http://www.cracked.com/article_17256_17-more-images-you-wont-believe-arent-photoshopped.html


I just thought this was interesting since you showed us that picture that was photoshopped but looked kind of realistic.

As the spring rains fall, soaking in them, on the roof, is a child's rag ball...

For those of you who read this, you may remember that I sat in on your class twice when Janelle taught Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. MHC (the name I will use to refer to Dick’s text from here on out) asks all sorts of questions without providing any easy answers. I don’t intend to delve into all of the particulars of the text, but I would like to outline a few things that really stand out to me, as well as hopefully open up for discussion a few questions that might be developed more fully in the essays that you have to write for Janelle’s class.

To model my blog, I would like to focus on an idea that I recently came across in an essay that I had to read for my theory class, “Literary History and Literary Modernity.” The author, Paul de Man, focuses part of his essay on Friedrich Nietzsche, a nineteenth century German philosopher and philologist who was conflicted over the paradoxical relation between history and modernity. As de Man writes,


Modernity and history relate to each other in a curiously contradictory way that goes beyond antithesis or opposition. If history is not to become sheer regression or paralysis, it depends on modernity for its duration and renewal; but modernity cannot assert itself without being at once swallowed up and reintegrated into a regressive historical process.


If we conceive of ‘modernity’ as the ‘present’ or the ‘now,’ then what de Man means is quite simple: the life of the past is dependent upon the present, and at the same time, the present will inevitably become part of the past. This is happening right now, even as you read this blog. With each passing sentence, the present moment becomes a past moment and there is nothing that you can do to stop it. It is an immutable condition of life.

With this in mind, it becomes interesting to re-examine MHC. Without even reading a word of the book, we know one thing for certain, as does Dick: MHC will be, in the end, just another historical document, a novel that, with each passing moment, slowly gains more and more history. As de Man’s essay asserts, something that ceases to be modern has to become historical. More important is what Dick asserts in MHC: something that becomes historical, or, as Wyndam-Matson says, gains “historicity,” immediately becomes subject to its interpretation, and it is this interpretation that plays such a huge part in the lives of the novel’s characters as well as our own lives.

For example, in the case of the two lighters that Wyndam-Matson shows to his mistress, one having important historical value (i.e. being in FDR’s pocket when he was assassinated) and one having no important historical value, the interpretation that the FDR lighter is subject to is the document that asserts its historical value. In other words, the lighter itself has no value except for the value that we attach to it.

For the sake of time, I must skip over several examples and move on to the most important one. Consider the pin that Tagomi contemplates in the penultimate chapter of MHC. It’s clear that Tagomi’s experience with the pin leads to an enlightened moment for him: he glimpses an alternate reality, one in which it appears that the Allies in fact (the expression “in fact,” I admit, is a tricky one to use when discussing MHC; however, for all practical purposes, I must ask forgiveness for using it and other expressions resembling statements of factuality) won World War II.

When asked how Tagomi experienced this enlightenment, the typical answer is usually comprised of two words: Inner Truth. However, I don’t feel like this fully solves what Dick was trying to say in his novel. I don’t exactly know myself, but I feel qualified to throw out a few ideas, and perhaps one of you reading this will play with these ideas in your essays.

It would help, at this point, to reintroduce Nietzsche. Nietzsche, as de Man writes, feels that “modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at last a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.” We see a similar idea in what Frank Frink is doing in MHC: by creating original, modern American art, Frink is, if not wiping away the Americana-Japanese craze that has persisted for so long, at least engendering something new, creating a present that is so different from the past before it, in the sense that Americans, a secondary race in MHC, are finally acting freely, finally doing something.

So, with all of this in mind, I ask you, the reader, a question of my own: how does one “wipe out whatever came earlier” and create a clean slate for oneself? This is, in my opinion, the question that lies at the center of MHC. The answer to this question seems to me to be the road to Inner Truth. I have several suggestions, but for the purposes of this blog I will be brief and focus on what I think is the best answer.

For me, the best answer is hidden in the adult-child dichotomy. There is so much talk of truth and falsity in this novel that so much of language concerning adults and children is overlooked. For example, I already mentioned in class the fact that Childan’s name closely resembles the word ‘child.’ More importantly, I addressed Childan’s reaction to the Horror of War cards and bottlecaps, as well as the possible significance of the Mickey Mouse watch and why Tagomi insists that he must “graft” it to Baynes.

