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Tag: Michel Gondry

  • On Carrie Bradshaw Developing the Idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

    On Carrie Bradshaw Developing the Idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

    Although it’s easy to shit on Sex and the City in the present, there are occasional moments in the show when one realizes how truly visionary it was for its time. You know, going to a tantric sex workshop and vaguely acknowledging white privilege while you’re getting a pedicure—things like that. But one thing Sex and the City rarely gets credit for is providing the kernel of the idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This occurred in season four of the series; specifically, episode six: “Time and Punishment” (the same episode where Charlotte York [Kristin Davis] was shamed for having “free time” instead of working). Which aired three years before Eternal Sunshine… was released in 2004.

    But back in July of 2001, when “Time and Punishment” first aired, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) had the sudden “revelation” that cheating on Aidan Shaw (John Corbett) back in mid-season three was the worst mistake of her life—or at least her romantic life (which, in truth, embodies one hundred percent of Carrie’s existence). Therefore, narcissist that she is, Carrie obviously believes it’s within her power to get him back…just because she decides on a whim that’s what she wants. And apparently, she’s not wrong in her assumption, wearing Aidan down with her seduction methods (however stalker-y) until he concedes that, sure, he wants to get back together.

    But before that glorious (for Carrie) moment, Bradshaw gives us one of her signature voiceover “insights” from the column de la semaine she’s writing, ruminating on a person’s inability to forgive if they can’t really forget. So it is that she tell us: “Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might be perfect together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Think how much easier it would all be if there was some swift surgical procedure to whisk away all the ugly memories and mistakes and leave only the fun trips and special holidays.” Yes, Carrie is perfectly describing what Charlie Kaufman would call “Lacuna Inc.” in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Minus the part where even the fun trips and special holidays are remembered. For, in Carrie’s ideal version of relationship memory erasure, you still at least remember the person existed in your life prior to the “procedure.”

    Kaufman and Michel Gondry did that concept one better by making it key for all traces of the person to be forgotten. Even though it only set up someone like Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) for the trap of gravitating right back toward the person they ended up finding toxic in the first place. Which is also something that Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice addresses in a more ominous way. But what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind prefers to do is position the inevitable “re-attraction” between two people who were already unable to make it work before as something with a more hopeful tinge. Not just more hopeful than what Blink Twice does with the concept, but also with what ends up happening to Carrie and Aidan by the end of season four (hint: total emotional catastrophe/an even more painful breakup than the first time around).

    However, before the reasons for their first breakup are proven yet again (and tenfold), to conclude her thoughts on the matter of “forgiving and forgetting,” Carrie adds, “But until that day arrives, what to do? Rely on the same old needlepoint philosophy of ‘forgive and forget’? And even if a couple can manage the forgiveness, has any[one] ever really conquered the forgetness? Can you ever really forgive, if you can’t forget?” In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there’s no need to forgive because all has been forgotten.

    As for setting up the premise for “Time and Punishment,” the episode that precedes it, “Baby, Talk Is Cheap,” also refers to the “unforgettability” (therefore, unforgivability) of what Carrie did to Aidan. An egregious sin he feels obliged to remind her of when she has the gall to come to his door late at night and plead her case for getting back together. None of her “logic” trumps the fact that, as Aidan screams, “You broke my heart!” But Carrie sees that only as a “minor detail” when presenting him with the “argument,” “Look, I know that you’re probably scared and I would be too, but it’s different now. Things are different. I-I’m different.” She then tries to prove it by taking a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and declaring, “Cigarettes, gone.” Of course, if they were really “gone,” they wouldn’t have been in her purse in the first place.

    Nonetheless, Carrie continues to insist that this “new” her was clearly not responsible for the actions of the old her and, thus, shouldn’t be punished by being denied another chance. She assures Aidan, “Seriously, all bad habits gone. This is a whole new thing because I miss you. And I’ve missed you.” As though her desire for him alone should be enough for him to want to forget about all the pain she caused him. And when Aidan screams the aforementioned line at her audacity, Carrie displays the kind of immaturity and embarrassing behavior she’s known for by simply running away instead of staying to face the firing squad, as it were.

