Tootsie doesn't roll

Ok so I know this is late but even if I don't get credit I want to tell you about the wonder that is Tootsie. I am very happy I was able to watch this movie. Quick synopsis: Dustin Hoffman is Michael Dorsey an out of work actor who is an un-hireable man. His solution? Dress up as a women and audition for roles as Dorothy Michaels. Only his roommate and agent know the truth,  but as Michael experiences the challenges women face in the entertainment industry, that soon changes.
This movie was entertaining but it also made me question the what's actually separating men and women as there are parallels between the unemployed actor's life and the role he's playing. This emphasizes the saying that "one is not born, but rather,  becomes a women" Simone de Beauvoir.  Under the patriarchal society of 1982 when this film was made and today, this saying rings true; women are become like women because it is said they can't be like men.

In the film there were very prominent examples of the advantages and disadvantages women have in the entertainment business. On one hand Michael found contentment by being Dorothy as he was finally getting hired. On the other, he found the life of a women to be an objectifying and condescending nightmare and the double life he had to lead to be exhausting and overwhelming.

The show Dorothy worked in is a metaphor for the reality women face. The doctor's sleazy character is reflected in the director who objectifies women in real life the way the doctor does on screen. While playing Dorothy, Michael had multiple male admirers but once it was revealed he was a man, they backed off, proving they were driven not by love but sex.
The director also wanted her to say lines that were passive in comparison to the situation but Michael's noble impulse allowed him to improv empowering words that women related to. Although I wonder had they known he was a man, would they have taken the advice? Does it matter who gives help as long as the person has your best interest at heart? It is also very important to note that while Dorothy was expected to speak her mind, Michael was deemed too difficult to work with for acting the same way. This is similar to our discussion during class on how men are taught not to reveal their emotions and  feelings.

Boys Don't Cry

The film Boys Don’t Cry is the story of Brandon, a female to male transgender. After being misunderstood and treated harshly by the people in his town, he moves to a new town and finds a group of friends. Brandon begins to date a girl named Lana, who doesn’t know that Brandon is a biological female. There are instances along the way that clue Lana in to the truth about Brandon; for example, when Lana sees Brandon’s cleavage, and when Brandon has to answer for the reason he is in the women’s prison. Nevertheless, Lana loves him. When her friends begin to question Brandon’s gender, they make him pull his pants down, and Lana tries not to look. She doesn’t really care what gender Brandon is. Brandon is later raped and killed by two of Lana’s friends. 

In Judith Butler’s Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, the correlation between gender and sex is questioned. Butler talks about how sex is what you were born as, but gender is basically a social construct that places certain ideas and expectations onto someone. In Boys Don’t Cry, Brandon did not fit into the typical role of a female, so he was shunned by many. Lana’s love for him does not depend on gender though, as she stuck with Brandon throughout the entirety of the film. 

Boys dont cry

The film Boys Don't Cry covers the topic of gender identity and acceptance. Through Brandon the film explores the harsh reality of being transgender in a society where it is unaccepted. He is thrown in a woman's jail, raped, and beaten all because of his sexuality. It is known that transgender equality is severely lacking, and this movie highlights the issue. Brandon knows who he is, but the people around him do not. Almost like a metaphor for sexuality, through interacting with Brandon most of the characters, especially Lana, discover more about there sexual nature. Whether it be they don't care about gender at all, or they are insecure about their own sexual identity, the lesson is tolerance towards each other and self discovery.

Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry is about a guy who is a transgender. Basically he is not treated as a normal human being. No one respects him or accepted his decision to become one. He is treated very harshly. He was jumped and raped. The relationship between gender and sexuality is  gender is the act of being male or female. And sexuality is the capacity for sexual feelings. All he wanted was equality. Transgendered people are usually frowned upon. They are not treated as normal people and many do not understand them. Transgendered people are looked at as criminals and sinners. Transgender people cannot serve in the US Military. Transgender people are also four times more likely to live in poverty. Trans people deserve the same right as everyone else and not to be singled out.

Crying is not gender specific

The film, Boys Don’t Cry is about a 20 year old, female-to-male transgender.  Brandon Teena leaves home after being threatened by an ex-girlfriend’s brother who finds out that Brandon is biologically female.  So Brandon moves to a small town where no one knows him and he can start his life over. He involves himself with some ex-convicts and becomes romantically involved with a woman named Lana. Brandon has charges from before he moved and is placed in the women’s prison. Lana goes to get him out and asks him why he was put there. He says it is because he is a hermaphrodite.  Lana says that she loves him no matter what. There is a news article that has Brandon’s birth name, Teena Brandon, which gets the attention of Tom and John. Tom and John, the ex-convicts, get suspicious and forcefully remove Brandon’s pants showing his lack of a penis. Afterwards, they take Brandon out to the middle of nowhere and brutally beat and rape him. Then they all go back to Tom’s house and Brandon is able to escape out the bathroom window. Even though he was threatened to not report what happened, he does. Tom and John decide to kill Brandon. Lana tries to stop them but they find Brandon at Candace’s house. One of them shoots Brandon and the other shoots Candace and then attempts to shoot Lana but is stopped and then Tom and John flee.  Lana just ends up falling asleep next to Brandon’s body. Her mother comes and takes her away from the scene. The movie ends with  Lana leaving home with a voice over of Brandon reading a letter he was going to give her.