However, there are several things I did not mention, such as the ballad that Baynes sings at the end of chapter ten. (In fact, I suggest that anyone interested in writing about this book look up information on this ballad and see how it might relate to the adult-child dichotomy, Inner Truth, and the novel as a whole.) Moreover, the fact that, when Tagomi enters the park in chapter fourteen, all he sees is “shabby men” who read the newspapers; however, after he experiences his enlightenment, he is led out of the park by “two Chinese boys [who] came scampering noisily along the path.” Above all else, we must consider Tagomi’s utterance in chapter fourteen, when he says “When I was a child I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.” Tagomi’s utterance is an echo of St. Paul, whose writings seem to play a huge part in MHC overall, and must not be overlooked in an essay about MHC.

In short, the question seems to me to be this: to discover the Inner Truth, do we need to rely on our rationality, an adult quality, or our imagination, a childish quality? I’m not sure that Dick makes this perfectly clear, but perhaps we shouldn’t expect any less: Dick’s books tend to be littered with contradictions that can never be fully reconciled.

However, what happens when we do find an answer to this question, assuming we do? Won’t our experiences and answers, as they lose their modernity and escape the present moment, inevitably fall into the realm of history and escape our grasp, slowly but surely becoming subject to human-crafted interpretations that are, as MHC clearly shows, entirely unreliable? It is, in my opinion, a paradoxical problem surely worth entertaining in a paper.

"God, they read a book, he thought, and they spout on forever."

After many discussions about The Man in the High Castle in class, it was easy to tell that this book, for lack of a better term, really pissed people off. I have heard and read multiple times that its a fine example of why one should not write novels when on acid.
Yet, this book earned its high praise for a reason. As confusing as it was for me personally, I thoroughly enjoyed getting ridiculously frustrated with this story. For a man on acid, Philip K. Dick knew what he was doing. Even though I knew that Nazi Germany and Japan didn't really win World War II in my world, I didn't question it in this novel. In the first chapter when Dick introduces Frank Fink, he writes
"After the Japs had taken Hawaii he had been sent to the West Coast. When the war ended, there he was, on the Japanese side of the settlement line. And here he was today, fifteen years later."
I thought to myself, well... that definitely sucks. However, I didn't question it. None of us did. Philip K. Dick used his literature to convince us of a completely different world that in the end, didn't even exist in a fictional matter. Personally, I think that's brilliant. We were all completely fooled.
The only real issue I had with the novel was all the characters and keeping track of who was who and who was from where. Yet, in the end, all these characters were alike in the fact that they had fallen into the illusion that they're world was of a world of fact and truth, when it turned out to be just the opposite.
I still don't think people should do acid, but I feel as though I had this opinion before Philip K. Dick stumbled into my life. Besides, I am not going to completely credit the acid for Dick's work. I have respect for the man who got me to drop my idea of truth, only to believe a complete lie.

Good Form

Personally I feel that during the act of war humans lose a sense of compassion. “I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces. But I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief” (180). This book is based off the partial memory of a once-was soldier. Tim O’ Brien even says so himself that there’s story-truth and happening-truth. Parts of stories have to be made up or embellished in order for a war story to survive. It’s always easy to place people and what they were like, but it’s not always easy to tell exactly what happened in a situation. Tim makes due with what he has. I feel that Tim O’ Brien is trying to describe how he felt during the war, and is using fiction Vs. Reality to show it.  His first book, he realized, couldn’t describe how he felt during the war. So in order to make you realize what it’s like he created a fictional book so he could show the readers what was going through his mind. Many people who return from going through such an emotionally bearing task often have mental instability. Tim wants you to understand what he felt, wants you to question yourself and every action you do. That’s a true story that never happened.

The Universal Truth

A memoir, or a biography with some degree of fiction, can sometimes hold more truth than a factual account of actual happenings, as O'Brien proves in The Things They Carried. However, Frank Fink's piece of jewelry serves as a different sort of fictional truth.
Both Childan and Tagomi are deeply affected by the art before them, though they lead completely separate lives and hold completely different positions in the world. Both men deal with the sales of faux-American artifacts, but when they run across the jewelry, they can immediately tell it is something different, something real. Like O'Brien's story-truth, this art is a kind of truth, something universal and honest in a world of falsities. Like O'Brien's story-truth, like Tim trying to save Timmy with a story, "art is long, stretching out endless..." (Dick, 184). You could consider art to be false, because it's not something real, it's (usually) not a photograph or an exact representation of the truth. Because it is seen through human eyes and made from human hands, it is truer than the happening-truth.

