Friday, April 11, 2008

The Pattern of Patterns

Since we’ve now all been conditioned to look for patterns lately, I feel it is only fair to point out some of the recurring themes in A Beautiful Mind that we’ve discussed in class. First off there is obvious notion that the protagonist, John Nash is looking for, what else, a pattern in governing dynamics, though I have no idea what governing dynamics is. If anyone could briefly explain this to me, I would be grateful and it would also help boost your comment total.

Another recurring pattern is of the (social) outcast who over comes obstacles to achieve success. Obviously this isn’t restricted to ABM. I can think of a few off the time off of my head like Spider-Man or virtually any rags to riches to story. Anyhow, in ABM Nash overcomes falling behind his peers and ends up winning a prestigious award then later seems to overcome schizophrenia to live a normal life. I’ve never seen this movie before nor heard much about John Nash so I don’t know how much is truth and how much is Hollywood. Oh, there’s also the not so subtle “love conquers all” schema in the movie that seems to play itself out in many Hollywood tales.

So, after viewing Pi and now this first portion of ABM it’s hard to deny that there are definitely recurring patterns in life. Perhaps Max was right in believing that everything in the universe has some sort of pattern. Perhaps we are just unable to figure out what those patterns are yet.

4 comments:

Miguel said...

To the best of my knowledge and what I've read governing dynamics is the revelation Nash had at the bar while they were all talking about the blonde. Like Nash was saying, if they each go for the blonde, (i.e. each party tries for their optimal outcome) then at least one person will not get their wish. But, if they collaborate and each choose their best option with the choice of the others in mind, then the collective outcome will be better than it would be if they did not collaborate. I don't know how much sense that makes, even to me, sorry.

Miguel said...

I just realized there is a blog from Monday that explains the whole Nash equillibrium/governing dynamics thing much better than I did. Oops.

Brian M said...

I do think that there are patterns in everything in the universe. Some may be trivial but they can be found if you look hard enough for them.

Cheney said...

It's easy to find patterns in movies. Like JJones said most movies follow like three or four universal formats. Go with what you know sells. It's easy in some way to apply these to any persons life. One thing in class that we talked about however was that it was unrealistic that someone could just get over schizophrenia on their own being unbelievable but unless I'm mistaken that's kind of what happened in Nash's real life. I'm starting to diverge from your post but Nash's life definitely had a Hollywood ending despite the disparities between the true nature of John Nash in his early years and the Nash portrayed in the movie.