Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 7 No. 10, May 2003
Christopher Bodnar
The Database, Logic, and Suffering
_Memento_ and Random-Access Information Aesthetics
Preface and
Apologies In producing this paper,
it soon became apparent that the argument presented would
not conform adequately to the format of a traditional
paper-based article. In understanding the aesthetic of the
database against the character of Leonard Shelby in the
setting of Los Angeles, a form of expression was required
that argued in a similar manner to the way in which we as an
audience confront Leonard through the cinematic experience.
Two particular items used in researching my argument provide
inspiration in presenting the arguments physically in this
paper, as much as they influence the nature of the arguments
themselves. First, in examining the city of Los Angeles in
his book _Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and
Regions_, Edward W. Soja presents chapter 12, 'LA 1992:
Overture to a Conclusion', through a series of quotes
'revisioning' the riots of 1992 and the subsequent
interpretations of the city's form. His brief comments on
each quote appear in footnotes -- subsets to the actual text
presented. The selection of quotes is a reinterpretation of
his own experiences in the city of his research and the
academic encounters following the dramatic events of the
year. The randomness of the quotes and the interplay between
others' ideas against the subjugated researcher's voice
appeared most appropriate for explaining an individual
re-encounter with the city and its meanings. The division
between the quotes and the footnotes also serves as a stark
interface between the researcher and his subjects that, in
turn, becomes the interface between the intellectual reading
of the city's form and the experience of Soja's reader. The
interaction between the reader and Soja's database of ideas
and experiences is worthy of further experimentation. It is
Soja who inspired the form this paper follows. The application of this
form to the subject of cinema and new media within the
confines of a paper became clearer in an interpretation of
Lev Manovich's section on 'The Database' in his book _The
Language of New Media_. In explaining Peter Greenaway's
experimentation with the database in cinema, Manovich
writes, 'new media artists working on the database-problem
can learn from cinema 'as it is''. [1] This is
because 'the editor constructs a film narrative out of this
database, creating a unique trajectory through the
conceptual space of all possible films that could have been
constructed'. [2] In directing _Memento_,
Christopher Nolan adopts this idea in an attempt to
challenge both the confines of his medium as well as the
audience's position as viewer. The viewers confront the
database, creating their own mental databases of images,
sequences and ideas required in reconstructing the
fragmented narrative of the film. In recognizing this
relation, Nolan engages his audience by inviting them into
the medium as an interpreter and participant in the database
of imagination. Within Manovich's
dialectic of paradigm and syntagm I experiment with the
essay's structure and test the linear nature of academic
writing. I take the syntagmatic quote of another writer and
relate it to other quotes by virtue of proximity and order.
At the same time, I take the syntagmatic interpretation of
my own thoughts, compartmentalize it (similar to the
compartmentalization of digital information), and subjugate
the text below the line dividing text from footnote. The
syntagmatic quote takes on a paradigmatic quality -- as
Manovich suggests, this is the nature of the database's
information in data structures when assigned material
qualities -- and the paradigmatic interpretation of these
quotes takes on a contemplative nature, attempting to tease
out the relations between Nolan's _Memento_ and a commentary
on the database and human suffering. I. Memento, the Database,
and a Case for Analysis Leonard Shelby is
introduced in _Memento_ as a suffering individual. Told in
reverse order of actual events, the film's narrative reveals
an individual who is mentally damaged by a brutal attack
against him and his wife. With her now dead and his own
memory lost, Leonard's sole purpose in life is to kill his
wife's attacker in an act of brutal revenge. Before long,
though, we realize that Leonard's purpose has been derailed.
Lost in his inability to remember, Leonard is seconded by a
drug ring for the purpose of carrying out their own gruesome
tasks involving greed and revenge. Drifting in a city
unknown to him, confronted with faces he does not recognize,
Leonard's task appears increasingly futile and the audience
cannot help but doubt the logic behind their 'hero's'
motivation. Rather, we confront a disabled database, driven
not by rational information, but by the embodiment of
anguish over a past loss and unattainable future. Leonard's
mind becomes an algorithm which those around him learn and
thus anticipate. He becomes an interface between warring
parties, oblivious to his surroundings, intent on fulfilling
his own mission. The irrational logic of the database
becomes the model of human rationality as Leonard plays the
faulty detective in this temporally broken noir. 'Photograph Sparks Murder
Investigation: Motel Customer Disappears; Leaves Suspicious
Photograph, Gun, Documents and Questions'
[3] 'It's been a weird organic
process, because my brother told me the concept when he was
writing the story. He told it to me while we were driving
from Chicago to LA, across country. And I was like great,
can I go and write a screenplay for this while you write the
story? Because he'd been doing draft after draft and in fact
it took him another two years. As we were finishing the
film, he was finishing his final draft of the short story.
We had decided that in our own ways we were going to try and
tell the story in the first person. Me in film and him in a
short story. We're both trying to escape the boundaries of
the particular medium that we're choosing to tell, because
we really want to create an experience that doesn't feed
into your head, that bleeds around the edges. I was going
for something that lived in its own shape, that was slightly
built from that standard linear experience. My brother in
the same way, in writing the story, had wanted to randomize
it somehow. Like he's done the web site and that's in an
electronic form.' [4] 'We are in a sort of big
transitional situation. Philosophically I feel that the
notion of artists as supermen is a Renaissance attitude, it
goes right back to Michelangelo, and that the Picassos and
Stravinskys in some sense are maybe the last great big
superheroes of art. Artists were regarded like that also
before Michelangelo, but this attitude has very much to do
with the Renaissance concept of humanism. Renaissance
concepts are always related to Monarchy and Absolutism and
Oligarchism, while we live in a sort of Western democratic
age, and there is a way in which our cultural organisation
of ethics is far behind our political systems. I think that
all moves to greater and greater activity and less and less
passivity, and away from the notions of the artist as a
superbeing, and I think there are a lot of things happening
in contemporary art which are supporting this notion.'
[5] 'Language is not a
cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell
time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a
distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains.
Language is a complex, specialized skill . . . virtually
every sentence that a person utters or understands is a
brand-new combination of words, appearing for the first time
in the history of the universe.' [6] 'To repeat: random access
allows the sequence of images to be determined at the time
of presentation, rather than fixed during the production
process. This implies that the viewer by some method or
another, or other external factors (weather conditions, the
time, the sound level in the viewing space . . . the
possibilities are endless), can determine the sequence.
Obviously a work that makes use of this potential needs a
structure, a shape, an architecture, a content that can
benefit from it.' [7] 'The burden of making
relationships between the parts of a work has shifted from
author to viewer.' [8] 'These technological
transformations can be expected to have a considerable
impact on knowledge. Its two principal functions -- research
and the transmission of acquired learning -- are already
feeling the effect, or will in the future . . . it is common
knowledge that the miniturization and commercialization of
machines is already changing the way in which learning is
acquired, classified, made available, and exploited.'
[9] 'The computerization of
culture involves the projects of these two fundamental parts
of computer software -- and of the computer's unique
ontology -- onto the cultural sphere. If CD-ROMs and Web
databases are cultural manifestations of one half of this
ontology -- data structures -- then computer games are
manifestations of the second half -- algorithms.'
[10] 'Steven Flusty has shown
how buskers, skateboarders and even poets in Los Angeles
work to exploit the impossibilities of real urban
panopticism . . . All the people Flusty talks to exploit the
fact that 'no matter how many 'armed response' patrols roam
the streets, and no matter how many video cameras keep watch
over the plazas, there remain blind spots that await, and
even invite, inhabitization by unforeseen and potent
alternative practices'.' [11] II. Suffering and Flesh of
the Database 'Flesh, first challenges
the systematicity that governs metaphysics. For flesh is
vulnerable. It absorbs burdens, blows, injuries, and shocks.
It compromises agency. Flesh suffers. But the very
vulnerabilities of flesh, second, often prod humans to
construct metaphysical systems to elevate them above its
softness, smell, and bloodiness.' [12] 'So, for the person in
pain, so incontestably and unnegotiably present is it that
'having pain' may come to be thought of as the most vibrant
example of what it is to 'have certainty', while for the
other person it is so elusive that 'hearing about pain' may
exist as the primary model of what it is 'to have doubt'.