Living in a fictitious world.

When I first started reading Man In The High Castle, I had a hard time adjusting to the idea of World War II turning out differently. I guess this based on the actual events. Whatever the reason, I couldn't get caught up in the story, for once in my life. The one thing that did catch my eye was Juliana's acceptance of herself as a fictitious character. It is this part that makes the book even harder to understand. How can a character in the novel realize she is a fictional character? It just doesn't make sense to me. Philip K. Dick has made it almost impossible for me to ever understand this novel by adding this little twist to the story. However, Juliana's acceptance is an admirable quality to have compared to the qualities of the other characters. She can look past the fact that her life is made-up, whereas the others are still convinced their lives are real. Had they picked up Juliana's outlook, their lives would have been different.

All in all, I don't recommend writing books while on acid. The result is often a work of literature that causes mass confusion.

Whose Reality is it Anyway?

The idea for The Man in the High Castle is really great. What would happen if we lost the second world war? Philip K. Dick delves into this realm, and comes out with quite the story. What he came up with was a world where everything is fake. People, artifacts, intentions- none of it can be trusted because it’s fake. Even the whole reality of the characters in the novel becomes fake. We see a similar thing happening in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. He tells war stories, but even the stories didn’t happen. He’ll go and say “I killed this one guy” but then turn around and say “no I didn’t everyone else did, and I just watched”. It’s such a trippy concept, and what do you know? Our whole class is based off of that idea. What a wonderful life! I’ll probably come out of this class paranoid and scared.

The Art of Perusasion; or, How to Resent Others' Opinions

Here's an interesting article that ran in Tuesday's _Times Picayune_ (10/13), written by Jarvis Deberry: Is art of persuasion dying a quiet death?

I think it might help us to recognize some of our own resistance to the texts we have been reading. It might also throw out the challenge to re-engage with these texts--and those that follow--in a less stringent, less absolute manner. Perhaps we can unhinge from what the article declares is our suspicion of texts that "don't believe as we do," so as to not become trapped by "the righteousness of our own positions."

I wonder what your response to the article will be? And, further, how you might apply the subject of this article to our course?

I'm listening... well, reading, if truth be written.

The Truthiness of Reality

In “The Man in the High Castle” Phillip K. Dick presents an alternate reality in which that reality is discovered to be fiction. After reading the novel, and discussing it in class, I began to question the so called truthiness of reality. In the book, Juliana discovers, albeit subtly, that she is in a book. Could it be that we too are in a book? For most people, I believe, reality is taken for granted. You must constantly face reality by questioning the truth in it, and then cope with it by whatever means necessary.
Beautifully put in the novel, Juliana thinks “Truth… As terrible as death. But harder to find”. Death is abundant in this world (see The Things They Carried), and naturally people question death, and more often than not, receive answers. Though when truth is questioned, answers become less and less clear (see Truth, Lies and Literature blogspot).
But what’s the difference between truth and reality? Are they one in the same or are they separate entities? I believe they overlap in a sense. The truth is the Allies won the war. The reality is nobody wins a war.

FDR's Lighter

For the other books (and movie) I focused mainly on the truth v. fiction of the story or book itself. This book, however, has more than one type of lie to focus on. Of course we find out at the end that all the characters in the book were living a lie by living in a false governmental situation (for lack of a better term). But there is also an issue of the "historical" objects.

On page 64, Wyndom-Matson and Rita are talking about Franklin Roosevelt's lighter, of which he had two copies. Rita didn't believe either of the lighters was real, so W-M said he'd show her the paper he had to prove it. "That's my point! I'd have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it's all a fake, a mass delusion [This sentence could be actually talking about the whole premise of the story that the characters believe as well as us]. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself."

I liked the last sentence of that quote, because what are books made of? Paper. The papers we read prove the worth of the story, not the true history. It is the story by itself we are a part of. If we are reading a story, then it doesn't matter who won WWII. What matters is the book telling us that Japan and Germany won the war.

When we are reading (especially for this class), we have to become readers, not historians. Anything can happen in a book, and we have to be willing to accept that in order to read it.

In What Universe?

What really caught my attention in "The Man in the High Castle" is when Childan is at the Kasouras for dinner and they start to have a conversation about "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy". In this conversation Childan decides, out loud, that "the world would be much worse" if Japan and Germany would not have won the war. No one could possibly know how things would be if Japan and Germany would have won the war, but who's to say that it wouldn't be better? What if Childan was actually right? As of right now we're fighting a morally bankrupt war, there's poverty everywhere, and we just pulled ourselves out of a recession that is still effecting us. Even genocide is present. I'm just wondering- is it really better that we won?

