I can remember it for you wholesale
Apr. 22nd, 2004 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI've always been fascinated by the concept of memory, and how much of our identity is informed by our memories. In college, my favorite part of the coursework for the psych program was an early class taught by one of the leading experts in memory. There was this great little throwaway nugget about a study that found people who remember things more bleakly or pessimistically are more connected to reality than folks who remember things more positively or optimistically -- say, your vacation turns into a nightmare, but when you get back, you tell everyone about the good things you remember, and don't recall as many of the bad things. I was like, yeah, see! I'm more connected to reality, I'm saner by being a whining negativist! And Philip K. Dick, whose writing is among the little SF stuff that's stood the test of time for me, wrote prodigiously about how memory is integral to who we are.
Origin spends most of its time on the impact of memory -- how it informs our character, our fate, our ability to communicate with others. It's interesting that it was written by Drew Goddard, who earlier explored the impact of memory and the confusion of shared pasts in Damage, when Dana's mental condition -- a psychosis induced by severe trauma and horrific memories she can't shed -- becomes even more destructive when she's given the shared memories of the slayer lineage. Even trust is informed by memory in the Angelverse. Wes believes he trusts Angel because the memories he has tell him to; Connor trusts his parents (and of course, they talk about setting up a trust all the way through the beginning as their ruse to bring him to W&H) because he has created memories. Wes hates Illyria but is also drawn to her because she has those echoes of Fred inside her, and Angel is consumed by his memories. And once again, because Angel has never understood how much to let people know and can’t fully understand how to communicate with people, he doesn’t let them have enough of their own past to make a decision, and everything he fears will be destroyed is... or, maybe not. Even the bad guy’s name sounds like veil. Things are hidden that must be revealed, and what’s revealed is still somewhat hidden because Angel is never certain what to really do with it, what others need.
What’s interesting is that the repercussions of the return of everyone’s memories aren’t quite what anyone’s expecting, especially not Angel. When Hamilton removes the amulet and Gunn remembers who he is and what’s happening, he confounds Hamilton by choosing to undergo the torture rather than regain his memories and his usefulness. When the... olan window thingie, whatever it was called, is broken, Connor appears to get his memories back, but it doesn’t destroy him the way Angel fears -- as Wes says, the old memories and the new are there side by side, and apparently this is enough to create some kind of improvement in Connor’s condition. Wes isn’t even as destroyed by the event as he might have been before, because now he also knows the part he played in the loss of Angel’s son, and that there is a history of betrayal -- it’s not a one-sided issue anymore, this breaking of trust thing. Gee, we’re all a big happy family, we all betray each other.
As much as Blade Runner veered away from Dick’s original Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, most of the core elements were there in terms of the emotional nature of memory and how it affects who we are. I loved the scene in the movie where Rachel plays a tune on the piano, and says to Deckard, “I remember lessons...” She so desperately wants to really remember trhem, for those lessons to be hers and not implanted memories, and it’s heartbreaking that she needs them so much to feel human. There’s an echo of those replicants and their needs for a history in this episode -- Vale (I never know how to spell these damn names!) claims to have built Angel’s son, memories are implanted in some, suffused into another’s in one creature, and nearly snuffed out by being “stuffed into a bottle” in Sajhaan’s case or muffled by an amulet in Gunn’s. Nothing is real, no one has control of their memories except Angel, and he can never be trusted to do the right thing with them because he is never able to really understand how to truly connect with others. He’s used to playing God with their lives, and he doesn’t want to hurt them, but over and over his efforts to protect people he cares about put them in danger, and he doesn’t know how to give them the information they need without betraying himself.
Wes, as usual, sums it up -- he says we need the false memories to endure reality (calling to mind that nugget from my psych class -- that we handle real life better if we remember bad things rather than glossing over them in a kind of false optimism, but of course, he wants to believe the false optimism as a palliative). Another of my favorite memory-based movies, Strange Days, was predicated on the idea that you could record memories of real life from a person’s actual experience (visual and other sensory memories) and then play those experiences back through your own brain, having that person’s experience at your own desire. Lenny sells these memories on a kind of drug-type black market. When Mace, who hates these memory tapes and the whole concept of selling other people's pasts but loves Lenny and tries to help him, destroys Lenny’s tapes of the ex-girlfriend he can’t let go of, she tells him “ this is your life! ... this is real time. Memories were meant to fade, Lenny. They’re designed that way for a reason.” That sentiment is echoed in Wes’s explanation to Illyria, but the fact is, of course, he doesn’t know how to live with the real memories. And it struck me as especially interesting that one of the only clear shots we have of Lilah in the memory rush is of her dressed as Fred -- that it’s his connection again to Fred apparently imbuing everything he sees from the past. It ties back to Angel’s line about “you’re still alive, act like it.” It’s real time, and Wes has to live in it now -- with his own terrible experiences, not someone else’s.