    Ultimately, though, she gets what she wants: for Aidan to submit to her. Granted, not without an initial bout of passive aggressive behavior in “Time and Punishment” that finally prompts Carrie to say of the co-worker he’s been openly flirting with, “Why don’t you just fuck her, then we can both be bad.” When he comes to her door at the end of the episode, Carrie tells him, “I know that you can’t forget what happened, but I hope that you can forgive me.” But she was onto something before in her column—the idea that no true forgiveness can be attained without forgetting. Ergo, her wish for a Lacuna Inc.-like enterprise that wouldn’t “exist” until three years later…perhaps after Kaufman caught sight of Carrie’s column. And while Carrie might not have been the first to wish for this form of a “relationship lobotomy,” she was the only one to say it out loud in such a crystallized way before Eternal Sunshine… came along to perfect the notion.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Boons and Banes of Memory Erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice

    The Boons and Banes of Memory Erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice

    Romy Schneider once said, “Memories are the best things in life, I think.” But are they, really, if some of them serve only as a brutal, triggering source of trauma? In both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice, that’s the main type of memory being dealt with, therefore suppressed. But while one is a “rom-com” (Charlie Kaufman-style), the other is a horrifying thriller with a #MeToo slant. Both, however, do center on “the necessity” of memory erasure as it pertains to the relationship between men and women.

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, of course, is much “lighter” by comparison. Even though, in its time and its place, it was considered just as “bleak” as it was “quirky.” It’s also more hyper-focused on one relationship in particular, in contrast to Blink Twice speaking to the overall power dynamics between men and women as it relates to sex rather than “romance.” More to the point, the power dynamics between rich men and “regular” women. In Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s narrative, the main “sufferers” (or beneficiaries, depending on one’s own personal views) of select memory loss are Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (Jim Carrey). But it is the former who “brings it on both of them,” as she’s the one to initially enlist the memory-erasing services of Lacuna Inc., run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). Joel merely follows suit after comprehending what she’s done, deciding that she shouldn’t be the only person in the relationship permitted the luxury of forgetting about all that they shared together. Good and bad.

    So it is that he, too, undergoes the procedure, briefed on the ins and out of it by Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst), the receptionist at Lacuna, and Dr. Mierzwiak before opting to excise Clementine from his brain as well (in a scene later to be repurposed by Ariana Grande for the “we can’t be friends [wait for your love]” video). Of course, this isn’t to say he’s not extremely hurt by her “whimsical” decision to “remove” him. Alas, by way of explanation, Dr. Mierzwiak can only offer, “She wanted to move on. We provide that possibility.” One can imagine that Slater King (Channing Tatum) tells himself something similar about his own nefarious operation on a private island that might as well be referred to as Little Saint James (a.k.a. the former “Epstein Island”).

    Sex and the City, incidentally, provided something of a precursor to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind “idea kernel” (de facto, the Blink Twice one) in the form of the season four episode, “Time and Punishment.” This due to Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) theme for her column of the week being whether or not you can ever really forgive someone if you can’t forget what they did (to you). The answer, in both Eternal Sunshine… and Blink Twice, seems to be a resounding no. Though, in the former, there appears to be a greater chance for redemption even after the couple remembers everything that happened between them (and still decides to give it another shot). This courtesy of Mary, who not only unveils the truth to all of Lacuna’s clients (or “patients”), but also unearths her own bitter truth vis-à-vis memory erasure: Howard did it to her (per her request) after the two had an affair. And yet, just as it is for Frida (Naomi Ackie) in Blink Twice, it’s as though we are doomed to repeat the same behavior/gravitate toward the same toxic person regardless of whether the slate (a.k.a. the mind) is wiped clean or not.