Wait.....What?

Ok, so I know that I’m not the only person who is confused after reading The Man in the High Castle. But what I don’t know is if there is anyone else who went online looking desperately for help trying to decode the confusion put in front of us by PKD. And after looking through all the searches from google, yahoo, and msn, I think I may have a small idea of what he is trying to say in this book.

Out of all the added details of the book, the one that stuck with me was the I Ching. I think I spent about three days trying to find a way to equate the I Ching to my daily horoscope in the Times Picayune (hey…I though it would be a good blog idea), only to give up. But I don’t think that it was just put into the novel as a minor detail. No, I believe that PKD uses the I Ching to set up one of the themes of the novel – that many times a person determines truth/reality based on a faith (though a weak one) in what h/she sees.

This idea can be seen in the last few pages of the novel when, at Abendsen’s house, Juliana summons the oracle (I Ching) about The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Revealing that Germany and Japan really lost the war, it shows that the alternate world that PKD wrote his novel about is actually another immaterial, false world. He is saying that even though his characters are living in a world where Japan and Germany won WWII, it doesn’t mean that it is the truth/reality. It is just set up as the truth because it is what the characters are seeing in their lives and (therefore) is what they believe to be true.

But what do I know? I could be reading into this book entirely too much, just confusing myself more than what I need to be. In those multiple searches on google, yahoo, and msn, I ran across one PKD fan forum that stated it very simply:

“As with so much of Dick's work, it's the dynamics of the inquiry that is the substance. Don't look for a conclusion. Don't look for a simple twist. Even when there is one, it's ultimately just as deconstructable as the original version you had of events. And that is the PKD lesson.”

Fictional memoirs?

As I embarked on O'Brien's twisted journey in his fictionally challenged war story, the parallels to Tropic Thunder immediately jumped out at me.

If the trailer was not a sufficient enough summary, I'll quickly recap the film. Tropic Thunder is titled after the movie within the movie Tropic Thunder, an idea we aren't entirely new to, courtesy of Vonnegut and Dick. The fictional movie Tropic Thunder is intended to be the film version of John "Four Leaf" Tayback’s memoir on the war in Vietnam, portrayed by the characters of Stiller, Downey, Black, Jackson, and Baruchel. The filming becomes disastrous; only five days into production, the crew is already a month behind schedule. The director cannot handle the actor’s prima donna attitudes. Thus, Tayback and the director hatch up a scheme to drop the actors in the middle of the jungle, shooting them “guerilla-style” with the use of hidden cameras. Conflict arises, however, as the production has unknowingly dropped the actors in the middle of a heroin producing gang’s territory. Naturally, hilarity ensues.

The main parallel to The Things They Carried that I am emphasizing is not the obvious references to ‘Nam. As the movie progresses, it is discovered that Tayback actually was not a war veteran, but a garbage man with an idea. He had fictionalized his whole memoir. In a sense, O’Brien has done the same thing. O’Brien has taken his personal accounts from Vietnam, but has slightly altered them in that he is not the character O'Brien. Though their lives are identical, O'Brien determines that he is not his main character, under the umbrella of fiction. The deceit in The Things They Carried lies within the ambiguity of the narrator's identity. He is O'Brien the narrator, the Vietnam veteran. He is not O'Brien the author, the Vietnam veteran. He has the exact same person in an almost identical name, but not because O'Brien the narrator is fictional. Therefore, The Things They Carried is not factual, though it resembles a memoir. Likewise, Tayback of Tropic Thunder is the author and character of Tropic Thunder the memoir. However, as Tayback has not even ever left the country, Tropic Thunder is not factual, though it resembles a memoir.

Tropic Thunder is a fictional memoir as The Things They Carried is a memoir of fiction.

Lying makes the world go round.

