Prosthetic memories and Visual Memory
The Maze Runner (2014) a science fiction sub-genre of the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction, is an example of how a prosthetic memory can change the direction of the narrative. How a false memory created through the use of a visual recording, a message from a past that the main protagonists did not live reveals and enlightens both the protagonists and spectators. The film opens with the main protagonist transferring to the surface from a subterranean location. The main protagonist, Thomas arrives with no memory alluding to his identity which in a few days he partially regains some memories limited to his name only. His memory has been wiped selectively, his name the only memory and identity that he knows, just like all the others. They do not know where they are in the world or the reason for their incarceration in this artificial environment, the Glade. They are determined to escape and so each day a team (the runners) explores the maze outside of the Glade, the aim to identify a route out of The Glade and escape back to the real world. Eventually, they escape only to find themselves in the laboratory, everyone appears to be dead, and the laboratory shows damage from a battle between the scientists and an unknown armed group. It is at this point when a visual recording starts to play. In the visual recording the scientist reveals that they have been the subjects of an experiment, the world is a ruin, destroyed by Sun flares and an unknown plague called the Flare, as the visual recording plays an armed battle is revealed playing out in the background. As the battle reaches a climax the scientist commits suicide in front of the camera rather than be captured.
But the visual recording is a falsehood its intention to create prosthetic memories in the small group of survivors. As the survivors are seemingly rescued from the laboratory the next scene reveals the scientist who killed herself in the visual recording is still alive and extorting to the other scientists that they are to prepare for stage 2 of the experiment. The staging of the armed assault in the laboratory and the formulation of memories of past events in the real world are essential in preparing the survivors for the next stage of the experiment. The visual recording is intended to manipulate the memories of the survivors. These survivors who because of what we have assumed to be selective memory wipes or the loss of short-term memory as they remember their names after a few days. They are not able to make a comparison between the real and prosthetic memories that they have been told through the scientist’s visual recording. For example, Burgoyne quotes Landsberg, “Landsberg argues that prosthetic memories, especially those afforded by the cinema, ‘become part of one’s personal archive of experience’.” (Burgoyne, 2003: 224). The visual recording achieves on several levels the effects of prosthetic memory. Firstly, it influences the actions of the protagonists and secondly the understanding of the spectator, as this is the only explanation of what happened to the real world. I have problems with prosthetic memory and visual recordings which include the main protagonist, as this would conflict with the definition of prosthetic memories, but this example does not.
However, in the following two examples I do have trouble coinciding the introduction and of the use of visual recording featuring the protagonist to represent memories that they have forgotten as prosthetic memories. In each case the protagonists have actually lived these memories, that is memories of events that they have forgotten and even though they are delivered by a form of mass media, that is visual recording they still believe do not reside within the definition of prosthetic memories. I featured both films in the Flashback section as they are recordings set in the past. Total Recall (1990) directed by Paul Verhoeven. In the scene where Douglas Quaid watches a visual recording of himself telling him that all of his memories are false, he is not married and not a construction worker but instead an agent actively working against Mars’s administrator Cohaagen. My problem with this visual recording revelation is that the main protagonist Douglas lived this event as he featured in the visual recording therefore it can be argued that these memories are not prosthetic memories even though he has no memory of them. This is an area that deserves to be expanded upon as the definition of prosthetic memory advanced by Landsberg seems limited.
The other example appears in the film Still Alice (2014) Directed by Richard Glatzer. My problem with this film is the suicide visual recording that Alice records for her future self. This visual recording is created for Alice to follow when her memory deteriorates to a set point determined by her daily memory questionnaire that she checks herself against on her mobile phone.
Visual Memory
My problem with this visual recording has the same issue I have for Total Recall as the protagonist features in the visual recording of this event, a memory that she has lived and therefore does not accommodate itself within the definition of prosthetic memory. This visual recording conflicts directly with one of the key elements of the prosthetic memory definition “ ( . . . ) a memory of events they did not live ( . . . . ) “ (Landsberg, 2016). This is another example of the difficulty of defining or of even finding the exact words to describe memory in film. In this case, another name and definition should be considered for this type of memory, perhaps Visual Memory?
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Oblivion (2013) Jack is a clone, number 49, but he does not know this because his memories are not his own. His prosthetic memory is of the Earth’s triumph and the defeat of an Alien invasion. That his role now as a Drone repair technician is helping to protect a desolate Earth from the few remaining Alien survivors. But in truth the opposite is true, the Alien Invasion was victorious, and Jack is unknowingly carrying out the Alien’s Avatar directions, by assisting Sally to strip the Earth of its few remaining resources. In truth, the aliens he is fighting are actually Earth’s real survivors, Scavengers or Scav’s as they are referred to.