I liked the nice play on Connor’s regained memories, how they were taking up residence in him side by side with the new ones, as if it came to him gradually rather than all at once. The hatred of demons, of self, that he had before now becoming more tolerable for him because he has the new memories of love and acceptance. His own ability to cope with his problems increased simply because he now has memories and feelings that have taught him *how*. He remembers lessons. It will be interesting to see how Lorne reacts to his regained memories, and what happens if they do get Gunn out of the hell dimension. For Connor, there is a nice closure, but for Angel, the closure almost opens new doors -- he’ll have to deal with the consequences of his actions, but he’ll also have to confront his tendency to play God with his people, and at this piont in time, that’s a pretty damn crucial thing to deal with. He can’t move forward if no one trusts him, and he doesn’t know if he can trust himself (especially since the outcome of his fears wasn’t half what he expected it to be), so how can he deal with it? Trust isn’t exactly in large supply on a good day at Angel Investigations/W&H; what’s it going to be like in this new reality living side by side with the old one, the painful one everyone will want to block out? Gunn’s sacrifice is pure -- he suffers over and over in a literal act of atonement by having his heart ripped out, by being tortured. Everyone else’s sacrifices and atonements are muddied by their pasts and by memories they don’t know for certain are the real ones, the ones that should bear more weight than others. If real time means you can’t act, if it paralyzes your ability to think and do the right thing, then what good is it?
So yeah, overall, I liked this. It sometimes felt a bit slow, but I loved the jokes and the drama, a perfect Ultimate Drew mix. The Anne Rice vampire joke, Sajhaan’s dialog, Connor’s glee at seeing all the demons... I especially loved the “let’s get Spike to do it,”’ which reminded me of the old Life cereal commercial where they decide “let’s get Mikey to try it” when they’re dubious about the cereal. It wasn’t exactly a great ep for Spike, which was a bit disappointing since I love how Goddard writes him, but at least we got the great “I would like to keep Spike as my pet” line. Back of the line, sister. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I was terribly disappointed when Hamilton said he and Angel wouldn’t be making love on the couch anytime soon. Well, I mean, darn. Oh, Drew, Drew, my spiritual fiancee. Even if you waste Spike in an ep, you give me great lines about petri dishes and Angel making out with other vampires. I can forgive you anything.
ETA: I thought about the reason for Spike being missing for much of the ep, and I realized that it makes a kind of sense, because he's the one person there who's not either tormented by memories, had his memories replaced/removed, or working hard to try to understand memories from someone else. He's basically at home with what he knows of his past, he accepts his actions and moves on (which annoys Angel no end, of course, because he doesn't believe Spike has tried to atone for the past). Spike doesn't see the value in wallowing or trying to cut out memories of the past, he just seems to believe that one should acknowledge them, take what you need and discard the rest, and get on with life. So of course, he wouldn't really fit in with the angst of the episode, centering on something so very specific to the previous AI team and Angel's own "family." Well, duh. Sometimes I'm a little slow.
Origin spends most of its time on the impact of memory -- how it informs our character, our fate, our ability to communicate with others. It's interesting that it was written by Drew Goddard, who earlier explored the impact of memory and the confusion of shared pasts in Damage, when Dana's mental condition -- a psychosis induced by severe trauma and horrific memories she can't shed -- becomes even more destructive when she's given the shared memories of the slayer lineage. Even trust is informed by memory in the Angelverse. Wes believes he trusts Angel because the memories he has tell him to; Connor trusts his parents (and of course, they talk about setting up a trust all the way through the beginning as their ruse to bring him to W&H) because he has created memories. Wes hates Illyria but is also drawn to her because she has those echoes of Fred inside her, and Angel is consumed by his memories. And once again, because Angel has never understood how much to let people know and can’t fully understand how to communicate with people, he doesn’t let them have enough of their own past to make a decision, and everything he fears will be destroyed is... or, maybe not. Even the bad guy’s name sounds like veil. Things are hidden that must be revealed, and what’s revealed is still somewhat hidden because Angel is never certain what to really do with it, what others need.