Thus pain came unsharably into our midst as at once that
which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed.'
[13] 'But I will argue here
that separating 'the pain experience' from other experiences
accompanying pain, somehow viewing it apart from 'real' pain
itself, is an impossible task.' [14] '[T]he structure
or grammar of the database creates relationships among
pieces of information that do not exist in those
relationships outside of the database . . . databases
constitute individuals by manipulating relationships between
bits of information.' [15] In Conclusion In writing this paper I
have argued that _Memento_ serves as commentary on the
aesthetic of the database in cinema. As well, writing on the
database offers a commentary on the cinematic experience of
the film. If the database represents the illusion of
infinite knowledge, _Memento's_ experience suggests this
knowledge is only as complete as the creator and user of the
database. What is more important in analyzing the database
as a cinematic medium is that it suggests multiple
interfaces between the artist, the user and the medium.
Nolan makes these interfaces and the resulting interactions
more explicit by offering an alternate web-based entry point
into his film. A second entry point to
interpret this film and its medium, I have argued, is
through the concept of human suffering and the intellectual
struggle as part of the physical nature of existence. My
discussion here is by no means conclusive. Rather, it offers
a brief beginning for further discussion of theories of
suffering, pain, and the database in relation to _Memento_.
The attempts to embody pain through the interface of flesh
and the transfer of language to the body offer a remarkable
comparison of the database to the human body and the
materiality of existence. People search for media to exhibit
the inexpressible experiences of suffering. Struggling to
express these emotions through various interfaces of
materiality becomes a driving force for the expression and
further comprehension of knowledge. The manner in which we
embody these messages constitutes new meaning and old
interpretations of suffering for new expression and
ultimately a re-embedding of our biographies in a physical
environment for further exploration. Ottawa, Canada Footnotes 1. Manovich, _The Language
of New Media_, p. 237 2. Ibid. 3. http://www.otnemem.com.
This fictional headline introduces a virtual newspaper
article on the _Memento_ web site. Upon opening the site, a
browser frame opens to fill the entire screen, displaying
the article, as though torn out of a newspaper, against a
white background. The site is not a promo for the movie, but
a second entry point into the film's broken narrative.
Information is provided on the site that is only briefly
alluded to in the film. The article is the site's primary
interface with the online content. As a newspaper article it
establishes a period of time within which the film's events
occur. In establishing this temporal benchmark in the
familiar form of a newspaper article, the site's interface
appears to recount events in the film. It explains the
disappearance of Leonard Shelby, an escaped patient from a
San Francisco psychiatric facility in September 1998 and a
subsequent search by police following Shelby's disappearance
from a Los Angeles motel. Left behind in the room were
photos, a handgun, and various documents, many burned or in
various pieces. Key words in the article -- body, foul,
suspicious, Leonard, photographs, forgetful, local, revenge
-- fade slightly into a grey tone every four seconds.
Mousing over the words causes the rest of the article to
fade into white, leaving only the one word on screen along
with the cursor. Each word is a hyperlink. Leonard, we
assume, has found the article. Key words trigger memories,
passages to other times, images. But, as the article
explains, Leonard is missing. In fact, the article is in
front of Leonard; the audience becomes Leonard, reading from
the first person perspective, attempting to make sense of
the events recounted on the page. The movie's narrative
element is recounted backward from the final event through
to the beginning of Leonard's experience. Leonard's
experience, however, is not complete, even when assembled by
the viewer. Throughout the sequence of pieces comprising the
linear events, Leonard recounts events that occurred prior
to the assault committed against him and his wife. Each of
these moments appear to allow some insight into the life
Leonard led prior to his wife's death. The glimpses into the
past, though, are brief and ultimately cast doubt on
Leonard's ability to recount even the simplest of details.
