Why do I fall in love with every woman I
see who shows me the least bit of attention?
I'm just a fucked-up girl who's
looking for my own peace of mind.
I'm gonna marry you - I know it.
Sounds scary.
I had these fantasies of us being married and having kids, just...
Birth, death, existential speculation and,
arguably the most potent, love defines
the climactic and tumultuous moments
endured during the human condition.
Its overwhelming nature cannot be
overstated, as the sheer suffering and
vivid ecstasy it encompasses can
paralyze human existence. Shared by a
passionate yet insecure Clementine, a
reserved yet anxious Joel, and an eager
yet clueless Mary, dissatisfaction,
resentment and regret of their love
pressures them to erase their memories
to soften the painful grief of living.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
however, presents how their eradication
of suffering through memory erasure is a
detrimental approach to the ill-fated
human condition by illustrating the
characters lack of objective judgment and
consent, the impracticality posed by the
social repercussions of their maintained
ignorance, the fragmentation of
self-identity, their destructive escapist
and hedonistic motivations, and their
inevitable necessity of suffering for
meaningful connection and growth.
Ontological idealism, as
described by Schopenhauer, paints reality
as a thought with ideas and perceptions
constituting the subjective and
irrational reality. Through Freud's
psychodynamics, the faculties of the mind
which creates such subjective ideas and
perceptions are fundamentally divided
into the conscious (what is in focal
awareness), the subconscious (what is not
in focal awareness but can be), and the
unconscious (what are deep and automatic
mind processes which cannot be made
aware). Much of consciousness is limited
compared to the unconscious workings of
the mind and, like an iceberg, the
fraction of active awareness is barely
surface level. Memory works a little bit
more like a Wikipedia page: you can go in
there and change it but so can other
people. In tandem with the
unreliability of memory, especially when
emotionally volatile, which is due to its
reconstructive process of biases
distorting memory reinterpretation to fit
the necessary psychological narrative,
the subjective reality is further victim
to mischaracterization by manipulative
defense mechanisms of repression, denial
and more.
Such is the case during Joel's resentment and rage upon the realization
that Clementine erased him from her
memory - a spark which pushes him to do
the same.
Regretfully, in his emotional stupor, Joel's reality
becomes clouded
in his negative recollection of his
memories with Clementine which, upon
deeper contemplation, he realizes that
her annoyances were actually fond quirks.
Under a certain mindset, the line between his
most cherished and most loathed memories
becomes blurred.
Furthermore, the
invasive self-mutilation and self
manipulation of Joel and Clementine's
minds to "maintain a tolerable condition"
abandons their Kantian duty to treat
themselves with the respect as free and
autonomous individuals, rather than a
means to an end. Especially troubling is
its psycho-surgical nature: like a
lobotomized zombie, there is a direct harm
to their center for rationality,
integrity, and personhood. Mary, upon the
realization of her procedure and affair
with Howard, experiences tremendous
regret, betrayal, and shame, and responds
by returning all patient records to
restore their lost Kantian autonomy.
Evidently, the use of memory erasure
demonstrates the characters treating
themselves as a means to an end - 
failing to recognize their self-worth - as
their emotionally driven reality pushes
them to desperation for this technology.
The afflicted, therefore, do not possess
the objective judgment to consent to the
deeply consequential procedure.
Concerning in itself, the execution of
Lacuna's memory erasure technology is
rudimentary and negligent: Stan finds
himself at the end of both a bottle and
a joint, Patrick's hopeless infatuation
drives him to manipulate his way into
Clementines heart, and the machine itself
is bulky and full of glitches.
There is something
deeply apathetic and disconnected with
the employees self-absorbed carelessness
with Joel's most meaningful memories - a
commentary on the desensitizational
effects of such a sensitive and personal
process. Even more problematic are their
letters of secrecy, which asks others to
maintain the patient's illusions through
lying by omission. To illustrate, Rob and
Carrie, mutual friends of Joel and
Clementine (who were once distantly unrelated
to their romantic conflicts), become
inevitably entangled with an ethical
quandary of lying in their interactions
with Clementine to respect her happiness
at the cost of their integrity. In
Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals, the
categorical imperative (Kant's supreme
principle of morality) urges for their
actions to express respect to Clementine
as an end rather than a means; to respect
her wishes,
rather than conduct action focused
solely on their self-interest.
However, this conflicts with their
similar Kantian duty of self respect as
autonomous and self defining agents who
reject being defined by others by living
authentically. Regardless of the
consequences,
lying remains an absolute moral fault by
the same criteria and it is not,
according to Kant, a burden on their
conscience when they tell the truth and
subject Clementine to
shock and grief - much like his murderous
axe. The utilitarian option, still,
remains heavy with guilt with respect to
Carrie - who sympathizes with Clementine's
heartbreak and wish to remain happy.
