Fictional depictions of egotistical self-pity?

January 20, 2024 1:41 PM

I'm looking for fiction or film scenes that show self-centered characters brooding resentfully over a sense of imagined offense or injustice-- basically the melodramatic, neurotic, self-pitying side of narcissism.

Ideally, I'd love psychologically nuanced versions that take the whiny egotist's point of view, showing their logic from the inside. David Foster Wallace's "The Depressed Person" is a great example of this, and so is the character of Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Any ideas for other places it might turn up? Thanks!

posted by Bardolph to Writing & Language (45 answers total)

I can't think of a particular scene offhand, but BoJack Horseman is full of this.
posted by wheatlets at 1:43 PM on January 20 [10 favorites]

For a humorous take, the movie Bridesmaids.
posted by kapers at 1:54 PM on January 20 [4 favorites]

Would Achilles in the Iliad fit the bill? Not necessarily from his perspective, though I'm sure there is other fiction related that might.
posted by Carillon at 1:56 PM on January 20 [3 favorites]

The semi-fictional portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network is filled with this. And seconding Bojack Horseman.
posted by windbox at 1:58 PM on January 20

I don't know how to narrow it down to one scene, because that's basically the entire premise of the science fiction film The Medusa Touch (1978), available there on Tubi and on Pluto FWIW. Richard Burton stars as a towering narcissist, full of anger over perceived slights and increasingly capable of venting that anger on the world with his psychic power to just imagine terrible things and make them happen.
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:01 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

There's an early Martin Amis novel, Success (1978) about sibling rivalry, where one brother is a terrible narcissist. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of the two brothers.
posted by biffa at 2:15 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

There's a hilarious stretch in the House of Gucci film where Jeremy Irons's character sulks over his perceived betrayal by his son in rejecting his advice on whom to marry.
posted by praemunire at 2:20 PM on January 20

Really, Mulholland Drive is a journey into this very thing.
posted by johngoren at 2:25 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

You might enjoy Tár
posted by potrzebie at 2:36 PM on January 20 [8 favorites]

Dostoyevsky’s Notes From The Underground.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:39 PM on January 20 [4 favorites]

Almost every scene in Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy from 1982. Same with his Taxi Driver, 1976. Maybe others; never saw Raging Bull.
posted by Rash at 3:03 PM on January 20

Bad Lieutenant is a lesson in dark triad narcissism bound in force and power.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 3:04 PM on January 20

Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” is a classic.
posted by ojocaliente at 3:32 PM on January 20 [5 favorites]

Citizen Kane.
posted by rd45 at 3:38 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

A lot of the recent Joker is this.
posted by Iteki at 3:49 PM on January 20

Marvin the paranoid android.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:53 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

IMO the Sword of Truth series fits. The MC's holier than thou attitude and ruminations grate on me so much that I've only managed to finish the original series (i.e. Wizards First Rule to Confessor) once. It's a shame 'cause the story and writing is excellent.
posted by gible at 4:52 PM on January 20

The character Withnail from Withnail & I might fit the description?
posted by Liquidwolf at 5:07 PM on January 20 [6 favorites]

If you're open to humorous TV I think the character excavation of Arnold Rimmer through at least the first five or so series of Red Dwarf is genuinely fascinating.
posted by babelfish at 5:16 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

Tony Soprano's mother (Lavinia?) is exactly this, but the show doesn't really project through her point of view.
posted by jeoc at 5:25 PM on January 20

I would suggest the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Rebecca is (to me) a really nuanced and sympathetic character who has a very human tendency to cast herself as the central character in everything, which manifests as a pretty profound self-centeredness and very relatable self-loathing at times. Personally I think the show does a really wonderful job of making you root for her and her wellbeing without excusing/hiding from these tendencies.

As a heads-up, it is a musical (over 100 original songs) and occasionally quite sad (though it's largely a comedy). Maybe check out this song for a sense of the show's tone? (As another warning, this is a pretty bleak watch in the sense that it is essentially Rebecca's self-hatred set to music, but as someone with anxiety, I find it very relatable and oddly comedic.)
posted by lavenderhaze at 5:47 PM on January 20 [5 favorites]

I just finished the novel Yellowfaceby R.F. Kuang, and it is basically entirely that.

For a shorter depiction, try the short story "Nobel Prize Speech Draft of Paul Winterhoeven, With Personal Notes," by Jane Espenson.
posted by gideonfrog at 6:20 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

Jack Lemmon's character (and others) in Glengarry Glen Ross -- they all think they're the best salespeople, and it's not their fault if they aren't given good leads.
posted by credulous at 6:42 PM on January 20

Nabokov has a couple of these. This is very much the impression I got of the first person narrator Humbert Humbert in Lolita and also of the footnote-writer Kinbote in Pale Fire. It's been so long since I read either that I can't recommend particular chapters or scenes.
posted by JonJacky at 8:22 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

John Gardner's Grendel might fit the bill?
posted by feistycakes at 8:49 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

It's fictionalized history rather than outright fiction, but Aaron Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton fits the bill.

