Lester Grimm (Eric Stoltz), the protagonist of Noah Baumbach’s Mr. Jealousy (1997), is a writer of fiction (in theory), a substitute teacher (in practice), and, above all, a jealous guy. A really jealous guy. Lester’s been this way since the inception of his romantic life and is notorious for pestering all of his girlfriends about their past lovers. In college, a girlfriend dumps him because she says they don’t see enough of each other: Lester spends all his time spying on her ex.
Enter Ramona Ray (Anabella Sciorra). Beautiful, popular, unorganized. Ramona with the “rockstar name”. On the night that Lester and Ramona consummate their relationship an important third presence is in the room. Dashiell Frank (Chris Eigman) lies swathed in the covers of her unmade bed, not in flesh but in the form of his recently published book of short stories dubbed by a New York Times reviewer as “the voice of a generation.” Lester picks up the book, Ramona tells him that Dashiell, her ex, wrote it… and thus the primary and most passionate relationship of the movie is born.
***
In the 1960s Girard coined the term “triangular desire”, a metaphor used to explain the imitative form that romance can take. In instances of triangulation, the desire that the subject feels for the object is not spontaneous but mediated by a third presence. In other words, the subject (Lester) desires the object (Ramona) because the mediator (Dashiell) desires it too. The subject models his desire after the mediator in part because he wants to be the mediator. Dashiell—published, successful, adored—has so much that Lester longs for.
Girard writes that the closer the mediator and the subject are to one another, the more there is potential for a “rivalry of desires”. When Lester finds out that he and Dashiell are age mates, that they live in the same city and have dated the same woman, he realizes that the two of them are, in fact, running the same race. Lester wants to be Dashiell, but Dashiell is also (at least in Lester’s mind), his biggest threat. Is there anything more embarrassing than being in awe of your enemy, than wanting to be your rival?
"Is there anything more embarrassing than being in awe of your enemy, than wanting to be your rival?"
When Lester enrolls himself in Dashiell’s weekly group therapy session—where he is sanctioned to verbally abuse his rival in a semi-public setting while also learning intimate details about his private life—we start to understand that Baumbach is taking triangulation to its logical extremes. Lester’s jealousy reaches its ridiculous apex when he stands Ramona up to go for a drink with her famous ex. Later, when he apologizes without telling Ramona where he has been, we learn that “making love to Ramona that night, Lester felt their bodies converge. […] He felt he knew her.” As Lester undresses Dashiell’s psyche he desires Ramona more than ever: the three points of the triangle threaten to consort.
***
The urge to copy someone else’s desire comes from an instability in the self. It’s easier, sometimes, to imitate a person you look up to than it is to figure out what you want, and by extension, who you are. Jealousy pivots around a deep feeling of inadequacy, a spiritual poverty, a soul in the need of doing some searching. I’m thinking back to my own first encounters with desire, circa middle school, when having a crush on someone had little to do with who I actually liked and a lot to do with who everybody else had a crush on.
Dark and sticky feelings of inadequacy follow many of Baumbach’s characters around like personal mini-storm clouds. In Kicking and Screaming Grover, recently graduated and confused, falls to stagnant, bitter pieces when his ambitious girlfriend moves to Prague to pursue their shared dream of writing fiction. Pauline almost tears apart her own happiness in Margot at the Wedding when her self-absorbed sister Margot, also a writer, decides that the former’s fiance is not good enough. And in The Squid and The Whale, Bernard, a flailing English professor, has self-loathing so cloaked in a toxic superiority complex that it threatens to irreparably poison his sons after his ex-wife’s novel becomes a huge hit. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about Baumbach’s relationship to jealous inadequacy, particularly as it pertains to writerly couples (watch out Greta).
For its part, Mr. Jealousy is a movie full of uncertainty, misdirection, fluid identity, and inversions. Baumbach makes a tragic figure of Lester, the archetype of a jealous man. Lester lies about who he is to Dashiell and the therapist, and about where he’s been to Ramona. He lies to himself about what he wants. He loses Ramona, but more importantly, he realizes just how lost he is.
***
We all know how jealousy works: we want the things that beautiful, successful, happy-looking people have because we think it will make us feel beautiful, successful, and happy. In the epoch of shameless self-promotion, it often feels like everybody else is thriving while we are left lacking. We try to fill an amorphous hole with concrete things to grasp at. Perhaps you (like I) have scrolled endlessly through the Instagram page of a pretty girl who has tagged your ex in a photo thinking: if I only had a body like that. Or, if only I could write a book, paint an epic painting, be a semi-famous DJ, a real pool shark, etc…
I believe that recognizing this feeling of inadequacy as a shared experience is a healing knowledge, however subtle. For me, Baumbach’s Mr. Jealousy illustrates the absurd and disturbing nature of comparison and jealousy in agonizing detail. It’s my jealous antidote: I feel ridiculous, and I feel cured. And I remember a quote that I found in Thomas Barnard’s novel, The Loser: “every person is a unique and autonomous person and actually, considered independently, the greatest artwork of all time.” Which, despite verging on corny, is true. No one looks quite like me, no one thinks quite like me, and no one writes quite like me. This thought is a perfect salvation, a gorgeous buoy to hang onto in the shark-eat-shark waters. This is the competition in which you will never fail to come out on top.