Ultimately, if not Clementine, Rob allows
for Kant to swing his axe unto Joel's
heart, and the sense of responsibility
between maintaining either self-respect
for Rob or respect for others for Carrie
drives a troubling wedge between them - 
a wedge which could potentially work to
separate them like Joel and Clementine.
Consequently, the power of knowledge creates a
power dynamic which imposes
bystanders, who are largely unaware of
the situation of the patients, to enforce
social justice similar to Rawls' veil of
ignorance. Specifically, its liberty
principle argues that the social
contract should ensure the most liberty
possible for everyone - without intruding
upon the freedom of others. However,
issues arise as Joel and Clementine
betray their Kantian duties by
utilizing their autonomous agency to,
contradictorily, sever their own freedom
through self-deception and a lack of
self respect. Whether or not it is
morally right to reveal this truth by a
Kantian or utilitarian perspective, the
impractical technological and social
consequences of maintaining ignorance
harmfully involves unrelated others in
an imbalanced power dynamic - one in which
they are condemned to an ethical
quandary of sacrificing integrity or
accord.
The company responsible for
memory erasure, Lacuna, is literally
defined as a void and stems from the
17th century Latin word "lacus" or "lake".
A dominant motif in Joel's dream
sequences with Clementine, Freud draws
parallels between water and the maternal
relationship of birth. Particularly,
Joel's formative years are exemplified
by the childlike wonder of rain and the
security of his mother bathing him in
the sink. Erik Erikson described that "the
psychoanalytic method is essentially a
historical method" and, based on his neo-Freudian psychosocial theory,
Clementine shares many characteristics
to Joel's mother,
such as her clothing, sense of design, and
personality - revealing the source of
Joel's romantic attraction for her: the
security of motherly attention or, in an
updated context, attention from women.
Even the role of his childhood
sweetheart, who assured him with comfort
and confidence, is directly associated
with Clementine. Then, during his final
moments in the procedure, the house where
Joel and Clementine first met - another
Freudian symbol for the self - begins to
flood with water ripping the floorboards,
or, the basis of his identity. These
memories are left as a void by Lacuna,
and the comfort of water devolves into
the danger of drowning. In Joel's
desperate attempts to hide Clementine in
deep, random memories where he was
convinced Lacuna could never find. He is
unable to realize that those same places
are where, unconsciously, she is the most
connected to him.
Following the erasure, he forgets his
mother's memorable singing of
Huckleberry Hound because it called upon
his appreciation for Clementine - a
microcosm of his fragmented self.
Clementine, too,  shatters under the rubble
of incongruent and incomplete memories
when Patrick uses Joel's lines to make
her fall in love with him.
Eternal Sunshine's portrayal of personal
identity and memory is a Lockean one:
that the self is a "thinking intelligent
being" with the "sameness of a rational
being." The continuity of personal
identity is necessitated by
consciousness and memory, which without,
"doubts are raised whether we are the
same thinking thing." As Eternal
Sunshine's nonlinear narrative further
parallels and emphasizes the chaos of
cognitive dissonance and a fragmented
self, it is demonstrated that the
removal of seemingly innocuous memories
unroots deeper and fundamental memories
necessary for self-identity.
In "Anarchy, State, and Utopia",
Nozick portrays the short-sighted nature
of Benthamite utilitarianism and its
hedonism in a thought experiment: "Suppose
there were an experience machine that
would give you any experience you
desired... All the time you would be
floating in a tank with electrodes
attached to your brain... Would you plug in?
What else can matter to us other than
how our lives feel from the inside?"
The ultimate pursual of happiness by way
of increasing pleasure and decreasing
pain comes at the cost of truth, where
the bridge is burned between the
individual and reality.
For Clementine,
Joel, and Mary to subject themselves to
ignorance for pleasure is to, in essence,
stray into the solipsistic isolation
of reality - to a greater degree than the
aforementioned idealistic reality driven by
subjective human psychology and emotion.
Alcohol symbolizes these escapist ideas
throughout Eternal Sunshine, from
Clementine's alcoholism to, more candidly,
Howard's relation of brain damage from
the procedure to alcoholic
overindulgence.
These self-destructive tendencies
numb pain temporarily as the
underlying issues exacerbate, and what
makes it more agonizing is their repressed
and shameful awareness of such. The
difficulty of addictive escapism
overpowers determined recovery because
of the conflict between the fundamental
values of desire for happiness and the
integrity of truth -  where the first tends
to veer vacuously and the latter tediously.
