Solipsism and the Celebration of Individuality in Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa

Solipsism and the Celebration of Individuality in Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa

Written by Samuel Rawlins

Charlie Kaufman is a filmmaker known for the depth and complexity in his stories.Kaufman is a writer that sometimes directs his own projects and the story portrayed is in his control. A recurring theme that is noticeable in many of Kaufman’s works is the philosophy of solipsism. Solipsism is the idea that the world only exists as it does through one’s perception. If one’s perception is altered, then reality itself must change completely. No one but the main character exists. This concept is utilized in Synecdoche New York, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Anomalisa, three of Kaufman’s most known works. However, it is in his 2015 film Anomalisa that the theme is explored in the most outright, on the nose way. In Anomalisa, the protagonist, Michael views every other person as one and the same, seeing them as one large unit. As a stop motion animation, this is portrayed through the figurines “acting” throughout the story. Almost all of them have the exact same face plate and voice. It is not until the very last scene that Michael’s perception is abandoned and the world is shown from the point of view of another. Kaufman uses solipsism in Anomalisa as a criticism of the philosophy, speaking to the vast individuality of each human being in existence.

The philosophy of solipsism is that nothing exists outside of one’s own inner world. Other people’s thoughts, experiences, and lives don’t exist because “for the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own.” It is an existential concept that questions whether or not every other person is conscious and real. Charlie Kaufman takes a creative twist on this philosophy and allows his characters to manipulate their environment with their perception in a way that could not happen in reality or in a live action picture. In Kaufman’s Anomalisa, every stop motion animated person besides Michael has the same face, voice, and personality traits. They are all stock characters created by Michael’s mind. He is alone until Lisa is introduced, another person with unique qualities. However, she too slips into the same unified being as the rest of the human race.

Michael’s perception of the world is not reality, even for the rest of the characters. Most of the film is portrayed through the lens of Michael’s perception except for the very last scene. In this scene, the film is played through Michael’s temporary love, Lisa’s perspective, and the reality of the movie completely changes. Instead of the dark, dreary tone that the rest of the film holds, this scene is bright and sunny. Instead of the same-­faced, same­-voiced person portraying Lisa and her friend Emily, they are finally shown as their unique selves. This is one of the most prominent examples of solipsism and its nonsensical nature in the film. Michael clearly has an abundance of psychological issues that he tries to work out with Lisa,and he is just using her, but he doesn’t even know it. In the end, it’s obvious that Michael needs help and is desperate for it. He doesn’t know what he needs and nobody can help him, but he is desperate for it anyways. Lisa represents the golden light at the end of the tunnel, the thing that makes all of this worth it, but that image of her is only an idealized falsehood that Michael has created. Lisa isn’t amazing because she’s an anomaly. She’s amazing because she’s just like the rest of us, and there’s something very beautiful in that.  Once she becomes part of Michael’s bleak perception however, joining the ranks of the similarity, he throws her away. He must know that she is another existing being, as he treats her as such for the entire second act of the film, but once the unique Lisa is gone, he is quick to recede back into his own mind to accept being alone.

However, while the change is sudden, it is not without emotional repercussions for Michael. In Anomalisa, Michael is in Cincinnati to speak at a convention for customer service representatives. When Lisa becomes one of the ordinary people, marking the beginning of the third act, Michael has to give his speech. In it, he says, “Each person you speak to has had a day. Some of those days have been good, some bad, but they’ve all had one. Each person has had a childhood, each has a body, each body has eggs... What is it to be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be... alive? I don’t know. What is it to ache? I don’t know. What is it to be alive? I don’t know.” (1:14:56­1:15:39) At the beginning of this speech, he tries to use these common attributes to portray individuality while subtly remaining uniform. Then he goes on to ask philosophical questions that he cannot answer. He does not know humanity because he is alone in the world. In reality, he is surrounded by unique people that only seem blank and uniform because of Michael’s mental illness. Michael’s unhappiness stems from the  broken nature of the world that he visualizes so literally.

In his speech, Michael treats his audience as if they are nonexistent, speaking more to himself than to them. He acknowledges their presence, but does not act in a way that a speaker at a presentation would. Of course, he is distraught due to his figurative loss of Lisa, but he vents to the audience out of desperation for contact, lamenting, “I’m lost... I’ve lost my love. She’s an an unmoored ship drifting off to sea and I have no one to talk to I have no one to talk to I have no one to talk to... I’m sorry, I don’t mean to burden you with that, but I just don’t know what else to do because I have no one to talk to.” (1:16:09­1:16:40) However, as he becomes more lost in his speech and in the concept of his solitude in a room full of people, Michael begins to act in a disorderly way towards the audience by mocking America, screaming, “the world is falling apart. The president is a war criminal. America is going down the tubes and you’re talking about God dam intelligent design. They’ve intentionally destroyed the public education system because it’s easier to manipulate dumb workers and soldiers.” (1:17:44­1:18:03) He does this because he has given up on any concept of a sensible world. There isn’t a systematic starting point. There isn’t a path that we follow, even though we just pretend like it’s normal. Michael has essentially said goodbye to Lisa and the rest of the human race because his solipsistic problems have become psychologically solidified. He can say whatever he wants to these people that don’t exist.

Michael carries out his vision of the world throughout the entire film. In the end, he leaves Cincinnati and returns home to his family and a surprise party. This occasion that should be joyful is not so because of Michael’s psychological condition. His wife, son, and guests all have the same stock face as the rest of those in Michael’s world. Michael is not at all happy to be back at home. He remains depressed, unhappy around the people that he does not deem real. He has a conversation with his wife, “‘Who are they’ ‘It’s...It’s everybody honey’ ‘Well I don’t recognize anyone’”(1:20:08­1:20:17) and later asks her “Who are you Donna? Who are you, really?” (1:20:48­1:20:50) Michael lives in Isolation. He may technically have friends and family that exist and love him, but they are unimportant in Michael’s world. Michael is trapped by his isolation, but only because of his psychological issues. It’s important to remember that he isn’t a philosopher believing in solipsism, but a person with psychological issues that portray the philosophy. Therefore, any of the issues that he has are invisible to the outside world, only perpetuating his feelings of solitude.

Due to his feelings of inevitable and never ending seclusion, Michael tends to cling to anything that strikes him as unique. The most obvious example of this is Lisa herself, and the

feelings that Michael has towards her while viewing her as a unique part of the world. The title of the film exemplifies this. Anomalisa is the combination of the word anomaly and Lisa’s name. When the title comes up in the film itself, Lisa expresses her own views on her own individuality, saying, “I like that word. Anomaly. I like the way it sounds and I like what it means. I feel like an anomaly. Before I used to know there was a word for it, it made me feel bad to be different. Now I kind of like it. Sometimes. I mean, not a lot, but sometimes. Makes me special, sort of. Y’know what I mean?” to which Michael replies, “Anomalisa.” (00:54:26­00:54:54) The two find value in unique things, but for very different reasons. Lisa finds contentment in her individuality because it is her way of getting over her feelings of self loathing. She expresses her ordinary attitude towards herself earlier in the film by covering up the scar on her face out of embarrassment and telling Michael about a previous relationship between her and an elderly married man, and “the only reason why he pursued [Lisa] was because he thought he had a good shot, which he did” (00:47:02­00:47:07) However, by appreciating the things that make her an individual, Lisa can overcome these feelings. Michael, on the other hand, clings to the unique because he has lived so long in a world without it. When Lisa comes along, the concept of solipsism in the film is temporarily altered as Michael is temporarily accompanied by another individual as “Kaufman’s Lisa, the surprising beauty, is a statement that solipsism is not man’s fate. It certainly is Michael’s condition but that’s his own fault, or rather his psychology.” However, as Michael will perpetually have issues with his psychological solipsism, Lisa cannot remain unique in his mind.

The only object in the film that can remain unique is a porcelain figurine of a Japanese woman that Michael buys for his son. When he buys it, he means to go to a toy shop for a gift, but is misdirected by a cab driver and ends up in a shop filled with sex toys. There, he finds the figurine. Instead of going to a real toy store later, Michael buys his young son what is obviously some kind of odd antique sex toy. He doesn’t go to a different store because Michael doesn’t care. In his eyes, his own son isn’t even real. He’s just another fake being in Michael’s world. Beyond that, Michael finds something special in the figurine, and cannot let it go. The only thing that can remain unique in Michael’s mind is something that is, in itself, fake. He doesn’t believe in other people, but believes in the reality of this porcelain figurine. This is his subconscious solipsism. Deep down, he knows that the figurine can be unique indefinitely because it is actually fake. It has no reason, no need for individuality. Ironically, the organic organisms in Michael’s life that should be growing and remaining unique indefinitely do not while the figurine, that can never change or grow, maintains its individuality. As an inanimate object, it does not have the ability to lose its individuality as Lisa does

When two characters meet, they each create an idealized version of the other that can never be lived up to. This is a concept explored in a lot of contemporary art such as Netflix’s Bojack Horseman. Bojack always creates perfect versions of people that they can be, and realizes that “when you see someone as they really are, it ruins them.” It begs the question though, is it other people’s fault for not being the “perfect other,” or is it the protagonists fault for creating the image to begin with? Can it even be a fault when it’s something innate and unintentional? Nobody tries to build the perfect image of the other, but when the fantasy falls apart, everyone is broken.

