A Quick Analysis of Artyom's 2017 Interview and His Anxiety
So I'm sure we're all very familiar with this interview, but after rewatching it for the millionth time, I decided to pull out a BPM counter. If you pay attention to his chest or even just the sound of his breathing, you can tell he's breathing pretty quickly. So I decided to measure it.
Throughout the interview, his average respiratory rate is 25. Keep in mind, the average respiratory rate for a healthy adult is 12-20 breaths per minute (I'll be abbreviating it to BPM). 25 BPM is the equivalent of a light jog. This is pretty normal for an interview. What is really interesting to me is where it spikes. For most of the questions, his BPM spikes to 30, which would equate to running. These questions are ones surrounding the victims or Nikita. This is moderate to severe anxiety, and it's approaching hyperventilation.
The most interesting part of this interview for me however, is his spikes to 35 BPM. This would equate to sprinting, and is quite literally Artyom hyperventilating in his seat. I've been able to measure these spikes in two separate instances. The first, at 3:29, and the second, at around 9:50.
What interests me about these specific instances, are that they're both examples of his ego being bruised in some way. In the first instance, the interviewer is asking Artyom about the nature of his fraudulent activities, and Artyom replies, "It's a secret", to which the interviewer laughs at him. In the second instance, Artyom is caught on his lie from earlier in the interview, where he claimed not to remember the interviewer, but then proceeded to talk about that exact interview where they had first met, and the interview asks him about that.
In both these examples, Artyom loses his sense of power and is undermined by the interviewer. In the first example, by laughing at Artyom's defence, he's essentially insulting Artyom. He's telling him, You're not intimidating, you're not mysterious. You are a joke to me. Artyom's not given time to dwell in that stress, because the interviewer changes the topic.
In the second example, Artyom directly loses the sense of power he has over the interviewer. By telling someone you don't remember them, you eliminate their existence of any meaning. I don't know you, you mean nothing to me, you weren't even important enough for me to remember you. It's a way to start off on a clean slate. What I said then doesn't matter, because I've completely removed it from my mind. By being caught on his lie, he's completely stripped of that advantage.
This, to me, is a great example of narcissistic injury. The questions about the victims he brutally murdered do not bother him nearly as much as being made to feel beneath the interviewer. I think these instances support the armchair diagnosis of NPD, as it's not behaviour isolated to this interview.
I've seen people claim that Artyom was trolling during this interview, and this is part of the reason why I believe he isn't.
That last point brings me to sort of the second part of this post, which is just a few less specific observations on his physical tells of anxiety throughout this interview.
He swallows a lot. It's made all the more obvious by his head position, the swallowing forces him to tilt his head up to do so more comfortably.
You can see the muscles in his jaw tightening throughout the interview.
After the first instance, at 3:29, Artyom looks away, and he brings his BPM down to 20. This could be interpreted as if trying to give himself a moment to get himself together. By looking away, he takes his eyes off the pressure (the interviewer). But it doesn't work, as it's difficult to force your body to calm down, so it spikes to 30 to make up for the suppression.
I think if he were just trolling, he wouldn't be this anxious throughout the entire interview. Again, he was quite literally hyperventilating in his seat, and forcing himself to calm down. He also gets more agitated as the interview goes on, to the point he's essentially just refusing to answer questions and just going in circles.
Well, that's about it. It's just something that I noticed and found interesting and decided to share! A fun game to play with this interview is to try to breathe as hard as he is and make yourself lightheaded.
Bonus: Talking about GITIS had his BPM at around 28.
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