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Its like waking, like I just woke up"

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(Radical) Cultural Constructivism... One must concede that the Western humanist concept of the autonomous individual ... moderate constructivism and cultural ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Its like waking, like I just woke up"


1
Its like waking, like I just woke up"
  • Consciousness, Cognitive Film Theory and Memento
    (2000)

2
(Radical) Cultural Constructivism...
  • One must concede that the Western humanist
    concept of the autonomous individual self is not
    universal, eternally given, and valid for all
    time and all places, but is a product of history
    and culture
  • -Novelist and Literary Theorist David Lodge
  • See also The General Legacy and Ethos of
    so-called SLAB-Theorists (Saussure, Lacan,
    Althusser, Barthes)

3
...And Some of Its Problems
  • Experimental research has shown that people who
    have had little or no access to cinema or to any
    other form of "individualised" Western culture
    have attributed personalities, emotions and
    agency to film characters shown to them (Hobbs et
    al Berliner)
  • Complexity of consciousness and self vs. the
    evolutionary recent development of language
    (Damasio)
  • Evidence of human universals nearly all human
    cultures and languages have concepts of "I",
    "me", or "self", as distinct from everything else
    (Brown)

4
Outline
  • The Main Argument Concerning The Singular Self
    and Its Experience in Cinema Culture AND
    Biology, Not Just Culture
  • Damasian Model of Consciousness
  • Application to Cinema Damasio-Smith-Currie
  • Consciousness and Ordinary Amnesia Films 3
    Short Cases
  • The Levels of Consciousness in Memento (2000)
  • Conclusions

5
Damasio Three Levels of Consciousness (1)
  • Proto-Consciousness
  • gtgt gives rise to Proto-Self
  • non-conscious,
    body-mind-interface
  • gtgt is a necessary requirement for
  • Core Consciousness
  • gtgt gives rise to Core Self
  • consciousness,
    "self", agency, onwership
  • gtgt is a necessary requirement for
  • Extended Consciousness
  • gtgt gives rise to Autobiographical
    Self
  • memories,
    introspection, complex beliefs

6
Damasio Three Levels of Consciousness (3)
7
Damasio Three Levels of Consciousness (4)
  • Rita Carter, Consciousness, p. 235

8
Damasio Three Levels of Consciousness (2)
  • Damasio, The Feeling..., p. 199

9
Damasio on the Core Self
  • You know that you are conscious, you feel that
    you are in the act of knowing, because the subtle
    imaged account that is now flowing in the stream
    of your organism's thoughts exhibits the
    knowledge that your proto-self has been changed
    by an object that has just become salient in the
    mind. You know you exist because the narrative
    exhibits you as protagonist in the act of
    knowing. You rise above the sea level of knowing,
    transiently but incessantly, as a felt core self,
    renewed again and again, thanks to anything that
    comes from outside the brain into its sensory
    machinery or anything that comes from the brain's
    memory stores toward sensory, motor, or autonomic
    recall. (The Feeling of What Happens, 171-2)

10
External Features of the Core Consciousness
  • wakefulness
  • attentiveness to stimuli
  • purposeful behaviour
  • specific actions and emotions
  • background emotions

11
Outline
  • The Main Argument Concerning The Singular Self
    and Its Experience in Cinema Culture AND
    Biology, Not Just Culture
  • Damasian Model of Consciousness
  • Application to Cinema Damasio-Smith-Currie
  • Consciousness and Ordinary Amnesia Films 3
    Short Cases
  • The Levels of Consciousness in Memento (2000)
  • Conclusions

12
Smith Person Schema
  • a discrete human body
  • perceptual activity, including self-awareness
  • intentional states, such as beliefs and desires
  • emotions
  • the ability to use and understand a natural
    language
  • the capacity for self-impelled actions and
    self-interpretation
  • the potential for traits, or persisting
    attributes
  • an enabling framework, part of the material out
    of which particular types of characterisation can
    be constructed"

