Research Paper

MICHAEL J. MEYER

Reflections on Comic Reconciliations: Ethics, Memory, and Anxious Happy Endings

Comedies of remarriage typically display a char- acteristic view of the reconciliation of troubled friendships. My preliminary thesis is that the “re- marriage reconciliations” at the heart of comedies of remarriage ground an important and yet under- appreciated aesthetic category that I call “anxious happy endings.” Remarriage comedies also high- light the often overlooked question: are there eth- ical reasons to try to hold on to certain memories? I investigate a crucial aspect of this question by considering the recent film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), which pro- vides an informed study of ethics and memory.

i. an ethics of thick relations and memory

An insightful analysis of ethics and memory has been provided by Avishai Margalit.1 I begin this in- vestigation with his version of a now standard divi- sion: “the distinction between ethics and morality. . . . [T]his in turn is based on a distinction between two types of human relations: thick and thin ones. Thick relations are grounded in attributes such as parent, friend, lover. . . . [T]hin relations, on the other hand, are backed by the attribute of being human.”2 My present interest is not with morality but instead with an ethics of thick relations and close-knit communities, especially friendships.3

Within this broad area I will pay close atten- tion to eudaimonistic issues (especially, a virtue ethics of personal character that focuses, as Aris- totle does, if not to all of the conclusions that he does, on human flourishing and on the centrality of friendship to such flourishing).4 Given this nar- rowing of the field, the question of an ethics of memory can be restated: is it on occasion virtuous

or admirable to try to hold on to certain memories and, at least sometimes, vicious and reprehensi- ble to not try to forestall one’s forgetting?5 If, as I shall argue, trying to hold on to certain memo- ries is properly a source of ethical admiration, the central reason is that keeping such memories is one basic condition of human flourishing. Forget- ting, especially in the context of intimate or thick relations, may impoverish one’s life.

ii. an ethical reading of eternal sunshine and the loss of memory

Montaigne expresses the ethical usefulness of memory nicely: “Memory is an instrument of won- drous service, without which judgment is hard put to do its duty.”6 As Margalit notes, promise keep- ing is an important example.7 One famous ver- sion of this link between memory and judgment is George Santayana’s remark, “Those who can- not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”8 While Santayana’s comment is perhaps most often associated with William L. Shirer’s use of it as the moral epigraph for Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the general point about memory and judgment is profoundly important for an ethics of intimate relations. This point is also the driving narrative concept of the witty screenplay by Char- lie Kaufman and the delightful film directed by Michel Gondry.9 The cost to good judgment re- sulting from forgetting is on full display in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in two distinct but intertwined dramas. First of all, Mary’s story (a tragic if ultimately avenged subplot) provides an example of that particular kind of forgetting that increases the danger of the repetition of serious

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66:1 Winter 2008 c© 2008 The American Society for Aesthetics

78 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

mistakes. Second, Joel’s story is a more general ex- ample of the forgetful duplication of actions, the disadvantages of which are importantly not lim- ited to the repetition of mistakes.

In Eternal Sunshine Dr. Howard Mierzwiak di- rects Lacuna Inc., a popular (especially at the holidays) New York practice of memory erasure. While his waiting room is filled with clients like the woman seeking to be spared the painful mem- ory of her dead dog, the booming business of the outwardly kind and seemingly well-intentioned doctor is the elimination of the memory of de- structive love affairs for those clients who want “to move on.” Mierzwiak asserts, “We provide that possibility.”10 As Joel contemplates “erasing Clementine”—who is in one way already lost to him because she has just had her memory of Joel erased—Dr. Mierzwiak remarks, “I suggest you at least consider the potential pitfalls of a psyche for- ever spinning its wheels.”11 Lacuna’s memory era- sure business is exceptionally busy around Valen- tine’s Day, during which time the film is set. The doctor is aided by a cheerful young staff of libidi- nous incompetents who mix the work of erasing their clients’ now painful memories of past lovers with some darkly farcical pleasure seeking of their own. Perhaps the most vulnerable member of this team is Mary, the young receptionist who is smit- ten by the much older Mierzwiak and what she initially sees as his deeply humanitarian practice. Mary says, “To let people begin again. It’s beauti- ful. You look at a baby and it’s so fresh, so clean, so free. Adults [are] like this mess of anger and pho- bias and sadness . . . hopelessness. And Howard just makes it go away.”12

First, in Mary’s story the ethical cost of for- getting serious mistakes is revealed to be the thereby increased risk of repeating them and suf- fering again the consequent harm to self and oth- ers that follows. The audience learns late in the film that Mary has already had a painful affair with the married Dr. Mierzwiak.13 Ignorant of her own past—having already had her bitter memories of this affair erased—Mary flirts again with the not-so-good doctor (who, it then becomes clear, had encouraged Mary’s erasure process, though his precise motives for doing so remain obscure). Repetition of this disaster is averted only by the last-moment arrival of Mierzwiak’s wife. The film makes clear that Mary’s near repetition of her tragic past results in part from the choice to erase memories that left those motives leading to the

tragedy completely unchecked by regret. As Mon- taigne observed, in the absence of memory, judg- ment is prone to error.