First of all I just want to say that this was the saddest movie I have ever seen.  Okay, now onto sex, gender, and sexuality. I thought it was interesting that Lana said she loved Brandon, no matter what he was. The first time that they became intimate out in the field, it shows that Lana noticed Brandon’s cleavage but she doesn’t question it. Then there’s the part with the woman’s prison and Brandon says he is a hermaphrodite and is going to get a sex change.  And the last time she is confronted with Brandon’s biological gender, is when Tom and John pull Brandon’s pants down. However, even though they try to force Lana to look, she refuses to. In the beginning of the movie you assume she is straight because she seemed to have some sort of relationship with John and then starts to fall for Brandon who she thinks is male. So, she seems to have been straight but does loving Brandon, who is biologically female, make her a lesbian? She acts on her desires that are for Brandon.  So it seems that sexuality not as cut and dry as people may think. But if at the very beginning, he told her that he possessed the body of a female, would she still fall in love with him? 

Paris is Burning

The 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning, follows the drag and transgender culture of New York City. This has long been one of my favorite films not only because it is thought-provoking, insightful and has beautiful subject matter, but because it is real and not fictional. It does an excellent job of telling the story of the individuals involved in the "balls" and explains the sub-culture and all of its facets and lingo through event footage and private interviews. Many of the drag queens are dealing with difficult situations (poverty, prostitution, banished from their family, and struggling with sex changes, disease), but use the balls as a strong motivation to work towards.

This situation of males putting on an elaborate performances in which they act as the socially constructed idea of females is discussed in Butler's "Peformance Acts and Gender Constitution" in which she points out that when it is a performance, the act is acceptable and entertaining, but once the act is taken off of the stage and into everyday life, it causes confusion, rejection and hatred. This is because it doesn't fall into any "pre-existing category that regulates gender reality." People want everything to fall into distinct categories of male and female, and when something appears to challenge those categories it is difficult for the average person to accept or understand. Butler discusses the difference between sex and gender, that sex is biological but gender is an act that is taught and enforced. So, all of us choose which gender we want to act as, regardless of our sex. In Paris is Burning, the drag queens choose to perform and act as women which brings them hope and excitement despite the challenges they must face from those who cannot understand.

Paris is Burning

     Butler explains that gender is not a fact from which all actions proceed, it is in fact a thing that is constantly renewed, maintaining itself in the ever-changing flux of time. This idea is reminiscent of Sartre's concept of our daily projects being our most defining factor. The idea that gender is hinged upon time is beautifully illustrated in the Harlem Drag Balls in the documentary Paris is Burning. We see each generation of performers all simultaneously changing their style of garb based on what is popular at the time, which was observed and commented on by multiple people within the culture. This is obviously less do to individuals expressing their own identity (although some do) and more to do with whatever is fashionable at the time.
     Butler specifies goes on to say that more general gender-specific actions is very much historically informed. It seems that in Paris is Burning, the gay person is also somewhat of a historically informed social construct. In this social group we see younger generations taken under the wing by older generations, due to their parent's intolerance. These role models undoubtedly partially influence their younger counterparts in speech pattern, mannerism and perspective. This understandable considering the almost gang-like bond that the Harlem gay community shares with one another. Unfortunately though, since this smaller cultural construct is in direct opposition with the larger gender construct of America as a whole, the punitive result the Butler describes has a very real effect on this suppressed minority, which is amplified by the fact that almost the entirety of the Harlem population is black.

You can be your own person but in this square.

              In Friends with Benefits we are delivered the same worn out romantic comedy story where the couple meet and go through whatever conflict that breaks them up and that they soon realize that they are meant for each other. They do bring up an interesting point of where they try to have a friendship that included sex but no emotion. They use their characters work and lives to set it where they even make fun of romantic comedies within the movie. Within the whole movie we are slowly given the stereotypes of men and women and how they interact in a relationship. We touched on what is expected in gender roles and the differences in what they mean for each gender in class so here it was somewhat acted out. Some examples from the movie was that men always had the motive for sex no matter the circumstance, and that women always had immediate emotional attachment for the man and had high expectations. They talked about how no matter what men and women always performed their roles. And there are multiple scenes of dialogue that talk about the other sex as a sort of creature that has been observed and can be predicted.  It was meant to be jokingly but it all has a sort of truth to it in the fact that it was written as it was.

            As I stated earlier, these points were only kind of joked about, and I couldn’t believe the casual way they were delivered in these one-liners.  Butler speaks on the way genders are in the constructed way, “Just as a script may be enacted in various ways, and just as the play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives.“  We have these predetermined expectations that are culturally constructed that we must perform from a very early age that we are suppose to be this type of person when we are this sex, yet when we do grow up we complain about these characteristics that develop from the attitudes and responses we are taught such as no emotion or too much emotion. We also have the hypocrisy of being told to be individualistic within these boundaries of your sex. It all seems kind of funny to me all these different ways that this system that has “No genesis” as Butler puts it, works all out with all these “essential” necessities for each gender that are only a hodgepodge cocktail of what was expected of people years ago. The idea of what these roles are only of European patriarchal style thinking anyway and have been at play for centuries creating these roles for us now, a deep ingrained idea that has been taught to generations to where it is fact for many. Either way we have a large portion of America to convince to quit these binary style gender roles that we already curse as they do in this movie. We should and have let start a generation become people they want to be from what I can tell of my colleagues and me. The millennial generation for the most part has seemed to at least cultivate the idea of relabeling gender for the next generations.