    In Blink Twice, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut (which she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum), that gravitation proves to be much more harmful for Frida, who drags her best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), along for the ride after infiltrating Slater’s fancy benefit dinner for his requisite “foundation.” Although the two are initially working the party as cater waiters, Frida has them both switch into gowns (which scream “trying too hard” while still looking embarrassingly cheap). Naturally, Slater invites them to accompany him and his entourage back to the island where he’s been sequestered in order to “work on himself” as part of a grand performance of a public apology for “bad behavior” past (there’s no need to get specific about what that might have entailed, for there’s a whole range of bad behavior [typically, sexual abuse/harassment-related] that female viewers can easily imagine for themselves). Though, usually, if one is truly working on themselves, they do so by not buying a private island to retreat to. By actually trying to exist in and adapt to the world around them, rather than creating an entirely new one that fits their own “needs.” But that’s the thing: Slater and his ilk don’t want to adapt, don’t want to acknowledge that things have changed and so, too, must their old ways. Instead, they’ve set up a “paradise” for themselves that happens to be every woman’s hell.

    The only requirement to keep them there? Scrubbing any memories they have of being sexually assaulted every night on the island. In lieu of Lacuna, Slater needs only a perfume called Desideria, conveniently crafted from a flower that’s only found on that particular island. It’s, in many ways, a slightly more implausible method for making someone forget a traumatic experience than all-out memory erasure through a “scientific procedure” like Lacuna’s. But, for Kravitz’s purposes, it works. Those purposes extend not only to holding up a mirror to the ongoing and new-fangled ways that men, even post-#MeToo, still manage to behave like barbarians, but also to the ways in which women “self-protect” by conveniently “removing” memories that are too painful to deal with, especially when it comes to men and their egregious comportment. This, in part, is why the Desideria is so effective. There’s a sense that the women of the island are only too ready to forget/ignore what horrors befell them the previous night.

    In the abovementioned Sex and the City episode, there’s a scene at the end where Carrie repeats (seven times) to Aidan (John Corbett), “You have to forgive me” in different “Oscar-worthy” manners. Just as Slater repeats, “I’m sorry” in different dramatic ways until he then askes Frida if she forgives him yet. Seeing (and expecting) that she definitely doesn’t, it only serves to prove his point that, no, you cannot forgive without forgetting (though, to be fair/in this case, maybe just don’t act like women owe you unfettered access to their bodies/treat them like disposable objects designed solely for your amusement and there won’t be any need to forgive).

    Thus, he considers himself in the right (or at least that he “had no choice”) for doing what he did in order to get what he wanted out of her and the other women he lures to the island with his charm (and, of course, the allure of his wealth). In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is also a belief, on Clementine’s part, in being “in the right” for willingly expunging her own memories without any man needing to do it for her. In this sense, one might say that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is all about the importance of agency in having certain aspects of your memories erased for the sake of self-preservation.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Pee-Wee’s Playhouse + The Science of Sleep + The Mighty Boosh + Problemista + Kafka = Fantasmas

    Pee-Wee’s Playhouse + The Science of Sleep + The Mighty Boosh + Problemista + Kafka = Fantasmas

    Many people still like to tout that we’re in the Golden Age of television, forgetting perhaps that, for much of the 2000s, a new wave of innovation not seen since the 1980s was happening with said medium. Obviously, the most creative and absurd television show to come out of the Decade of Excess was Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. In fact, it’s a wonder that the show was ever greenlit and then allowed to continue for even more than a season, so “offbeat” and “weird” was it. And yet, children (and adults) immediately gravitated to the content, which was so different for the era of “normie Reaganism.” In commenting on the appeal of the show to Time in 2006, Paul Reubens stated, “At the time there weren’t many live-action people on [kids’] television. It was a time of Transformers and merchandise-driven shows that I didn’t think were creative. I believe kids liked the Playhouse because it was very fast-paced and colorful. And more than anything, it never talked down to them. I always felt like kids were real smart and should be dealt with that way.”

