Song: The Spots That Never Go Away
Viewed: 32 - Published at: 7 years ago
Artist: Behan the Scene
Year: 2021Viewed: 32 - Published at: 7 years ago
The love that exists between Joel and Clementine is deeply rooted in their changeless emotions. The idea of a mind that is continuously happy is far from a blissful one. If a mind is empty, it means that the good and bad memories no longer remain. Sometimes humans have to cope with their troubled pasts to keep the moments that make up for it. The film demonstrates that love, among other factors of the universe, is above all. Fate is a factor out of human control. Lovеrs meant to be togethеr may take different paths to reach the same destination. Love-hate relationships are abundant and are never perfect. Achieving happiness is the fulcrum of the poem. The theme connects to the title of the film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Moreso, the poem connects through inspiration. The film theme is that memories are what make humans who they are. More importantly, our growth relies on the balance of positive and negative details we remember. Clementine undergoes a procedure to remove her memories of Joel. After finding out, Joel follows. However, he soon realizes that what he wants is not going to benefit him after all. Certain factors mold the human experience and are the reason a spotless mind cannot manifest. Eternal sunshine cannot be achieved through tinkering with thoughts, and a spotless mind can never be realized.
The first factor is fate. Fate steers us in the direction that we are meant to go in. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind tackles fate head-on, but it is only at the closing of the movie where fate leads to a conclusion. At the beginning of the film, Joel ponders the idea of going back to Clementine to make up for their past conflictions. This was an early sign that fate already had a hold of the reigns. Clementine has overstayed her welcome in Joel’s mind, but ultimately her welcome is a permanent one. The film doesn’t only see fate as a power in love, but also destruction.
When the truth is revealed that Howard has been keeping his previous relationship with Mary under wraps, that not only hurts Mary, but it destroys the trust that his wife, Carry, barely had left. Still, though, long before Mary ever knew about the procedure, she was able to fall right back into love with her boss. The procedure was unsuccessful in preventing her feelings from resurfacing. It didn't take long for her to start admiring him again (01:17:55). It also didn't take long for Joel and Clementine to accept that they might be destined for each other. After all, they ended up right back at the place they first met: Montauk. The pair find themselves fated to be in a loop. In the film, the idea that paths can cross when fate is involved is pushed. Purposefully removing their memories do nothing but try to slow down the inevitable. In "Eloisa to Abelard," Alexander Pope shares the same belief that fate cannot be avoided. The poem goes as far as stating that there is not a method in the world that could be used to escape fate other than death. In the film, Clementine says, “This is it, Joel. I’m going to be gone soon. What do we do?” (01:26:19). This point in the film marks when Joel is coming to terms with his fate. He knows Clementine will be erased from his memory at any moment. Despite this, he tells her that they should enjoy the time they have left. This mindset reflects that of Nietzsche, a German philosopher, as the love he wants to try to encourage is “supposed to be expressed in a positive, affirmative attitude to one’s fate and consequently to one’s own life" (Elgat 174). Nietzsche wants people to look at a particular memory and find the beauty in it. “Amor fati,” the phrase connected to Nietzsche’s philosophy, means “love of fate.” Nietzsche believes that one needs skills to achieve such. These skills can be obtained through experience.