Second, the film’s central tale is about the era- sure of Joel’s memory of Clementine. While Joel’s is the most broadly revealing example of the in- strumental value of memory, the lessons of Joel’s story are not focused on the risks of repeating forgotten mistakes. The clever and complex way this particular story is told puts it beyond simple summary. It should suffice for present purposes to note the following. The bulk of the narrative concerns itself with an internal view of this era- sure of Joel’s memory, which is cross-cut with an external view of the same. Internally the narrative proceeds, roughly, in reverse order—that is, we see Joel’s most recent memories of Clementine erased first and the history of their friendship unfolds be- fore us, and him, in reverse. This “wiping” of Joel’s memory proceeds relentlessly toward the last of Joel’s recollections, that of his first meeting with Clementine. This is further complicated by the presumption of the film that, as Mierzwiak notes, “there is an emotional core to each of our mem- ories.”14 The narrative upshot of this is that the exact reverse chronology of the story is less than orderly, presumably a consequence of the emo- tional dimensions of each memory—that is, their relative conscious or unconscious importance to Joel. Because midway into the process Joel begins to resist and to try to hold on to certain powerful memories, the erasure of his memory of his two- year-long relationship with Clementine proceeds imperfectly and, at times, hilariously.15 The master narrative of the film into which this story is placed finally leads Joel and Clementine to a jointly am- nesic Valentine’s Day “reunion” on the beach at Montauk. This unknowing reunion is aptly placed at the start of the film so, like Joel and Clementine, the audience does not know until looking back from the very end that this scene is indeed a re- connection rather than a first meeting.

This central story of Eternal Sunshine inge- niously highlights how Joel’s forgetting of Clemen- tine has various distinct but related disadvantages that go well beyond his incurring the liability of repeating past mistakes. First of all, as Joel be- gins to have his memory of the bad times with Clementine erased (those times which, in anger, he is, at the outset of the procedure, glad to have erased), he loses as well many good and tender memories.16 Joel’s later change of heart and mind

Meyer Reflections on Comic Reconciliations 79

becomes clear when, as we come upon a soon-to- be eliminated memory of an especially affection- ate moment, he says to the technicians of Lacuna Inc., “Please let me keep this memory; just this one.”17 Clearly, the fresh start that is purchased with a loss of memory results in the yet deeper loss of the awareness of the honest fact that Joel did once love Clementine, their obvious troubles (her alcohol abuse as well as their intertwined prob- lems with self-esteem) notwithstanding. In short, if you come to forget the bad times, the good times go too.

Second, if you come to forget the bad times— times wherein you have been wronged or hurt— you cannot remember enough to be able to for- give. This point about memory and forgiveness is central to the ethical reading of the film. More- over, there is reason to think that this link between memory and forgiveness (and thereby the ethi- cal reading itself) is central to the film. This fun- damental link is represented on two levels. First of all, the powerful conclusion of the film begins with a series of apologies and moments of some- times unspoken and even uncertain forgiveness between Joel and Clementine.18 This merciful end- ing is made possible because, after their unknow- ing “reunion” at Montauk, Joel and Clementine receive from Mary Lacuna Inc.’s copies of their own memory files. Indeed, this restoration of rec- ollection is, for one, Mary’s way of seeking for- giveness and making amends for her role in the destruction of their memories.19

These files, complete with audiotapes, pro- vide detailed evidence that Joel and Clemen- tine have had memories of each other erased. Joel’s and Clementine’s tapes—veritable litanies of complaints about the other and the sad state of their former friendship—are partially overheard by each other toward the end of the film, which has the initial consequence of rendering them an- gry with each other and quite confused. How- ever, the ultimate dramatic upshot of this influx of mostly bitter memory brings both Joel and Clementine, who are at this point only begin- ning to absorb these recovered “quasi-memories,” to a concluding cascade of apologies. In a scene displaying their state of mutual confusion and regret—especially about what the erasure of their memory has brought about between them—Joel says, “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” and Clementine replies, “It’s ok.” She then quickly follows with, “I really like you and I hate that I said mean

things about you.” Only moments later Joel says, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Clementine follows, once again, with “I’m sorry about all this.”20 This final flood of contrition and forgiveness—shot in a gray interior with a somber soundtrack—is the key that allows the two main characters to move forth at the very end of the film to begin to recover their friendship. Yet, this move toward a powerful, if also decidedly modest, comic ending is only the first way that the film expressly connects memory and mercy.

