Written vs. Spoken Manipulation

After watching Memento for the second time, I noticed many details that I had glanced over before. During class, I kept watching for manipulation throughout this film (it’s kind of hard to miss). My goal was to count how many times I saw manipulation, but after about 17 I lost count. Then, I observed something very peculiar. Leonard does not like to speak to people without seeing them, as if the spoken word is more tainted than the written word. Even though technically there is manipulation in writing as well (Janelle’s contract, for example), the characters in the film swindle Leonard through the entire movie: the host at the motel makes him pay for staying in multiple rooms, Natalie tricks him into getting rid of Dodd, and Teddy deceives Leonard by getting him to kill multiple people with the name John G. I then realized that there is manipulation of the written word as well within the movie. For example, Leonard trusts his tattoos as if they are unbiased, however, the truth us that some (if not all) of his tattoos are false. He taints his tattoos by convincing himself to kill Teddy, even though he is not the person who raped and killed his wife. He thinks that the written word represents the truth, or reality.  I think this message applies to life in general because no matter if it is written or spoken, manipulation is involved with many of our everyday activities. There really is no escape from the inevitable onslaught, but, there is a minor solution. In order to deceive manipulation, we need to be aware of the duplicity. By doing so, we can effectively spot (maybe not completely evade) the manipulation and make our decisions based on what we can discern as manipulation.