The Role of Time

I have never seen Momento before and so far I love it. Over Thanksgiving break one of my friends was talking about the movie to someone else and I overheard him say that everything is in reverse. I thought the movie was spoiled for me because I thought that I now knew a key fact we wouldn’t know until the end. But as soon as it started I realized that knowing that had spoiled nothing for me. The movie starts off very clearly in reverse and then continues that theme by the events occurring chronologically backwards. To me the flow of time does not (so far) seem to be the main focus of the movie anyway, it seems to be more about Lenny’s lack of memory and his struggle to find the truth when he can only go by his notes to himself and the tattoos on his body.

The time “issue” seems to be more of a way to convey meaning to viewers. If the events in the movie occurred in a normal chronological order I don’t think we would get the same experience from watching the movie. In a way, going in reverse order puts viewers in a position similar to Lenny’s; from the start we don’t know what has already happened, just what happens at the moment in time that we are seeing it play out. For example, in the beginning we see Lenny kill a man but we have no idea what happened right before he did so (just as Lenny doesn’t remember what happened before that moment either). This also definitely helps to draw viewers into the plot of the movie right from the start even though we really don’t know what just happened. Octavia Butler employs a similar technique in Kindred; like the movie this novel starts with the end (with Dana losing her arm). We are drawn in right from the very start and become more invested in the story. Kindred also deals with time “issues” (time travel) but is not focused around this idea. Time travel was really only a way for Octavia Butler to better convey meaning in the novel. No matter how much we argued about it and its impossibilities/possibilities, I think we all eventually came to the conclusion that time travel was not the central focus of the novel.

I’m very interested to see how the rest of Momento plays out. I am curious if Lenny will be able to stick to the “truth” or if he will follow a path that he believes to be the “truth” but that is not. I also want to see exactly how/why the aspect of time was messed around with. It could be that I’m totally off in my view of time in the movie so far, but I guess I’ll find out soon!

Temporal Distortion as a Form of Manipulation

Temporal distortion, a characteristic of postmodernism, has become increasingly popular in films. In Vantage Point, the director uses temporal distortion to provide the viewer with an understanding of the various viewpoints of the characters, without piecing the entire movie together. Instead the viewer is left with many "aha" moments and a few surprises at the end. Temporal distortion allows the director to give the clues to the watcher, while simultaneously confusing him and forcing him to miss a few clues. This provides a more dramatic and unexpected conclusion to the movie.

Memento also functions around temporal distortion as the viewer is only provided with short snippets of time that are gradually pieced together for him. This forces the reader to be more attentive and active when he tries to piece together a linear timeline for the events.

In Memento the temporal distortion is necessary in order to inhibit the viewer similarly to Lenny. Lenny's condition severely inhibits him from being able to piece together clues in order to realize what is happening to him, who his wife's murderer is, and who he can trust/how he is being deceived. Because the temporal distortion of the movie prevents the viewer from forming a reliable timeline of events, and only allows the viewer to see certain clips of events at a time, he is similarly inhibited and is left questioning what is happening to Lenny. While the viewer does have the power of memory, which allows him to piece together the snippets he is shown, he is only presented confusing bits of information, and therefore left questioning just as Lenny is. The viewer, therefore, doesn't have much more knowledge than Lenny does and is still subject to the manipulation of the director.

Memento

I have seen Memento before but when I watched it for the first time it was for a psychology class and we obviously viewed through a psychological lens. We analyzed Lenny’s psychological condition and things of that nature. Now, watching it in this class it’s almost like watching a whole new movie. Im no longer paying attention to his symptoms and behaviors but instead find myself focusing on how Lenny finds the truth in his everyday life. Because Lenny “has this condition,” he cant remember things for himself so he must rely on hand written notes to get by. As you can see, this can get kind of messy. People can easily manipulate Lenny into thinking something is true even when its blatant lies. Lenny’s truth is in his tattoos and hand written notes, a lot of which he got the information for from other people i.e. the license plate number given to him from Natalie. Lenny trusts that she is who she says she is and therefore takes the information as the truth. So Lenny’s truth is almost entirely dependent on other people.