From "The Sovereignty of the Good", Murdoch
responds by affirming the value of
clarity:
"the authority of morals is the authority
of truth... the difficulty is to keep the
attention fixed upon the real situation
and to prevent it from returning
surreptitiously to the self with
consolations of self pity, resentment,
fantasy, and despair... It is a task to come
to see the world as it is." Indeed, the
moral action is to look back on the
painful past, as it is the responsibility
for one to look at the world with the
clarity morality requires; otherwise, to
evade such responsibility is to readmit
the same dissatisfaction, resentment, and
regret that plagued Joel, Clementine, and
Mary to begin with. In these ways, the
escapism provided by the hedonistic
procedure conflicts with the fundamental
value of truth - a necessity to
maintaining the clarity that morality
and progress demands.
In the end, despite their lack of memory,
Joel and Clementine reunite at the same
time in place by only an impulse -  an
emotional and existential call to the
void of their identities, that is, Montauk.
Overwhelmed by the recordings of their
painful relationship, they nonetheless
decide to say "okay" and run across the
proverbial snowy beach to give their
seemingly doomed relationship another
chance. As referenced throughout Eternal
Sunshine, the influence of Nietzsche is
brought to fore with his thought
experiment of the eternal recurrence as
found in "The Gay Science": “What if… this life as you now live it and have lived it,
you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be
nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy… The question… Do you desire
this once more and innumerable times more?” Here,
Nietzsche urges the importance in
accepting responsibility for the meaning
of our lives by acting in a way that we
would want to repeat forevermore. "Amor
fati", he calls, a "love of faith" reassures
that time spent mourning over past
mistakes is another eternity reliving
another painful eternity in this eternal
recurrence and that it is necessary to
affirm and embrace one's inevitable
actions and suffering for true
contentment.
Similarly, Joel and Clementine's refusal
of Lacuna's offer for "a new life" by
affirming and embracing the suffering
endured in their past relationship and
repeating their actions demonstrates this
same love of fate.
Delving deeper, it is important to
consider how the idiosyncrasies of Joel
and Clementine have undergone resentment
and appreciation in fluctuation:
Clementine's impulsivity is destructive
like "a meteorite on fire", yet it is a
shooting star that seduces Joel out of
his mundane, and Joel's smile is pathetic
and apologetic like "a wounded puppy", yet
it is what pacifies Clementine's deep
insecurities. Notably, the same
characteristics that acted as flaws
ending the relationship equally acts as
endearing qualities that revitalizes the
relationship.
Instead of lamenting on
what could have been and dwelling on the
platonic perfection of forms - 
what Kaufman sought to dismantle of
Hollywood's depiction of an infatuation
driven hedonistic model of relationships -
they changed their expectations by
understanding both the subjectivity of
their idealistic realities and the
inevitable entanglement of suffering
with contentment and identity. Like the
ironic pairing of humans as social
creatures and their doomed
relationships, the rejection of suffering
is the rejection of primordial instincts.
Painting a nihilistic reality, Joel and
Clementine's continued relationship
affirms their lives against this by
creating their own purpose
using these paradoxical truths. The
bridge between their realities and
perceptions bursts their protective,
subjective bubbles in their renewed
pursuit of suffering itself, for it is
the inescapable atom to their identity and path
to contentment. Suffering is inevitably
intertwined with the human nature and
its necessity for meaningful connection
and growth extends an existential weight
that not only supports Eternal
Sunshine's philosophical themes, but also
the thought-provoking nature of the
human condition.
Eternal Sunshine demonstrates the
multi-faceted nature of suffering and
our human responses to it. It shows that
the procedure of memory erasure, although
seemingly desperate, is an alluring promise
that calls to our deepest desires and
faculties that make us human - reaching
into our childhood, emotions, and memories.
It considers the feelings of burden,
respect, and autonomy in our most
fundamental values of truth and
happiness and shows us how our lonely,
sometimes resentful, grief can not only
impact ourselves but others in ways we
had not considered due to our cloudy
reality. Although a story about a type of
radical science of memory erasure, the
timidity and mundane elements of science
fiction, from the unpromising offices of
Lacuna to the glitches in technology,
reveal to us the deeper and uglier
subject at hand: the ways we use to cope
with reality, from the mindless mess of
alcohol to the carefully crafted world
of unsustainable infatuation. It calls,
ultimately, that the pursuit of pleasure
and eradication of suffering is a misguided
and dangerous solution to the
pain of human existence and, instead, we must change
our expectations and embrace suffering
through love because we are our
suffering and it is necessary for
meaningful growth.
