Monday, November 12, 2012

The Asch Experiment

Zelig Quotes

Quotes from Zelig:

Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim: The question of weather Zelig was a psychotic or merely neurotic was a question that was endlessly discussed among his doctors. Now I myself felt his feelings were really not all that different from the normal, what one would call the well-adjusted, normal person, only carried to an extreme degree, to an extreme extent. I myself felt that one could really think of him as the ultimate conformist.

 He seemed clearly to be an aristocrat and extolled the very rich as he chatted with socialites. He spoke adoringly of... the Republican Party, all in an upper-class Boston accent. An hour later,... I was stunned to see the same man speaking with the kitchen help. Now he claimed to be a Democrat, and his accent seemed coarse, as if he were one of the crowd.

It's safe...to be like the others. I want to be liked .

Kids, you got to be yourself.  You can't act like anybody else just because you think they have all the answers and you don't.  You have to be your own man and learn to speak up and say what’s on your mind.

I have to be a real person and make my own moral choices, even when they do require real courage.  Otherwise you're like a robot or a lizard.

Like the lizard that is endowed by nature with a marvellous protective device that enables it to change color and to blend in with its immediate surroundings, Zelig too protects himself by becoming whoever he is around.

No. I'm nobody. I'm nothing.

Though the shows and parties keep his sister and her lover rich and amused, Zelig's own existence is a non-existence. Devoid of personality, his human qualities long since lost in the shuffle of life, he sits alone, quietly staring into space, a cipher, a non-person, a performing freak.