by Patrick Connolly
In Sarah Polley’s documentary, The Stories We Tell, she examines her family’s history, specifically her mother’s history in the family. She interviews a man who her mother had had an affair with in the late 1970s. As Diane Polley was married to Michael Polley, the affair needed to be kept secret for the benefit of Diane and Michael’s relationship. But Harry, Diane’s lover, wished there were more witnesses to his affair, to give it some sense of existence.
That got the class thinking about applications of this idea nowadays, specifically the idea of pictures on Instagram and Facebook. For some, the need to show their friends pictures of their trip to Hawaii or to take a picture of the Mona Lisa is just too enticing. Recently, a few studies have come out on the subject. One stating that posting to Facebook encourages narcissism and another says that “neurotic and extroverted people tend to upload a higher volume of photos” than everyone else.
This could explain another part of Harry’s attitude in the movie. Sarah Polley discovers that Harry Gulkin is in fact her biological father when she meets with him to discuss her mother. He decides he wants to write an account of the situation, from meeting Diane, to the present day story with Sarah reconnecting with him. But Sarah doesn’t want him to publish it. She feels that all the interested parties are already privy to that information, but Harry wants to publish it to the public. It still isn’t enough for him to just have the knowledge that Sarah s his daughter, he needs that gratification from the public. Even when Sarah asks him in her documentary what he thinks about her interviewing a bunch of people about the situation, he’s against it. He feels that it’s his story to tell, regardless if it effects Sarah just as much or the whole Polley family. That’s a narcissist if I’ve ever seen one.
Work Cited:
Bereznak, Alyssa. “Study: People Who Post Lots of Photos on Facebook May Be Neurotic.”Yahoo! Tech. Yahoo!, 8 Aug. 2014. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
Nevada, Maria Bianca.”Frenzied Picture-taking in Front of Mona Lisa – Louvre, Paris.” Fading Ad Blog. 9 July 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
“Facebook Profile Picture Ratings Are Predictors of Narcissism: Study.” NDTV Gadgets. 15 July 2014. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
I thought it was strange of how possessive Harry Gulkin felt about how his side of the story needed to be told without the interruptions of other voices, but recently in another class, we discussed the “narcissistic writer.” The question, “Are all writers narcissistic in thinking (s)he has something to share with the world?,” was posed to the class. I think Harry Gulkin just spoke aloud what Polley and Michael failed to say aloud, which is “my story should be heard.” Yes, Polley allows numerous voices to fill her version of the story, but in the end, it is in her power to cut and mesh the voices and clips together to tell HER story.
I agree that Harry Gulkin’s assertion that the story is only his to tell seems incredibly short-sighted and narcissistic. It made me think of what Gabriel Marcel has to say about ego. He cites a child announcing that he picked a bouquet for his mother, in saying “I picked these,” he is in fact saying, “It was I, I who am with you here, who picked these lovely flowers, don’t go thinking it was Nanny or my sister; it was I and no one else.” (Marcel 13) For Marcel, it seems as though attention and appreciation assume almost material qualities to be desired. The ego has then some magnetic pull for recognition. This is what Harry represents for me in the film, someone who wants to legitimise the ego of his relationship with Diane. Sarah Polley counters this by drawing any attention to her story away from herself and to the story as a whole. Legitimising the story by not identifying it as something to be legitimised, if anything, it is merely legitimised by the affect it has clearly had on the concerned parties.
Works Cited:
Marcel, Gabriel. “Homo Viator.” Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1951. Print.