Little Miss Sunshine is about a family who goes on a road trip across the country to bring seven-year-old Olive to compete in a beauty pageant. Included in the group are two characters, Frank and Dwayne, who show signs of social anxiety, though in different ways and for different reasons. Continue reading
Ghost World is about two teenage hipsters, Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), struggling to navigate the real world after their high school graduation. When Enid plays a prank by responding to a personal ad in the newspaper, she and Rebecca meet Seymour (Steve Buscemi), an older man whom they view as a pathetic socially awkward loser. Continue reading
The Station Agent is about Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage, pre-Game of Thrones), a quiet dwarf who tries to live isolated from society, but after he inherits a train depot, several people in the town invade his life of solitude. Continue reading
I’ve written about social anxiety in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Essentially the Dark Side is social anxiety, and the Force is mindfulness. Now the time has come to complete the trilogy with Part VI – Return of the Jedi. Continue reading
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1864 novel, Notes From Underground, is about an unnamed narrator who has gone “underground” to live in isolation from society. He shows several signs of social anxiety through his thoughts and actions. The following quotes from the Underground Man convey what social anxiety feels like. Continue reading
Notes From the Underground is an 1864 novel written by the Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who has gone underground, or withdrawn from society to live in isolation. Broken up into two parts, the first, called “Underground,” includes the narrator’s rambling thoughts and philosophies about life, consciousness, and all the things he dislikes about society. In the second part, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” the narrator goes out into society and has several misguided interactions with people. Continue reading
“Did you get him to talk?”
“He doesn’t like to talk… He’s not the biggest talker.”
In a recent interview on the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon spoke with Jodie Foster about their interactions with Robert De Niro. Both joked about how De Niro doesn’t talk much. They laughed about it, and something about that rubbed me the wrong way. Continue reading
The Chumscrubber is about Dean (Jamie Bell) a high school loner whose only friend, Troy, commits suicide. Dean has to deal with school bullies who want him to steal a stash of prescription drugs from Troy’s room. Plus, he and the other kids in the town have to deal with their parents, who aren’t exactly model citizens themselves. Continue reading
Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson version of a romantic comedy between Barry and Lena, two shy, socially awkward characters. Continue reading
Stranger Than Fiction is about Harold Crick, (Will Ferrell) a lonely introverted accountant who begins hearing a voice narrate his life. He discovers the voice is an author, (Emma Thompson) and he is a character in her latest novel. Everything she writes about him comes true, so Harold grows concerned when she writes that he is soon going to die. Continue reading
T.Z. Barry 