Love is a constant factor in human life. It is a powerful force that cannot be expressed in quantity. In the film, Clementine’s love for Joel is seemingly fading away. To forget all the bad memories she has of him, she goes to Lacuna to get her brain wiped. When Joel finds out that she has forgotten him, he decides to undergo the procedure as well. What Joel is unaware of is that he will eventually regret it. In the film, Joel screams out to the procedure guys to stop the procedure. He “wants to call it off” (00:54:33). Unfortunately, nobody can hear him. The film depicts love as both chaotic and rejuvenating. There are numerous moments in the film where Joel expresses his view has shifted. In one specific scene, Joel tries to hide Clementine in places she didn’t exist previously. He believes that he’ll save her memory if he isn’t allowed to have her anymore. He tells Howard, “You’re erasing her from me. You’re erasing me from her.” His tone implies that he is surprised. Howard asks Joel, “I thought you understood what was going on here” (00:56:29). Joel has not thought his decision through. It was his emotions that drove him to do it. In another scene, Joel is overwhelmed by his senses and Clementine’s nagging. His field of vision is blurry, and he tries to shut it out (00:42:50). Throughout the movie, despite wanting to reverse his decision, he still lives through the lowest moments in their relationship. He hates that they go to dinner at Cane's and he cannot stand that they’re a couple. Clementine finds Joel repulsive and doesn’t like his hair being left on the soap in the shower. When they listen to the tapes, they are reintroduced to all the qualities they hate about each other. However, Joel and Clementine underestimate love by the end of the film because they rekindle their relationship. When Patrick tries to use Joel and say the same phrases he used to say to Clementine, he demonstrates that love can also be performative. Love can be artificial (00:51:20). Perhaps deep-down Patrick does love Clementine, but his intentions show through. Luis Rodriguez, from the School of Psychotherapy, states in his existential analysis that “Love grows out of natural attraction between human beings, and out of shared experiences” (370). This can connect to when Joel and Clementine talked on the train. They had a natural attraction, despite not knowing each other. Rodriguez goes on to say that “so powerful is love and its attendant feelings that it can often elicit a kind of fear in people" (370). Throughout the movie, Joel feared many things. When he was at Clementine’s place, he left in a hurry. In between scene transitions, Joel nearly drowns in water. He fears that he’ll lose his lover in Clementine (01:09:09). In Eloisa to Abelard, Eloisa writes, “I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find and wake to all the griefs I left behind" (Pope, lines 247-248). This calls back to tape readings. Similar to how Eloisa is terrified of her past, so are Joel and Clementine.
Relationships are not perfect. Joel and Clementine fall in and out of their relationship, while Howard keeps his with Mary a secret. Throughout the film, Joel finds that relationships can be toxic. He has a love-hate relationship with Clementine. Mary mentions that babies are pure while “adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias” (00:49:21). She is aware that relationships come with baggage. In the middle of an argument between Joel and Clementine, Joel offers Clementine a ride home. She tells Joel off and he responds with, “look at it out here, it’s all falling apart” (00:38:31). This is a reference to how bad their relationship got, as a car falls from the sky and crashes to the ground. Joel ends the scene by yelling, “the perfect ending to this piece-of-shit story.” He knows he doesn’t mean what he said, but it’s a trench in the relationship during that time. Part of a relationship is fighting. The fighting in Joel and Clementine’s relationship worsened to the point where neither of them wanted to remember each other. Christopher Grau highlights that it is normal for humans, as we have seen with the main characters, to “experience pain and heartbreak” and that “[they] value being certain kinds of people” (121).
The poem Eloisa to Abelard was the inspiration for the creation of Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind. The poem teaches that human emotions are attached to us and losing memories will not change who we are. Additionally, people who have not loved, have not gone through the same emotional struggles to need their memories removed. People who have not loved are “vestals” or pure. In the main quote taken from the poem, it reads “How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot” (Pope, line 207). It’s asking how happy an innocent woman is. The next line is “The world forgetting by the world forgot,” which implies that purity can be achieved when a woman erases the world that erased her (Pope, line 208). “Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d” means that Eloisa is finally at peace; she is joyous because her prayers were accepted, and she does not need to know of what has happened in her past (Pope, line 210). The entirety of the poem wants its audience to believe that ignorance is bliss; that if we erase the hurtful memories, it’s okay to dismiss the nurturing memories too. In the movie, Mary interprets this quote as ignorance being positive. At Lacuna Inc., they specialize in removing people’s memories. She says that Howard gives people the ability to start over. The movie is the complete opposite of what the poem is trying to say. The plot may be a removal of one’s memories, but as a result, it’s the epiphany that happiness doesn’t wait at the end of the process. We can use our memories to improve on the future. Eloisa wanted a spotless mind. She did no want Abelard ingrained in her mind any longer. She too finds out that her attempt to erase him fails. In “Memory and Reality,” it’s stated that “formations and formulations of identity are so embedded [...] they can never be fully erased.” Additionally, “There is no on/off switch in human beings” and “Mary, Joel, and Clementine carry the residual traces of their first relationships” (Simmons, 114). When it comes to Mary, she mirrors Eloisa extensively. It’s stated in “White Pages” that “Heloise was involved in an “illicit affair and secret marriage” (Edwards, 120). She believes there’s happiness once she erases all of her regrets. Lacuna Inc.’s technically proves an actual procedure for removing memories, and it happens to be that Mary has already had it done. She was in an affair as well. However, the truth couldn’t be hidden from her forever and she found out about her boss anyways. This proves her emotions were still attached to her.