As events unfold, he begins to break through the artificial and false prosthetic memories and begin to remember the reality of what happened, eventually overriding the prosthetic memories in the process. One of the key events in understanding his true situation and identity is the chance meeting of his clone, duplicating his role in a different zone. As in the film Ghost in the Shell, the false memories begin to break down. Jack is a clone, yet he appears to retain the memories of the original Jack, hidden behind the false prosthetic memories imprinted on his brain by Sally. As Lury argues in a culture created through the use of prosthetic memory that this culture that is a [p]rosthetic culture thus provides a novel context for understandings of the person and of self-identity”. (Lury, 2013: 11). What I would argue and as Lury appears to suggest in her argument, is that Jack’s identity up to this point does not include the possibility that he is a clone, that he is uniquely Jack, not a clone and his prosthetic memories are real and inform his identity and purpose, which only changes as Jack learns his true identity.
The Maze Runner (2014) The film opens with the main protagonist transferring to the surface from a subterranean location. The main protagonist, Thomas arrives with no memory except in a few days he remembers his name. His memory has been wiped selectively, his name the only memory and identity that he knows, just like all the others. They do not know where they are in the world or the reason for their incarceration in the Glade. They are determined to escape and so each day a team (runners) explores the maze outside of the Glade, the aim to identify a route out of the false habitat The Glade and escape back to the real world.
Eventually, they escape only to find themselves in a laboratory, everyone appears to be dead, and the laboratory shows damage from a battle between the scientists and an unknown armed group. It is at this point a video starts to play. In the video the scientist reveals that they have been the subjects of an experiment, the world is a ruin destroyed by Sun flares and an unknown plague called the Flare, as the video plays an armed battle is revealed in the background. As the battle reaches a climax the scientist commits suicide in front of the camera rather than be captured. But the video is a lie its intention to create false memories, prosthetic memories in the group of survivors. As the survivors are seemingly rescued from the laboratory the next scene reveals the scientist who killed herself in the video alive and explaining to the other scientists to prepare for stage 2 of the experiment. The staging set in the laboratory and false memories of past events are essential in preparing the survivors for the next stage of the experiment. The video manipulating the memories of the survivors who because of their memory wipes cannot make any comparison between what they know and what they have been told
Prosthetic Memory in Science Fiction
Consider Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and its prequel these two films are almost a definition for advanced technology and prosthetic memory. The film follows on from the original Blade Runner (1982) “Thirty years after the events of Blade Runner (1982), a new Blade Runner, L.A.P.D. Officer “K” (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former L.A.P.D. Blade Runner, who has been missing for thirty years”. (Warner Brothers, 2017) As the producer’s state, this sequel follows on from the original Blade Runner (1982) albeit with a 30-year gap from where in the final scenes of the extended version of the film (The Directors Cut, 1992) Deckard and Rachael are together in Deckard’s flying car escaping for a new life, somewhere outside of Los Angeles. The spectator is left to make their own conclusions as to what happens to them in the future, with the narrator suggesting that Rachael might not have the limited 4-year life span of a replicant, which is one of the key premises for the film, the replicants seeking an extension to their limited 4 year life span.
One of the men in the life raft appears to be recalling a memory and calls out the name Kath, the visuals of the rippling water is once again deployed to flashback to a scene of home before the war. This time the flashback visuals are accompanied by the sound of the sea overlayed onto the music as the shot cross dissolves to a shot of two people one of them the sailor discussing the likelihood of coming of the war. The scene matching the one between the Captain and his wife, two households at each end of the social classes seemingly in agreement that war is coming and that despite the difference in social class they are all in this together. As the scene plays out the ripple effect visuals and the sound of the sea prepare the spectator for a return to the chronological time line but instead it flashbacks cross fading back in time returning to the scene of the commissioning of the ship and the address by the Captain to the ship’s crew before their first voyage. This would initially confuse the spectator until part of the scene plays out and the disorientation ends? The flashback is sequence provides essential information, the preparedness of the ship and its crew as war is declared. As Turim states “[t]his logic of time and space is ultimately what helps the viewer to distinguish a flashback from a purely imaginary sequence or an arbitrary narrative disruption”. (Turim, 2013: 11)
As the flashback continues the scene joins each of the main protagonists as they celebrate Christmas at their respective homes, each separated by class but joined together in celebration, again promoting this feeling of they are all in this war together. As the scene comes to an end the Captains wife echo’s the words from the narration at the start of the flashback, and with the shot rippling, the music overlayed with the sound of the waves the shot crossfades back to the chronological timeline and re-joins the survivors in the life raft as they contemplate the loss of their ship as it begins to sink below the surface. The flashbacks in this film appear to be derived from the personal memories of each of the protagonists and as Turim suggests “If flashbacks give us images of memory, the personal archives of the past, they also give us images of history, the shared and recorded past.” (Turim, 2014: 2) The flashbacks occur with increasing regularity as the survivor’s each revisit memories of events of their home and relationships before the ship sailed, each a personal memory of their lives before the war. Triggered by events and linked through images and sounds, for example the tattoo on the injured sailors arm says ‘Freda’ which links back to a memory of the first meeting between the survivor and Freda on a train journey. This, his future wife, which through another flashback the spectator joins the scene of their marriage before returning back to the chronological timeline and the scene of the life raft.