While he desperately searches for 'facts' to indict his
wife's murderer, he burns the very articles of evidence that
would serve as evidence to his own past: Polaroid photos,
his wife's belongings, and new pieces of evidence in his
mind, left to wither in the time of his own absent memory,
vanishing before finding a place on paper. Just as Leonard's
mental database malfunctions, we come to equally distrust
his odd assortment of notes and photos. In addition,
Leonard's memories of Sammy Jankis come to justify Leonard's
own actions. But as we learn that the memories of Sammy may
not be any more truthful than the mess of clues upon which
Leonard bases his case for revenge, the reality becomes
apparent. Leonard reveals himself as the ignorant killer of
his own wife -- or at least we are left with this additional
possibility. More importantly, just as Leonard recognized
Sammy's ability to complete complex tasks learned prior to
his injury, we come to recognize Leonard's equal ability. He
becomes a skilful murderer, following long trails of
erroneous yet meticulous clues to find and kill anyone who
may be responsible for his wife's death. The database is
shown to be only as useful as its interface and user are
capable of interpreting its information. Nonetheless,
Leonard strives to find facts he can trust, upon which he
can base his mission of revenge -- something to provide
relief, or at least direction in his suffering. This is
discussed further in Section II. 4. Christopher Nolan, in
Nolan and Kaufman, 'Interview'. Nolan indicates his own
desire to attempt a non-linear story in building off of his
brother's idea for a short story. Each brother uses each
other's experiences with and perceptions of their particular
media as points of escape from their own medium. As briefly
discussed in the preface, cinema provides an interface
between the artist's imagination and the audience's
interpretation. Manovich argues that a database process is
already prevalent: 'We can think of all the material
accumulated during shooting as forming a database,
especially since the shooting schedule usually does not
follow the narrative of the film but is determined by
production logistics'; Manovich, _The Language of New
Media_, p. 237. 5. Peter Greenaway, in
Greenaway and Luksch, 'Interview with Peter Greenaway'.
Greenaway views new media as a way in which the audience may
interact and be involved with cinema -- a somewhat
'democratic' age. At the same time, information is
controlled. The artist interprets ideas and designs
interfaces within which the audience may access and engage
with the ideas. The audience also chooses how, when, and
where to access various artifacts. The combination of their
selections leads to an interactivity of choices that will
lead to varying interpretations of the artwork. The nature of intellectual
involvement with the database is greater when the audience
is required to actively interpret a larger subset of ideas
through the interface of the medium. Greenaway experiments
with the interface between the artist, the director and the
audience in _Prospero's Books_ and _The Pillow Book_. In the
former, Prospero becomes the figure of 'interface' to the
infinite knowledge held in the multitude of books in his
possession. In the later, the human body becomes the point
of interface as flesh becomes the medium of choice for the
artist. There is an honest recognition that the potential of
infinite knowledge meets physical reality at the point of
materiality. The materiality of the medium may portray a
finite amount of information, whether in the form of pixels,
ink, canvas, or sound waves. At the same time, the
materiality of any language represents an infinite potential
for further creation. 6. Steven Pinker, _The
Language Instinct_, pp. 18 and 22. In dispelling many
contemporary myths about language and its origins, Pinker
highlights both the banality and the awesome qualities of
language. Given the infinite ability to represent ideas
through language, Pinker explains that the rules of language
are wired into our brains. Utterances are constructed using
parcels of language, comprising morphemes, phonemes, words,
and phrases. The manner in which we construct these
utterances is hardwired into our brains through instinctual
mechanisms. We, in turn, attempt to confront our language,
challenging its meanings and imbuing new ideas to particular
utterances. The magic of language in art is that despite our
innate language instinct, each unique phrase is the
constitution of a new experience in the material world and
open to unique interpretation. Language is a fundamental
interface of human experience and, perhaps, the most
important database structure for the storage and expression
of information. 7. Grahame Weinbren, 'The
Digital Revolution is a Revolution of Random Access'.