Gender Performance and Boys Don't Cry's portrayal of Brandon Teena

Boys Don’t Cry is about a female-to-male non-operative transgender named Brandon. What this means is that the main character is anatomically female, but identifies as a male. The non-operative part means that he choose to not operate and remain anatomically a female. The story begins with Brandon having just received a haircut and being dressed in men’s clothes. This is the first act of Brandon deciding to be male. He goes on a date with a woman at a rollerskate place. The movie starts with him transitioning to how he thinks a man should act and is followed by a tiny mob rushing after him for breaking the norm. This relates to Butler’s view of gender as consisting of a certain type of stylized acts and also serves as a microcosm of the overall plot.

Brandon’s story is at the bottom hopeful even though it ends with tragedy. He continues to identify as and act as his identity is rather than conforming to social norms. The emphasis on this is displayed throughout the movie’s beginning as he continually makes decisions with “it’s what a boy would do” as the rationale. In this way Brandon performs as his gender rather than what his anatomy and society dictates. But he not only acts how he thinks he should for himself, but also to take part in society’s performance of stylized acts. In other words, he acts like other males do because it makes him feel like a male in society. 

The social aspect is an important one. Without the social aspect one could internalize gender and not have to go through the trials and tribulations of being publicly transgender. As Butler stated, “because gender is a project which has cultural survival as its end, the term ‘strategy’ better suggests the situation of duress under which gender performance always and variously occurs. Hence, as a strategy of survival, gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences.” The key phrase “cultural survival.” Heteronormativity is so deeply entrenched because people who “do not do their gender right” are punished. People who break what society has laid out as the correct path are seen as wrong. This is ignoring the fact that gender exists only as a construct and not as a physical reality. The idea of gender being the same thing or being directly attached to one’s sex is a false construct of society.

The main antagonist, John, believes that gender is attached to sex. The moment that best encapsulates how society views transgender people is when Brandon is forced to reveal his genitalia. Brandon has been dating John’s close friend (perhaps, it was a hard to define relationship) Lana but John has reason to believe that Brandon has been hiding his gender. Brandon swears up and down that he is male. This is true because he identifies as a male and gender is based on the acts one performs. However John forcibly removes his pants to reveal his vagina. John starts shouting “Does this look like a man to you?” at the people present. This movie is very tragic, but it does display hope in the way that Brandon continues to prove himself dedicated to what he knows to be true. Despite the fact that society has indeed exacted “punitive consequences,” Brandon continues to perform male acts and never give into the pressure that society places on him.

Though the article talks about LGBT sensitivity training in the town, it starts with background info. Can also be useful to see how the town changed since the incident the movie is based on:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/two-decades-after-brandon-teenas-murder-a-look-back-at-falls-city/282738/

Boys Don't Cry

In the Kimberly Pierce film Boys Don't Cry, Brandon Teena, born female, changes gender to become a man within the context of Falls Creek, Nebraska, where he falls for Lana Tisdel. The group of friends he is surrounded by are a powder keg at best, with personalities ranging from lazy to volatile, the latter describing supporting males John and Tom. After some time with the estranged family, Brandon is eventually found to have been hiding his sex and background information from them. Lana continues to love him, but he is eventually killed by John and Tom.

After a reading of Judith Butler's Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, we can place the characters of the film into a kind of framework. Earlier on, Butler reorganizes sex and gender to be completely independent of each other, that sex is the body that one has, but gender is the historical and cultural form that is placed upon one's body. When behaving in the manner of a man as a female, this person is defying the cultural norm, rejecting the "strategy" of living society has taught. When Brandon Teena does this, it is not met with an open mind. Butler,"Discrete genders are part of what "humanizes" individuals within contemporary culture; indeed, those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished." John and Tom couldn't wrap their heads around someone's sex not determining their gender (and in this case as well, sexual orientation), so Brandon became an "it" to them. He was totally dehumanized.

Something else I found interesting was the legal jargon Brandon had clearly been put into. We hear in the film and see in action that being a man "just felt right" and seemed to be a very conscious, if gradual, decision to transform. But in the interrogative police scene we hear that he'd been diagnosed with a sexual identity crisis, as if it was a sudden confusion of the mind. The words used in the "diagnosis" negatively define Brandon's choice.

In Time

It’s a crude, but accurate depiction of the casual cruelty of capitalism.

This is the first thought I had, watching Justin Timberlake catch his weirdly young mother as she died. And with the casual dismissiveness with which people regarded “timing out.” Of course people are going to be resentful and revolt—their lives are on the line! In capitalism, you’d need to maintain a working class, not watch them all die off in a ghetto.

As a shallow interpretation of Marxist critique, the film works well enough. There is irony in this in the unsubtle marks of sequel baiting, “the adventure continues” and so on and so forth.

I suppose I still don’t understand how putting a million years into the ghetto helps anything. The way I see it, they wouldn’t be wasting a year’s worth to get to the obscenely expensive 1% world. They’d be better off taking their new wealth to a slightly better area and working to maintain their new bounty and live to see another day. But then, I suppose that isn’t as dramatic as the march into the wealthy world, and it might be a thought too deep for this flashy film.