The idea behind solipsism is the concept that everything around one is nonexistent and only a creation of the mind. Solipsism “might answer one question (what is the nature of the universe) by an axiomatic fiat consistent with your one real empirical observation ­ that you exist there is no doubt if you try to doubt it, but it is only an axiom when you assert that only you exist.” Therefore, there are points in Kaufman’s Anomalisa in which Michael’s perception goes beyond only solipsism and he begins to question his own existence. In the first instance, he is standing alone in his bathroom staring at himself in the mirror. Since Anomalisa is stop­motion animation, the characters are figurines manipulated by an animator. While Michael stares at himself in the mirror, he begins to realize that his face is changing. It is cycling between unique faces and the uniform one. Lisa’s voice snaps him out of this trance. In the second instance, Michael is sprinting in a panic down the hallway of his hotel, and his face comes off entirely. He picks it up, looks at it and puts it back on. These two events symbolize Michael’s questioning of his own existence. The concepts behind solipsism are still there, except that Michael is no longer any more certain about his own reality than he is about the reality of the rest of the human race. It’s interesting because it is a metareference. In the true reality, Michael isn’t real. He’s just an animated figurine with a voice actor, and in these two moments, Michael knows it. When Anomalisa ends, so does Michael’s existence. However, a film, from the perspective of a character within it, is only a small segment of their life. Said character has a backstory and a story that will continue past the end of the film if possible. The moments with Michael’s face allow Kaufman to place doubt in the audience’s mind about the very nature of Michael’s story. The characters represented don’t seem to have any backstory or story that will continue beyond the scope of the film because they are all portrayed as fake, and suddenly, the fact that Michael may also be fake is presented. However, this is all false, as portrayed through the final scene with the unique Lisa and Emily. That scene implies that everyone in the film has their own lives outside of Michaels, each with their own unique story. The idea of solipsism is criticized here, as Kaufman leans heavily on a final message of individuality.

While Lisa and Emily’s realities are bright and sunny, Michael’s is not. Cincinnati is dreary and rainy throughout his visit, contrasting Lisa and Emily’s warm scene, Michael’s home is never shown during the day, pushing the dark emotions that Michael has. He has these emotions because of his psychological issues that mirror solipsism. When speaking of his issues to an ex-significant other, he says, “I think I might have psychological problems” (00:28:26­00:28:31) and describes how he left her 11 years ago because “things kind of shifted,” (00:28:49­00:28:50) and by this he implies a situation much like the one that he will eventually face with Lisa, all caused by his solipsist-­like psychological issues. On an emotional level, Michael is trapped by his loneliness. Therefore, if he were to break through his psychological barriers and recognize each person as an individual, then he would no longer be alone in his world, or trapped by his solipsist perception. When ending his big customer service speech, he says, “look for what is special about each individual. Focus on that during a conversation. Our time is limited, we forget that. Death comes, that’s it, soon as if we never existed. So remember to smile.” (1:18:44­1:19:08) Michael sums up the purpose of Kaufman’s film in this quote. Michael’s life is terrible because he can’t focus on individuality. If he could change only his outlook, it’s possible that he could finally be happy, or at the very least, healthy

Charlie Kaufman uses the philosophy of solipsism throughout Anomalisa as a criticism to the philosophy and to highlight the concept of individuality. Throughout the piece, the main character Michael is plagued by internal torment caused by psychological issues that cause him to view every single human being as a copy, varying very slightly on a case to case basis. Humanity’s voices and faces are all the same. While it is established in the conclusion that in reality, the world does not hold these characteristics, Michael still suffers because of them. In the end, Kaufman pushes across the point that it is essential to find the thing about each individual that makes them an individual. Individuality is a key characteristic of the human race, and without it, Michael feels lost and alone in the world. Therefore, it is important to keep a positive perspective and remember to “look for what is special about each individual.” (1:18:44­1:18:47)

Works Cited:

1. Thorton, Stephen P. "Solipsism and the Problem with Other Minds." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. University of Limerick, 2002. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.

2. Tiersky, Ronald. "Film Critique: 'Anomalisa,' (Co­Directors Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson)."The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Jan. 2016. Web. 09 May 2017.

3. Bob-Waksberg, Raphael. “‘BoJack Horseman’ Stop the Presses.” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt5218452/characters/nm0004715.

4. Brown, Robert G. Why Solipsism Is Bullshit. Duke Physics, 17 Dec. 2007. Web. 2 May 2017. Anomalisa. Dir. Charlie Kaufman. Universal Pictures, 2015. Digital.