Joel's Mind In Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

1841 Words4 Pages

Within the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind there are many characters that have a fair sharing of mystery. From the doctors, to the main characters. They all have a story of their own and events in their lives that made them who the are. With the powerful ability for people to forget their memories, it shows true struggles and feelings all the characters went through. The best way to display the amount of information the film showed of the character's minds are through Joel and Clementine. Throughout the film Joel’s mind was entered and the memories of Clementine was trying to be erased. When Joel’s mind is being entered he is in REM sleep. REM sleep is “A stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movement, a high level of …show more content…

He had repressed these thoughts, hiding them from himself. Repression is “Pulling into the unconscious, such as forgetting sexual abuse from your childhood due to the trauma and anxiety” (Heffner). One of the things that traumatized him was when a clique of boys made him kill a bird. Clique is “A small, exclusive group of people within a larger group” (Kasschau, 110). Joel became who he was, and kept his mind secluded because of these events. This is similar to the idea of Social Learning Theory. Social Learning Theory is “Bandura's view of human development; emphasizes interaction”. (Kasschau, 107). Joel’s father was never seen throughout the film, making his ability to find his identification was different from the rest of the boys, possibly making it so he stood out more to them, making him an easier target. Identification is “The process by which a child adopts the values and principles of the same-sex parent” (Kasschau, 82). When Joel changes his mind about having his memory removed he starts to use his frontal lobe to help him come up with a plan to avoid losing his memories. The frontal lobe “...organizes responses to complex problems, plans steps to an objective, searches memory for relevant experience, adapts strategies to accommodate new data, guides behavior with verbal skills and houses working memory...” (The Brain). As Joel is fighting on the inside, he is also getting influence from the

Open Document