Arianna Atkins
Mikaela Wray
Professor Vacker
Media Images and Analysis; TV/Film Critique
27 November 2017
“Perfect Places”
As the world and society progresses, there is the inevitable idea or dream to make an individual’s state of living better or more ideal. As long as we are able to think we are able to dream and if we are able to dream, we are able to make things into a reality (Roemischer 71). Advancements in technology have made it possible to preserve our overall health, our looks, entertainment purposes, and our memory. In some cases, people are compelled to remain in a state where their past memories seem to be inherently better. Instead of creating utopias where a person is free from famine and thirst, we are now infatuated with utopias that help us escape from the cold truth that is reality.
We see the idea of escaping from reality to a cyberspace/virtual utopia throughout Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, Inception, and Black Mirror’s episode San Junipero. The characters in these stories want to return to a simple way of life, a place in their minds where they do not have to feel the pain from their reality. This is a naive way to live and in the pages to follow we will discuss why this is the case. In each of the pieces chosen, the characters of each used new media technologies of a “new world” to remain in an eternal state of happiness in the mind.
In the real world we live in today, we’ve hit a point in technology that lets us hold on to our pasts, feeding our nostalgia. It is the advancements in technology that nurtures this psychological need to hold on to what we feel will make us the most safe or happy. In our world, we see this in social media. There are ways for the systems to show you exactly what you did “on this day” every day, so you can relive and reminisce. It is a form a gratification within one’s self, to avoid the feelings of negativity and fear. In these media examples we have provided, we take a look at how technology has made it possible to escape negative realities, finding/ retreating to a perfect place inside one’s mind in order to escape the pain of real life events.
What is a “Virtual Utopia/Cyberspace”:
The “New World” utopian model that is prevalent throughout the pieces, explained later in the essay, is the cyberspace/virtual utopia. The virtual utopia is an enhanced world that was fabricated through the use of bits, bytes, and the internet. In addition, cyberspace is interconnect technology that allows large groups of people to connect in the same environment (Wikipedia). It is considered a “new world” because it is “a human- created world that overcame the constraints of pure nature through the deployment of technology” (Vacker 4). In addition, a virtual reality falls in line with some of the categories of a new world model. It was created during a time where science is helping improve our lives, technological advancements have made it possible to exist, it’s a consumer paradise, it has space age characteristics, and it functions using the global brain/ the network society (internet). Moreover, similar to the concept of the hyperreal, individuals seem to prefer a counterfeit world rather than experience the real. The virtual utopia is an enhanced and tweaked version of reality where there is less room for problematic situations. In this world there is no error, you can relive each moment however many times you please, and because this world is never subject to change, it’s predictable. “Mediation and simulation are the dominant energies” (Vacker 73). People feed off of the idea that they can relive a moment as many times as they want in hopes of finding a different way of doing things. This gives people the satisfaction of never having to face the reality of pain and suffering, and leaves them with strictly pleasure. As you go on further in this essay we will explain how these key aspects have helped thicken the plot of these science fiction pieces.
Example 1 Eternal Sunshine:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a science fiction/drama that follows Jim Carrey as Joel and Kate Winslet as Clementine after a painful breakup. The movie begins with the two seemingly meeting for the very first time in Montauk, New York, as Joel impulsively decides to skip work and take the train there instead. This is where he meets a colorful and free spirited Clementine. Except this is not the first time Joel and Clementine have met. The chronological order of this film is nonlinear, so viewers are lead to believe this is their initial meeting, however we later learn that they have already been in a relationship and both have had the other erased from their memory. Clementine is the first to wipe her memories and once Joel learns what Clementine has done, he decides to do the same because he can’t live with the pain. We learn the break up was tough for the two to deal with through Joel’s memories of the two as they are being erased. However, during the memory erasing process, Joel realizes that he doesn’t want to forget her and he attempts to hide memories of her in different parts of his brain. Unsuccessfully, he loses the memories all together, but not before his subconscious tells her subconscious to meet him in Montauk, which is exactly where the movie begins. “[Virtual utopias] are, by contrast, controlled and sequential, a precisely planned route without detours or shortcuts, so the visitor can be sure of replicating that same experience as often as they like, in the spirit of the notion that happiness is nothing other than the desire for repetition (Roemischer 53-54).”