In a way, this is similar to O’Brien’s truth in The Things They Carried. In his text, O’Brien changes his stories in order to “make the stomach believe” and cause his desired emotions in his audience. So O’Brien’s truth too is sort of dependent on other people. If they walk away from the water buffalo story with feelings of love, grief for human life, and an understanding of how close young boys get when they are in battle together then his story is perfect. If not, and they feel sorry for the buffalo and feel that war is brutal then he will change the details in his story in order to get them to feel the way he wants them to because “it wasn’t a war story. It was a love story” (O’Brien).

The Facts

It's hard writing about a movie that you've already seen not wanting to give away any specific details yet to come. Ignoring that, I think the best summation of the first half of Memento as I remember watching it my first time was just the sheer confusion that the viewer experiences regarding the structure. Told in a format that consistently goes back in time, the audience is left piecing together facts of the events that lead up to the climax.

Regarding the condition of Leonard, the amnesia that impacts his short-term memory, fear must immediately strike the hearts of anyone who witnesses the dramatic effects of this condition. Instead of losing memories of the long-ago past, the condition makes it so that you simply can't remember things from a very recent time ago. This discussion of memory brings up possibly my favorite quote from the movie as uttered by Leonard,

"Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts."

Leonard makes this statement as a depiction of the seemingly poor possibilities of memory to ever have any real effect. It is this memory that seems to sway so many individuals in the wrong directions and cause problems when attempting to decipher the truth. As Leonard states, memories can indeed change and be corrupted which lead to the end of the truth. However, how much can memory be ignored along with the facts? Memory is indeed a notion that becomes questionable when considering these concepts because the facts are vitally connected to memory. Without a memory, it becomes much harder for Leonard to have the facts of the situation himself.

Momento

The title of the film “Memento” reminds me of the Spanish word “momento,” as in a moment, but the title and the word it reminds me of have different meanings. The way the story is told makes me think that the main character is stuck in a moment in time. He can’t form new memories; he can only recall what he learned before the accident because his thoughts are erased. For example, in the scene in the bathroom, the man couldn’t recall that he intended to use as a weapon the bottle he was holding.


The movie also takes us back farther in time, rather than progressing forward as would be natural in a movie. I would guess the film does this because in the beginning it gives the viewer the impression that the story starts near the end. So it must work itself backward for us to fully understand what is happening. Regardless, I am enjoying “Memento.”

Habits

"I know what that's going to sound like when I knock on it. I know that's what going to feel like when I pick it up. See? Certainties. It's the kind of memory that you take for granted"

"Sammy Jankis wrote himself endless notes. But he'd get mixed up. I've got a more graceful solution to the memory problem. I'm disciplined and organized. I use habit and routine to make my life possible."

In Momento, Leonard used Sammy's inability to be conditioned as a reason to reject his insurance claim. When Leonard suffers from the same condition, he relies on habits and physical memory in conjunction with the notes to function. When he shaves, he needs a note to remind himself to shave and where his shaving supplies are, but he remembers the action. When he drives, he can't remember where he parked his car or what his car looks like, but he can maneuver it. He knows the weight to the objects around him. He knows the physicalities.

Yet, can those memories and habits really be trusted? The habits our bodies remember are action-based and don't require us to think. We can remember the familiarity of our actions, but unless we are aware of a condition like Leonard's we don't really dwell on the miniscule differences. I put my cellphone about five inches from my bed. I'm used to it. It wouldn't disturb me too greatly if it were four inches or six inches instead. But it has to be on the left side of my bed, not the right. It has to be on top of the unsightly piles of work, not next to or under it. If I'm outside, it has to be in my right butt pocket, not the left of the front one. In moments when I slip my phone in my coat pocket, I get a jolt of fear when I mechanically reach to grope my back pocket and feel nothing. It's to the point where I don't feel the phone in my pocket because I'm so used to it. I just assume that it's there and it is, most of the time. But, habits like those can be easily confused and messed up when the body is out of sync.

Take for instance, brushing your teeth. Pretty simple task, right? Wet toothbrush, rinse mouth, squeeze toothpaste onto the bristles, start brushing, spit the foam out, rinse. You do it so often you probably don't put much thought into it. A couple of weeks ago, though, when I was sleep deprived, it was late at night and though the routine went smoothly, I ended up squirting face wash on my toothbrush instead of toothpaste. I didn't even notice a difference until I didn't get the usual minty taste. Sad, I know, but true.

What if Leonard is like that? We haven't seen him muddling up his habits, yet, which makes me suspicious. For a man with short term memory and only memories before the death of his wife, his ability to do use a gun or tattoo are too precise for a man that can't remember the familiarity of talking to the same people on a regular basis.

Memory believes

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

-William Faulkner

I’d actually never watched Memento before. I’ve watched a Bollywood movie that was supposedly inspired by it but I realized they’re quite different except for the basic plot. It was interesting to see how two movies based on the same plot can be so different because they were intended for different audiences. Each wanted to focus on the aspect of the story that the producers knew would appeal to the audience it was intended for. But, going back to the quote by William Faulkner- I remembered this quote as I was thinking about what Leonard said about memory-

“Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.”

His idea was that facts and records outweigh memories. He probably just said this in his defense because he did not want to be pitied for his inability to form memories. But this statement just made me a little uncomfortable because I think that memories are relevant, regardless of the facts. It’s the same idea of story-truth versus happening-truth that we first encountered in The Things The Carried. Having a memory of something is more than knowing what happened. Memory is more than the sum total of facts. Memory is about the emotional truth of an experience; facts and records cannot carry such emotional weight. In fact, Leonard himself epitomizes this idea. The drive with which he pursues John G. and the “reason” he thinks he will be able to make it, unlike Sammy Jenkins, comes from his memories of his wife. As Leonard says on another occasion,

“You know, I can remember so much. The feel of the world... her.”

What he remembers is not just the mere “fact” of her existence, it’s the feel of her. It’s her memories that constantly push him towards his purpose. So, even though he denies it, memories are relevant to him. Because even when memories disguise the happening truths, they speak the emotional truth. Leonard has all the facts he needs to find his wife’s murderer, but they are mean something to him only because if his wife memories. So, it’s not memories that are irrelevant in lack of facts. It’s the facts that are irrelevant without memories.

Memory perhaps doesn’t even have anything to do with happening truths and facts. Slight digression but it’s like what Albert Einstein once said about education, that education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. Memory is what remains after one has forgotten all the facts. In the end, memory outweighs facts, it outweighs knowledge. Knowing doesn’t believe, it doesn’t inspire, memory does.

Understanding and Connections

After seeing Memento numerous times, the little details still fascinate me. I feel like it is a movie wherein you see more every time you watch it. Those little details are clues, much like we saw in previous texts. They play on memory, much like the majority of this film does. In the movie Leonard says, “I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next,” which is interesting to place in this movie because after each viewing you understand more and more about it and see the subtle details which may not be overly obvious the first time you view it. This movie is also ust as thrilling each time you see it because there are so many things that are needed and cannot be forgotten; and if they are the events will not add up and then the story lacks the believability.

This movie’s timeline is very similar to The Things They Carried because thing bounce back and forth and they are repeated numerous times to show their importance. For example, the scene often flashed to Leonard’s “remember Sammy Jankins” tattoo. The story is important which is why it comes up so often (I will not go into further details, at least not until my next blog post after everyone finishes the movie). Ideas in the movie come up again and again and everything makes sense by the end of the film, if only you take a moment to think back and relive the quotes and visual ques, much like we had to do with Aura. It will not be completely clear, and it will involve trust, and it will most definitely beg the question “who can we trust and what is real?”

As we go on with the movie, I urge everyone, if they have seen it or not, to pay special attention to…everything. If it is in the movie, it has a meaning to something else; everything in this movie is related to something else and to understand this movie you have to think and make those connections.

The Memento Dilemma

After nearly a full semester of this class, I have learned how to critically evaluative work as it pertains to truth, lies, and perception. Although I have seen Memento in the past, re-watching the film with my "Truth, Lies & Literature" lenses has shed light on some issues that I otherwise would have passed over. Although this film has not so far encountered any grave truth/lies perplexities, it directly correlates to what we have studied in class (and purposefully); Memento and "Truth, Lies & Literature" have shared frameworks and overall themes.

Leonard Shelby, Guy Pierce's character and the protagonist of the story, has an interesting take on memory given his anterograde amnesia: "Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts."

(Yes, it's the same quote that mostly everyone on this blog has commented on, but bear with me I have a different analysis!)

Leonard goes on to talk about how the Police use their notes to solve cases and not just what they see to justifying his method of functioning. This point is something that at first I never thought nothing of and accepted as truth, but now I am obliged to comment on: Leonard is wrong because "records" and "facts" can be distorted as well.

To prove my point, look at Leonard's system. Leonard experiences something over a short period of time and "records" the event with a couple of words. The problem arises in the way that humans read--we all interpret and perceptive text in different ways, just as we do with memory. There is no one way to read a book or one overall meaning of a text. The same exact sentence for can produce a different meaning for two separate people. Our classroom discussions over the books we read this semester proves this point. The "records" and "facts" that Leonard counts on are just as unreliable as memories.

Leonard's system is broken. Say Leonard writes down a sentences to portray a certain sentiment towards a person he meets; when Leonard forgets, his system fails if the few words that he documents does not bring to light the exact same feelings in the past. It's unlikely that these sentences achieve its goal because of the difficulty of evoking these same feelings. Leonard is at fault for interpreting his own writing differently than he had originally intended.

Leonard has false pride in his system, but after being in "Truth, Lies & Literature," I am convinced that he could do no better. The only fact that we know for sure is that there are no facts--a seeming paradox. However, whether its memory, text, videotaping, or audio recording, we based our decisions of off things that are subject to change through perception and interpretation.

Memento and Reading

In an effort to avoid giving away spoilers, I’d like to focus solely on the scene between Lenny and his wife while she reads an old book. Based on all of our readings and discussions throughout the semester, I think we can find interesting ties between their conversation and our class. Lenny asks his wife how she can re-read a book so many times. He doesn’t seem to understand the endless enjoyment she finds in reading the book; he believes that enjoyment is found in the story’s unpredictability. This disagreement begs the question: why do we read? There are probably hundreds of answers to this question, but based on our class, I think a few specific ones come to mind.

We often read because we are expected to. In the past few weeks of class, we have been asked to take note of how outside forces influence our daily decisions. As students, we’re at college to learn and further our education. Most likely, we all want to succeed, and in order to do so, we conform to expectations of the College’s education system. Professors assign readings, and we complete them so that we can participate in class discussions, or better understand the material for upcoming tests. Perhaps doctors are expected to read articles about new treatments or medicines to remain successful in their practice, or teachers must read assignments they give students in order to have a successful lesson. We therefore see that although there exist a wide variety of personal identities, everyone at some point recognizes the effect of outside expectations and reads because they have to in order to be successful.

Like Lenny’s wife, we often read for pure pleasure. Reading for pleasure and to fulfill expectations can intersect, which I have happily found is true for our class readings. Lenny’s wife has read her book as Lenny says, “a thousand times.” She becomes frustrated when he doesn’t understand that she can enjoy the book just as much reading it a fifth time as she did the first time. Although the scene doesn’t reveal what a good story means to her, for Lenny’s wife, reading for pleasure seems to just be about reading a good story. On the other hand, Lenny reveals that for him, reading for pleasure has to do with the excitement of the unknown, the mystery of the story. Based on his character in the film so far, this makes sense. Throughout the film, he reveals that he used to investigate cases, such as the case of Sammy Jenkiss’ memory loss. This career choice, and his own investigations throughout the film are revelatory about his character. He seems to be a man that enjoys mystery, or solving cases. Therefore, his interpretation of reading for pleasure is understandably focused on the excitement of an unknown story. Lenny and his wife’s two different positions, allow us to understand that reading for pleasure is dependent on one’s identity, and the meaning of reading for pleasure can vary quite widely.

The texts we have read in class reveal other reasons we may have for reading. O’Brien’s The Things They Carried distinguishes between an “emotionally true” story, and a “factually true” story. Depending on a reader’s mood or situation, they make seek a specific story. A story may carry an emotional truth of happiness, love, anger or jealousy, or it could carry a story absent of such emotions, such as an almanac purely stating facts. We may wish to read a happy, funny story to improve our mood, or we may read an encyclopedia to glean information. Reading therefore often serves as an escape, as it is for Bokononists; reading The Books of Bokonon to escape the Christian world that they are supposed to live in. But reading also always provides us with information, as Julianna learns about the true nature of her world after reading The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. By reading, we can learn about physical entities: current events, what food to buy, the latest fashions. But we can also learn in more abstract ways: about emotions, relationships, or perceptions of reality. The way we interpret what we learn, we discover more and more about ourselves. Again we see what we have talked about all semester: everything comes down to interpretation. So although we may read for different reasons, and interpret stories differently, their commonality is that it is these differences that teach us the same thing; the type of person we are.

Memory

"Doesn't make a difference whether I know about it. Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless. The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?" -- Lenny (Memento)

What is a good objective indicator of the truth of something? The scientific method says observation. Can you hear, feel, touch, taste...? Can you repeat it? Can you make the same thing happen again?

(Can we trust our senses? Can we trust ourselves to interpret them right?

Are you familiar with the black swan metaphor? It's an extremely unlikely event that takes place that only in retrospect, upon reworking our understanding of how the circumstances work, becomes not so unlikely.

We are trapped within the limitations of human thought. We use the knowledge of the world around us to come to new conclusions without necessarily questioning if that knowledge is in fact true, because it's too much to look at at once.)

In George Orwell's 1984, characters try to create new objective truths by manipulating memory. Records of people who used to exist are erased, and no one speaks of them. Did those people even exist at all? How can you tell?

In Memento, Lenny seems to want to believe that his actions are changing something. His inability to create memories, though, will leave him in such a state that he'll feel the same about the events afterwards as beforehand. Lenny says that memories are "irrelevant if you have the facts," but what creates the facts?

Disconcertingly, this inability to get a feel for the objective existence of actions, lives, and universal laws, does not only apply to Lenny. Even though most people do not have a disability that prevents them from getting new memories, memories can still not act as the objective truth by which it is possible to measure our actions.

"Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted."

What can't?

Tattoos

One of the most striking parts of Memento is the way Leonard’s body is covered in tattoos. All of them are “facts” about his wife’s murder. In his quest to find the man who raped and murdered his wife, Leonard is constantly trying to separate truth from lies. His tattoos represent how, with the loss of his memory, Leonard’s sense of reality has collapsed onto himself. Leonard uses his body as the “absolute truth.” He trusts in everything that is written on his body and everything that is written in his own handwriting or he carries on his person. Leonard ultimately demonstrates this certainty when he kills Teddy simply because his handwriting on Teddy’s picture tells him that Teddy is “the one” and to “kill him.”

It makes sense that Leonard would choose to believe in the “facts” that he himself wrote. Who can you trust better than yourself? However, as we have been discussing these last few weeks, people can be manipulated. We are being manipulated all the time, by our family and friends, by the media, by our entire environment and culture. Leonard is no different. In fact, he is even more vulnerable since he cannot remember anything. While he is successful in preventing Teddy from using his memory loss to try and manipulate Leonard’s car away from him, we see that Leonard is not successful in preventing Burt from manipulating him into renting two motel rooms. Though I do not know how this movie ends, I suspect that Leonard has been manipulated into writing something false on himself or one of his mementos. This would mean that Leonard’s system failed, and that he has no way of knowing the “absolute truth.”

To a certain extent, Leonard is like a student in this class. Just as we are trying to pull the truth from Memento and the novels we have read, Leonard is trying to pull the truth out of his situation. The difference is that Leonard has lost the ability to learn from his mistakes, while we still can. Memento warns us yet again to be wary of outside manipulations.

Influences

It is commonly said that we should live in the present and leave the past in the past. However, Memento illuminated the extent to which we base our present experiences and choices on the past. The present and the past are actually very interconnected. By constructing Leonard to be constantly questioning events and people in his life due to his short term memory inabilities, Memento illustrated how often we define ourselves with our pasts. After the “mediated artifact” class, I began to notice the different factors that shape our lives. I noticed advertisements, TV shows and familial influences, but I failed to appreciate the huge effect our past has on us. The past affects who we associate with, where we live and how we make decisions, among other things. As much as we like to think we are making decisions for ourselves, our past actually dictates our future actions.

So is it really us making the choices or have the events in the past influenced us to make certain decisions? I think we are probably led to certain decisions because of our past experiences. Memento demonstrates how completely lost we would be in our identity, if we did not have the past to base it upon. Leonard’s choices would have been meaningless if he had not written notes for himself from before.