So as I'm sitting around talking to my friend Lauryn (gossipping as usual), it hits me: our lives are so affected by lies, we barely even notice sometimes. Take gossip, for example. Despite what people try to say, everyone gossips at some point in their lives. It doesn't matter whether the story is true; it will be spread regardless. This reminds me of Momento in many ways. Firstly, Leonard's life was greatly affected by numerous lies, and most of the time he never even noticed it. He spent his days after the accident in a state of confusion, never knowing what to believe. Because of his condition, he gets to the point where he can't tell who's lying and who's telling the truth. Even though he goes through the same routines, he still can't pinpoint the lies from the truth. People, like Natalie for instance, can lie straight to his face without him noticing a thing. The same thing happens to people in this world everday. People get so good at lying, no one can ever catch them at it. In a way, it's kind of sad to think that a person who you are very close to can be lying to you about everything. That's pretty much what happens to Leonard throughout the movie. He trusts the wrong people, and in the end, never fully accepts that they were lying to him. This makes me think about how much we as a society focus on rumors and gossip on a day to day basis. Like Leonard and his condition, we go from one story to the next, forgetting the stuff in between. We can never focus on the truth in our lives simply because there's so many lies circulating at the same time. It also makes me think about all of the people I'm close to, and how I hope they don't lie to me like the people in Leonard's life lied to him.

If you think about it, anyone can lie. It takes real skill to be able to tell what's bullshit and what's not.

The loving, caring and manipulative Natalie.

I thought that Natalie was playing Leonard. I thought that she was using him to get rid of men that were competing with her drug-dealing boyfriend. Then I thought that she was using him for his "money". Then I thought that maybe, just maybe she might love him, and perhaps she was helping him out of love (or pity as Leonard put it).

But no. Not only was she on a completely self-serving mission, she used Leonard's disability against him! She stole all the pens, got him good and pissed-off by insulting his late wife, and then when he hauled off and hit her, she used those injuries to get him to hurt another man.

A woman like Natalie gives women a bad name. Not only is she conniving and manipulative she also tries to use sex to get what she wants, although how well that works on a man that can't remember is hard to tell. But she tries it anyway. This woman has no shame, no remorse, no morals and really only cares for her boyfriend (James, the dead guy) as a steady stream of income.

Which leads me to wonder, as she is one of only four female characters in the movie, what kind of interaction Christopher Nolan has had with women.

Natalie, Catherine, Mrs. Jankis and the un-named hooker are the only women in the story. One's a manipulative monster, one is dead and worthy of unending devotion, but was shown as a very "uppity" woman (remember when she was in bed reading that novel?), one is an unstable woman who, according to Leonard, loved her husband so much that she starved him and eventually forced him to put her in a diabetic coma, and the last is a drugged out prostitute.

To be completely fair most of the male characters are the dredges of humanity. A crooked cop, a homicidal maniac, a con-artist desk clerk, a drug dealer. The only reasonably "normal" male character was Sammy Jankis, and he had brain damage!

Even so, is there some reason that Nolan decided on those four "stereotypes" of women? Did he believe that he was accurately representing women? Did he believe that it was the best way to push the movie into darker territory? Was he even thinking about his representation of women at all?

Even if he wasn't focused on, or even aware of how he was representing women, Nolan's portrayal seems less than complimentary to say the least.

Me, Myself, and Lies

The movie "Memento" was confusing, exciting, and shocking. My favorite part about the movie was that every time I thought I had figured it out, the plot twisted again. In the beginning, the viewer was led to believe that Teddy was the killer. You start to worry about Leonard spending so much time with him, but then you begin to feel better because at least Natalie is someone who is there for him, helping him out. You later find out that Teddy is Leonard's true friend and that Natalie is the one that you should have been worried about. The movie took the viewer through so many viewpoints, and revealed information in very small increments, so that almost every ten minutes there was a different idea. The story kept evolving with every new detail, and the premature opinions that I had formed were completely destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again. It really made me think about how, without having all of the necessary information, people can make judgements and conjectures that make perfect sense to them, but are completely wrong. This happens in everyday life, where we are given bits of information and we draw conclusions but then realize that what we had imagined was nothing like the truth. When, at the end, we realize that Leonard's wife had actually sort of killed herself, you realize exactly how you went wrong in your other guesses, which is exactly what happens in life when we are confronted with the truth after having formed inaccurate ideas.

"Just don't think about it..."

I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've been in a situation that wasn't to my liking, and hearing someone tell me, "just don't think about it."

Before this movie, I would like to think that this statement is easier said than done. Memento gives a different spin on the truth of this statement. Leonard's world is completely based on his ability to remain focused, and by doing so, keeping his memory in tact for as long as possible. However, the moment Leonard "doesn't think about it" that memory is lost forever. There have been times where I wished I could just forget a memory, but Leonard showed me that I'd rather just deal with the problems than forget they ever happened.