    In the present, it has become more and more the case that even adults are talked down to and treated rather stupidly (which is perhaps part of the reason why the U.S. has gradually transitioned into a place that’s destined to fulfill the predictions laid out in Idiocracy). Not only that, but all the programming geared toward that demographic has either become so serious or, on the other end of the spectrum, mind-numbing “reality” TV. In the early 00s, just as the latter category of television was gaining popularity, the British duo known as The Mighty Boosh (Julian Barratt and Noel Fieliding) would come together to eventually bring audiences The Mighty Boosh, a surrealist comedy that aired from 2004 to 2007. Sandwiched in between those years was the release of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep in 2006, an equally as surreal offering that seemed to indicate the population’s desire to retreat into fantasy at a time dominated by the brutal, embarrassing (for Americans, anyway) realities of war in a post-9/11 world. With Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, the same phenomenon was happening in the world, where a desire to retreat into the fantastical was preferable to further exposing oneself to the brainwashing propaganda instilled on both sides by the Cold War.

    Perhaps it can be said, then, that the arrival of Julio Torres’ Fantasmas also coincides with an overall desire to retreat into fantasy. Because, despite the “hope” of Kamala Harris taking things in a new direction for the U.S., the realities of 2024 remain particularly bleak. That doesn’t just include the ongoing Palestinian genocide, but so many other horrors that are less publicized, including the civil war and famine in Sudan, the violent oppression of women in Afghanistan, the violence and political instability in Venezuela, the total lawlessness of Haiti, the high rates of femicide in Mexico (indeed, Latin America overall has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world), the climate-related disasters that have led to something as impactful as the endlessly raging wildfires in Canada. The list truly does go on and on. And with so much brutality in the world, even in “ultra-modern,” “land of the free” America, one can’t blame Torres for often retreating into the comforts of his mind, where reality can be diluted and subdued. Especially since he lives in one of the shittiest places on Earth: New York. Of course, it’s no secret that New Yorkers get off on their misery, pride themselves on being able to “take it” where other more “lily-livered” types can’t. (Or simply have the good sense and self-respect to leave.)

    Perhaps knowing that the “real” New York isn’t all that romantic, Torres opts to create an “alternate version” of it in Fantasmas. And yes, as he freely admits, there are many correlations to his directorial debut, Problemista, in terms of both setting, tone and character. As he told Indiewire, “It feels like a sequel to [Problemista], with achieving the quote-unquote ‘Dream.’” But more than that, it’s the types of magical realism details in Problemista that parallel Fantasmas. Take, for example, how Alejandro (Torres) works at a place called FreezeCorp in Problemista, where clients pay to have themselves cryogenically frozen so that they might come to life in the future (again, Idiocracy comes to mind…or Austin Powers). In reality, as Isabella Rossellini narrates, “This company provides a form of euthanasia.” In the commercial, the FreezeCorp spokeswoman admits, “Our scientists are working around the clock to one day discover how to bring our patients back.”

    The FreezeCorp-esque entity in Fantasmas, called New Solutions Incorporated, instead pivots to the notion of uploading one’s consciousness and disposing of their corporeal self altogether. As Vicky (Sydnee Washington) assures Julio, “Our incorporeal service can free you of your daily bodily ailments and discomforts.” And, considering Julio is convinced he has skin cancer, he’s only too ready to get on board with what Grimes was already advocating for back in 2018 with “We Appreciate Power” when she said, “Come on, you’re not even alive/If you’re not backed up on a drive/And if you long to never die/Baby, plug in, upload your mind.” That’s just what Julio intends to do—the only problem is, like every other minor endeavor in this hyper-bureaucratic world, the company requires him to show “Proof of Existence” in order to participate. Irritated yet again by this demand, Julio asks incredulously, “I need to prove that I exist so I can stop existing?”

