BEING JOHN MALKOWITCH _ A NARRATIVE CONNECTION

People with desires, emotions and history use a host / a mask to explore themselves, their connection to each other, to their environment and their personal changes by shifting their perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_John_Malkovich

I would like to use this plot to frame up 9 canticles which could help to change my perspective within the environment to discover the hidden connections and their output.

THE HOST A MARIONETTE:

Schwartz, drawing on his background as a puppeteer, discovers that he is able to control Malkovich's actions while in his head, and this causes the actor to become paranoid.

“Something was making me talk.

Something was making me move.

I gotta get out of here...”

The occupier is controlling the host like a marionette, controlling his mind in order to actively connect to the scene happening in the host’s environment. When is the host acting and when the occupant?

BEING WATCHED THROUGH THE EYES OF TWO:

One time while Lotte is inside Malkovich, he goes on a date with Maxine. Maxine falls in love with Malkovich (with Lotte inside him), and they continue to see each other in this fashion...

“When I looked into his

eyes, I could feel you

peering out. Behind the stubble and

the too-prominent brow and the male

pattern baldness, I sensed your

feminine longing peering out,

and it just slew me.”

A common environment and an event is connecting the external participant and the host, who is not aware that he is used as a communicating mask that links the occupier in his mind to the scene.

THROUGH THE EYES OF SOMEONE ELSE:

While filing paperwork, Schwartz discovers a portal behind a filing cabinet and when he enters it, finds himself in the mind of actor John Malkovich, able to observe and sense whatever Malkovich does...

...He opens the little door and enters the narrow hallway. It's dark and wet.

The walls are soft and membranous.

There is a dripping sound. He crawls along. Soon

something starts to pull him as if he is being sucked

through a straw. There is a flash of light.

The view of someone reading a newspaper. The person lifts

a cup of coffee to his mouth. There is a slurping sound.

The person puts down the coffee cup and the newspaper, and

stands up. The person walks across the room, picks

up his wallet from a coffee table. Looks in a mirror and

checks his teeth for food.

“What's happening?

Am I inside him? Am I in his brain?

Am I him? Is he me? Does he know

I'm here? My brain is reeling!

Is his brain reeling?”

The occupant is experiencing the host’s environment through the eyes of a mask. How does it affect the occupant? Is he still himself behind a mask or is he one with the host? Is his mind self-conscious.

THE HOST:

... Dr. Lester is well aware of the portal and has been using it to live on for year after year, changing from one dying body to a younger one each time. When the body is "ripe," the portal moves to its next host. Anyone who manages to enter the portal at the right time when the body becomes "ripe" gets to live on in the body. At the present time, the portal is connected to the body of Malkovich, which is getting "ripe" soon. Dr. Lester reveals to Lotte his plan to use Malkovich as a host for himself and several of his friends.

A living body (John Malkowitch) is used as a host that can be entered by others through a portal. Entering the host at the right time allows others to live on year after year through the body. When the occupied host is getting “ripe” the body needs to be changed to a younger one.

The host is not aware of his occupation. Not that his body is used as a mask. He is dealing with life as usual. Embedded into his environment. Fully under control of himself.

A marionette could be seen as a bridging system, a connection between two different systems.

Traditional between a person and a puppet where the puppet player causes, by moving the controls following his intention, an animating effect on the puppet. Because of the connection between a living and a non living organism the cause and the effect remain a one way system with a forced effect.

It would be interesting to use the principle of a marionette, bridging two living systems and creating an adaptive system with an unpredictable result.

A Mask gives you a sense of liberation, you can be much more playful behind them. (G.Wearing)

You can be yourself, you do not have to do what the environment expects you to do, you can decide whether you would like to adapt to the environment or not.

A mask can be used to pretend the adaption to an environment. At the same time it acts as a protection enabling the autonomous adaption to environmental forces within the required timescale, following an individual decision making process.

Therefore a mask could act as a bridge between different structures (living / environmental structures) like a part of a marionette.

Wet, cold plaster bandages being placed on my face. Closing the surface of the skin sheet by sheet, layer by layer. I can feel the thing slowly drying out. Every muscle and sense seem to be fixed under the damp cover. My chin was touched but I thought it was my nose. My face feels like being replaced by a hard dull shell.

I try to gently move my face. It hurts. My skin and some of my hair seem to be encased but I can feel the thing releasing. I use my hands to help and now I sense the warmness of my hidden face coming though. Slowly the thing comes off and I hold it in my hands my face.