In summary, Sunshine cannot be continuous. Happiness is only temporary, so humans work through the struggles to gain it back from time to time. Fate will re-insert the memories we try to get rid of. Love is in everyone and emotions can be the spark. Relationships can be rocky. Memories are needed for growth. A spotless mind cannot be beneficial to humans if the good memories are taken too. A spotless mind cannot have eternal sunshine.
The first factor is fate. Fate steers us in the direction that we are meant to go in. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind tackles fate head-on, but it is only at the closing of the movie where fate leads to a conclusion. At the beginning of the film, Joel ponders the idea of going back to Clementine to make up for their past conflictions. This was an early sign that fate already had a hold of the reigns. Clementine has overstayed her welcome in Joel’s mind, but ultimately her welcome is a permanent one. The film doesn’t only see fate as a power in love, but also destruction.
When the truth is revealed that Howard has been keeping his previous relationship with Mary under wraps, that not only hurts Mary, but it destroys the trust that his wife, Carry, barely had left. Still, though, long before Mary ever knew about the procedure, she was able to fall right back into love with her boss. The procedure was unsuccessful in preventing her feelings from resurfacing. It didn't take long for her to start admiring him again (01:17:55). It also didn't take long for Joel and Clementine to accept that they might be destined for each other. After all, they ended up right back at the place they first met: Montauk. The pair find themselves fated to be in a loop. In the film, the idea that paths can cross when fate is involved is pushed. Purposefully removing their memories do nothing but try to slow down the inevitable. In "Eloisa to Abelard," Alexander Pope shares the same belief that fate cannot be avoided. The poem goes as far as stating that there is not a method in the world that could be used to escape fate other than death. In the film, Clementine says, “This is it, Joel. I’m going to be gone soon. What do we do?” (01:26:19). This point in the film marks when Joel is coming to terms with his fate. He knows Clementine will be erased from his memory at any moment. Despite this, he tells her that they should enjoy the time they have left. This mindset reflects that of Nietzsche, a German philosopher, as the love he wants to try to encourage is “supposed to be expressed in a positive, affirmative attitude to one’s fate and consequently to one’s own life" (Elgat 174). Nietzsche wants people to look at a particular memory and find the beauty in it. “Amor fati,” the phrase connected to Nietzsche’s philosophy, means “love of fate.” Nietzsche believes that one needs skills to achieve such. These skills can be obtained through experience.
Love is a constant factor in human life. It is a powerful force that cannot be expressed in quantity. In the film, Clementine’s love for Joel is seemingly fading away. To forget all the bad memories she has of him, she goes to Lacuna to get her brain wiped. When Joel finds out that she has forgotten him, he decides to undergo the procedure as well. What Joel is unaware of is that he will eventually regret it. In the film, Joel screams out to the procedure guys to stop the procedure. He “wants to call it off” (00:54:33). Unfortunately, nobody can hear him. The film depicts love as both chaotic and rejuvenating. There are numerous moments in the film where Joel expresses his view has shifted. In one specific scene, Joel tries to hide Clementine in places she didn’t exist previously. He believes that he’ll save her memory if he isn’t allowed to have her anymore. He tells Howard, “You’re erasing her from me. You’re erasing me from her.” His tone implies that he is surprised. Howard asks Joel, “I thought you understood what was going on here” (00:56:29). Joel has not thought his decision through. It was his emotions that drove him to do it. In another scene, Joel is overwhelmed by his senses and Clementine’s nagging. His field of vision is blurry, and he tries to shut it out (00:42:50). Throughout the movie, despite wanting to reverse his decision, he still lives through the lowest moments in their relationship. He hates that they go to dinner at Cane's and he cannot stand that they’re a couple. Clementine finds Joel repulsive and doesn’t like his hair being left on the soap in the shower. When they listen to the tapes, they are reintroduced to all the qualities they hate about each other. However, Joel and Clementine underestimate love by the end of the film because they rekindle their relationship. When Patrick tries to use Joel and say the same phrases he used to say to Clementine, he demonstrates that love can also be performative. Love can be artificial (00:51:20). Perhaps deep-down Patrick does love Clementine, but his intentions show through. Luis Rodriguez, from the School of Psychotherapy, states in his existential analysis that “Love grows out of natural attraction between human beings, and out of shared experiences” (370). This can connect to when Joel and Clementine talked on the train. They had a natural attraction, despite not knowing each other. Rodriguez goes on to say that “so powerful is love and its attendant feelings that it can often elicit a kind of fear in people" (370). Throughout the movie, Joel feared many things. When he was at Clementine’s place, he left in a hurry. In between scene transitions, Joel nearly drowns in water. He fears that he’ll lose his lover in Clementine (01:09:09). In Eloisa to Abelard, Eloisa writes, “I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find and wake to all the griefs I left behind" (Pope, lines 247-248). This calls back to tape readings. Similar to how Eloisa is terrified of her past, so are Joel and Clementine.