In the case study of the film The Limey (1999) the narrative has multiple examples of using flashbacks. Through these flashbacks and the creative use of the editing process appears to make it seem as if the film is always looking backwards as the Director intended, the fragmented editing process represents the fragmentation of the main protagonist’s, Wilson’s memory. In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine the director Soderbergh states that “[g]iven its premise, it seemed there was some possibility to recraft it into a memory piece”. (Fear, 2019) There are flashbacks within flashbacks and flashbacks looking back to a past that Wilson could not have participated. For example, the flashback to a past with appears to be a young Wilson and Jenny, this what we would call a meta-flashback with footage sourced from another film, by the Director Ken Loach, Poor Cow (1967). This meta-flashback integrates so well into The Limey’s linear timeline so that the spectator doesn’t
In Anna (2019) the flashbacks use classical conventions for entering and exiting for example, flashes to white, fades a cross dissolve combined with the sounds of a camera’s shutter operation. A lengthy flashback with flashbacks within it, provides some of the origins of Anna’s character to inform the spectator through these flashback sequences details of her background and her training as a spy. The flashbacks inform the spectator who now has some understanding as to how in one scene a market stall seller in Russia makes the jump into a modelling job in the Paris fashion industry. Then in a later scene from fashion model to an International assassin. This fits in perfectly with a quotation by Bordwell who states “Most obviously, a flashback can explain why one character acts as she or he does.” (Bordwell, 2009). The use of intertitles at the beginning and the end of the sequence clearly indicates the start and ending of the flashback and where in the past that the events occur, although the much earlier childhood flashbacks are not so indicated, instead these use the classical conventions of fades, sound and flashes to white to enter and exit the flashback sequences. As Bordwell states “If your flashbacks skip around a lot, you might worry about viewers’ losing their bearings. So to help out, you might add superimposed titles identifying the time and place of the scene.” (Bordwell, Thompson and Smith, 2016: 75). The concept of using intertitles to indicate changes in the linear timeline, harks back to early silent cinema and classical Hollywood cinema, but as I have already discussed this has also been used in contemporary films for example Anna (2019) and Iron Man (2008).
In another case study the film The Notebook (2004), the flashbacks are used to link to past events, the memories of a past forgotten in its entirety by the central character, Allie. Duke, Allie’s husband uses the notebook, from which the film’s title is derived, as a means of misdirection, to be not seen as drawing upon his own memories in the retelling of what is their story that is revealed in the flashbacks. Duke appears to read from his notebook in the hope that Allie will regain her memory of their past life together. In many respects this misdirection works, as Allie believes the story is of a couple unknown to her, an interesting story of young love. That is true until she has a lucid moment and she remembers that Duke is her husband and the story he has been telling her from the notebook, is their own. One of the possible reasons for this filmmaking approach and the use of the flashbacks is to also keep the spectator in suspense of the identity of the young couple in the flashbacks to create a mystery. That is until a point in the film where it becomes clear that they and the young couple from the flashbacks are one and the same. A useful analogy could be derived from Theatre as Hugo Münsterberg the psychologist argues “[u]nderstanding a theatrical performance, for example, relies on our remembering the sequence of scenes that preceded the one that is before us. A character can draw attention to an earlier scene, stage props, lighting and music can also suggest these to us, but the scene itself cannot be directly “replayed” before our eyes. With film, however, things are different. The act of remembering can be screened, so to speak, before our very eyes thanks to the use of flashbacks. (Colman, 2012: 34).