The Green-Eyed Monster in Three Acts: A Look at Envy in Film
- Cody Thomas Rounds
- Aug 12
- 11 min read
It's a sly, creeping thing, envy. The great sin, the one that whispers in the dark when you’re alone with your perceived failures. It's not a loud, brazen crime like wrath, or a languid, self-indulgent one like sloth. Envy is a silent, corrosive acid that eats away at the soul from the inside out, often to the profound and violent detriment of others. To covet another’s worldly goods is one thing, a simple, understandable greed. But to covet what they are—their talent, their grace, their very self—that is the poison that gives birth to monsters. While jealousy is the fear of losing something you already possess, envy is the desperate and often destructive desire for something you do not have. Cinema, our modern-day temple of mythological storytelling, has never shied away from this subject, and in fact, has given us a few of the most unnervingly perfect portraits of the envious man ever put to screen.
We're going to pull up a chair to three such gentlemen, all of whom, in their own profoundly distinct ways, show us the raw, terrifying face of this most human of emotions. We'll start with the theatrical, move to the existential, and end, of course, with the truly grotesque. These are not merely stories about wanting what someone else has; they are case studies in how the ego, when it meets its superior, can shatter into a million destructive pieces, and how the shadow self, the part of us we deny, asserts itself with a terrifying vengeance, taking a life of its own in the dark spaces of the psyche.
The Envy of God's Anointed
In Miloš Forman's operatic masterpiece, Amadeus, we meet Antonio Salieri, a man who, by all objective measures, should be the most contented musician in Vienna. He is the court composer to the Emperor, a man of profound faith, discipline, and success. He is, to his own mind, a devout servant of God, and his musical talent is the manifestation of this piety—a reward for his tireless effort and pure spirit. Yet, all of this is rendered to dust the moment he encounters Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What Salieri envies isn't Mozart's fame or wealth; he envies his talent. He sees in Mozart's music not just genius, but the very voice of God—a voice he believes should have been his.
Salieri's envy is a spiritual crisis of the highest order. He has, in his own mind, a contract with God: "I will be pure, I will be diligent, I will honor you with my art, and in return, you will give me genius." But God, as he sees it, has reneged on the deal, bestowing the divine spark upon a vulgar, puerile, and profane buffoon who tells dirty jokes and giggles like a child. The horror for Salieri is not just the beauty of Mozart's music, but the effortless, almost careless way it flows from him, as if he were merely a conduit for the divine. This stands in stark contrast to Salieri's own painstaking labor, his years of disciplined practice and prayer. Salieri's initial shock gives way to a righteous, theological rage against a cosmic injustice. He becomes, in effect, a self-appointed avenger, believing he is punishing God himself by destroying the vessel of his grace. It's an envy so grand in its scope that it elevates itself from a petty jealousy to a full-blown war with the divine, a battle of wills that can only end in self-annihilation. He meticulously orchestrates Mozart's fall, all while wearing the mask of a patron and a friend. His pious life becomes a facade for a deep, festering shadow self of pure, malevolent resentment. The truly tragic dimension of his envy is that it becomes a twisted sort of creative force in its own right, as he pours all his energy and cunning into the requiem, a project meant to kill both his rival and his own soul. His final act is not one of triumph, but of becoming the very thing he despised: a pathetic old man confessing his sins to a stranger, his great life's work a hollow lie.
The Envy of Being
Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley presents us with a very different, and perhaps more chilling, form of the sickness. Tom Ripley, a young man of indeterminate past and zero prospects, is sent to Italy to retrieve a wealthy playboy, Dickie Greenleaf. It's a simple premise, but what unfolds is a ballet of psychological possession. Ripley doesn't merely envy Dickie's money, his clothes, or his carefree existence; he envies his essence. Ripley is a cipher, a walking void, a human chameleon with no true color of his own. He is a master of mimicry, but his talent is a symptom of a profound inner emptiness. In Dickie, he sees a complete, vibrant person, a man who seems to exist without effort, to be the very embodiment of the good life. Dickie has a defined self, a history, a family, and a future—everything Ripley lacks.