Weinbren's argument here would suggest that random access is
far more common than might be considered. In reflecting upon
Greenaway's comments, Weinbren echoes sentiments that the
experience of the artist has been and continues to be closer
to that of an intimate engagement with the audience. Artist
are each the one interface against their particular media,
and the medium is, in turn, an interface between the artist
and the audience. The nature of the medium may determine
when, where, and how the viewer may experience and interpret
the artist's work. 8. Weinbren, 'The Digital
Revolution is a Revolution of Random Access'. In the
interview with Kaufman, Nolan explains about _Memento_: 'I
find it quite satisfying that people will come out of this
film arguing about who the good guys are and who the bad guy
is. Not because there isn't one, but because we are using an
unreliable narrator.' This is not a fulfilment, however, of
Weinbren's assessment that the production of relationships
is transferring from the director to the audience. In fact,
Nolan admits a much greater responsibility upon the artist
to consider how the viewer will encounter the work: 'I feel
like I've got three years to work on this thing and as a
viewer you've got like two hours to watch it, so it ought to
be functioning at some level of greater sophistication than
you can absorb in one viewing.' While the film itself tests
the linearity of time and uses a database aesthetic, the
viewer is still not in control of the medium itself as much
as they have interpretive power over the narrative. There
are, nonetheless, elements that lead to a viewer's increased
interactivity. Darke claims 'the real pleasure of Memento
lies in its openness to re-viewing and hence to
interpretation' ('Mr Memory', p. 43). The film's web site
adds a particular element of involvement in the narrative as
well. The site offers an undated newspaper article and the
navigator is in the place of Leonard, attempting to make
sense of recent events. We choose how to navigate through
the story and thus how many additional clues we may be able
to find in the site. After navigating the site, though, it
becomes apparent that the information it contains is finite.
Moreover, the number of words hyperlinked to specified
databases determines the number of paths to attaining
additional information about Leonard. After navigating once,
the user becomes aware of an algorithm, what Manovich calls
'its hidden logic' (_The Language of New Media_, p. 222).
The site offers two items of note. First, it demonstrates an
awareness by the creator(s) that the story, in its
non-linear form, may provide alternate interpretations in
different media. Second, the alternate medium by which the
viewer may enter the information provides a programmed
avenue for the audience to analyze the artist's use of media
to present a narrative. 9. Jean-Francois Lyotard,
_The Postmodern Condition_, p. 4. Lyotard's observations on
the nature of knowledge in the computer age have had a
substantial influence in the debate over the state of
postmodernity and characteristics of the present age. In
engaging postmodern texts there is a general tendency to
look for temporal disjunctures between the present and the
period of knowledge that may be considered 'modern'. Indeed,
Lyotard's argument is that societal changes have ushered in
a new state of knowledge. Given the discussion of notes 3 to
6 above, then Lyotard's pronouncement appears
premature. There are alternate, more
useful perspectives on the nature of knowledge in
contemporary times. Ulrich Beck, in particular, uses the
term 'reflexive modernity' to describe a situation whereby
modernity applies reason critically back upon itself,
leading to a dynamic state of change. He explains
that: ''Reflexive modernization'
means the possibility of a creative (self-) destruction for
an entire epoch: that of industrial society . . . by virtue
of its inherent dynamism, modern society is undercutting its
formations of class, stratum, occupation, sex roles, nuclear
family, plant, business sectors and of course also the
prerequisites and continuing forms of natural
techno-economic progress' ('The Reinvention of Politics', p.
2). These are qualities often
left unattributed by postmodernists to the project of
modernity. These characteristics are part of a process
where, through reason applied upon itself and the
institutions of modernity, individual identities are
disembedded from a particular spatial and temporal
convergence, but always re-embedded back into a place and
time. Beck further describes this as a process of
individualization where 'first, the disembedding and,
second, the re-embedding of industrial society ways of life
by new ones, in which the individuals must produce, stage
and cobble together their biographies themselves' ('The
Reinvention of Politics', p. 13). This understanding is
important in analyzing Leonard's actions in _Memento_. In
the film, Leonard is disembedded from the stability of his
former life. His short-term memory left disabled, he finds
himself in a matrix of social relations he must interpret
and into which he feels he should re-embed himself. At this
point, it would seem that Leonard's attempts to re-embed his
identity within the construct of an LA drug ring are futile
and ridiculously dangerous. Indeed, this is true. He works
only on blind trust of his own handwriting in recorded
clues, yet has no additional rational application of
knowledge. His mind's database is broken. He represents,
nonetheless, the arbitrariness of unrelated information
being given relational significance by its juxtaposition in
the database -- the database, in essence, is reasoning
itself (see note 11 for a discussion related to Cubitt's
analysis of the database). Leonard is left to rely upon the
language games that constitute a basic form of social
interaction, attempting to save his life from one moment to
the next. The result is an interplay of tensions between the
corporeal individual and the identity he tries to construct
in a world of random-access information. As Cubitt explains,
'Identity, gender, nation, are abstractions we have woven
out of the endless flickering of community, derivations from
the void which we drape, fold and knit about ourselves to
keep us warm, and to stop our selves from leaking out . . .
