Unknown White Male
My philospher friend Jon blogged about this film already as the three of us saw it together but I wanted to add my thoughts as well.
Unknown White Male is a documentary that has to do specifically with memory and delves both into the way in which our brains store different types of memories as well as what uniquely defines us. I’ve always felt we’re really just the cummulative sum of all of our experiences and really, if you think about it, this is a fairly popular notion. (Consider the expression “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”) but there hasn’t been a film to my knowledge that quite explores this concept with the same amount of depth.
By losing much of his episodic and semantic memory, the protagonist in this real life film experiences each thing anew, including different foods and even the ocean. He actually dives into the ocean not sure if he can actually swim or not (as good luck would have it, this part of his procedural memory is firmly in place.) He experiences well known bands like The Rolling Stones for the first time too. By talking to his friends and family, we also sense how his personality changed with the loss of his memory.
When something horrible or wonderful happens to us, we do store it in our brains. Even if it is something we haven’t thought about in awhile, it has still changed us in some way and affected us. It seems like it would be utterly refreshing to start again without all of this baggage.
The protagonist at one point asks the camera, “I mean, who are we really?” I am a little girl at the Toronto zoo looking at the animals. I am a teenager discovering The Cure for the first time and falling in love as well. I am in college roaming up and down the English library memorizing entire passages of King Lear. I am an adult trying to teach kids. I am all of these things all at once. Because time is just an illusion that makes us forget about ourselves and who we are. Who would I be without all of these things? Without the great expanse of memory that makes me myself? I really have to wonder about that.