Memory-loss films reflect cultural anxiety about identities being upgradeable like software

Evidence

The unnamed object of desire here is authenticity. This theme also haunts modern entertainment, just as much as it did in the 1950s. Existential anxiety is more closely intertwined with technological anxiety than ever in films such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the Wachowskis’ Matrix, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1001 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

No doubt this is another example of the struggle between the forces of deterritorialization and reterritorialization which Deleuze and Guattari argue is constitutive of capitalism as such. … The memory disorder that is the correlative of this situation is the condition which afflicts Leonard in Memento, theoretically pure anterograde amnesia. Here, memories prior to the onset of the condition are left intact, but sufferers are unable to transfer new memories into long term memory; the new therefore looms up as hostile, fleeting, un-navigable, and the sufferer is drawn back to the security of the old. The inability to make new memories: a succinct formulation of the postmodern impasse… — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 122 (#builds-on, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postmodern culture mirrors anterograde amnesia, clinging to old certainties while newness stays unnavigable — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 122; Digital-native generations experience time as disconnected micro-slices — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 53; Contemporary sci-fi films fuse existential angst with technological anxiety — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1001 (+1 more)

Related

• Contemporary sci-fi films fuse existential angst with technological anxiety (similarity 0.86)
• Software-like identity upgrading drives cultural obsession with memory disorders. (similarity 0.85)
• Postmodern culture mirrors anterograde amnesia, clinging to old certainties while newness stays unnavigable (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Contemporary sci-fi films fuse existential angst with technological anxiety #corroborates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1001