It is discourse that produces the self, a discourse
hypostatised as an autonomous historical agent' (_Digital
Aesthetics_, p. 20). 10. Lev Manovich, _The
Language of New Media_, p. 223. Leonard cannot learn new
habits by matter of instinct. He cannot remember the
algorithm of the city, nor the essential data structures he
collects as evidence against his unknown enemy. But within
Manovich's argument, we must stop and ask how much of the
database aesthetic is actually a 'projection of the ontology
of a computer onto culture itself' (_The Language of New
Media_, p. 223)? It would appear more at this point that the
digital montage offered by the database is only a more
facilitated depiction of the human mind. Humans create
structures that, in turn, come to limit them. Marx has
already entrenched this in the minds of modernist academics.
The danger here is to fall into a technological determinist
position whereby the computer would have a defined effect
upon the individual or society as a whole. Rather, a dynamic
interplay between the individual and the structured
technology occurs. Indeed, humans engage computers for a
variety of tasks that we may, in turn, recognize as a
'computerization' of society. These may come to limit
actions, just as Leonard's vague notes come to define his
scope of analysis. These data structures and algorithms only
limit the actions of individuals, though, as long as people
are willing to give into the computer-mechanized systems of
knowledge. While there are systems of oppression and
technology becomes an application for the sustained
oppression of a population, we need a more sophisticated
understanding of this process. I hope to expand this idea in
note 9. 11. Stephen Graham and
Simon Marvin, _Splintering Urbanism_, pp. 395-6. Los Angeles
is the setting for Leonard Shelby's noir adventure. Used
most often as an example of the fragmentation of urban
experience (see Davis, _Ecology of Fear_), LA represents all
that is random in the user's experience yet deliberate in
design and function. Leonard has no ability to learn the
pattern of algorithms in the design of navigable space, nor
does he recognize data structures beyond the basic language
games inherent within cultural particularities. While the
traditional understanding of the urban institution is that
the city makes one 'free' (see Magnusson, 'Social Movements
and the Global City'), Leonard is caught in the city's
seeming ambiguity but oblivious to the urban logic and
meaning represented through spatial design. He nonetheless
exemplifies Flusty's analysis of spatial use in LA. Leonard
is engaged in his own 'investigation', guided by random
items of parcelled information. His matrix of social
interaction appears random to him -- and us, the viewers --
yet there is nothing random about his experience. He is
caught in the middle of a deadly drug deal nestled in the
city's blind spots. Leonard's phone calls with a police
officer -- society's agent of surveillance -- are only with
one member of the drug battle who is using Leonard as a pawn
for alternate purposes. Leonard is oblivious to these
circumstances and maintains a single focus: the revenge of
his wife's brutal death. As long as he feels that his
direction will fulfil this purpose, his suffering for
justice propels him through the maze of material and social
spaces toward the folly of his adventure; as Leonard's story
appears complete in the audience's mind, it only becomes
apparent that, in his fragmented world, the lust for revenge
is insatiable. Indeed, when this is the only life purpose
upon which Leonard can rely, he ensures he won't remember
each murder by destroying the evidence and moving on to his
next manhunt. As we will see in the next section, pain is
inexpressible, just as the retribution it demands is
ultimately unattainable. 12. William E. Connolly,
'Suffering, Justice, and the Politics of Becoming', pp.
