Memory Erasure In Film

Take a moment and look back on a memory that you would rather forget. Maybe you are picturing a relationship that ended badly, or perhaps the death of a family member. Maybe you are remembering a traumatic incident in your past, or maybe you are a war veteran trying not to relive the horrors of war. Regardless of the memory you have recalled, it is likely that, at some point in your life, you have come across one of these painful memories and wished there was a way to erase them from your mind. Our society imagines the possibility of memory erasure in seemingly logical, simplistic ways; most people imagine a world where memories can be erased simply by taking a pill or undergoing a procedure. The concept is shrouded by society’s futuristic, sci-fi expectations of advanced technology that could allow for memory erasure to become a reality, and the media plays up this belief in film. One film that contributes to the stereotypical image of memory erasure is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which characters Joel and Clementine, formerly in a relationship, both decide to undergo a procedure which targets and erases all of their memories surrounding the other and their failed …show more content…
Unlike the procedure shown in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the mental pathways followed to create and remember are too complex and varied to trace, making it impossible to target specific memories without knowing the exact pathways it follows. Because these pathways are too difficult to trace, it is unlikely that any pill or procedure could ever be capable of erasing a memory. Though the fantasy version of memory erasure will surely never exist, memory erasure itself is not quite as unrealistic as we may