Ripley’s envy is a form of spiritual vampirism, a parasitic need to absorb the life force of another to sustain his own hollow existence. He studies Dickie with an unnerving intensity, taking mental notes on his mannerisms, his tastes in music, his way of speaking. He puts on Dickie's clothes and looks at himself in the mirror, not to appreciate the finery, but as if trying on a soul. The moment he slips on Dickie’s ring, he is no longer just observing; he is beginning to inhabit. This isn’t a desire to replace Dickie in the world, but to replace Dickie in his own skin. When Ripley’s masquerade is threatened, the envy curdles into violence. He doesn't just want to kill Dickie; he wants to absorb him. The murder itself is a chaotic act, but Ripley’s actions afterward are meticulous. He takes not only Dickie's life, but his identity, and carries on as him, performing a macabre, improvised play. This is the envy of the empty, a desire so profound and terrifying that it seeks to erase the other and become them entirely. Ripley’s tragedy is that in the end, he is left alone, having successfully stolen a life but still possessing no self of his own. He is a ghost haunting the life he stole, forever looking over his shoulder for the next person to imitate. He is forever a pretender, his soul a haunted house of the people he has consumed.
The Envy of Form
Finally, we arrive at the most disturbing of our subjects: Buffalo Bill, the killer from Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. The film’s brilliant conceit is that his envy is so misunderstood, even by himself. He is a man who wants to be a woman, but not in the way we commonly understand. He is not a person suffering from gender dysphoria who seeks a transition to a new life and an authentic self. Instead, he seeks to embody a physical form that is not his own through the most heinous means. His grotesque project, the meticulously crafted "woman suit," is the literal and physical manifestation of his envy.
Buffalo Bill's envy is a visceral, anatomical fury. He is a man trapped in a body he detests, and his envy is directed not at a person, but at the very form of a woman. It is an unholy act of creation born from a profound, self-loathing desire to shed his own skin and wear another's. The film makes it clear that he is a broken man whose envy has become a murderous, predatory compulsion. The infamous scene with the moth, the Acherontia Styx, with its skull-like pattern on its back, is the perfect metaphor for his obsession. He is trying to create, to transform, but what he is really doing is shedding the husk of a life he can't stand. He craves the transformation that the moth undergoes, a metamorphosis he believes will make him whole, and his heinous acts are a grotesque parody of this natural process. His envy is so extreme, so desperate, that it becomes a literal, nightmarish act of creation—a testament to how the self, when it cannot reconcile with its own reality, will resort to the most horrific means to impose a new one. In the end, his goal is not just to kill, but to create. He is a twisted artist, his medium being the lives and skins of his victims.
In the end, all three of these men are not just villains, but victims of their own unmanageable desires. Salieri, the holy man, is undone by his failure to accept the limits of his own talent. Ripley, the hollow man, is undone by his desperate desire for an identity he can’t find. Buffalo Bill, the tormented man, is undone by his violent war with his own body. Envy, in all its forms, is a mirror, and what each of them saw was not just what they lacked, but the terrible emptiness they held within themselves. And what they did, in trying to destroy the object of their envy, was to turn that destruction inward, ultimately leaving them with nothing but the ruins of their own fractured humanity. Each of them, in their own way, was a failed creator, and their legacy is one of loss, both for their victims and for themselves.
This provocative ContraPoints essay delves into envy—from surface gossip to Nietzsche‑infused moral spiral—inviting deeper reflection on human desire, identity, and social comparison.
The Grandiosity of the Shadow
To fully grasp the pathologies of our filmic anti-heroes and to see their dark reflection in our own lives, we must first understand a deeper psychological truth: Envy, at its root, is a form of grandiosity. This may seem a contradiction, for envy is born of a feeling of inferiority, of lacking something essential. But as the Jungian tradition teaches us, the ego, when wounded, often compensates with a dangerous inflation. This isn't simple arrogance; it is a profound and often unconscious defense mechanism, a psychic armor forged in the fires of inadequacy. It is the ego’s desperate and deluded attempt to deny its own limitations by convincing itself that it is, in fact, superior to everyone and everything around it. This process builds a metaphorical kingdom in the mind, a fragile and imaginary throne. When reality—in the form of another person’s talent, success, or being—threatens to expose this kingdom as a mere hut, the envious man seeks to burn down the entire world just to prove his reign.
