In Memento, there was a fluidity that I sensed between the black and white scenes and those filmed in color. I considered these variations in color and these switching backs of scenes in a backward but linear order a metaphor for the imperfect human memory, which is intensified in the character Leonard. Because Leonard believes he is unable to recall anything that has happened since the night of his wife’s murder\/rape and at the same time insists that he will not give up the structure of living each moment in a linear, progressing order, he suffers from his desire to control his mind and get revenge on his wife’s supposed offender. The possibility, however, that Leonard is responsible for his wife’s death makes him a tragic character—someone unable of letting go and incapable of letting go (his last memory being his wife’s death). <\/p>\n
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Then there is Teddy. On some level, Teddy reminded me of Orr’s doctor in the Lathe of Dreams. Of course, Teddy is and isn’t who he says he is, but what are we to believe since we’re viewing this reality from the perspective of someone with a memory disability? Anyway, Teddy behaves parallel to Leonard. He too wants to be in control, reduced to taking advantage of Leonard’s disability by setting him up as a hit man. Again, I circled back, the way Memento wants us to, and considered how Leonard unknowingly overdosed his wife with insulin and that he’s already avenged her rape at some time prior to the action in the film. This is what Teddy tells us, so his death at the beginning of the movie seemed unjustified. But Memento made me think about whether it matters why<\/em><\/strong> Teddy got shot; the outcome for Teddy is having his disabled hit man turn around and destroy him (in a Frankenstein fashion). Does Teddy deserve death? Maybe not, though it could be that things work as they must in the long run. Teddy was behind a lot of other deaths, Leonard was his paranoid weapon. I wondered what would happen to Leonard after his “master” is no longer setting up his days—but then there’s that little flicker where Leonard’s the man sitting in Sammy’s seat at the asylum. So, could that be what our writer and director suggest awaits the unchanged modernist? Living our days around a bunch of other crazy people. Well, that doesn’t sound so different. <\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Memento, there was a fluidity that I sensed between the black and white scenes and those filmed in color. I considered these variations in color and these switching backs of scenes in a backward but linear order a metaphor for the imperfect human memory, which is intensified in the character Leonard. Because Leonard believes … Continue reading Parallels between Leonard and Teddy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}