This movie ties into the cyberspace/virtual utopian model because due to the technology available to them, the two characters are able to revert their minds back to a time that is seemingly easier for them. They don’t want to feel the pain of their break up, and this memory wiping operation allows them and others to completely free themselves of this psychological pain, which puts them in a form of mental utopia. “How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot /Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.” -Mary (in the film,) Quote by Alexander Pope. Although the memory wiping process seems to be ideal in order to escape the painful reality, Joel realizes the mistake he has made while he is undergoing the process. In his subconscious, Clementine too regrets getting the procedure, because it is not worth never knowing one another no matter how painful. While having this form of advanced technology in existence in this Universe, it doesn’t aid to actual mental illness. The only positive would be that our two main characters, and later on in the film secondary characters as well, realize that this seemingly perfect way to not feel pain, is not the answer and does not do anything to actually help you. Instead it leaves you less human than before. This goes to show that running or hiding from your pain is never the answer. This is what causes people to lose themselves; lose what makes them human. Mistakes have to be made in order for us to improve and learn so we can advance further. Never run from your fears or the unknown.
Example 2 Inception:
Inception is a science fiction thriller about Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCappuccino, a thief with the ability to steal secrets through a person’s dreams. With the title of becoming the best in the business, it cost him everything he held dear. Once presented with an almost impossible task, plant an idea into someone’s mind, he risks it all in order to return to the life he once lost. Cobb gathers members for the job and has the entire heist planned out. There’s only one problem: the memories of his dead wife Mal interfere with him being able to do his job.
Mal informs the projections of the subjects’ dreams of what he’s trying to do which results in them trying to harm him. Throughout the course of the movie he is advised by Ariadne, a member of his heist team to address the issues that are holding him back. At the climax of the movie Cobb is faced with the decision of staying in limbo forever with Mal, remaining in a coma like state or moving on, living the rest of his life, and seeing his children again. The audience is lead on to believe that Cobb returns home and to his children. The movie ends on Cobb's totem, a top, he gives it a spin and it ends before we are able to see if it topples over.
Inception relates to the cyberspace/ virtual utopia because Cobb reveals that the PASIV (Portable Automated Somnacin Intravenous Device) is the only way that he himself is able to dream. This technology has allowed himself to escape reality and the painful mistakes he’s made and reexperience the things moments he cherishes the most: memories of him and Mal before she killed herself. While in this dreaming state time moves much slower which makes each moment asleep very time sensitive. For example, five minutes in the real world translates to a couple of hours in a dream which makes it easy to spend a vast amount of time in this dreaming state. Finally, inception makes use of the Russian Doll principle. In “Prefabricated Dreams”, it states that “America, which long ago established the pursuit of happiness as an inviolable right- be it in the real world or in a digital scenarios, […] creating an illusion of natural surroundings and untouched nature; or in the gaming worlds constructed on the Russian doll principle: the town in the town in the world” (Herwig and Holzherr ). Inception makes use of this idea by using dreams within a dream, making it so they spend long periods of time in this utopia, forgetting about reality.
Jean Baudrillard once said, “We have to be in these two orders of reality: we have to confront what we’ve lost and anticipate what’s ahead of us: that’s our brand of fatality (Vacker 2)”. Although it is unclear of whether Cobb had chosen to stay in limbo with Mal or return to reality, his biggest issue is that he has, like Mal, lost a sense of what is real and what is just a dream. “Cobb: Limbo became her reality. […] To wake up from that after years, after decades… after we'd become old souls thrown back into youth like that… I knew something was wrong with her. She just wouldn't admit it. Eventually, she told me the truth. She was possessed by an idea, this one, very simple idea, that changed everything. That our world wasn't real. That she needed to wake up to come back to reality, that, in order to get back home, we had to kill ourselves”. Again we see this concept of running from your problems and reverting to a state where the perception is everything is perfect and it is not subject to change.