As Leonard demonstrates to us, we need people and events to shape our personality and influence our decisions, because without the rest of the world to interact with, we would not have a personality of our own. This class focuses a great deal on the negative influences in our lives, but I think it is important to recognize that our personality is mostly shaped by external influences: our family, our society and our past. It is impossible to go through life without being influenced by everything we experience. It would be a sad and lonely life to not be affected by anything, similar to Leonard.

GAGA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oP_CKRUX4&feature=relmfu

I never thought I would find a Lady Gaga video that would relate to this class, but I guess miracles do happen. I just wanted to share this with you all. Lady Gaga's opening sentences in this video reminded me a lot of our class and the themes we discuss about what is truth and what is lie and, now especially with Memento, what is memory.

"When I look back on my life, it’s not that I don’t want to see things exactly as they happened, it’s just that I prefer to remember them in an artistic way. And truthfully, the lie of it all is much more honest because I invented it. Clinical psychology tells us arguably that trauma is the ultimate killer. Memories are not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics; they can be lost forever. It’s sort of like my past is an unfinished painting and as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again. It’s not that I’ve been dishonest, it’s just that I loathe reality."

Favorite quote

One of my favorite lines in Memento, which so happens to fit with the course, comes when Leonard and Teddy are talking in the diner about memory and facts. Leonard says, “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.” The quote brings up two important ideas.

1. Memory is subject to interpretation. Time can change a memory and your role in an event drastically influences how you view it. Over time, our memories fade and we are only left to remember vague aspects of events that are important to us. In doing so, we often tend to distort the past and emphasize and exaggerate what we deem as the important aspects. For example, when I remember a funeral I attended, my mind zeros in on the solemn aspects and the fact that it was raining. I tend to forget the pleasant conversations I had with my family and the hopeful speeches that were given. Thus my memory of it today is extremely different from what is was a few hours afterwards. A similar thing occurs when we recount stories. When I try to recount a funny story, I focus on and exaggerate the details that will enhance the punch line. Usually when I finish telling a story, my friends joke, “Ok, so what actually happened?” As for roles, my wisdom teeth post said it all. I will remember that surgery forever, whereas the doctor who performed it has probably already forgotten my name.

As we have seen in the course, almost everything in our lives has been manipulated and mediated. It makes sense that even our own memory does the same thing. Society has taught us how to digest information and typify situations and in doing so we formulate manipulated memories.

1. Facts are true...false! Throughout the movie, Leonard holds onto the single idea that facts are always true. However, we see that even the “facts” that he collects are manipulated. For example, the guy who works at the Discount Inn tells him that he is staying in room 304, but Leonard learns that he is actually occupying two rooms. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but this appears in many situations, which will be clear after next class.

The texts of the class explore a similar theme. In Cat’s Cradle, the narrator changes his name, even though I have considered names to be facts. In The Man in the High Castle, Dick changes history and envisions a world where the Allies lost. In doing so, the texts take away certain comforts that I have grown to take for granted, such as reliable narrators, which makes me question everything I am presented with. I find myself constantly asking, where does the truth lie? Because I know it does.

A New Perspective

Throughout the year we have been introduced to text after text. From first and third person accounts in fiction, fictional non-fiction (how I like to categorize The Things They Carried), science fiction and historical fiction, to the second person accounts in magical realism and "adventure". This progression of novels has opened our eyes to the manipulation and the lack of choice found in the every author's message. Now we have been introduced to a whole different kind of situation with the movie Memento. While this has introduced a new medium in which we will discuss, it has also introduced a new situation unlike anything we have seen thus far.

In the movie, Leonard has to deal with a severe case of short-term memory loss that inhibits him from remember in people places and events that happened hours to minutes ago. Despite this type disability, Leonard still attempts to track down his wife's murderer in order to get his revenge. The biggest point that makes this story unique to the other stories read this year is the that we, as the audience, have the intellectual high point on Leonard. Because of his disability we are able to realize and remember the things that he can not. This allow us to have an intellectual advantage on the character at whatever point in the movie. We are able to see the manipulation that Leonard is subject to through all the characters that he comes into contact with, but doesn't remember. This makes us believe that we are in control of the manipulation, that we can see and recognize it because we are not the "weakest" person who is thus being targeted. This is where we fail to truly see the real manipulation. We are so caught up in the character that we forget the larger force that really holds the power of manipulation over Leonard and the audience. The director, writer, editor and others are the true manipulators in this situation. Being able to show us what they want to from Leonard's past, in the way that they do it, allows them to put us (the audience) in a situation somewhat similar to Leonard's. We are at their control, at their manipulation.