Egotism: In this fictionalized version of events, Aaron Burr had no principles, only self-serving ambition.

Self pity: Near the end of the show, after the duel in which he kills Hamilton, Burr sings:

...When Alexander aimed at the sky
He may have been the first one to die
But I'm the one who paid for it
I survived but I paid for it

Now I'm the villain in your history
I was too young and blind to see...

It's a bit rich coming from a guy who (in the fictionalized account) has just shot someone who was aiming their gun at the sky! And BTW was 50 years old. It's astounding how Miranda managed to make such a whiny baby moment so moving, lol.
posted by MiraK at 9:04 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

Well the "strawberry" incident from the movie Caine Mutiny fits the bill in my opinion.
posted by forthright at 9:09 PM on January 20

An iconic example of what you're looking for surely is Macbeth's famous "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy. (Link goes to Sir Ian McKellan performing it, extremely worth watching!)

tl;dr/dw: an egotistical murderous maniac breaks down and waxes lyrical about how meaningless and arbitrarily short life is, just because his beloved (and murderous) wife has died. "Out, out, brief candle!" he moans, after having personally slit the throat of several people pretty damn recently and literally tried to murder a child! Brief candle indeed. If the speech wasn't so pretty your eyes would roll right out of your head.
posted by MiraK at 9:11 PM on January 20

Seconding Humbert Humbert in Lolita.
posted by threecheesetrees at 9:44 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]

Also, "Javert's Suicide" from Les Miserables
posted by feistycakes at 9:45 PM on January 20

this sounds like what Syndrome was going through in “The Incredibles”
posted by alchemist at 9:56 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]

"fiction .... that show self-centered characters brooding resentfully over a sense of imagined offense or injustice-- basically the melodramatic, neurotic, self-pitying side of narcissism."

This could be the dusk jacket blurb for The Catcher in the Rye. The protagonist is one of the most annoying and dislikeable characters in modern literature.
posted by underclocked at 1:04 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]

Wait, Jeremy Irons is in House of Gucci and he's angry about his horrid betrayal at the hands of Adam Driver? Watching this!

Crime and Punishment is a classic about someone who is depressed and who thinks they are the center of the universe, with deadly results.
posted by kingdead at 1:09 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]

I feel like this is Baumbach territory. Start with "Margot at the Wedding" or "The Squid and the Whale" and see if they don't push this button for you. "Greenberg" for a more pathological angle.
posted by rhizome at 2:31 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]

One Fat Englishman is like this. Goodreads link because it confirmed my feeling that the self-pitying dipshit main character is not someone Amis sucked out of his finger.

I think that's same the character who maliciously destroys a child's toy and who otherwise goes around sucking all the joy out of life pretty much full-time while also getting everything he could possibly want.
posted by BibiRose at 6:10 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]

Fleishman Is In Trouble is sort of one big gut punch of this, at least it was for me.
posted by pjenks at 6:20 AM on January 21

Nthing that Nabokov does this character type well. Paduk in Bend Sinister is exactly this.
posted by trip and a half at 6:31 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]

I just watched Anatomy of a Fall and there's an interesting version of this dynamic throughout the film
posted by Morpeth at 10:54 AM on January 21

A Confederacy of Dunces is a novel-length examination of this character type (and it’s hilarious to boot).
posted by ejs at 4:33 PM on January 21 [6 favorites]

Lesley Manville’s character in the 2010 Mike Leigh film “Another Year” is exactly this. There are other narcissistic characters in that film (that’s what it’s all about, I think) but her performance stands out.

Also there’s a novella called “Sukkwan Island” in the middle of a book by David Van called Legend of a Suicide. I can’t think of a better depiction of this type of character. I wrote in my Goodreads review about this novella, “That Vann could make me end up sympathizing with such an odious, self-pitying, self-rationalizing character as Jim Fenn is a mighty feat.” The rest of the book is great too, but that novella really taught me something about the psychological problems of other people.
posted by SomethinsWrong at 5:59 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]

I was going to point to A Confederacy of Dunces as well, but ejs beat me to it!!
posted by sonofsnark at 8:31 PM on January 21

The Feminist. Tony Tulathimutte.

It is free to read on N Plus One, and the story is a really wonderful game. You just have to read it and wonder, what parts is the main character missing in his vision of the world?
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 8:45 PM on January 21

Mrs Gummidge in David Copperfield.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:08 AM on January 22

Parts of The Picture of Dorian Gray might work for you.
posted by darchildre at 10:02 AM on January 23

Also, Undine Spragg in an Edith Wharton’s Custom of the Country.
posted by SomethinsWrong at 5:24 PM on February 14