Example 3 San Junipero:
Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, is a British television show that portrays the satirical nature of modern society. It gives in depth, analogies of the benefits and dangers of new media technologies. During the episode “San Junipero” it depicts the somewhat positive idea of the possibilities of life after death. Compared to other Black Mirror episodes it has a more hopeful tone compared to other episodes. The story follows two women, Kelly and Yorkie, who are using a simulated reality that allows the elderly, dead, and terminally ill to live in a utopian beach resort. Kelly and Yorkie begin a relationship which Kelly tries to avoid because it is revealed that she only has a short time to live and has opposing views about San Junipero. She isn’t sure if she is ready to live in San Junipero forever because her husband and daughter did not choose similar fates. However, after meeting Yorkie in real life, she learns that Yorkie is a quadriplegic and has been that way for over 40 years. Kelly decides to marry Yorkie so she can help fulfill her wish of being euthanized and be a permanent resident of San Junipero. After a few more visits to the resort, Kelly warms up to the idea of living in San Junipero and in the end stays there with Yorkie forever.
Unlike our last two examples of the a virtual utopia, San Junipero doesn’t explicitly present a problem with remaining in their version of a virtual utopia. The residents are able to skip through different eras and experience the highlights of their life while staying at a constant age. They don’t experience physical pain unless they choose to and when they are bored with living in San Junipero they have the option to kill themselves/ delete themselves from the global brain/network society. In the Utopian Propensity it states, “the earliest mythological visions are of a paradise that does not exist on earth. It’s a paradise after death. And they don't just depict a single person. It’s a vision of a whole lot of people wandering through this beautiful garden and talking to one another. It’s not a solitary paradise; it’s a community. But there’s no connection to reality- immortality was a given, for example. These visions are ethereal. The early utopian thinkers were not social revolutionaries or social activists they were pure dreamers”(Roemischer 72). The people who visit San Junipero are escaping their ailments and sickness in the real world for a body that is healthy and young in a perfect society. Also upon choosing to live in this utopia you forfeit your rights to know about the people you left behind in the real world. People would be plagued with the unknown of whether their loved ones would follow suit. Kelly was against living in San Junipero for this very reason. Yorkie told her to forget what happened in her life to live in bliss forever. Kelly: “49 years. I was with him for 49 years. You can't begin to imagine. You can't know the bond, the commitment, the boredom, the yearning, the laughter, the love of it. The fucking love. You just cannot know! Everything we sacrificed. The years I gave him. The years he gave me. Did you think to ask?” Even though we are able to escape to a utopia where nothing bad happens, we are plagued by the mistakes, stresses, and guilt of our past.
While living in the form of a euphoric mental state as a result of cyberspace/virtual utopias, it is unrealistic in the fact that we as humans are not perfect. We will never be able to make everything we do work out for the best and that is what makes us human. If we never make mistakes or feel any kind of pain from those decisions, we will never learn from those choices, thus never advancing or learning from them. In the our examples of perfect places as a mental state, we see that in the end no matter what there is a feeling of positivity, the feeling is only temporary and does not end for the better. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind shows us that no matter how much love hurts sometimes, it is important to experience those life experiences. We would not know compassion or love in general if it were not for the experience of loss. Inception teaches us that living through your memories is unhealthy in that you have to move forward with life in order to actually live and not lose yourself. By not moving forward with your life after experiencing difficult moments, you will stay in a permanent cycle that does not allow you to evolve. Black Mirror teaches us that by choosing to live in a virtual world, remaining stagnant in age and time means you are leaving everything else behind. The family and friends who did not choose to live in San Junipero, the feeling of experiencing new things that happen over the course of a lifetime, seeing different parts of the world and the changing of the seasons are all take away from you once you decide to live in this constant state. The seduction of living in a virtual utopia may entice even the strongest willed individuals but it is in fact the wanting more out of life aspect that keeps people driven to achieve more. Once a person/society has achieved all that they have gotten out of life, it seems as if their lives has lost purpose.
In a perfect place, a mental utopia, people become more and more focused on themselves and their well being. That is not the type of society we live in. “If we want to survive, if we want to evolve, if we want to create a future that is anywhere close to the utopian dreams that have helped give birth to this ever-growing information highway crisscrossing our collective consciousness, then all of us personally empowered digitally enhanced hyper-individuals had better get very good at something that doesn’t come naturally – community” (Phipps 151). The technological advancements in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Inception, and Black Mirror; San Junipero, show that we in fact can’t evolve as a society if we lose our sense of community and if all we have is selfishness, we will fall. Relationships are what makes this world possible and with that comes inevitable heartbreak and pain, but all for good reason.