In Time and Marx's Estranged Labour

While the film In Time is a rather shallow contemporary film, (exemplified by the choice to cast Justin Timberlake as the lead role) it does in many ways mirror Marx's ideology regarding capitalism. Replacing money with time as a conceptual measure allows an exaggerated analogy to contemporary capitalism. In In Time, peoples right to live is literally based on economic standing. 

The same principals apply in the film as they do in real life according to Marx, "The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.” In time shows the alienation of laborers and disproportionate distribution of wealth between the rich and poor.

There's a degree of irony in a large feature film by a major studio which may, unwittingly or not, be critiquing the ills of capitalism.

Marx's 'In Time'

In Time is a direct result of the 'Fern Gully' effect, so-called for the film of same name dedicated to not-so-subtly raising a new generation of environmentally-aware/conscious people. By adapting Marx's Criticism of Capitalism into a sci-fi film with a modern twist, In Time attempted to raise awareness of the corruption built into our society while hiding behind a thin layer of smooth action sequences and fast one-liners.
Despite the poor writing, half-baked plot, and near-preachy monologues In Time does honestly function as a simple, easily accessible interpretation of Marx's Criticism of Capitalism. The entire system is set up to generate what amounts to human livestock produced to perform acts of manual labour, create more time for the rich, and live under such desperate living means that acts as population control.
The most interesting aspect of this film is the relationship that develops between Slyvia Weis and Will Solas. The plot of the movie doesn't really take form until Sylvia's introduction and eventual interaction with Will, directing the film into the strange 'bonnie and clyde meets robin hood' theme. Up until Sylvia's arrival Will's actions aren't geared towards using the time he's been given to help others, only how to tear down those who live better. In fact, after Will's initial failed attempt to provide his community more time he's ready to give up. If it hadn't been for Sylvia's temptation of taking the time by force then the film would've taken a totally different turn. Everything that happens after Sylvia's kidnapping is directly related to her idea that the time gap between those in the ghetto and those in New Greenwich was unfair.
The possible implications of such a narrative decision can only really be interpreted as such: for the struggle of the oppressed to be heard, those with privilege must lend their voices. Comparing this idea with Marx's idea that the workers must all ban together to protest their conditions, it poses an interesting question: is it true that the combined voices of an entire workforce still hold no power in comparison to the single voice of a privileged person?

In Time

When human beings genes are mutated and individuals stop aging at 25 and must work hard to prolong their life, the question of power and consumerism comes into question. Karl Marx, a philosopher from the 1800s, questions the way that society is run after the industrial revolution and how individuals in the society become alienated from themselves and others in the current system that we have now. The main character in In Time, Will Salas has always lived a life scrounging for more time added to his clock.  Living in the ghetto time zone, Will has become accustomed to those that surround him literally living out the phrase "time is money." When he witnesses a man with a lot of time on his wrist in his community, Will  decides to confront the man and protect him. The man, in turn, gives Will the rest of the time on his watch, which happens to be a century, more time than Will has ever had. He then ruins the balance between life and death within the nation and those that live "average" lives are now able to live just as long as those who once lived forever due to their wealth.

The comparisons with Karl Marx theories and the ideas expressed in "In Time" reveal to the viewer the question of power and the comparision to the consumerist way of thinking that as a modern nation we express. Should we place the amount of value that we do on money and waste time that we could use to explore and gain knowledge and independence  to gain more money for our bank accounts? Does our system of money making really benefit us as a whole or does it stunt the possible growth that individuals have when not focused on material and industrial goods?

Karl Marx believes that workers become literal parts in a system and lose all identity just to be able to participate in normal "human" things such as eating, sleeping, relaxing, and reproduction. The things that we should just do because we are human become luxury. He believes that the system we have in place alienates the worker from himself and others which in turn takes away from the way that we can further ourselves as individuals and as a society.

The correlations between In Time and the way that Karl Marx interprets our society depicts to the viewer the ridiculousness of our materialism and critiques how the individuals in power are stealing from the poor.

Less than & Time Periods

I believe that Andrew Niccol's film In Time is a great representation of Marx's "Estranged Labour" and its discussion of how the worker is treated. I think the part that most simply represented his writing is when Will Salas goes to work at the factory. There is a moment where he is manufacturing the time (I'm not sure of the word) devices. Marx discusses how the worker becomes a servant to the object they produce. When Will goes to "clock out" for the day, he is told that he did not meet the factory's quota and will not be paid in full. I think there is a direct similarity between the movie and the writing, because Marx discusses this very instance. "The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates." Even though Will's personal quota went up from the week before, he is still not meeting the factory's unrealistic standard. Therefore, he is deemed "less than", and not paid the full amount as he should have.

One thing that I think is also interesting that wasn't discussed in class, is the time period of Marx and "Estranged Labour". "Estranged Labour" was written in 1844, which is just after the Industrial Revolution, which was about 1760-1840. Technology was slowly coming around during the time that Marx wrote this. Workers were subject to extremely poor working conditions, and they were barely staying alive with what they earned. Similar to In Time, where in the less wealthy districts, it is very common for people to be running to their next destination and struggling to have the time to see the next day. While In Time is held in 2169, it is almost as if time and history have come full circle. All the while, these humans are carrying out their work, doing "human" functions, when in reality, they would love nothing more than to be at home, eating, sleeping, or procreating; serving "animal" functions.