I know it was not Leonard's fault that he lost his memory. His situation was terrible. However, even though his condition was not controllable, he learned how to work his own system. Revenge got the best of him. Even in his moments of clarity when he knew his deed had been done - he killed his wife's rapist, he chose to pretend it never happened. It was not his mental condition that forgot his successful revenge. He just "didn't think about it."

This movie has fit in with our class perfectly. Looking around while watching the movie, everyone was clearly captivated and connected with the movie. It was nice having the visual effects of what lies can do to us. While reading our literature, it was our minds that created the characters and acted it out in our heads. Watching the movie, the lies were even harder to not get caught up in. It was a perfect example of how a story can make us think and feel how the author wants us to feel. In this case, we were called in to Leonard's world - a world where we just don't have to think about it.

Living a lie

In Mementos, we see a man who has lost his memory, and lives day to day using his system of notes and only trusting his own handwriting. He's looking for the murderer of his wife, who was brutally murdered and raped. Soon however, we learn that Leonard (the protagonist) is living a lie, one he made for himself, though he cannot remember making it. Leonard it turns out, ended up killing his wife by giving her too many insulin shots, because he couldn't remember that he'd already done it. He can't bare to live with this truth, so he projects the reality as a story, the Sammy story. He uses this story as an example of someone who couldn't live with their disability, someone who was weak. The fact that he lies to himself, and therefore lies to us, the viewer, is totally in theme with the course. What is the truth? If Leonard truly believes that he didn't kill his wife, that a Sammy truly exists, does that now count as his truth? Or does he need to be held accountable for his actions, even though he cannot remember. He purposely tricks himself at the end of the movie, by making himself think that Teddy is actually John G, something that we see him discover throughout the film. His 6th tattoo, about the license plate number, is all a lie, but he purposely does that. Leonard can't bare to live in his reality, so he makes up his "Facts" and plants false truths and hints to help him live this lie. Everything around him is a lie. Like with Natalie, when she gets all the people to spit in the cup, and about 15 seconds later she serves Leonard and he drinks it, I was so grossed out and felt so sorry for him. all his supposed friends actually just use him, which is super sad.

Tattoos, Pictures, and War Stories

When watching this movie, I attempted to relate it to Time O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Amazingly, I found a similarity between the movie of the cruel life of a widowed man and the ever so confusing Vietnam novel. This similarity was the art of remembering, and how it changes.

In the movie, the protagonist with his "condition" attempts to remember things by writing down facts on the back of photographs and by tattooing them onto his body. In the novel, things are remembered by the characters through stories. The similarity-both memories are distorted. Due to a condition, memories are screwed with by those trying to take advantage of a poor character trying to get revenge. Due to the sake of story-telling, memories are tampered with to become a better or more extravagant story. This "distorted" memory leaves audiences looking for the truth or like me just all together frustrated. This makes both the novel and the movie a successful one.

I love movies I can just relax and watch, but a movie that makes an audience use their brain is a success!

