Before the iconic movie Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdi was released people on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Twitter were already entering their “Marty Supreme Era”. The promotion for this movie heavily relied on this. The people following this trend stuck with a quote where Marty Mauser says, “That doesn’t even enter my consciousness” showing Marty’s blind ambition to get what he wants.
In the YouTube video “Why Marty Supreme is not inspiring” The creator, Stephen Landy talks about how and why Marty Mauser and characters like him, should not be a role model and have everything but nothing at the same time.
Marty Supreme is an extremely well filmed movie with amazing cinematography, but it was made to show the downfall of completely bulldozing over people who support you, you fail in the end. Landy’s video mentions this, saying, “If you chase your dreams so hard that you forget about everyone else around you that negativity is eventually gonna to catch up to you.”
A character like Marty would be good because he is ambitious and hard working but he crosses the line from just being hard working to being manipulative and a workaholic, Lang speaks on this saying “To leave the movie finding him inspiring, I feel, misses the point.” and it does.
The video also talks about how people feel so connected to Marty’s characters as well as others like him, such as Nina Sayers in Black Swan, and Andrew Neiman in Whiplash. People view those characters as mirrors. Lang’s video brings up that “The reason this trope performs so well in cinema is because within these tortured characters, we see glimmers of ourselves.” and how “we like to think of ourselves as the main character.”
This “Main Character Syndrome” really only works in movies and TV. If you try the things Marty Mauser did in the film, you’d end up lost and alone. Similar to how Marty ends up at the end of the movie.
The way people love Marty Mauser is because they think that if they work hard and get a ton of money they will be fulfilled. People want to feel like they have a purpose and want to fulfill it. This mindset, in the end, will create a lost soul out of you Marty’s example should not be followed.