125-153. Connolly employs the conceptions of suffering from
both Caputo and Nietzsche in approaching an ethical space of
responsibility among individuals. He attempts to realign an
understanding of suffering as part of becoming, which
conflicts with finding security in simply being. The flesh
of each individual is a universalizing element, according to
Caputo. In flesh every person suffers in physical and mental
manners and because of the nature of flesh, people have a
natural tendency to keep others' well being as a social
responsibility. This, as Connolly points out, is obviously
not the case in many circumstances. As a result, in turning
to Nietzsche, an argument is developed that identifies a
need for stability amidst suffering -- these are called
'winter doctrines'. Conceptions of winter recognize
stagnancies in the frozen stability of the natural world. It
becomes conceivable that one may walk on water, albeit
frozen water, as it appears stable to the sufferer. On the
basis of a perceived stability, the suffering individual may
find comfort. Connolly explains, 'sufferers often seek
relief from the riddle of suffering, and they often find
solace when things appear still at the bottom. Suffering
readily fosters winter doctrines' ('Suffering, Justice, and
the Politics of Becoming', p. 132). As suffering
individuals, we each search for some stability upon which we
may rest and contemplate building something meaningful that
extends beyond our suffering. Leonard is a suffering
individual and exhibits the inherent search for stability in
life purpose. Understanding his own inability to ever
mentally grasp the complexity of his situation, he finds
solace in trusting his own handwriting. Scrawls on photos,
coasters, and scraps of paper become the guiding principles
in fulfilling his one purpose -- getting revenge against his
wife's murderer. His handwriting and the messages each
conveys are not infallible, though. The database Leonard
develops appears to provide clues toward established 'facts'
that may become proof against one individual responsible for
the murder. The viewer sees that this is not the case. Each
photo and note has more background than can be culled in a
quick glance. Moreover, Leonard's own inability to
comprehend his situation while still leaving clues
indicating his own incorrect assumptions in searching for
revenge undermine the validity of his database and his
entire quest. As Natalie asks him what good revenge will be
as they sit at the diner. She points out that he will never
remember it anyway. The futility of Leonard's task becomes
apparent. The futility of inquiry under the assumption that
conclusive statements may be established is also
questioned. 13. Elaine Scarry, _The
Body in Pain_, p. 4. The primary point to be taken from
research on pain is that a level of inexpressibility exists
in experiencing pain. While, in Connolly's argument, flesh
is an equalizer and suffering is a motivation in the human
experience, Scarry points out that the disconnection between
the certainty of pain's experience against the certainty of
uncertainty of the non-pain experience creates a larger gap
in communication than flesh itself can hope to
bridge. In light of Scarry's
argument, recognizing Leonard's mental suffering combined
with the emotional pain of his wife's death indicates a
particular certainty in Leonard's thought process. Despite
his inability to formulate a larger purpose to his actions,
the certainty of revenge -- an expression, he believes, of
his sorrow -- is the thrust behind his actions that
eliminates all doubt and focuses his attention. 14. Jean Jackson, 'Chronic
Pain and the Tension Between the Body as Subject and
Object', pp. 203. In studying the sufferer's encounter with
chronic pain, Jackson focuses on attempts of the sufferer
both to objectify pain as something external or inflicted on
the body and to subjectify the pain as something part of the
sufferer's mind. Jackson identifies a need to separate
mental from physical pain and understand it as part of the
body and the sufferer's life experience: 'When we see pain
as lived, as experienced in the body, we can see it as
preobjective, that is, not yet incorporating a
subject-object distinction. And we can understand that pain
sufferers who inhabit the pain-full world try to extricate
themselves from this world by attempting to create such a
distinction' ('Chronic Pain and the Tension Between the Body
as Subject and Object', p. 223). Understanding this
distinction provides an interesting interpretation of
Leonard's pain. Throughout the film, we
watch Leonard add clues to his body, tattooing each with a
painful permanence -- an indication of his own certainty of
pain. This is interesting in comparison to Greenaway's
comments earlier referring to the artist's confrontation
with the interface of their own medium of expression.