I think "Estranged Labour" goes along with several other movies very well; my first two thoughts are Looper and Hunger Games. The Hunger Games series has the overbearing government where you're always being watched, there's districts with drastically different amounts of wealth. Both the series and In Time are about the revolution of the workers. The workers greatly outnumber the ones who hold the wealth, the bourgeois who own the factories, so who is actually genuinely surprised when they revolt and try to make things more fair?

Marx and In Time

The movie "In Time" s about a dystopian future where the amount of time you have to live is used as currency and it's earned through labor. The people that live in the ghettos of this dystopian world live day to day as the they try to scrounge up enough time to keep themselves alive. Working everyday isn't enough to keep themselves alive and with the cost of living rising many are forced to beg, borrow, and steal for the necessary time. In contrast the people on the higher rungs of their society can live live for thousands of years off of the work of those in the ghettos. This stratification and society leads to Justin Timberlake's character deciding to steal back what the rich have already stolen from the poor in an effort to force change.

Marx says that the worker depreciates in value with the more wealth and product they produce. The worker becomes a commodity by selling themselves and as a thing to be brought they are worth less then what is produced. The more wealth that is accumulated by the rich the bigger the gap between themselves an the workers. By selling themselves for as labor they are alienating themselves from the half that is profiting off of them. To exploit someone you must first believe they are unlike you and alienation through labor as well as the objectification of workers makes the exploitation possible.

The exploitation and alienation seen in the movie are the foundation of capitalism , not only in their society but ours as well. In the movie Justin Timberlake and the red haired rich chick are the catalyst for change in their society which seems weird because of the obvious malaise in regards to the situation. It could be argued that everyone's too busy trying to stay alive to start a revolution but there's nothing else for them to live for or pacify them besides the hope that maybe someday they'll have enough time to quit worrying. If that's the case then they've alienated themselves to the point were they only see themselves as workers and Marx refers to this as the estrangement of man from his own body. Because they have stopped living for themselves and no longer live for the sake of living they've separated themselves into two existences, the worker and the human.

Next week's reading assignment: Judith Butler

Please click here to view/download next week's reading assignment, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" by Judith Butler.

Time Machine Issues

One of the things that I mentioned in class that I don't think I explained very well, is how odd the assumption of time travel is. When H.G. Wells created the idea of the time machine, it was an interesting idea, because he was living in a period of time that was functionally different from his grandfathers. Up until about the 18th century things had been pretty much the exact same for millennias, the power just changed hands. For the first time, in H.G. Wells' time, the use of technology had improved some things and made others obsolete. The idea of the future and the past being radically different was now not only a possibility, but a growing reality. But, the past and the future don't really exist.

For example, if I were to get into a time machine right now and go back to the Ancient Roman Republic, that place is no longer the past for me. It's no longer the past for anyone. It is most certainly the present, for me, for Caesar, and for anyone alive at the moment. For them the past that they can imagine is the ancient Greeks, the founding of Rome, and the Siege of Troy, where they believed Rome traces its beginnings from. All because somebody at some point wrote about it. But, it doesn't exist, in reality it's gone. It stopped existing, which means it doesn't exist. It exists within the imaginations of the Romans. To create a tree the seed must cease to exist. Therefore, the past doesn't exist in reality, solely in Imagination.

Similarly, the future doesn't actually exist either. The future is also within human imaginations. A long running joke in science fiction has been to ask the question, "Where are all the jet-packs and flying cars". The same place they've always been! In your head!

So really a time machine doesn't actually go back in time, it just changes the conditions of what the present means. So the paradox of time travel, I think is less "what happens if i kill my own grandfather", as posited in class, but more "how can i experience, what is by its very definition, cannot be experienced?" How can I see what cannot be seen? And if you pay attention to all the time travel movies, that is always the central conflict. In Looper, "young Joe" makes it clear that he doesn't care about his future, and by extension his future self. He can't see his own future, even if he is a little more forward thinking than his compatriots. "Old Joe" can't see the future that he's about to create by killing those children, which is ultimately fixing the time line into the destructive place it's going. Because when going back and forth into the past and future there is always a gamble that people pretend isn't there, that there actions have further reaching consequences both positive (like in Back to the Future) and negative(Looper or Butterfly Effect). The exact, exact, exact same as the present. The only show that pretends there are no consequences of doing whatever the fuck you want is Doctor Who, and even they allude to having consequences sometimes.

Can memories affect real life?

Life is all about choices and how one life effects another,whether we choose to or not. Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind is about a man who decides to have the memories of his girlfriend erased after learning that she did the same to him. The problem occurs when, during the procedure, his subconscious realizes he still loves her and he struggles to save his memories of her. This brings into question how effective can our memories be if they are so easy to forget, both in the case of a crew of people hired to erase the and in real circumstances. I also think this really caused me to consider whether or not or memories could affect real life. I think there is some truth to this because if we don't remember something, we try our best to access the information. And if we find that we can't, we go on a quest to find out. Similar to how Joel and Clementine eventually met up at their frozen hideaway.

