Movie Gadget Friday: The Memory Erasing Process from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
posted October 15th 2004 5:56PM
Last friday
Josie Fraser checked out the
Dejarik Holochess game from Star Wars, for this week's
Movie Gadget Friday she writes about the Memory Erasing Process from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: A lot of the action in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place inside the head of main character
Joel (played by Jim Carrey - thankfully not gurning for once), while he is having all memories relating to his
ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) erased by two techies. They work for a company called Lacuna, Inc., run by Dr.
Howard Mierzwiak, who has perfected a painless, non-surgical procedure for identifying and erasing unwanted and painful
memories.
In the film, the procedure is a two step process - first, the patient brings items relating to memories of the events
or person they want expunging. Their head is placed in a large, white, donut shaped machine, which produces a display
of cross-sections of their brain. They look at their meaningful objects, and while re-experience the unwanted memories
Dr. Mierzwiak maps where the nasty thoughts are hiding out.
Next, the patient goes home, takes a sedative and is visited by the aforementioned technicians. Using a laptop, some
software and a silver coloured space helmet, they then target and remove the neurons containing the memories. As Dr.
Mierzwiak says, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but on a par with a night of heavy drinking.
Nothing youll miss.
Leaving aside the issue of entrusting your house, let alone your brain to random techies (in this movie, drunken
knicker-stealing ones), lets take a look at the technologies Lacuna Inc. procedure draws on.
The brain maps in the film look exactly like those generated by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
brain-scan. fMRI uses magnetic fields and radio signals that show up brain activity, since the exact location of brain
functions (speech for example) arent uniform or accurately predictable enough to carry out brain surgery before
knowing where the main action is taking place. However, in the movie memories are shown as specific and identifiable
clusters, which helpfully show up on screen as red dots. Memories are actually diffuse, and they arent recalled by
unique synaptic pathways. So dont try taking out random cell clusters in the hope of forgetting that git who just
dumped you for your mother/best friend/twin.
The technology nearest to the Lacuna memory wipe is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) - a highly controversial
technology developed on the scientific premise that epileptic fits may cure depression, although nobody knows exactly
why. Long and short term memory loss are regularly sited as common side effects by patients undergoing ECT, although
unfortunately for our love sick readers the actual memories lost arent selectable or predictable.
Your best bet currently is to dull your ability to feel in general, as this will then reduce the strength of any
memories created in the first place, as well as your ability to experience the full pain of subsequent loss.
Neurobiologist James McGaugh has demonstrated that the beta-blocker propepanol can help you with this. Popular
alternatives include valium and good old alcoholism. The down-side being that dulling your senses in anticipation of an
eventual heartbreak will almost certainly prevent anyone falling in love with you in the first place, since who wants
to date a drugged up emotional zombie?
Keen movie goers will know a similar device is used in Woos disappointing Paycheck. The reason Im looking
at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and not Paycheck is that Im still upset that Charlie
Kaufmans screenplay for A Scanner Darkly isnt being used.
Check out Philip K. Dick stories/novels. You will love it if you like this site and sf...
For weeks the comment space on Movie Gadget Friday is FILLED with rants and raves how you want them to look at current tech, but now that they have, no one comments? Jeez, you guys suck. Good job, Josie.
Really enjoyed that piece, it's interesting stuff. The topper was the reference to Charlie's "Scanner" adaptation -- oh, how I wish they were using his version. VERY faithful to the book and a damn good script.
--Mick.
Philip K. Dick's short stories and novels have my times been turned into movies with varying degrees of success ("Blade Runner" = the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", "Total Recall" = "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale", "Minority Report" = "Minority Report", "Paycheck" = "Paycheck") Visually "Blade Runner" and "Minority Report" have the best style sense, while "Blade Runner" probably has the most interesting ambience to it (although it's not particularly faithful to the book). Just in case people wondered the 2 short stories which "Total Recall" and "Minority Report" are based on are actually based in the same universe (the "pre-cogs" in "Minority Report" are the same as that psychic for the same reasons that little girl in "Total Recall" is psychic).
I've read Kaufman's Scanner... script and it wasn't anything special. In fact it was quite literally PKD's book converted to screenplay form. Rick's script is also very faithful, so other than the coolness factor of Kaufman's name being attatched to something, nothing was lost in not using his script.
it is still not said whether momories could actually be erased or not,despite everything that is said so far