Shorty Like a Memory in My Head

knahT doG siht eivom saw edam ni eht ,seitenin esuaceb ti si ylraen elbissopmi ot teg dioraloP mlif .syadawon tsuJ .gniyas yM stnerap dluow ylbaborp nwosid em fi I dellup a yuG ecreiP dna detrats gnittat flesym .pu nehT niaga ym stnerap dluow ylbaborp nwosid em fi I detrats gniffo nhoJ ,s’G esuaceb yeht dluow edulcni eno fo ym s’daD tseb sdneirf dna ym s’mom .tsitned mottoB ,enil I t’ndluoc evil s’ynneL efil dna teg yawa htiw .ti ynneL sekam eht esac rof hturt sa a evitcejbus tnemele ot seno sfeileb sa eh ylno seveileb tahw eh dah dlot flesmih ni eht .tsap I kniht erom naht gnihtyna I dluow ton eb elba ot evil htiw flesym gniwonk tahw I saw .gniod ynneL t’nseod ezilaer taht eh si gnillik eht gnorw yug sa eh si gniod ,ti tub eh saw ylluf tnazingoc fo sih erutuf ta eht tnemom eh delaes .ti oT ,ynneL eh si gniwollof stcaf taht eh dial tuo rof .flesmih eH t’nseod ezilaer taht ynneL morf evif setunim oga sah tsuj tes ffo rehtona tsujnu redrum taht sah yletulosba gnihton ot od htiw sih s’efiw .htaed ynneL seveileb taht lla sih snoitca era desab no .stcaf sihT fo esruoc si desab no eht feileb taht eh dluow ton eil ot .flesmih sihT si gnorw esuaceb ynneL si a tnereffid .nosrep eH srebmemer flesmih morf erofeb eht ,tnedicca ebyam a ynneL taht t’ndluow eil ot flesmih ot elbane sseltniop .egnever ehT epar dna tnerappa redrum fo sih efiw saw a sutepmi taht denrut mih otni a lufegnev reredrum ohw dluow llik rof a gnileef fo noitcafsitas taht detsal ssel naht net .setunim tahW siht wen ynneL t’ndid ,ezilaer ro yltnerappa erac ,tuoba saw taht net setunim fo noitcafsitas rof mih tnaem gnidne s’enoemos efil .reverof esehT ’stcaf‘ taht ynneL swollof era lla evitcejbus ot sih etats fo .dnim fI eh sees gnihtemos sa a doog ,aedi eh lliw evael a liart fo sbmurcdaerb rof eht ynneL net setunim retfa .mih sihT renni ytilarom si a yrev suoregnad rentrap ot ecnad .htiw eH si gniwollof shturt taht eh sah ylgniwonknu detcocnoc os eh nac eunitnoc ot leef erusaelp nwod eht .daor oS I ksa siht :noitseuq fI uoy nac tsurt ,flesruoy mohw nac uoy ?tsurt ynneL dluoc ylisae dael flesmih ot od ynam sgniht taht eh dluow ton yllautca tnaw ot .od eH dluoc oottat llik‘ ’flesruoy no sih ,mra dna tnerruc ynneL yam kniht taht eh yllautca dellik sih ,efiw dna dluow ylbaborp llik .flesmih ,rO fi enoemos esle erew elba ot oottat ,ynneL yeht dluoc od sseltnuoc sgniht ot etalupinam .mih ynneL ,sksa ehT“ dlrow t’nseod tsuj raeppasid nehw uoy esolc ruoy ,seye seod ”?ti ,oN ti .t’nseod tuB ni eht emas ,esnes hturt t’nseod tsuj raeppasid fi uoy ekam pu a .eil oT ,ynneL ,revewoh ti .seod s’ynneL elohw larom dna lacihte elacs si os os dekcuf .pu eH si gniyl ot flesmih ot tcurtsni flesmih ot timmoc snoitca taht era yletelpmoc tnavelerri ot sih tseuq rof ,ecnaegnev ylluf gniwonk taht eh si gniog ot od gnihtemos eh t’ndluohs .od dnA taht ecnetnes t’nseod neve emoc esolc ot woh gnisufnoc sih larom radar .si otnemeM si desab no noitalupinam dna evitcejbus .hturt llA eht sretcarahc ni eht mlif etalupinam ,ynneL gnidulcni .flesmih yracS sgniht neppah nehw hturt si revetahw ew yas ti .si ooT hcum rewop rof eno ,luos ni ym .dnim

"I have this condition."

If you could go back in time and forget certain moments, start fresh with no recollection of how or why you got where you are, would you? Leonard Shelby created lies to give his life purpose, but in all honesty, is that really any different than what we all do in our own lives? 

In the movie Momento, Leonard Shelby tells us, "I have this condition". In a way, I think some of us may be envious of that condition. In his own twisted way, Leonard is able to give his life purpose through things like "learning to trust his own handwriting" and basing his life off "facts, not observations." The irony of this of course, is that his whole life, this purpose that he has created for himself and that the audience is so drawn into, is fictional and made up. The reason, I believe, that some of us may be envious of this condition is because we all do this everyday in our lives. Whether it is consciously or unconsciously, we all tell ourselves little lies to give our lives purpose and meaning, or to just make it through the day. Sometimes in life, it is difficult to find meaning in the mundane or the ordinary so in order to find this hidden purpose one might have to create it within his or her own life.

In the case of Leonard Shelby, he knew that his life would fall apart if he knew the truth, like Teddy said to him at the very end, which would technically be the beginning, "You don't want the truth, you make up your own truth." But maybe that is just it, maybe we all want to find purpose or forget or change something in our lives so badly that the real truth becomes irrelevant because we would rather believe our own truth. For some of us, the real world is just too hard to handle sometimes, but that does not mean that it doesn't still exist and hold meaning in our lives. Like Leonard said, "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?" So, even though Leonard Shelby might be able to live his life based on lies that he has created to give himself a purpose, it only works because he cannot remember where the lies began. Unlike Leonard, we can all try to convince ourselves of certain things in our lives, but as much as we might like to think so sometimes, we will never be able to completely run away from the truth or reality.