(or)

I think there is a certain part of everything we experience that never leaves us. Joel and Clementine still manage to find each other even after both of them supposedly "erase" the other. So memories can be altered but feelings never just go away.

Romantic time loops

Loopers idea of time travel wasn't exactly accurate but none the less it was a good movie. The issue though lies with how it went about constructing timelines intertwining and how they would affect each other. "Old" Joe travels to the past to stop the Rain Man from happening, from the start it is folly. He might change the future but he would never know for certain that he would ever end up with his love again, or even know if she lives the way he wanted her to live. However Looper excludes all the facts with a characters laziness of explanation. Thus it creates what I call a "Romantic Time Loop". This is a common notion towards time travel that we all have. We discover a way to travel back in time, change the future and live happily forever. This is seen in a lot of movies besides Looper such as Superman: The Movie (1979), or even Back To The Future 2 where Biff goes to his past to make himself rich. They all have the idea that there will be no significant changes by going back and messing up the order of things. Where as in truth, the whole world would fricking go to chaos, a.k.a. "The Butterfly Effect". No not actual butterflies causing tornados, but one " initial condition" that changes the entire system over time rather than one little part. It may start out with a minute amount of change but given some time everything could be different.

The "Romantic Time Loop" is filled with empty gaps leaving out plenty of the science behind actual time travel. Really the whole idea of time travel is built upon man's constant laziness, the sin of sloth if you will. Instead of fixing the problems in the present, we would choose to spend all our time to go back and tweak the past to our liking.

Back to the Future was an impossible story.
If Marty McFly went back to 1955 and rearranged how his parents met, being a more heroic, tumultuous tale, changing the outlook and esteem of his parents and context of 1985, we can assume that Marty's knowledge and upbringing would change as his story in their lives unfolded. In the "original" story, George McFly fell from a tree and was hit by Lorraine's dad, and she nursed him back to health, falling for him the whole way. Marty had heard this story his entire life. If this event changed, by, say Marty keeping George out of the tree in the first place, Marty's knowledge of the event that was "supposed" to happen, wouldn't exist. As the movie goes, the "original" story doesn't happen, so he shouldn't logically have any recollection of that story, so he wouldn't regret saving George from the car. At minimum consequence, he should have grown up with the story of a strange life-preserver wearing boy interrupting the couple's lives and changing HOW they met. The how is emphasized because we know some offspring of George and Lorraine existed in 1955 alongside them, then they met, they married, they had the child. But this is merely an unnecessary control. If Marty had changed the past so drastically that he wouldn't have been born (like killing his father), then he wouldn't just fade away in a curiously dramatic way, but he wouldn't make it to 1955, or exist at all to begin with. If Marty sees that he is conscious/alive/existing in 1955, then he can rest well knowing that his parents met and received each other. There would be no exact point of goofy disappearance.
David Lewis in Paradoxes of Time Travel points out that  an "original" story and a "new" one are one and the same. Marty cannot isolate himself from his context. The more he does in 1955 concerning George and Lorraine's story about how they met, and therefore are supposed to meet, the more Marty's memory about the story about how they met changes. As soon as Marty jumped out in front of the car to save George, that event has been told to him by his mother his whole life. He would have no recollection of the "original" story because, now, it never happened. To even say "as soon as" is irrelevant. Everything he does has already happened, so he comes into every event playing the roles that have already happened. Whatever memories he has must play out, further making the previous statement irrelevant. To come into 1955 as the 17 year old, rebellious, Van Halen loving teen we see, he would to only be able to watch. He is forced into being a ghost. To be Marty McFly at all, he cannot affect a past where he is not alive. If he goes back to 1980, for example, he can exist and manipulate his context, but only as a 12 year old normally would, blissfully unaware that he had just erased seven years of humanity.To put another way, Marty could be in the 17 year old inaffective ghost state until the second he was conceived, where he could begin to affect his context starting as a pupa.
It made sense in my head.

Looper

Looper, is about a mob that creates a kill system using a time machine to send people back 30 years in the past to  kill them. The mob was very dangerous and they would kill any member that did not kill their assigned target. These killers were called loopers. One looper decided that he was going to take control of his own life and also get revenge on the mob for killing his wife. He almost succeeds his plans when his younger self realizes how selfish he will be in the future. He kills himself erasing his entire existence. I believe that act was a good example of character and demonstrates courage. Richard Taylor argues that time and space are more related than people think. I often wonder if time travel is real. Maybe the government is secretly using time travel and we do not know. I personally do not know how space relates to time. I do believe that they do somehow. I do believe in the future time travel will be available for people to use because anything is possible. Time travel can be very confusing. Just as the grandfather paradox was in class. Looper was very interesting in the way it portrayed the future to be. It seemed that the there were only two class of people. the rich and the poor. I thought that was different perspective that never would have thought about.

