This week we had to watch two films in which people who weren’t actually people were the stars. In Marjorie Prime we saw a prime, Walter, which was like a holographic person of Majorie’s husband. It took me a little while to realize he wasn’t real, but Marjorie walked over what should’ve been his solid feet. In the Star Trek episode we see Data, which is literally Data. He knows everything about the Enterprise and is almost like a human on the ship.
Marjorie uses Walter to listen to all the memories she’s soon going to forget because of Alzheimer’s. Since he’s a holographic projection, he doesn’t forget the things Marjorie tells him. She often asks him to tell her stories of things like her old dog and adds in details before he does. This shows Marjorie’s memory isn’t totally gone, but when it is, she’ll rely on Walter for all her memories.
One time Walter was telling her the story of when he proposed to her. She was adding in details that didn’t happen and essentially said that if they think about it enough, the next time they talk it’ll be true. This was Marjorie trying to change her autobiographical memory since this memory is a revisable and negotiable record of ones personal history. Her emotions were influencing this change because she was visibly more excited and happy about being proposed to after watching Casablanca. I know memories change because we think about them in different contexts, but Marjorie was just changing the whole memory which made me laugh. Marjorie was trying to change the memory with the Toni example, but I wonder how she would have reacted if let’s say Walter said the dog’s name wasn’t Toni and instead something else.
I feel like the Star Trek episode connected more with the emotions of Inside Out. When Picard finds out that Maddox has an ulterior motive, he first becomes sad and then angry. I imagined the emotions from Inside Out being in Picard’s head.
Maddox plans on putting all Data’s data in a positronic brain in order for him to figure out how he works. Data doesn’t want this to happen because even though he’s not human, he still remembers events and experiences with emotion, just like a human does. He’s scared that the episodic memory won’t come back to him and it’ll just be the semantics. Without his memories, he wouldn’t be himself. The flavor of the memory would be gone and this is how Data explained which I thought was perfect.
Memories are extremely important to when it comes to one’s identity. Memories and the way people recall certain events are the reason they act and behave in certain ways. This is the affective dimension of memory and all the characters in both films experienced it.
3 thoughts on “Memories with flavor <3”
Hi Alex,
One of the things that these texts are asking us to think about is what does it mean to be a person? Both Data and the Primes are AI, but are they “people”? And what makes an entity a person?
You make a great a point about how Marjorie fills in details as Walter Prime is telling her stories about her past. I think that we can talk about this in terms of extended cognition. Walter Prime is storing her memories for her; he is remembering for her—in a similar way that we might use a list to remember for us. But as we learned about in this week’s VT, we often remember together. It is not just that he preserves Marjorie’s memories, but that by talking and thinking with him she remembers more.
I agree that Marjorie deliberately changing her memory was pretty funny. But our memories change all the time without us intending to. (Consider for example, the debate between Tess and Jon about what kind of ice cream they were eating.) You point, though, about her attempting to change her autobiographical self is excellent. She wants to be the kind of person who gets proposed to after watching Casablanca in a movie theater (not My Best Friend’s Wedding), which is already a revision from the proposal scene we flashback to in the film.
Jessica Hautsch
Hi Alex!
I agree, it definitely took me a little while to realize that Walter wasn’t actually “real”. I thought he was an android at first but I made the same observation when Marjorie walked on his feet and her feet went through his. I think the film is existentially sad in the sense that she needs to rely on a hologram in order to enjoy her core memories as she slowly fades away due to Alzeimer’s. I noticed that with each story, Marjorie was adding in details that didn’t necessaryily happen. I think this was her trying to relinquish that feeling of safety and stability — or even her trying to “live through” the ultimate demise of her memory.
Reading your analysis on the Star Trek episode, I was able to see that it did have a lot of parallels to Inside Out–especially how Data keeps certain objects around as they have a deep sentimental meaning to him. Riley does this with her “Core Memory Islands”. Each event that has had a lasting impact on her creates a memory and a character trait to go along with it.
tpenske
Hey Alex!
I really enjoyed your post. I like how you connected Picard’s emotions in the Star Trek episode to how emotions worked in “Inside Out”. I also loved how you described memories as being important to one’s identity. I think that perfectly describes why Data was so afraid to lose his memories. Our memories do shape us and help us grow into the people we are. I also completely understand your confusion that Walter wasn’t actually real at first in the film. I thought the same thing when I began watching the film.
chowland