13
Smith Damasio
  • Damasian (Proto and) Core Consciousness
  • a discrete human body
  • perceptual activity, including self-awareness
  • emotions
  • the ability to use and understand a natural
    language
  • the capacity for self-impelled actions and
    self-interpretation
  • Damasian Extended Consciousness
  • the potential for traits, or persisting
    attributes
  • intentional states, such as beliefs and desires

14
Currie Simulation Theory
  • Currie "when we see someone in a situation and
    attend to what is occurring, we take on the
    beliefs and desires we imagine they must have.
    Unlike our own beliefs and desires, however,
    these are run "off-line. They are disconnected
    from their normal perceptual inputs and
    behavioural outputs"
  • Smith As with all schemata, the person schema
    and the hierarchy of consciousness it contains
    are subject to revision we may apply the person
    schema to a brain-damaged individual, and be
    forced to revise it on discovering that the
    individual lacks certain capacities pre-supposed
    by the schema.

15
Outline
  • The Main Argument Concerning The Singular Self
    and Its Experience in Cinema Culture AND
    Biology, Not Just Culture
  • Damasian Model of Consciousness
  • Application to Cinema Damasio-Smith-Currie
  • Consciousness and Ordinary Amnesia Films 3
    Short Cases
  • The Levels of Consciousness in Memento (2000)
  • Conclusions

16
Three Ordinary Amnesia Films
  • Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
  • Ziyu Fengbao / Purple Storm (1999)
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
  • different cultures, two decades in time,
    different genres, from superstar mainstream and
    action thriller to cross-over / art house.

17
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
18
Ziyu Fengbao / Purple Storm (1999)
19
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
20
All Three Films
  • The unity of the core self remains intact.
  • Could be explained with approximate conventions
    of representation seem, however, to be
    ultimately grounded in an insurmountable
    biological basis of the core self
  • The Core Self helps and smoothes out the
    comprehension of the anomalous characters of
    these narratives.
  • Personal histories and identities are constantly
    lost, regained, readjusted, rejected, used and
    abused
  • This status is crystallised in the recurring,
    off-hand, synecdocheic representation of
    autobiographies as dossiers, boxes, files or bin
    bags of clues
  • A sustained Lacuna treatment would lead to a
    spotless mind not far removed from a transient,
    but incessantly recreated core self and an
    extremely short term memory.
  • the brain damage in Memento, which acts
    precisely like a continuous, inbuilt Lacuna
    procedure.

21
Outline
  • The Main Argument Concerning The Singular Self
    and Its Experience in Cinema Culture AND
    Biology, Not Just Culture
  • Damasian Model of Consciousness
  • Application to Cinema Damasio-Smith-Currie
  • Consciousness and Ordinary Amnesia Films 3
    Short Cases
  • The Levels of Consciousness in Memento (2000)
  • Conclusions

22
Leonard Shelbys Condition in Memento (2000)
  • Leonard, like David, cannot form new memories
    anteriograde memory loss
  • his autobiographical self extends to his wife's
    death, but no further
  • since that incident he seems to have been living
    in roughly 10 minute slots of short term memory
  • Despite his handicap, Leonard tries to find his
    wife's killers, and becomes entangled in
    suspicious and exploitative relationships.

23
Amnesia and Cinematic Devices in Memento (2000)
(1)
  • Christopher Nolan "making the audience think
    like Leo", "putting the audience in this man's
    head" and "in his mindset drawing "the audience
    into Leonard's consciousness"
  • the inner monologue or voice-over that has no
    room tone
  • the self-observation and self-questioning
    character of the voice-over
  • predominantly subjective camera (according to
    Nolan there are only two shots in the film which
    happen outside Leonard's perimeter of
    consciousness)
  • closed, almost claustrophobic sets
  • recurrent motifs, such as the multiple
    awakenings. AND
  • NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE gtgtgt

24
Amnesia and Cinematic Devices in Memento (2000)
(2)
  • Non-Linear Narrative
  • restricted almost exclusively to Leonards POV
  • black-and-white goes forward
  • colour goes backwards
  • unveils situations strange, unfamiliar, virginal
    both to Leonard and the audience
  • disrupts / obstructs character construction
  • induces confusion

25
The Two-Fold Significance of Memento1. The
Persistence of Self
  • No Clear Identity
  • No Clear Past
  • Yet There still is a self in search of an
    autobiography
  • A unified entity with an ownership and agency
    distinct from the environment, which is
  • Automatically attuned and related to its
    surroundings via its body.
  • Leonard's monologue "You kinda know who you
    are" "I can feel the world" "How am I supposed
    to heal, if I can't feel time?" "So, what am I
    doing..." "Its like waking, like I just woke
    up" "Awake. Where am I?".