Loopty Loop

        Looper is a thought provoking science fiction thriller that explores the topic of time travel. Not the fun type of time travel though. The type where're you are ordered to perform a job that involves killing people who are sent to the past where your killer awaits. When the mob sends you back in time to your looper, you are strapped with silver bricks that is money for said looper. Except when you get yourself to kill, then you get gold bricks. This is done by the mob because they want you to end your time as a looper and you can finally retire. This looper is particular is named Joe, who is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (older Joe is played by Bruce Willis). He learns one day at the kill spot on the farm that the mob is demanding him to “close the loop” by sending back Joe’s future self for assassination. At this time in 2074, time traveling is illegal so the people who participate are part of the black market.
        I see the grandfather paradox within the film. The fact that Joe had to do everything a certain way in his life that led Bruce Willis to his beautiful wife and a free life away from these mobsters. In all of our lives, we have certain events that have happened in our past that make us and our lives the way they are today. From minuscule situations,, like what we decide to
wear to a job interview and how our attire affects the chances of getting the job. To something like choosing where we go to college and the life path we take. For example, my dad was on his way to Arizona State University to study journalism when his VW beetle broke down and he couldn't afford the out of state tuition and getting His car fixed. He decided to go back home to LA and went to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. He met my mom there and they have been married for thirty years. What would have happened if his car didn't break down? What would his life be like today if he did decide to go to ASU?
        If improbable coincidence is a key factor, how many “must have” coincidences have to happen in order for the rest of the things in your life to play out? Personally, I can go back in my life and think about a variety of important situations that happened, if they didn't go as I remembered things would be a lot different right now. It is fascinating and mind boggling to think about and I am interested in reading more about this topic.

A spotless mind does not create an eternal sunshine

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, in my opinion, is more about how memory does or does not affect us, than it is about time. This movie is about a couple, Joel and clementine, and their relationship. However, their relationship is different. They meet on a train and instantly click, even before they start talking there is this chemistry between them. their first meeting is actually their second. There is an agency that erases memories for people. Clementine got her memory of Joel erased because of a fight. When Joel discovers this, he has his memories of clementine erased as well. When he is getting his memory erased of all things Clementine, the movie takes place inside of his head. We experience his memories with him as the memories are erased. Joel tries to outrun the memories because he realizes that they are important and so he tries to hide from the eraser people and drags clementine with him. She comes up with the idea to hide in his deepest hidden memories from childhood. But in actuality, it was Joel’s idea. He just thought, “what would Clementine do?”.  This idea came from her wanting him to be intimate and share with her, who he used to be.  In the end, they are unable to outrun the erasers and all of the memories are gone. However, someone that worked for the company that erases memories, was affected by the process and so she sent a letter to people letting them know that their memories have been erased and what was erased.  This messed up Joel and Clementine’s new relationship but in the end, they give it another try. I think this is sweet, like they were meant to be together. Not remembering each other did not truly affect them in the way that was intended. The feelings that they felt did not go away, just the recollection of them.  I don’t see how time played as much of a role in this movie. There was no time travel. The closest thing to time travel was him running through his memories but that was just him thinking about the past, not really going there. Even though the memories did not exist, the feelings that the memories created still existed. Having a spotless mind, does not create and eternal sunshine.

Leonard existing outside the stream of time in Memento

Memento is a film about a man with short term memory loss. He is searching for the man that killed his wife. But he doesn't have the ability to form new memories. So he is constantly writing things to remind himself of things and help him hold himself together. At one point Natalie enrages Leonard (the main character with memory loss) to the point that he hits her. She gets in her car, closes the door, opens it again, and tells Leonard someone else hit her. This causes Leonard to nearly kill someone.

Scene where Natalie Fools him
Can You Get Angry?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ3Z0TSIpE0

Taylor's "Space and Time" mentions that an object can move from places and return to an original place relatively easily. It also says that the same thing could happen with time. As in that something can be in the same place at different times, something can be in different places at the same time. Like if an earthquake was covering a large area, and affected multiple places at the same time. This is important to the idea of Memento. Memento is about a man who travels through the world's places and times but has no concept of it. So that even though the man appears to be in different times he is really stuck in a single starting point to himself.

Since Groundhog Day was mentioned during free will I thought it drew an interesting parallel. Groundhog Day the character was the only person who realized that time was passing as the world around him reset. In Memento the world marches on as the main character is himself reset. So to Leonard, Leonard can move spatially but cannot move very far in time. His time exists only as far as his attention can carry him. But despite this limited movement he is trapped in time. It's like someone trapped in a cell. This jailed person may pace back and forth in their cell but can never actually leave the cell. And since the injury is physical, there isn't a good way to unlock it either.

The movie also raises the question of if Leonard can really do things long term with his life. Because as soon as he does anything it is usually soon gone. Even if he could achieve meaningful things he wouldn't remember them. The horror of this is apparent in Natalie fooling Leonard into killing someone. This means that though Leonard is affected by pure becoming, as Taylor has outlined, he cannot see it or respond to it. One must wonder if Leonard will ever even realize he is aging until he is dead or dying. One of the characters also claims that he brought justic to his wife's murderer. Despite this Leonard does not remember even that (remembering that many characters lie so that may be untrue)

The movie does mention that a person can condition themselves to think things through repetition. So that might mean he is not completely stuck in that resetting point. From a philosophical standpoint, it really comes to one of an inability to form temporal connections. Taylor talks a lot of how the foundation of time is the relationship between the instance when different events occur. So as a person that cannot form a relationship between what is occurring now and what lead up to it Leonard is lost in time. Characters allude several times to the fact that viewer has no idea when Leonard's wife was actually killed. There is no real indication, especially since so many people give Leonard false information and mislead him. The past as Leonard knows it is only a foundation for his identity and things known through wrote memorization. So even though Leonard is privy to his own extreme version of "pure becoming," in a way he exists completely outside time.

