morality no longer figure into his decision-making. He becomes solely concerned with a desire for Maxine. However, this movie provides an interesting twist on the old story of a man gone crazy with unrequited love. Schwartz deals with his descent into wantonness by becoming a higher order of will in John Malkovich. While Malkovich has his own primary and secondary desires, Schwartz supersedes these in his quest for Maxine. He becomes another order which influences the actions of Malkovich. This takes away the ability of the true Malkovich to act, but since his conscious is still present, it does not take away his will. Therefore, multiple wills are present in the current Malkovich identity, with the foreign will of Schwartz acting as the strongest. Schwartz's circumstances change by the end of the film, however. Again driven by his obsession with Maxine, Schwartz gives up his control over Malkovich's body, and then his own life. He tragically ends up trapped in Maxine and Lottie's daughter's body, doomed to forever watch through the child's eyes. At the end of the film, Schwartz is left only with his will. He can no longer act, coming full circle and finally becoming equal to his puppet, despairing at his lack of control.

Lottie (Cameron Diaz), the puppeteer's wife, is also an interesting case of a progression from being controlled by second order to first order desires. She begins the film rational and reasonable. She is concerned with providing for and taking care of her husband and the many animals she lives with. However, this all changes the moment she becomes John Malkovich. Her understanding of her sexual identity and orientation are called into question, and she is no longer concerned with second order desires. Like her husband, she becomes obsessed with Maxine and the experience of being with her through Malkovich. Her actions become solely based on this obsession. Her desperation is exceedingly clear, and is further emphasized by Schwartz eventually locking her up in Elijah the monkey's cage. The separation between being a person and an animal is clearly blurred as she delves into only acting on her primary desires. She does not end the film this way, however. She finds her way back to being a person through her love for the child she fathered with Maxine.

I think its interesting to consider the difference in Lottie and Schwartz’s fates as a reflection of what we believe can take our humanity away, as well as which of these things is more noble. Schwartz struggles for control over his own life as well others. His desire for Maxine is about controlling a force that seems uncontrollable. The complete control over life that the puppeteer desires and loses himself too is something that we don’t believe in as a culture. While we believe that we have free will, that we can make our own decisions due to our primary and secondary desires, we do not believe that everything is up to us. This is because there are other people in the world, and we cannot ever completely control them, nor should we be able to. In contrast Lottie loses her personhood over questions of identity. I think the reason she ends up happily ever after is that her quest is due to something we consider essential to being human. Understanding your own identity is extremely important to our culture. We feel that understanding ourselves is the path to happiness and satisfaction. The kind of identity crisis that Lottie goes through is enough to create animals out of us, however this is a temporary regression, until we are able to understand and accept our identity. So, while we cannot and should not control the world or others, we should seek to understand and love ourselves.