Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

It's no longer just a fantasy from a movie--now it's science. Selective memory erasure is possible... in mice, anyway--which makes me laugh, because right now I'm picturing a mousy mouse dressed like Joel Barish and an orange-dyed mouse dressed like Clementine.

Humans may very well be next. Last year, scientists published findings suggesting that certain drugs may be able to refashion memories when administered shortly after traumatic events. Now they are looking for ways to reshape and/or erase painful memories even years afterwards.

That would be a great scientific breakthrough for, say, people suffering from PTSD. But for traumatic breakups? Ooh... I don't know. I don't think that's a good idea, actually.

I read Charlie Kaufman's original script--not the shooting script--which started with a flash-forward to the future, when an 80-year-old Clementine shows up at the clinic yet again asking to have all memories of one Joel Barish erased... again. I don't know that the movie actually needed that scene. But it illustrates Kaufman's viewpoint on the wisdom of erasing memories of people we once loved. And the tragedy of it is, if Clementine and Joel had just kept their memories of each other, good bad ugly and everything in between... maybe they could have learned from it, and even figured out one day how to make their relationship work in the long-term. Maybe not. But impulsive memory-erasure just kept those two locked in an eternal cycle of the wisdom-less mind. (Sigh)

Here's the article behind this post http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-07/the-end-of-bad-memories/