What’s interesting is that the repercussions of the return of everyone’s memories aren’t quite what anyone’s expecting, especially not Angel. When Hamilton removes the amulet and Gunn remembers who he is and what’s happening, he confounds Hamilton by choosing to undergo the torture rather than regain his memories and his usefulness. When the... olan window thingie, whatever it was called, is broken, Connor appears to get his memories back, but it doesn’t destroy him the way Angel fears -- as Wes says, the old memories and the new are there side by side, and apparently this is enough to create some kind of improvement in Connor’s condition. Wes isn’t even as destroyed by the event as he might have been before, because now he also knows the part he played in the loss of Angel’s son, and that there is a history of betrayal -- it’s not a one-sided issue anymore, this breaking of trust thing. Gee, we’re all a big happy family, we all betray each other.
As much as Blade Runner veered away from Dick’s original Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, most of the core elements were there in terms of the emotional nature of memory and how it affects who we are. I loved the scene in the movie where Rachel plays a tune on the piano, and says to Deckard, “I remember lessons...” She so desperately wants to really remember trhem, for those lessons to be hers and not implanted memories, and it’s heartbreaking that she needs them so much to feel human. There’s an echo of those replicants and their needs for a history in this episode -- Vale (I never know how to spell these damn names!) claims to have built Angel’s son, memories are implanted in some, suffused into another’s in one creature, and nearly snuffed out by being “stuffed into a bottle” in Sajhaan’s case or muffled by an amulet in Gunn’s. Nothing is real, no one has control of their memories except Angel, and he can never be trusted to do the right thing with them because he is never able to really understand how to truly connect with others. He’s used to playing God with their lives, and he doesn’t want to hurt them, but over and over his efforts to protect people he cares about put them in danger, and he doesn’t know how to give them the information they need without betraying himself.
Wes, as usual, sums it up -- he says we need the false memories to endure reality (calling to mind that nugget from my psych class -- that we handle real life better if we remember bad things rather than glossing over them in a kind of false optimism, but of course, he wants to believe the false optimism as a palliative). Another of my favorite memory-based movies, Strange Days, was predicated on the idea that you could record memories of real life from a person’s actual experience (visual and other sensory memories) and then play those experiences back through your own brain, having that person’s experience at your own desire. Lenny sells these memories on a kind of drug-type black market. When Mace, who hates these memory tapes and the whole concept of selling other people's pasts but loves Lenny and tries to help him, destroys Lenny’s tapes of the ex-girlfriend he can’t let go of, she tells him “ this is your life! ... this is real time. Memories were meant to fade, Lenny. They’re designed that way for a reason.” That sentiment is echoed in Wes’s explanation to Illyria, but the fact is, of course, he doesn’t know how to live with the real memories. And it struck me as especially interesting that one of the only clear shots we have of Lilah in the memory rush is of her dressed as Fred -- that it’s his connection again to Fred apparently imbuing everything he sees from the past. It ties back to Angel’s line about “you’re still alive, act like it.” It’s real time, and Wes has to live in it now -- with his own terrible experiences, not someone else’s.
I liked the nice play on Connor’s regained memories, how they were taking up residence in him side by side with the new ones, as if it came to him gradually rather than all at once. The hatred of demons, of self, that he had before now becoming more tolerable for him because he has the new memories of love and acceptance. His own ability to cope with his problems increased simply because he now has memories and feelings that have taught him *how*. He remembers lessons. It will be interesting to see how Lorne reacts to his regained memories, and what happens if they do get Gunn out of the hell dimension. For Connor, there is a nice closure, but for Angel, the closure almost opens new doors -- he’ll have to deal with the consequences of his actions, but he’ll also have to confront his tendency to play God with his people, and at this piont in time, that’s a pretty damn crucial thing to deal with. He can’t move forward if no one trusts him, and he doesn’t know if he can trust himself (especially since the outcome of his fears wasn’t half what he expected it to be), so how can he deal with it? Trust isn’t exactly in large supply on a good day at Angel Investigations/W&H; what’s it going to be like in this new reality living side by side with the old one, the painful one everyone will want to block out? Gunn’s sacrifice is pure -- he suffers over and over in a literal act of atonement by having his heart ripped out, by being tortured. Everyone else’s sacrifices and atonements are muddied by their pasts and by memories they don’t know for certain are the real ones, the ones that should bear more weight than others. If real time means you can’t act, if it paralyzes your ability to think and do the right thing, then what good is it?