So even through a text that seems to promise power to the audience over the character, we are still misguided, in that we don't at first see the manipulation that is occurring all around us.

Proactive & their commercials...

Don’t you just love those Proactive commercials? They are everywhere. I remember when the first Proactive commercials aired back in the day with Jessica Simpson. Proactive made an effort to have decent spokespersons who actually had their pizza face moments. Even when Lindsay Lohan had her commercial, that was some real zit improvement. But these days it seems to me that Proactive is just putting everybody and anybody on these commercials that now practically air every five minutes. Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne… Well, I will let that last one slide because when Avril first hit it big she had a grungier style that probably came with a few nasty oily zits. But when on earth did Justin Bieber have acne? That must be fake because that boy has had milky white creamy skin since the womb. I doubt that prepubescent child has a single flaw on his skin. To top it off, they always feature unrealistic and airbrushed before and after shots that look nothing alike while playing overly dramatic music that sounds like it was ripped from the soundtrack for The Young and the Restless.

What’s more is these Proactive commercials are always trying to manipulate you into buying more than just the zit cream. You get Proactive, the cleanser, and then the ridiculous refining mask that really just dries up your skin into an ashy mess. “Renew, revitalize, repair!” It is actually sad that I have seen these commercials so much that I can even remember that. And then if all this still has not convinced you to buy Proactive the commercial even says “If you call in the next 25 minutes you can get this and the refining mask absolutely free!” You are given the illusion that you are saving so much money and only paying $19.95 when shipping and handling is somewhere around a zillion dollars.

Even more laughable is the fact that on the Proactive brochure it is stated in absurdly small print that the product does not work for people who have “cystic” or “severe” acne despite their entire campaign about how Proactive is “the answer” because it works for everybody regardless of age, skin type or severity of acne. From what I can tell, it looks like Proactive just makes tons of money because of its shady marketing.

Today in my Critical Thinking class, we discussed scientific reasoning and my professor ended class by saying, "Science does not guarantee truth. There is always a gap between the hypothesis and evidence. Instead, what science does is that it aims for adequacy and providing explanations, which are judgements."
-Professor Doran

Makes me think of our Cat's Cradle days and the discourse we had about science as a truth.

Shampoos are misleading...

If you know absolutely nothing about a product you are looking to buy, but you know that you need that kind of product, then the guideline is usually the price. The idea is that the more expensive the product we buy, the better quality are the results we get. Sometimes that idea is exactly true, but not if you are buying shampoo.

If you look closely at the labels on these shampoo bottles, you will notice that the first ingredient in shampoo is water. It may be purified water or just plain tap, but the point is that it is water. Ingredients on beauty products are always listed in descending order of weight and, for the most part, these ingredients are all the same no matter what brand shampoo you are buying. Regardless of the price, somewhere between 90 and 95 per cent of the ingredients on these labels are going to be identical. Perfume and color are what often distinguish one shampoo from another, not miracle additives. And if you are thinking what about all those lovely natural extracts you also see listed—sunflower oil, mint, citrus extracts and so on?
 Such additives will probably only be present as less than 1 per cent of the overall amount.
 In other words, that is like adding a drop of whisky to water and calling it a cocktail. So then why do we feel pressured to buy the fancier, more expensive shampoo bottles over the cheaper, store brand shampoo?

You can pay $22 for a luxury shampoo like Bumble & Bumble (oh yeah that is not an exaggerated price, people) or you can pay $5 for a plainer brand. While you may think the pricier the shampoo, the shinier the locks, you are really just buying the same shampoo only from a different manufacturer in a different kind of bottle, maybe one with more sparkles on it. Either way, I am pretty sure that the original purpose for shampoo was to wash your hair, not to smell like a cupcake.

Besides, this guy seems to have long, strong hair and I highly doubt he is lining up to buy Bumble & Bumble… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXc6ncfEkX0