I don’t know if this is because I’m getting older and it’s an eyesight and/or memory thing or what. Anyone else (who’s 50ish) have this, or a similar, issue?
So, sometimes when I’m watching a show, I have a hard time telling two characters apart. They seem to resemble each other in some weird subliminal way (though they usually do appear similar in appearance, such as eye and hair color), and I can generally only tell them apart by concentrating really hard and paying hyper-close attention to what the character is saying and what he’d doing in order to know “oh yeah, that’s the son, the other guy is the bad guy who works at the dad’s company” (or whatever).
I notice it generally only happens with men, but occasionally I’ll have the problem with the leading ladies as well.
I’m a male in my fifties, and I find I’m having trouble telling youngish women characters apart, unless they are seriously different looking. Guy characters I generally have no trouble with.
Sometimes the people really DO look too much alike. I was watching some movie on TV recently, a cop show set in the '50s. All the men were clean-shaven, had short hair, wore hats and raincoats. Hell, their own mothers couldn’t have told them apart.
I’m not that great at recognizing faces, so it happens to me from time to time, particularly when dealing with movies or shows with less-known actors.
Right now I remember watching the (terrible) 2012 Total Recall remake. Even though I’m familiar with both Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale, and I’ve never thought the two actresses as being all that similar, I had a serious time telling them apart in that movie, because they had similar hairstyles.
I personally attribute the phenomenon to aging. For me, I find that I just can’t follow some shows - usually cop/mystery shows - they just come off as nonsense gibberish. I feel that I am just not paying enough attention. Now, as a counterpoint - when I am engaged, I can still pick out the mystery or the killer easily. So, the underlying skill is still there, it’s just the engagement that has slipped.
As for recognizing actors / characters - yeah, I get that too, to a degree. Some shows I see frequently (I don’t seek them out, but happen to see them) and I can admit that if one of the lead actors walked up to me today I wouldn’t recognize them. Again, I think it’s because I just am not engaged in the show (I just don’t care…)
Yes! Now that you mention it, I just (wasted 2 hours on that horror) saw that remake, and I had the same problem with those two. I had to rewind a few times in the beginning to get my bearings. “hey wait? wasn’t that the same girl that he was just kissing? now she’s the enemy”?
Same with L.A. Confidential, I had a hard time telling some of the male characters apart. I had to run that one back a few times to sort it out as well. I just thought of something, I think in some cases, such as both the Total Recall remake and L.A. Confidential, the lighting is really low, so that adds to the problem. That is, you can’t see them that clearly in the first place.
Mid-thirties here, and have the problem with females especially, but it extends to real life occasionally as well. I figure I’ve got a mild case of prosopagnosia (face-blindness; probably misspelled) and leave it at that.
Much actually! I thought I was showing signs of early onset Alzheimer’s or something! And I’m not being snarky. I’ve had this happen several times, and my reaction is “what is WRONG with me, this can’t be that hard”!
The first time I noticed it where I just couldn’t seem to tell the two young men apart was on the remake of “Dallas” (which I stopped watching after a few episodes anyway). The two young men, um JR’s kid and Bobby’s kid, I kept getting them confused. Seeing them together I was like “okay, they both have dark hair, but they don’t look THAT much alike”. But no matter what, if they weren’t side by side, I’d have to see what the scene entailed half the time before I could figure out which one was which.
*Schindler’s List *is a very confusing movie when you can’t tell Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson apart. Just sayin’.
But yes, I do find it happening more the older I get. I don’t know if my brain is just getting full or if the starlets are all looking more alike. I think it’s a little of each.