We All Need Mirrors to Remind Ourselves Who We Are

Leonard Shelby might be the most unreliable narrator I’ve encountered in this course (and beating out Tim O’Brien is quite a feat). At the end of Memento—which is really the beginning of the story—Lenny wonders, “Will I lie to myself to be happy? ...[Y]es, I will.” Earlier in the movie –which is actually later in his life—he asks, ” 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?” This is not a result of memory loss, but instability in Lenny’s personality. He is taking two fundamentally different views. What makes something true: belief or actual events? It seems, to experience truth we need a frame of reference. Because of Lenny’s condition, we are not given one and are left confused. This forced me to make my own truth. In order to analyze the film I needed some grounding. I chose to believe Teddy’s story that Lenny’s wife died after the assault from the insulin he administered, and that Lenny had killed the second assailant.

Lenny states that physical things and actions in the world are all that matter. He wants his wife’s “murderer” dead, even if he cannot remember it. In itself, this idea makes little sense because people extract revenge to give themselves a sense of closure and consolation. Throughout the film we learn that Lenny has mixed the details of his own life with that of Sammy Jankens, this could have been done subconsciously, but in Lenny’s one lucid moment at the end of the film, he admits that he would lie to make his life bearable. The detective game he is playing is the only tie he has to his previous life. It gives him a sense of purpose. It is also comforting because his condition does not allow time for coping with the loss of his memory and wife. I believe that by admitting he would rather live a lie than in the real world he is admitting that belief is more essential to truth than actual happenings. This means that Lenny is lying to himself about more than just Sammy Jankins. He’s lying to himself about his entire world view. Without these falsehoods conditioned in, he wouldn’t be able to go on living.

Everybody Lies

I did not like this movie. When I watch a movie, I like relaxing. I put my mind on autopilot and glide to the happy ending, with convenient bathroom breaks during predictably scary and sad parts. With Memento my brain’s movie GPS was irrevocably confused. Forcing it to stray from the beloved pattern of romantic comedies and venture into the unknown realm of… the unknown.

Regardless of whether I enjoyed the film, Memento was appropriate to the themes of this class. Memento successfully blurred the lines between truth and fiction- making it nearly impossible to detect where truth ends and lies begin. This film reminds the viewer that memory is duplicitous.

Leonard, the main character- a man who suffers from a rare form of memory loss; he can remember the past, but cannot form new memories. Leonard lives his to avenge his wife’s rape and murder. He hunts down the murder throughout the movie but is denied the sweet flavor of revenge because he cannot remember if he actually killed his wife’s murder. In effect, Leonard tells himself that his wife’s murderer is still at large, when in reality he is her murderer.
Leonard says, “Do I lie to myself to be happy?... Yes I do.” However, do Leonard’s lies make him any different from normal people? Just because Leonard’s bases his life on lies, does not mean his life is meaningless. All people lie, to make themselves feel better. Even if Leonard bases his entire existence after his wife’s death on a lie, his life is imbibed with meaning, because he has a purpose.

I like movies that have a moral or those that make me feel good. This movie was left me confused, saddened and with a residual feeling of immorality, like the soap scum on a shower curtain.

You have to have a system.

Once again I have been forced to question what statements are true and what statements are false. Momento was an extreme brain twister at first. The story is told in reverse chronological order. I found this to be an extremely effective way at mimicking Leonards's own "condition". Leonard can only retain information for roughly five minutes. This is why each scene is roughly five minutes long.
Because of Leonard's "condition" he is forced to write everything down on photos in order to remember. This causes many problems for our protagonist. He is easily manipulated by people such as Teddy and Natalie. This manipulation can go so far as to involve the murder of innocent, or not so innocent (we don't know) people. The only thing that is important to Leonard is to get revenge for his wife. His wife was murdered by a John G. but he doesn't know which one. This poses a problem for Leonard. If he does finally get revenge on John G, he never remembers that he has. Therefor his lust for revenge is never subdued.
One aspect I felt was ironic was the fact that he kept mentioning how you had to come up with a system and that's how you could make it work with this disease. Yet he had a system that was based entirely on pens and photos. Without one of those he could not remember anything since his accident. The entire time he would keep saying "you see, you have to have a system" yet the entire movie he is being manipulated to do other's biddings. Some system.
Yeah I guess last but not least, the funniest part of the movie I though was where he was getting chased and goes, "Whats going on, I'm chasing somebody." Get's shot at and goes, "No they are chasing me." Classic.