26
The Two-Fold Significance of Memento 2.
Character Simulation by the Audience
  • Normal Person Schema gtgtgt unfulfilled gtgtgt
  • Only Core Self inferred for Leonard gtgtgt
  • Offline simulation of Core Self only
  • Augmented by the non-linear, first person
    narrative gtgtgt
  • A simulated sense of Core Self without the
    (usual) Autobiographical Self perhaps a genuine
    sense of confusion
  • Yet the sense of unitary, singular self remains
    (both for Leonard and the spectator)

27
1600 User Comments (IMDB)
  • "The film is constructed and told in such a way
    that you are constantly put into the shoes of
    Leonard Shelby, beautifully played by Guy
    Pierce.
  • "So, go and see it be confused, acknowledge the
    frailty of all you know to be true, and then
    imagine the freedom of actually being Lenny, and
    then the horror of having nothing, nothing but
    the reliance of a pen and a Polaroid camera to
    know who you are.
  • "But you might get frustrated because you don't
    know what's going on. That's normal. In fact,
    that's the whole idea.... find out just how
    twisted and complex Leonard's world is. This film
    will leave its own memento on your mind, and
    you'll have a hard time forgetting how much you
    enjoyed it.
  • ""Memento" wins this year's prize for inducing
    the most audience participation. Not only is the
    film thought-provoking and unusually absorbing,
    but it also places us in the main character's
    shoes. How can we be in the same mental status
    with the main character when he cannot remember
    anything?
  • It forces you to think in the same way that our
    lead character, Leonard Shelby... our perceptions
    are shattered in the same way."
  • "I loved this movie because it made me feel as if
    I had a short-term memory deficit."

28
Outline
  • The Main Argument Concerning The Singular Self
    and Its Experience in Cinema Culture AND
    Biology, Not Just Culture
  • Damasian Model of Consciousness
  • Application to Cinema Damasio-Smith-Currie
  • Consciousness and Ordinary Amnesia Films 3
    Short Cases
  • The Levels of Consciousness in Memento (2000)
  • Conclusions

29
Summary and Conclusions (1)
  • Damasio
  • the universal architecture of consciousness
  • unitary, singular self can be created and
    maintained without memory (and culture?)
  • Theory of Mind mentalising, simulating other
    peoples thoughts
  • Currie offline simulation in cinema
  • Smith
  • architecture of offline simulation and character
    engagement
  • person schema and its refinement with Damasian
    levels
  • Application of Damasian concepts to 3 amnesia
    films
  • singular core self a strong representational
    convention
  • autobiographical self malleable and adjustable
    (bag of clues)

30
Summary and Conclusions (2)
  • Memento
  • the depiction of anteriograde memory loss
  • a striking way of representing the core
    consciousness only
  • non-linear, first person narrative helps audience
    to simulate the core consciousness
  • singular, unified self remains, even without (a
    proper) autobiography
  • General Conclusions and Prospects
  • A more systematic inquiry into memory loss films
  • How they represent the different Damasian layers
    of consciousness
  • How much can be explained with Damasian terms
  • Biological architecture of consciousness provides
    the fundamental explanation for universal appeal
    of individual selves in the narrative arts
  • Biological architecture of consciousness does NOT
    exhaust particular questions about the self,
    identity and personal histories in cinema the
    domain of the moderate constructivism and
    cultural history

31
Thank You!
  • Harri Kilpi FL
  • Researcher, Associate Tutor
  • School of Film and Television Studies,
  • University of Helsinki
  • E-mail harri.kilpi_at_helsinki.fi
  • Tel 35850 523 8969
  • Web http//www.helsinki.fi/hkilpi
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