Julia Friese explains why narcissism is not only finding its way into the cinema.
1. everyone wants to rule the world
In “Marty Supreme” (2025), Josh Safdie tells a story loosely based on Marty Reisman, a ping pong player from the New York underground table tennis scene of the 50s. Safdie appropriates Reisman by calling him Marty Mauser and his girlfriend Rachel Mizler. Mauser and Mizler live their way cartoonishly through the catastrophes that arise because Mauser doesn’t look for a rise to the top, but rather expects it as a matter of course. Mauser doesn’t want to play ping pong without the Royale Suite at the Ritz.
Mizler, a pet store employee, accuses Mauser – again: it should be the 50s – of narcissism. According to Google Trends, the level of awareness of the ego diagnosis “narcissism” has been increasing since 2010 and entered the mainstream vocabulary in February 2017 – i.e. in the first weeks of Trump’s first presidency. But that’s not all the conscious anachronisms: Safdie’s pictures are from the 50s, an analogue coexistence in sweat, blood and sperm. On top of that he puts the cold, clean synths of the 80s yuppie era. “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” (1985) by Tears For Fears stays in your head for the longest time after the film, while you scroll again and read: Donald Trump wants to rule Venezuela himself for the time being. Want to buy Greenland.
You read the Donroe doctrine instead of the Monroe doctrine. Conscious anachronisms are typical of our present. Everything is egocentrically tailored to your own point of view. Safdie, who was born in 1984, shouldn’t have any 50s nostalgia. But when “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” came on the radio, he was a toddler, so even without being challenged he could think he was the center of the world.
2. it’s my own desire
Marty Reisman was the son of a taxi driver who had bet on himself in the all-class table tennis clubs and was then banned, who also took part in the World Championships for the USA in mixed constellations. Marty Mauser single-handedly represents the USA in the final against Japan.
“Marty Supreme” is co-financed by the actor Timothée Chalamet, who plays Mauser – previously more of a cultivated, elegant ferret type – who is using the film disproportionately to change his own image. He now wants to be seen as a player. Climb onto the multi-purpose hall “Sphere” in Las Vegas, turn it into a gigantic ball, because he, Chalamet, has balls, make them rain in social media videos in which he says he is a “clit commander” – a clitoris commander. He never tires of emphasizing that he wants to be “one of the greats,” meaning he wants to win awards alongside his “Billion Dollar Baby,” Kylie Jenner.
3. e pluribus unum
The film and its main character-centric marketing, which trumps the film itself, are less about a dazzling trickster figure and more about a contemporary vibe: the main character energy of an individual in capitalism who believes that he has to take into account a special calling that entitles him to let everyone else jump over the edge. The non-ego must have no particular goal and is therefore automatically committed to the ego. It is the western iPhone, myspace, YouTube-induced ego era that is now so normal that younger media can do without possessives: TikTok, Gemini, ChatGPT.
It has long been clear that we are their slaves while they pretend to be our slaves. An effect, perfectly ambiguously refracted in this one series that everyone watches: Vince Gilligan’s “Pluribus”. The title comes from the old heraldic motto of the USA: E pluribus unum. Many become one. Here a cynical individual – funnily enough, an author who despises her romantic work because she would so much like to be called to something greater, to LITERATURE – fights against humanity, which has become an organism through a virus that is now also aware of this unity. Art, competition and self-assertion have become superfluous in a world in which everyone knows everything, can do everything and happily serves the separated, few individuals in harmony with one another. Individuals whom the hive mind feels strangely sorry for…
This column first appeared in Musikexpress issue 3/2026.