    It’s enough to drive him battier than riding in the car with Chester (Tomas Matos), a former Uber driver who has decided to create his own rideshare app called, what else, Chester. It is in his car that Julio first learns about the existence of a show called Melf, playing on the TV in the back of the cab. Needless to say, it’s a sendup of ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form), the late 80s sitcom that centered on an alien that looks more like he fled from the Planet Sesame Street. Like Alf, Melf ends up landing on the doorstep of a suburban family, but Julio takes the original concept and turns it on its ear by creating a sordid romance between Melf and Jeff (Paul Dano), the character modeled after Willie Tanner (Max Wright). Instead of making it “wholesome” family content, Julio positions Melf and Jeff as secret lovers who hide their trysts until it finally becomes too obvious to Jeff’s wife, Nancy (Sunita Mani). Despite the pain he causes his family—and the international scandal it invokes—Jeff is happy he can finally be his authentic self, free to love the, er, being he really wants to. It is little digressions like these that also make Fantasmas reminiscent of the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse style. Granted, Torres has far more “k-hole” moments, if you will, than Pee-Wee ever did. From Dodo the Elf (Bowen Yang) to Denise (Aidy Bryant) the Toilet Dresser to Becca the Customer Service Rep for Assembly Plan Insurance. It is the latter character who also ties into a scene from Problemista when Alejandro calls a banking representative after seeing that he has a negative amount in his account.

    Not understanding how he got so overdrawn, she chirpily tells him, “Every time you overdraft, the bank must impose a penalty of thirty-five dollars.” In disbelief, Julio snaps back, “So, what? Like an eight-dollar sandwich becomes a forty-five-dollar sandwich?” “Forty-three dollars,” she corrects matter-of-factly, adding, “That’s the policy, Mr. Martinez.” Julio continues to rebuff, “But that makes absolutely no sense. I distinctly recall making a cash deposit.” “And that deposit was flagged as potentially fraudulent, so it’s on hold now. For your protection.” “Right, but then that hold made me overdraw… Why would you let this happen? Why not just let my card get declined?” Unfazed, the representative says, “That’s not the way things work.” “But that is the way things should work. Otherwise, the bank is just benefitting from my misfortune. From the misfortune of people who can’t afford to make any mistakes. From people who have no margin of error.” “It’s policy. It is what it is.” Julio then launches into an even more emotional plea, concluding, “I know that there’s still a person in there, and I know that she can hear me.” For a moment, it seems like she might actually come around, only to end up shooting him in the face as she declares, “I stand with Bank of America.”

    This bank representative is so clearly the precursor for Becca in Fantasmas, who gets an ostensible orgasm over other people’s suffering as she delivers the voiceover, “God, I love insurance. And banks, and credit cards, and the military. Law and order. I pity those who do not stand behind us.” Torres’ contempt for people who are simply “following orders” (you know, like the Nazis) is a hallmark of his work. Along with his total inability, as someone with an abstract artist’s mind, to fathom how anyone could live with themselves at such a job (acting as a gatekeeper who gets off on their own small form of power). Apart from the reason of “needing money to survive”—by fucking up other people’s survival.

    In this sense, too, Torres touches on the idea that the employees of color so often working in these roles are only hurting their own kind in service of the white CEOs and other assorted power mongers at the top. The system in place, thus, continues to thrive through division and pitting people (usually the “unmonied”) against each other.

    Another noticeable similarity between Julio in Fantasmas and Alejandro is that the latter has a similar form of hypochondria, at one point texting his mother a picture of his tongue with the caption (in Spanish), “Do you see those dots? Is that something bad?” For Julio, the obsession becomes all about the birthmark that looks like a mole just underneath his ear. Rather than focusing on the crushing pressure and simultaneous banality of dealing with his ever-mounting bureaucratic affairs, Julio would rather obsess over finding the oyster-shaped earring that was the exact same shape as his birthmark so that he can place it against said birthmark in front of a doctor to prove that it’s grown, therefore needs to be biopsied.