Greenaway experiments with the medium of flesh where, in
_The Pillow Book_, the artist finds that only the embodiment
of text through imposition on material flesh is adequate for
expression. In _Memento_, the embodiment of expression
through text on flesh represents a certainty of emotional
pain through the embodiment of physical pain. 15. Mark Poster, quoted in
Cubitt, _Digital Aesthetics_, p. 20. Poster summarizes the
very problem with Leonard's database of knowledge. In having
diverse pieces of information available through the same
interface, there is no differentiation made between values
of information. As a result, if two ideas can be accessed
and cross-referenced through the interface, they become
related, regardless of their initial irrelevance to each
other. Leonard collects 'clues' in an attempt to provide
stability and direction for action in opposition to his
suffering. The facts he collects receive equal
consideration, though, given the credibility he holds by
trusting his handwriting as the indicator of truth. Faith is
in the artifact, not the rationality (or lack thereof)
behind the item. When a clue is established as fact, Leonard
has the information inscribed in a tattoo on his body. The
pain for his loss is materialized in a tangible piece of
evidence, now made into flesh. While his pain cannot be
articulated, the facts leading to a solution can at least be
made real in writing. The grammar of the database's
information becomes the body. By virtue of the information's
place on the body, Leonard realizes the pain and comes
closer to realizing an end to his task. But the viewers come
to understand the futility in his drive. Anger blinds him to
any suggestion that he might be wrong. His own interface --
his body -- cannot be trusted for its mental clues, nor for
the relations it draws between facts inscribed in his flesh.
In what is an appropriate description of the situation,
Cubitt explains that the 'text is substituted for the world,
rendered into an object in its own right, and severed from a
reality which it no longer describes but constructs'
(_Digital Aesthetics_, p. 20). This happens, as shown in
Leonard's blind trust, regardless of his database's
validity. Bibliography Beck, Ulrich, 'The
Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive
Modernization', in U. Beck, A. Giddens, and S. Lash, eds,
_Reflexive Modernity_ (London: Sage, 1994). Connolly, William E.,
'Suffering, Justice, and the Politics of Becoming', in D.
Campbell and M. J. Shapiro, eds, _Moral Spaces: Rethinking
Ethics and World Politics_ (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999). Cubitt, Sean, _Digital
Aesthetics_ (London: Sage, 1998). Darke, Chris, 'Mr Memory',
_Sight and Sound_, vol. 10 no. 11, 2000. Davis, Mike, _Ecology of
Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster_ (New
York: Vintage Books, 1998). Graham, Stephen and Simon
Marvin, _Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures,
Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition_ (London:
Routledge, 2001). Greenaway, Peter, and Manu
Luksch, 'Interview with Peter Greenaway: The Medium is the
Message', _Telepolis: Magazin der Netkultur_, 13 February
1997 <http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/film/6112/1.html>;
accessed 18 March 2003. Jackson, Jean, 'Chronic
Pain and the Tension Between the Body as Subject and
Object', in T. J. Csordas, ed., _Embodiment and Experience_
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Lyotard, Jean-Francois,
_The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge_, trans. G
Bennington and B. Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1979). Magnusson, Warren, 'Social
Movements and the Global City', _Millennium: Journal of
International Studies_, vol. 23 no. 3, 1994. Manovich, Lev, _The
Language of New Media_ (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 2001). Nolan, Christopher,
'Photograph Sparks Murder Investigation: Motel Customer
Disappears; Leaves Suspicious Photograph, Gun, Documents and
Questions' (2000) <http://www.otnemem.com>;
accessed 18 March 2003. Nolan, Christopher, and
Anthony Kaufman, 'Interview: Mindgames; Christopher Nolan
Remembers _Memento_', _indieWIRE_ 16 March 2001
<http://www.indiewire.com/people/int_Nolan_Christoph_010316.html>;
accessed 18 March 2003. Pinker, Steven, _The
Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language_ (New York:
W. Morrow and Co., 1994). Scarry, Elaine, _The Body
in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World_ (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985). Soja, Edward. W.,
_Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions_
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). Weinbren, Grahame, 'The
Digital Revolution is a Revolution of Random Access',
_Telepolis: Magazin der Netkultur_, 17 February 1997
<http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/film/6113/2.html>;
accessed 18 March 2003. Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2003 Christopher Bodnar, 'The
Database, Logic, and Suffering: _Memento_ and Random-Access
Information Aesthetics', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 10,
May 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n10bodnar>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
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