Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Concept of Memory Erasure
‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ is a film directed by Michel Gondry and scripted by Charlie Kaufman in 2004. It captivatingly illustrates the interesting relationship of Clementine Kruczynski and Joel Barish. They both undertake a seemingly ordinary technology of their time which is a memory erasure procedure. Performed at Lacuna Inc. run by Dr. Mierzwiak, they both intended to eradicate their painful memories of each other indefinitely. After studying this film, I have come to believe that it is impossible to completely eradicate memories of a relationship that has had a significant impact on your life. I fashioned three focal questions to investigate my thesis in depth: Why do we not appreciate how important our memories are to us, how does memory erasure impact us in the long run, and is it worth deleting painful memories if it takes away the happy ones too. I examined several resources to aid in my investigation and centred my focus on three critics’ works; “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by Harvey S. Karten (2004), “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Memory Alteration Technology” by E. M. Gallagher (2009), and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Question of Transcendence” by David L. Smith (2005).
“Ensembles of neurons are thought to serve as the physical representation of memory…However, identifying the precise neurons that constitute a memory trace is challenging because these neuronal ensembles are likely sparsely distributed.” This statement clearly describes how complex memories are. Scientifically, a memory is a group of sporadically spread nerve cells, but we know a memory as an array of images and thoughts of experiences from our past, triggered by a sound, a smell or an object. Isn’t losing our identity the most frightening thing? What if you couldn’t remember a person, though something screamed familiar? What if you heard a song and suddenly felt an overwhelming sadness, but you couldn’t figure out why? Isn’t
“Ensembles of neurons are thought to serve as the physical representation of memory…However, identifying the precise neurons that constitute a memory trace is challenging because these neuronal ensembles are likely sparsely distributed.” This statement clearly describes how complex memories are. Scientifically, a memory is a group of sporadically spread nerve cells, but we know a memory as an array of images and thoughts of experiences from our past, triggered by a sound, a smell or an object. Isn’t losing our identity the most frightening thing? What if you couldn’t remember a person, though something screamed familiar? What if you heard a song and suddenly felt an overwhelming sadness, but you couldn’t figure out why? Isn’t