    There to occasionally try to make him see reason is his “manager.” Or rather a performance artist playing his manager, but who has been doing it for so long that she’s really just his manager now. Alas, not even Vanesja (played by real-life performance artist Martine) or Julio’s “assistant,” a robot named Bibo (Joe Rumrill), can distract him from his quest to be distracted. And in the world of Fantasmas, there are many shiny people and objects to be distracted by—as there should be in any narrative worth its weight in magical realism.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Ariana Grande’s “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” Video: A Postmodernist’s Wet Dream

    Ariana Grande’s “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” Video: A Postmodernist’s Wet Dream

    It’s safe to say that, of all the pop stars working today (apart from, of course, Madonna), Ariana Grande is the one most blatantly enamored of postmodernism—wherein no distinction exists between high and low art, and references galore are placed in a “pastiche blender.” Even more than her contemporaries, Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift, Grande is the most obvious in how she’ll take a piece of pop culture and “reinterpret” it. Though perhaps some would say she’s merely recreating it, shot-for-shot, à la Gus Van Sant with Psycho. That much can practically be said of the video for her second single from Eternal Sunshine, “we can’t be friends (wait for your love).” This following her other pastiche-drenched video for “yes, and?,” which is a knockoff of Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted” video. 

    As with “yes, and?,” Christian Breslauer also directed “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” marking their second collaboration. Perhaps they didn’t end up working together sooner due to Grande’s long-standing devotion to Hannah Lux Davis, who has brought us so many Grande music videos over the years, including “Bang Bang,” “Love Me Harder,” “Focus,” “Into You,” “Side to Side,” “breathin,” “thank u, next” (also filled with movie-related pastiche), “7 rings,” “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored,” “boyfriend” and “Don’t Call Me Angel.”

    But “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” has a different vibe from all of those aforementioned light-hearted videos (of which, even “breathin” was more light-hearted than this). Suffused with the kind of melancholia and restraint that comes in the wake of a breakup, Grande and Breslauer take what Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman did in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and distill it down to four minutes and forty-three seconds (something Kaufman would likely be horrified by). Starting with Grande being in the waiting room of “Brighter Days Inc.” (dumbed down from the more “esoteric” company name in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lacuna Inc.—lacuna meaning “an unfilled space; a gap”), Grande’s penchant for pastiche might even extend to the 2004 (also when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released) video for Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For?” In it, Stefani also finds her in a dubious, nondescript waiting room filling out a form filled with odd questions (e.g., “Do you like the smell of gasoline?”). Except it isn’t to help erase her memory, but rather, “be inspired” a.k.a. get rid of her writer’s block. Grande doesn’t tend to have any issues with that, especially when she’s in her “after a breakup/new relationship” phase. 

    Riffing on Clementine Kruczynski’s (Kate Winslet) look, Grande sits in the waiting room of Brighter Days Inc.—an air of uncertainty about her—styled in a fur-trim coat, tights with knee-high boots (featuring a 70s-esque flower pattern) and a flower flourish drawn in white around her eye. This particular detail gives more Katy Perry than Clementine vibes (especially in the former’s hippie-dippy “Never Really Over” video), but it’s part of Grande’s own spin on the character. Which now also incorporates some version of herself thanks to her recent experience of wanting to erase the memory of a botched relationship. Namely, the one that resulted in her two-year marriage to Dalton Gomez. Hence, like Joel Barish (Jim Carrey, who Grande is a well-known fan of), we see Grande-as-“Peaches” (a none too subtle allusion to Clementine) filling out a form that basically denies Brighter Days Inc. any legal responsibility for what might happen after the procedure—including a lingering and barely dormant sense of regret. 

    So it is that we see “Peaches” checking the “Yes” box under the statement, “You have given extensive thought behind your decision and give Brighter Days Inc. the exclusive permission to remove this person completely from your memory.” Clementine herself, of course, didn’t give much extensive thought to it, later telling Joel, “You know me, I’m impulsive.” Peaches is likely the same way, simply wanting to rid herself of the pain that comes from remembering a failed relationship. Thus, despite seeing the anxiousness radiating from her as she resolves to go through with the decision, Peaches knows that it’s “for the best.” 