"Blessed are the forgetful..."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind begins as two former lovers “meet” again. Joel and Clementine dated for two years in the past, but ended up having each other erased from their memories. Clementine was the first to erase her memories, and when Joel finds out about the procedure, he decides to participate as well. The film then shows what is happening in Joel’s mind. After seeing some of his happy memories he decides he does not want to forget Clementine after all and attempts place his memories of her in other parts of his mind, such as his childhood. This is to prevent the procedure from detecting those particular memories. While Joel is watching his memories, he sees Clementine disappearing from them, until the very end. 

The pair end up meeting at the same place they did before. While they do not remember each other, are still initially drawn to each other because their personalities have not changed. Eventually, Joel and Clementine figure out the truth of their situation when they are given tapes from their erasure sessions. At first, Clementine is skeptical to stay with Joel because of the past, but they end up back together anyway.

This film brings up questions like how effective would erasing memories be? Clementine and Joel had affected each others’ minds and personalities and helped shape each other. Erasing one’s memory does not allow them to learn from their past and as we see, Joel and Clementine blindly go into their relationship for a second time. 

In Richard Taylor’s “Space and Time,” he discusses the relativity of time. He questions whether or not time has a fixed direction. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, time is reversed, so does that mean according to Taylor that time has no direction? While Joel and Clementine traveled to the past in their minds, when they woke up, they were still the same people, so was there really any benefit to erasing their memories?

Marx, Alan, and the Memories of a Cutter

I decided to watch The Final Cut (2004) and I am not entirely certain how to come about this in a philosophical way. There are so many aspects I can talk about, my take on the film’s deeper meanings.

To compare a philosophical idea to this film, I want to bring up Marx and “Alienated Labor”. Marx came up with 4 ideas of labor, capitalism, and alienation. I deemed this the most formidable to this film because Alan’s job was his life. Throughout the film, we take note that Alan is pretty solitary, and not many people know much about him. Marx says that alienation is “established due to nature of product”. This means that one loses a part of themselves from being integrated with the product. The product in this case is Alan’s job as a Cutter. Alan became alienated because of his occupation. There were visual representations of this in the film, such as when he was looking through Bannister’s memories, and the film showed Alan at his desk surrounded by videos of Bannister’s life.

I want to talk about the concept of Cutters and the idea of Rememories. Cutters are not allowed to falsify memories, or alter them; they just take snippets that the families want to remember about the deceased. There was the underlying issue in the film that parts of society did not agree with this technology. They did not agree with the ability to remove the bad memories from someone’s being, and use the good to show the family. I believe that Alan, troubled by his past, wanted to right his wrongs by being a part of this technology. He chose to take the disturbed people and out of respect of the living, try to help the Rememory be filled with positive memories.

 The idea of controlling a memory is practically controlling someone’s life. In a way, their lives could be altered. The anti-cutting group found a way to “solve” the issues that they deemed bad, by accessing one of the deceased’s memories. In the end, Alan had to die.  His former colleague, Fletcher, looked into Alan’s eyes, as he was glancing into the mirror, Fletcher watching had promised Alan that “it’s for the greater good…your life will mean something”. Did his life not mean anything in the first place? I think that it was important because he was considered a great Cutter, but that was all he was. So to say that his life will mean something for having to die for his memories, places emphasis that Alan and his memories, that he remembers the deceased’s life, will have a greater impact on society, than Alan being a Cutter.

 (couldn't find a .gif of anything from the film so here's Dead Poet's Society)

Manipulating History with Memory

Robin William's character in The Final Cut has the job of splicing together memories of the deceased for their loved ones (a Cutter). He combs through their entire life's memories with the EYE tech chip that is planted in their brains. Seeing the good and the bad, he must decide what is right to show at the deceased's Rememory (like a funeral) for their family to watch. It is a way to travel back in time within a person's memory and relive events through their eyes without ever leaving the present.

In Richard Taylor's "Space and Time", he states that to travel back in time is simply to imagine the events of the past 'except for oneself'. He says it would not make sense to make oneself a witness to such things. But in The Final Cut they do exactly that. Robin Williams job is to witness the memories of the past, going all the way back to his clients birth. Also at the Rememory of those who have died, the video Cutters put together is essentially letting the deceased's family view the past as witness. It is seen through the deceased's eyes, like a point of view television show.

Cutters have the ability in this world to manipulate the memories in such a way to make the person appear to be different. "You make a saint out of a murderer" was an insult an ex-Cutter threw at Robin Williams. An example would be as he is reviewing the memories of one wealthy man, he finds the memory of the man sexually abusing his daughter. The memory begins with his walking into her room at night and telling her he loved her. Robin cuts the rest of the scene and splices it to a memory of the daughter's talent show performance where the father acts as a normal loving father would. This changes the entire purpose of the original clip in the daughters room to make the father appear to be caring and supportive.

It is changing the past without ever traveling, because the fathers family will now remember him for those memories. The Rememory video is placed on the headstone of the deceased, so anyone can watch it as long as the headstone is there. Whatever the Cutter has altered in the person's memories is now known as that person's history, regardless of if it is true. And the Cutter (along with anyone involved such as the daughter in the above example) is the only person to ever know the history is flawed.