Oops--sorry Joseph. I didn't see your prior entry. My apologies.
Hi Everyone--I was just wondering if anyone else has seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? I just saw it this weekend and I thought it raised some interesting issues that really resonated with the stuff we've been talking about in class. In particular, there are these scenes in which Jim Carrey's brain is represented on a computer screen. His "bad memories" are mapped out by pixels and a couple of technicians are responsible for going through this map and deleting (literally pressing a delete button) these memories from his brain. The idea that the human and the computer here are so symbiotic--that the delete button has an immediate impact on the body--put me in mind of Hayles and the posthuman ... mostly, I suppose, because the computer seems to be a type of prosthetic extension. Most critics I have read see the movie as an exploration of consciousness, but I think that it also offers an interesting vision of how we might imagine technology as embodied (or the body as technology for that matter). I wonder what this movie will look like to audiences in fifty years--prophetic or ridiculous? Anyhow, I was just wondering if anyone else saw it and had the same feeling.
I think the ending of The Bug also has much in common with what happens in the movie, but maybe some people didn't finish the book yet, so I won't go on. In any case, I loved the movie and I hope somebody else out there wants to talk about it.
Posted by Jenny at March 31, 2004 02:12 AMUm...I kind of blogged on Eternal Sunshine over the weekend. See my comments under the entry entitled "Posting from Tralfamadore."
You'll find that many of our observations correspond (without knowing it!).
It would be kind of fun to do a class outing to see the film. Those who'd like to do so, see me after class tonight.
Posted by: Joseph Byrne at March 31, 2004 11:30 AMI realized that I should have linked to this from Joseph's entry...
Steven Johnson's slate article on Eternal Sunshine: http://slate.msn.com/id/2097502/
This is about neuroscience and our current understanding of consciousness, and might give people an interesting background for discussing the relevance of our reading to the film (which I have now seen twice, with no appreciable loss of interest on the second viewing... it's really very good).
Posted by: Jess at March 31, 2004 01:48 PM