What is Grandiosity and Its Tie to Envy?
Grandiosity, in this psychological sense, is a state of self-inflation where the ego overestimates its own importance, abilities, and entitlements. It is the Shadow, the unintegrated and rejected part of the self, that fuels this inflation. The Shadow holds not only our repressed weaknesses—our laziness, our cowardice, our shame—but also our unlived potential, the powerful, instinctual parts of us we fear to acknowledge. Envy is the specific emotional nexus where these two forces collide. It is the moment we encounter someone who embodies our own unlived potential—a Mozart, a Dickie, a woman in the eyes of Buffalo Bill. The envious man is a grandiose man because he believes, in the deepest part of his psyche, that he is not just worthy of what another possesses, but that he is entitled to it. The ego, unable to bear the pain of its own shortcomings, projects its desired qualities onto another, then feels a righteous fury that they possess what it feels should have been its own.
Envy as a Manifestation of Grandiosity
This is why envy is a manifestation, not just a symptom, of grandiosity. It is the act through which the grandiose lie becomes a force in the world. The Shadow surges forward, asserting its right to another's talent or being with a force that feels like destiny. "That talent should be mine," the Shadow hisses. "That life, that form, is what I was meant to have. The universe made a mistake." This is the grandiose lie in its most insidious form—the self-deception that a person's worth is tied not to who they are, but to what they can seize or destroy. It's the moment the ego, facing its own humility and the arduous, patient process of becoming, chooses instead to become a god, to rewrite the cosmic script to suit its own wounded narrative. This is the ultimate spiritual pride, a defiance of the divine order that makes Salieri’s envy so potent. He doesn't just resent Mozart; he resents God's choice, placing himself in a position to be the ultimate judge of creative genius. His entire destructive project is a grandiose performance, an attempt to prove to God—and to himself—that his own talent was the one worth blessing.
The Allure and Agony of Grandiose Envy
The feeling of envy, then, is a complex and contradictory phenomenon. It is, at once, profoundly painful and strangely exhilarating. The pain is the recognition of our own lack, the sharp sting of inferiority that the ego cannot tolerate. It's the silent suffering of the man who sees his peer rise above him, a gnawing emptiness in the pit of the soul. The exhilaration, however, is the rush of power that comes from the Shadow's mobilization. It is the raw, untamed energy of a powerful drive to close the gap, to take what is "rightfully" ours. In this moment of activation, the envious man feels a sense of purpose, a clarity of mission, however twisted. This is why envy, in the moment, feels both good and bad, a sort of ecstatic agony. It is the feeling of becoming a force, of having a purpose, however malevolent. It gives the envious man a new and terrible sense of self, a false identity built on destruction. It is the ultimate manifestation of the refusal to accept one's station, a destructive method rather than a constructive one.
How to Recognize Grandiose Envy in Our Own Lives
Recognizing grandiose envy in ourselves requires a brutal and honest self-appraisal. It rarely appears as a full-blown pathology, but rather in our small, daily acts of resentment and sabotage. We see it in the quiet satisfaction we feel when a friend’s new venture fails. We see it in the passive-aggressive dismissal of a colleague’s accomplishment. We see it in the subtle but persistent need to find a flaw in the person who seems to have it all, to reassure ourselves that their success is somehow hollow or undeserved. The key is to notice the moment you feel both the sting of inferiority and the subtle thrill of malevolent power. It's the fleeting thought, "They don't really deserve that," or the compulsive need to downplay another’s success to make your own feel more significant. In these moments, we are tapping into that same dark reservoir as Salieri, Ripley, and Buffalo Bill. Our envy, too, is a grandiose protest against our own limitations, a pathetic and powerful drive to correct what we perceive as a cosmic mistake in our own lives. It is the Shadow, asserting itself, seeking to dominate the ego and turn us into something we were never meant to be. The envious man is a tragic figure not because of what he lacks, but because of the tremendous energy he pours into the destruction of others, energy that might have been used to build his own life.
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