    Watching the “technicians” remove key mementos of the relationship from the box she brought in (the same way the patients in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind do), viewers soon see the wall of the “operating room” open up behind her (kind of the way the wall opens up behind Miley Cyrus in the “Used To Be Young” video) to reveal the first memory to be scraped. The one that relates to the tiny teddy bear in the box. A bear plucked from what the Brits (and Arctic Monkeys) call a teddy picker by Grande’s ex, played by Evan Peters…who is labeled simply as “Lover” where credited (how Swiftian). The memory then starts to black-out around her (the same way it does for Joel just as he’s remembering all the “good stuff” he loved about being with Clementine). Startled by the abyssal nature of the process, this is the moment where the lyrics, “Me and my truth, we sit in silence/Mmm, baby girl it’s just me and you.” And as the very “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn beat swells again, the blackness around her is replaced by another memory, one in which Lover’s back is turned to her in bed. While she sits up in the place next to him, it’s as though the two are at the point in their relationship where things have become strained, and words have lost all meaning. 

    From this memory, Grande runs out to open the door, leading her into a snow-filled landscape where “Brighter Days” of them making snow angels together exist. This being Grande’s version of Joel and Clementine lying on the ice of the frozen-over Charles River (though, in actuality, that scene was filmed in Yorktown Heights). A “cut” is then made by way of a sheet falling over the scene to transition us from Peaches lying on the snow to Peaches lying in bed with Lover (side note: the sheets’ pattern gives off a decidedly “hospital bed” feel—maybe an unwitting allusion to how love makes you crazy). And in the same way that Clementine is literally yanked away from Joel while they’re lying on the ice together, so, too, is Lover while he and Peaches are looking at each other with the same loving fondness in bed. 

    In the next scene, Breslauer cuts to the memory box again, as a technician picks up a framed photo of the two arranged in “Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) and Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) pose” with a cake between them, exactly as it was in John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. It is at this moment that viewers might realize Grande is incapable of sticking to just one movie as a visual reference point (even with “34+35,” she couldn’t “only” refer to Austin Powers with her fembot aesthetic….there had to be a Frankenstein premise as well)—something we saw at a peak in “thank u, next.” A video that, although it wields Mean Girls as its primary inspiration, also sees fit to devolve into nods to Bring It On, Legally Blonde and 13 Going on 30. 

    While it’s unclear if Lover is doing this Sixteen Candles homage deliberately because he knows how much Peaches adores the movie or it’s simply another instance of Grande incorporating a pop culture reference apropos of nothing (which is understandable, as many women and gay men’s minds function that way), the point is that Lover disappears from the picture just as they lean into kiss one another over the birthday candles (something that was just as stressful to watch in Sixteen Candles for those fearing a fire hazard). Sitting there alone as the lyric, “So for now, it’s only me/And maybe that’s all I need” plays, Grande blows out the candles before we see the map of her brain again. In the style of Joel freaking out when the “eraser guys” manage to find Clementine hidden within a memory of his childhood (a suggestion made by Clementine so that he could hold onto her in some way even after the process), Grande starts panicking and crying before the computer flashes a sign that reads, “Relinking.” 

    In another memory still, we see Grande on the couch with Lover as he presents her with a necklace that then turns into a dog collar before Lover himself is transformed into a dog (for, as Birds of Prey taught us, dogs are the animals women are most likely to replace men with). This is where Grande takes the most liberties with her reinterpretation of the movie, for it seems that Brighter Days Inc. isn’t just capable of erasing memories, but also reworking them entirely. As such, the interior decor around her continues to, let’s say, shapeshift, while the TV in front of her plays back the memories one last time before we see Peaches shaking hands with the doctor and nurse for doing their job, the procedure now over. 

    The image of the box of memories, teddy bear and all, being incinerated then leads into Peaches walking down a street with a new boyfriend and passing Lover with his new girlfriend, neither party registering any kind of recognition. And just like that, Peaches forgets all about her pain. Just as viewers might forget all about the original Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But that’s what pastiche is about: subverting collective memories for the sake of consumption.

    Genna Rivieccio

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