So yeah, overall, I liked this. It sometimes felt a bit slow, but I loved the jokes and the drama, a perfect Ultimate Drew mix. The Anne Rice vampire joke, Sajhaan’s dialog, Connor’s glee at seeing all the demons... I especially loved the “let’s get Spike to do it,”’ which reminded me of the old Life cereal commercial where they decide “let’s get Mikey to try it” when they’re dubious about the cereal. It wasn’t exactly a great ep for Spike, which was a bit disappointing since I love how Goddard writes him, but at least we got the great “I would like to keep Spike as my pet” line. Back of the line, sister. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I was terribly disappointed when Hamilton said he and Angel wouldn’t be making love on the couch anytime soon. Well, I mean, darn. Oh, Drew, Drew, my spiritual fiancee. Even if you waste Spike in an ep, you give me great lines about petri dishes and Angel making out with other vampires. I can forgive you anything.
ETA: I thought about the reason for Spike being missing for much of the ep, and I realized that it makes a kind of sense, because he's the one person there who's not either tormented by memories, had his memories replaced/removed, or working hard to try to understand memories from someone else. He's basically at home with what he knows of his past, he accepts his actions and moves on (which annoys Angel no end, of course, because he doesn't believe Spike has tried to atone for the past). Spike doesn't see the value in wallowing or trying to cut out memories of the past, he just seems to believe that one should acknowledge them, take what you need and discard the rest, and get on with life. So of course, he wouldn't really fit in with the angst of the episode, centering on something so very specific to the previous AI team and Angel's own "family." Well, duh. Sometimes I'm a little slow.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 12:55 pm (UTC)Lorne and Gunn should have their false memories intact, because Vale said that the box would erase false memories if broken near someone who had their memory altered. Lorne & Gunn weren't there, ergo, shouldn't have regained the real past.
Interesting, thought, though, about memory and existance. From a Pagan perspective, memories aren't the arbiters of who we are. Our experiences shape us, whether we remember those experiences or not, like the child who is stung by a bee as a toddler, and grows up with a fear of insects, though they can't recall the initial injury.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 01:06 pm (UTC)personally (yeah, of course thus is gonna veer into slash theory :-), i am fascinated by the way we play with these issues in fiction. i'm not sure i've seen false memories implanted...anyone??? but i think both au's and amnesia fic lean in that direction (yes, i'm beginning to work on my identity paper...why are you asking. LOL)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 06:19 pm (UTC)It puzzles me that in the Western world, at a time when overall people are safer, wealthier, healthier and freer than they have ever been before, that the level of unhappiness and discontent is so high. Maybe it's expectations -- people expect the moon these days, whereas in earlier times they didn't. In earlier times, it was just about survival. Now we have existential angst.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 06:46 pm (UTC)I hear there's a whole genre of amensia fic out there. I can't ever remember really reading any of it, but... maybe that's a good thing!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 07:01 pm (UTC)I use it mostly as an example of how far away from the reality of their world the AI team has become, and also to mock myself a little bit, because I'm such a pessimistic person, so cynical and negative and bitter, that it gives me a great chance to poke fun at my glass is half empty personality.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 08:13 pm (UTC)And I get annoyed for you, when you are obviously such a talented editor, that stupid bastards aren't giving you good jobs and are making you jump through hoops on their silly tests. Don't they know that most editors look things up, and that to have your mind chock full of the most arcane knowledge can sometimes mean there is little room for the other things an editor needs, like judgment and a sense of context?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 08:33 pm (UTC)Pssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh. *Smacks you upside the head*
I loved this review of the ep. You put everything into such clear detail. I especially loved your introductory paragraph, because that's something I noticed in high school. Someone (a teacher making a lesson plan out of a book, not trained in the science) said that people tend to remember good memories over bad. I went all gloomy and depressive and adolescent by thinking that I tend to remember bad stuff.
Not all the time, though. *G*
no subject
Date: 2004-04-23 04:11 am (UTC)He says it during that first conversation with Angel, right after "but you have to be careful..."
no subject
Date: 2004-04-23 07:18 am (UTC)Back of the line, sister.
Word. :)