I wrote this column for an assignment in ENGL 316 (“Rhetoric of Love”), which explores how rhetorical discourses shape and constitute peoples’ understandings of love.
My generation is anything but naïve. Embittered by news media, as well as Comedy Central, we cannot accept purported truths with a nod and smile. We wield instead question and criticism, ever intent on discerning the difference between what something is and what something seems like.
In short, my generation likes questions and, quite frankly, loathes answers. Because they’re never as absolute as they pretend to be. Next time you hear someone give his or her opinion, listen for all the maybe “possiblys,” the “kindas,” “sortas,” and “likes” which neuter his or her claim to make it nothing more than a hesitant musing.
Any presumption of knowledge or steadfast truth faces strict critical attention, so who in their right mind would dare make one and run the risk of looking naïve? At best, you’ll hear a non-scientific claim begin with “It appears to me that,” or “In a very specific context…”
So let’s return to the question of love, which is, categorically, a transcendent claim. In this (dare I say, post-) modern world where nothing is known for sure, transcendent claims are dead in the water.
This might help explain the current boom in atheism across the United States, as well as the stark contrast contemporary art holds with that of times past. Modern artists explore emotional territories with audiences rather than enlighten them in classical cinematic fashion. Love plays a central role in many of these non-pedagogical films.
Case in point: “How Do You Know,” a 2010 rom-com about three city dwellers struggling to know what love is. The film, of course, never answers its own question. But really, how do you know whether or not lovers are merely naïve? “Lost in Translation,” “Sideways,” “(500) Days of Summer,” “Blue Valentine,” “Beginners,” and several other films have tackled this issue one way or another in the past decade. But none have made such a huge splash in the cultural and critical community as Michel Gondry’s 2004 film, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
Appearing on best-of charts for almost every film critic who recalled the greatest films of the 2000-2009 decade, “Eternal Sunshine” seems to have left a greater impression in filmgoers than the aforementioned films. Says The AV Club of the film, “It’s the rare film that shows us who we are now and who we’re likely, for better or worse, forever to be.”
It follows Joel Barish, a man who has the memories of his ex-girlfriend procedurally erased once he realizes that she had done the same to her own memories of him.