Lester Grimm (Eric Stoltz), the protagonist of Noah Baumbach’s Mr. Jealousy (1997), is a writer of fiction (in theory), a substitute teacher (in practice), and, above all, a jealous guy. A really jealous guy. Lester’s been this way since the inception of his romantic life and is notorious for pestering all of his girlfriends about their past lovers. In college, a girlfriend dumps him because she says they don’t see enough of each other: Lester spends all his time spying on her ex.
Enter Ramona Ray (Anabella Sciorra). Beautiful, popular, unorganized. Ramona with the “rockstar name”. On the night that Lester and Ramona consummate their relationship an important third presence is in the room. Dashiell Frank (Chris Eigman) lies swathed in the covers of her unmade bed, not in flesh but in the form of his recently published book of short stories dubbed by a New York Times reviewer as “the voice of a generation.” Lester picks up the book, Ramona tells him that Dashiell, her ex, wrote it… and thus the primary and most passionate relationship of the movie is born.
***
In the 1960s Girard coined the term “triangular desire”, a metaphor used to explain the imitative form that romance can take. In instances of triangulation, the desire that the subject feels for the object is not spontaneous but mediated by a third presence. In other words, the subject (Lester) desires the object (Ramona) because the mediator (Dashiell) desires it too. The subject models his desire after the mediator in part because he wants to be the mediator. Dashiell—published, successful, adored—has so much that Lester longs for.
Girard writes that the closer the mediator and the subject are to one another, the more there is potential for a “rivalry of desires”. When Lester finds out that he and Dashiell are age mates, that they live in the same city and have dated the same woman, he realizes that the two of them are, in fact, running the same race. Lester wants to be Dashiell, but Dashiell is also (at least in Lester’s mind), his biggest threat. Is there anything more embarrassing than being in awe of your enemy, than wanting to be your rival?
"Is there anything more embarrassing than being in awe of your enemy, than wanting to be your rival?"
When Lester enrolls himself in Dashiell’s weekly group therapy session—where he is sanctioned to verbally abuse his rival in a semi-public setting while also learning intimate details about his private life—we start to understand that Baumbach is taking triangulation to its logical extremes. Lester’s jealousy reaches its ridiculous apex when he stands Ramona up to go for a drink with her famous ex. Later, when he apologizes without telling Ramona where he has been, we learn that “making love to Ramona that night, Lester felt their bodies converge. […] He felt he knew her.” As Lester undresses Dashiell’s psyche he desires Ramona more than ever: the three points of the triangle threaten to consort.
***
The urge to copy someone else’s desire comes from an instability in the self. It’s easier, sometimes, to imitate a person you look up to than it is to figure out what you want, and by extension, who you are. Jealousy pivots around a deep feeling of inadequacy, a spiritual poverty, a soul in the need of doing some searching. I’m thinking back to my own first encounters with desire, circa middle school, when having a crush on someone had little to do with who I actually liked and a lot to do with who everybody else had a crush on.
Dark and sticky feelings of inadequacy follow many of Baumbach’s characters around like personal mini-storm clouds. In Kicking and Screaming Grover, recently graduated and confused, falls to stagnant, bitter pieces when his ambitious girlfriend moves to Prague to pursue their shared dream of writing fiction. Pauline almost tears apart her own happiness in Margot at the Wedding when her self-absorbed sister Margot, also a writer, decides that the former’s fiance is not good enough. And in The Squid and The Whale, Bernard, a flailing English professor, has self-loathing so cloaked in a toxic superiority complex that it threatens to irreparably poison his sons after his ex-wife’s novel becomes a huge hit. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about Baumbach’s relationship to jealous inadequacy, particularly as it pertains to writerly couples (watch out Greta).
For its part, Mr. Jealousy is a movie full of uncertainty, misdirection, fluid identity, and inversions. Baumbach makes a tragic figure of Lester, the archetype of a jealous man. Lester lies about who he is to Dashiell and the therapist, and about where he’s been to Ramona. He lies to himself about what he wants. He loses Ramona, but more importantly, he realizes just how lost he is.
***
We all know how jealousy works: we want the things that beautiful, successful, happy-looking people have because we think it will make us feel beautiful, successful, and happy. In the epoch of shameless self-promotion, it often feels like everybody else is thriving while we are left lacking. We try to fill an amorphous hole with concrete things to grasp at. Perhaps you (like I) have scrolled endlessly through the Instagram page of a pretty girl who has tagged your ex in a photo thinking: if I only had a body like that. Or, if only I could write a book, paint an epic painting, be a semi-famous DJ, a real pool shark, etc…
I believe that recognizing this feeling of inadequacy as a shared experience is a healing knowledge, however subtle. For me, Baumbach’s Mr. Jealousy illustrates the absurd and disturbing nature of comparison and jealousy in agonizing detail. It’s my jealous antidote: I feel ridiculous, and I feel cured. And I remember a quote that I found in Thomas Barnard’s novel, The Loser: “every person is a unique and autonomous person and actually, considered independently, the greatest artwork of all time.” Which, despite verging on corny, is true. No one looks quite like me, no one thinks quite like me, and no one writes quite like me. This thought is a perfect salvation, a gorgeous buoy to hang onto in the shark-eat-shark waters. This is the competition in which you will never fail to come out on top.