Event 2: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Screening

For my second event, I attended the screening of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film directed by Michel Gondry. This movie is about a man named Joel (the protagonist) who uses a new memory-erasing technology to rid himself of painful memories of his ex-lover, Clementine.

This movie is most related to our Week 6 discussions on Biotechnology + Art and our Week 7 discussions on Neuroscience + Art. My biggest reaction to this movie was a feeling that we (as in humanity) don’t truly understand ourselves, and therefore don’t understand our reactions to the medicines we administer to ourselves.

In the movie, the memory-erasing device doesn’t seem to actually completely erase memories as advertised. When Joel and Clementine first meet, Joel references Huckleberry Hound’s rendition of “Oh My Darling, Clementine”.

Joel briefly singing “Oh My Darling, Clementine” when first meeting Clementine.

Later in the movie, when Joel and Clementine re-meet on the train, Clementine references the song but Joel doesn’t know it, even though originally he knew it from childhood.

Clementine singing “Oh My Darling, Clementine” when re-meeting Joel because he doesn’t know it.

If the device erased the song from Joel’s memory because of its relevance to their first meeting, then it should have done the same for Clementine. That it doesn’t shows that the device doesn’t work as well as intended. The movie is riddled with several other examples like this one.

My best guess is that the device can erase memories from being accessed by the conscious mind, but is unable to wipe the memories, or at least the effects of those memories, from the unconscious. Note that as Joel ventures deeper and deeper into his repressed memories, it becomes harder for the scientists at Lacuna to find and erase the memory of Clementine that he brings with him. Both Freud and Jung agreed that repressed memories live in the unconscious.

Joel taking Clementine to a repressed memory of him hammering a bird in order to avoid erasure.

In that regard, this movie is a good warning about our confidence in our medicines. Our history is brimming with examples where our incomprehension of some medical topic led to disastrous consequences (e.g. the mass prescription of cocaine as a panacea in the 1880’s). Our minds seem even less comprehensible than our bodies, so we should be even more careful.

Cscott713. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Bird Scene.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 June 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1VQxJNu-pE.

“Huckleberry Hound.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Hound.

Mcleod, Saul. “Carl Jung.” Carl Jung | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.html.

Musto, D F. “Cocaine's history, especially the American experience.” Ciba Foundation symposium vol. 166 (1992): 7-14; discussion 14-9. doi:10.1002/9780470514245.ch2

movieclips. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (1/11) Movie CLIP - Train Ride (2004) HD.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 June 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdl2FFp0eA.

movieclips. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (7/11) Movie CLIP - The Day We Met (2004) HD.” YouTube, YouTube, 29 May 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpAoVOU-q60.

“The History of Cocaine - Where Does Cocaine Come from? - Drug-Free World.” Foundation for a Drug-Free World, www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/cocaine/a-short-history.html. 

“Unconscious Mind.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 May 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind.