All right, that’s it: no more multiple part articles from now on. Clearly I used the breaks as an excuse for procrastination of massive proportions . . . I think I’ll try to put less mental anguish into these things too. I’d almost begun treating blog entries as if they were essays, with all the polish I’d put into a paper for class. That’s probably why my procrastination instincts kicked in: I kept thinking “but dude, you’ll have to think hard about what you’re going to write! Why don’t you just give your brain a break?” And then I’d web surf my way into the next day.
Anyways, on with the show . . . the second half of my Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind analysis. Future entries won’t be so relentlessly academic–lots of things have been happening in my life lately and I’d like to finally give an update that has nothing to do with theology. 
FORGET ME NOT? Part Two
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: A Theological Interpretation
Mortal, know thyself! –the full Delphic Oracle saying
Living as we do in time, in the inescapable chain of cause and effect, there can never any real escape from the past. Once a deed is done, it and its effects are fixed in objective reality and don’t change, even if subjective realities like memories do. We discover in the film, for instance, that after the operation, Joel cannot account for the dent that Clementine made while driving it–but the dent is there nnonetheless. So are the rips in his diary. Later, a ghost of the memory haunts him in his sudden, seemingly spontaneous desire to walk along the beach at Montauk in winter. Also, Mary, Kirsten Dunst’s character, finds out about her erased past when another character reveals it to her, and this eventually leads to the unraveling of the Doctor’s practice.
So in spite of the miracles that science promises, perhaps we really can’t do away with the past after all, because what we have done affects not only ourselves but others. Believing that just erasing the memory can solve the problem reveals our solipsism and narcissism; we posmoderns naturally tend to think that what we don’t perceive or remember is somehow less than real. This film reminds us that this is far from the case. To quote another movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia: we may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.
Moreover, the characters in the film understand at a deep level that to erase a memory is to do something fundamentally violent and unnatural to the self. A witty exchange in the film acknowledges this fact explicitly. “Is there any risk of brain damage?” Joel asks the doctor. He replies, “Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you’ll miss.” Unnatural situations can also occur, too. When Patrick (Elijah Wood) attempts to seduce Clementine by taking advantage of his knowledge of Joel’s behaviors and Clementine’s surgically induced forgetfulness, we immediately sense something immoral about his aping of Joel’s moves. It seems like a kind of rape, akin to knocking out one’s sexual conquest with a drug so that the victim is unconscious of what happened.
With the sickness at the heart of the scientific technique revealed, it’s clear that the denial of what has come and gone offers something less than redemption. It suppresses rather than heals. So if this is no panacea, then what is? Is there any way to deal with the hurt we inflict and receive from the fallen world?
* * *
I am reminded of the phrase in the Confession of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: “we have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.” The Confession is a prayer of regret, which is only possible if one remembers the things done and undone. Our misdeeds make us ill. So the characters in the movie rush to the doctor because they know, deep down, they have “no health” in themselves.
But there is more to this metaphor of illness than simply feeling bad: what about what happens after we recover from the illness? (As we always do to some degree, until we die.) Our bodies change after we recover from an illness by developing an immunity to that particular bacteria or virus. On some level, it is a change for the better, by preventing us from being stricken by the same exact disease again. But what if, in trying to heal disease, we tried to turn back the clock on our bodies and return it to its exact state before the illness? We would not be immune from the same infection. We would get hit again and again, the cycle continuing until the end of our shortened lives.
Perhaps, in some ways, bad experiences do similar work for us, though here the metaphor breaks down somewhat. We ought not develop an “immunity” to all feeling and all emotion, to develop spiritual callouses that leave us dead to all things higher than our immediate selves. Being unfazed by everything is not necessarily a sign of strength. But returning to the metaphor of illness and medicine, think of what vaccines are. Many vaccines are actually mild versions of the illness injected into the body, which then learns to develop the immunity. The disease has to become a part of us in order for us to overcome it: it can’t be strong enough to totally kill, but it has to be enough to “teach” the body to get well. It must be absorbed so that it can be vanquished. Or, to use the phrase of St. Paul to talk about a much greater kind of redemption–death is swallowed up in victory.
Joel and Clementine experience a hint of this redemption at the film’s end. The memory erasing plot having been revealed, the couple have received recordings of how they felt about each other prior to their operations. They describe each other’s foibles with brutally honest, insulting clarity, and the (re)united couple are shocked and hurt at the (re)revelations. Clementine, in particular, can’t stand to hear what Joel once said to her and might say to her again once they have gotten to (re) know each other. She dashes out the door, hoping never to return.
Then Joel, following after her, says: “Wait.”
“Why?” Clementine asks.
“I don’t know . . . just wait for a while,” he replies. “I don’t see anything I don’t like about you.”
Clementine pauses. “But you will, and I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what I do.” This is the threat that memory poses.
But to this, Joel says, simply: “Okay.” And they look at each other for a long while as the camera fades.
Clementine and Joel are merely human. They cannot, like God–who promises to “remember their sins no more”–forget everything. But now they have realized that they shouldn’t have tried. The two most important words in that dialogue are “wait” and “okay.” “Wait,” because our society has taught us to flee from the slightest difficulty in relationships for our own comfort, to take the easy way out, and Joel has learned better. “Okay,” because Joel has decided to accept the humanity of his situation, of having to live with the awful recordings, but he still chooses to build a relationship on something stronger than ignorance. The tapes have become part of their story, and with hope and love, perhaps their bond can be stronger because they have moved through their hurts. Their pain has been redeemed: used and exchanged for something better.
In this, we see an echo of what Christian ethicist Gilbert Meilaender describes about God and His people:
Perhaps, therefore, the issue is not so much whether we have an obligation to remember—though there is something to that—but whether the erasure of painful memories does not diminish our humanity. “Remember,” the ancient Israelites are commanded by their Lord, “remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.” Even the memory of their bondage is not to be erased, but, rather, drawn into a story that, by God’s power and grace, is transformed into one of redemption . . . “Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good.” Human beings, at any rate, are not to erase the memories that give them pain but to place those memories into a new, larger, and redemptive story.
How much Charlie Kaufman, the writer of the film, believes in the “new, larger, and redemptive story” is an open question. But films like this move us, because they recall to us our humanity and, perhaps, lead us to that journey of rediscovery where
the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning.
–TS Eliot, “Little Gidding“
What’s interesting is that both quotes, which sum up the film’s central conceit–the idea of memory loss as an escape from problems–also have religious contexts. Pope’s poem, set among medieval characters, is partly about the characteristically medieval conflict between fleshly and spiritual desires. With typical Enlightenment prejudice, he also associates religious bliss with ignorance–the “spotless mind” and “the world forgetting.” Nietzsche parodies the form of the Beatitudes in his aphorism, but he seems to have a kinder view of forgetfulness. Memory is only an obstacle to be overcome, along with tradition and Christian morality; in this case, it hinders us from getting over our blunders. It turns us into those contemptible half-men who dwell monastically on their own sins and failings, or at least fills our lives with needless pain. Or at least it would be needless if one could get rid of them. In the film’s story, science makes this possible: a surgical procedure carried with flashing computers and metal headpieces does the magical work of cleansing heartaches. Presumably, with such a technique, priests and ministers would lose the last bit of usefulness they still have in our society: nowadays, they are often seen as little more than psychologists and counselors, and if something could take away all sources of emotional stress, then who needs someone else to help you merely cope with the problem? Get your brain washed and come home as shiny happy people. 
This is the hallmark of modernity: its aspiration to omnipotence through reason, its promise of freedom from pain and drudgery through technology. Through the enlightenment of learning, it is in fact able to do the opposite, induce ignornace. Forgiveness, which is what religion might counsel, is a little too hard for science, so it helps you do the next best thing–just forget. Is that not almost a God-like power–the ability to not just “get over” another’s offenses, but to completely put them out of mind and behave as if it literally never happened?