Relationships are not perfect. Joel and Clementine fall in and out of their relationship, while Howard keeps his with Mary a secret. Throughout the film, Joel finds that relationships can be toxic. He has a love-hate relationship with Clementine. Mary mentions that babies are pure while “adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias” (00:49:21). She is aware that relationships come with baggage. In the middle of an argument between Joel and Clementine, Joel offers Clementine a ride home. She tells Joel off and he responds with, “look at it out here, it’s all falling apart” (00:38:31). This is a reference to how bad their relationship got, as a car falls from the sky and crashes to the ground. Joel ends the scene by yelling, “the perfect ending to this piece-of-shit story.” He knows he doesn’t mean what he said, but it’s a trench in the relationship during that time. Part of a relationship is fighting. The fighting in Joel and Clementine’s relationship worsened to the point where neither of them wanted to remember each other. Christopher Grau highlights that it is normal for humans, as we have seen with the main characters, to “experience pain and heartbreak” and that “[they] value being certain kinds of people” (121).
The poem Eloisa to Abelard was the inspiration for the creation of Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind. The poem teaches that human emotions are attached to us and losing memories will not change who we are. Additionally, people who have not loved, have not gone through the same emotional struggles to need their memories removed. People who have not loved are “vestals” or pure. In the main quote taken from the poem, it reads “How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot” (Pope, line 207). It’s asking how happy an innocent woman is. The next line is “The world forgetting by the world forgot,” which implies that purity can be achieved when a woman erases the world that erased her (Pope, line 208). “Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d” means that Eloisa is finally at peace; she is joyous because her prayers were accepted, and she does not need to know of what has happened in her past (Pope, line 210). The entirety of the poem wants its audience to believe that ignorance is bliss; that if we erase the hurtful memories, it’s okay to dismiss the nurturing memories too. In the movie, Mary interprets this quote as ignorance being positive. At Lacuna Inc., they specialize in removing people’s memories. She says that Howard gives people the ability to start over. The movie is the complete opposite of what the poem is trying to say. The plot may be a removal of one’s memories, but as a result, it’s the epiphany that happiness doesn’t wait at the end of the process. We can use our memories to improve on the future. Eloisa wanted a spotless mind. She did no want Abelard ingrained in her mind any longer. She too finds out that her attempt to erase him fails. In “Memory and Reality,” it’s stated that “formations and formulations of identity are so embedded [...] they can never be fully erased.” Additionally, “There is no on/off switch in human beings” and “Mary, Joel, and Clementine carry the residual traces of their first relationships” (Simmons, 114). When it comes to Mary, she mirrors Eloisa extensively. It’s stated in “White Pages” that “Heloise was involved in an “illicit affair and secret marriage” (Edwards, 120). She believes there’s happiness once she erases all of her regrets. Lacuna Inc.’s technically proves an actual procedure for removing memories, and it happens to be that Mary has already had it done. She was in an affair as well. However, the truth couldn’t be hidden from her forever and she found out about her boss anyways. This proves her emotions were still attached to her.
In summary, Sunshine cannot be continuous. Happiness is only temporary, so humans work through the struggles to gain it back from time to time. Fate will re-insert the memories we try to get rid of. Love is in everyone and emotions can be the spark. Relationships can be rocky. Memories are needed for growth. A spotless mind cannot be beneficial to humans if the good memories are taken too. A spotless mind cannot have eternal sunshine.
( Behan the Scene )
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