Thank You, Thank You Very Much
With my sanity on the line, I called in the experts.
Austin Butler talks like Elvis.
(Bartlett did not respond to Bustles request for comment.)
I had three years where [Elvis] was my only focus in life.
On its face, this seemingly permanent voice change defies reason.
People are weird, sure, and the mind can generate some pretty nutso ideas (Cotards syndrome!
The Fregoli delusion!)
but Butlers predicament is somehow even stranger.
There is no such reason for Butler adopting Elvis accent after hes no longer playing him.
She assured me that our voices are fluid and always evolving nothing to panic about.
And thats also reflected through the voice.
It definitely requires self-aware effort at the beginning.
We process our own voice completely differently from the way we perceive other peoples voices, Kleinberger continues.
Your mental state and strong emotion and cognitive load might actually reduce our ability to control our voice.
And in that case it might be even harder to consciously decide, she says.
Really whatever comes out, comes out.
But actors adopt fake accents for roles all the time, and they almost never pull a Butler.
Wed have to lock her in a Wawa.)
Clearly, something is different about his case.
Shes identified two reasons why Butler might be all, Thank you, thank you very much.
And second, a conscious desire to disassociate.
(Daniel Day-Lewis found dead, cold hands clamped around his Oscars.)
Butler did fully immerse himself for the role.
I had months where I wouldnt talk to anybody.
And when I did, the only thing I was ever thinking about was Elvis.
So I called up Peter Schwardmann, an assistant professor and behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University.
He studies self-deception in depth, and lists several coherent reasons why people might lie to themselves.
This, apparently, helps us feel better about ourselves and our uncertain futures.
But if you believe it, youre not faking it anymore, Schwardmann says.
How could this apply to my good man Austin Butler?
What is acting, after all, if not an artistic license to lie?
Id assumed that Butler and I occupied the same reality, which we clearly dont.
If its true in his mind, itistrue.
I think if youre doing science, you have to assume there are facts, Mele says.
Theres only so much room for error in interpretation, he explains.
If our beliefs were not largely true, I think eventually we would just die.
Kind of like a Tamagotchi, if you chose to believe it didnt need to eat.
Alright, but then what about… And as the final glop of brain goo slid out my ear, so did my worries.
This article was originally published onMarch 9, 2023