The link between memory and forgiveness em- phasized in the final scene of the story is also set up on a metaphorical level from the very outset of the film. When Joel first hears Clementine’s name he says, “It’s a pretty name. . . . It means merci- ful, right? Clemency?”21 To fully understand this link between Clementine and clemency, it is cru- cial to begin by noting that for the bulk of the film (the entire story of Joel’s erasure process, which reveals most of what we know about their friend- ship) it is strictly speaking not Clementine, but Joel’s memory of Clementine, that is on-screen.22

Seeing Joel’s view of the erasure process, we real- ize that he is not only stuck inside his mind, unable to escape and stop the process, but we are also fully in Joel’s world, seeing people and events as he and only he remembers them. The strongly subjective point of view of these memories is crucial to appre- ciating the place of Clementine as the film’s sym- bol of clemency, as well as Joel’s Muse of mercy. For most of the film Clementine is simply a player in Joel’s internal story, a figment of Joel’s imagina- tion of their past friendship. In this particular nar- rative locale, which echoes Joel’s portrayal from the outset, Clementine personifies clemency. From this viewpoint, to “erase Clementine” is not only to erase access to memories that provide the oppor- tunity for forgiveness (my point above about how making use of this opportunity ultimately leads to the comic ending of the film). Doing so is also to erase the film’s main sign of forgiveness.

Furthermore, from the point of view of Joel’s ethical character, to “erase Clementine” is to erase one chief source supporting his disposition to for- give. Joel’s life without memories of Clementine is his life without connection to her friendly in- spiration toward forgiveness, which would surely impair Joel’s own talent for mercy. This under- standing of Clementine as Joel’s Muse of mercy is best seen within the context of Aristotle’s idea of the friend as an “other-self.”23 (I will discuss

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why Aristotelian friendship is an especially apt notion to invoke in this particular film below in Section iii.) Right now the main point is this: in the Aristotelian tradition (from Seneca to Montaigne to Emerson) of the friend as an “other self,” the friend is understood as a source of moral suste- nance. For Aristotle, “[t]hose who wish for their friends’ good for their friends’ sake are friends in the truest sense.”24 In short, for one to forget a friend who directly promotes one’s virtuous dispo- sitions would be a form of ethical self-mutilation (a point to which I will return in Section iv). This de- struction undermines the seeking of individual and shared progress toward happiness, understanding “happiness” here as a kind of ethical flourishing or eudaimonia. So “erasing Clementine” has the poignant consequence for Joel of eliminating a personally powerful prompting for his own ten- dency to live out the virtue of mercy. The upshot of this use of Clementine as Joel’s inspiration for forgiveness is that, for the bulk of the story, he is experiencing the erasure of that part of his mem- ory that helps provide access to his disposition for the virtue of clemency as well as related aspects of eudaimonia that would arise from this source.

So “Joel’s Clementine” is a figure of forgiveness and a Muse of mercy. Both points become quite clear when at the end of the story both Clemen- tine and Joel’s memory of Clementine are brought back into the film and back into relationship with him. As I outlined above, the result of this sym- bolic return of memory combined with this reunit- ing of the friends is not only that the possibility as well as the spur to the disposition for mercy re- turn but also that the penultimate scene, with its repeated requesting and granting of forgiveness, quite naturally leads to the powerful end of the story. And it is this very progression that gener- ates one final point in support of the ethical read- ing of the film. Indeed this final point focuses di- rectly on the moving and upbeat ending of the film. The point is this: if you can’t remember the bad times (and so, as argued above, you simply can’t forgive), you also can’t achieve reconciliation. The link between memory and reconciliation is the eth- ical lesson of the comic conclusion of the film. If we understand ‘forgiveness’ as it is often under- stood (as a forswearing of attitudes like resent- ment), forgiveness between friends may be only a first step toward reconciliation.25 Within this story reconciliation might be best understood as based on a mutual forgiveness (one given and received in

both directions) and a further shared appreciation of this merciful exchange. For one, such a recon- ciliation is the final step toward reestablishing a friendship of an Aristotelian sort.26 And reconcil- iation is the unmistakable subject of the final scene of the film.

Seeing this point is enhanced by the fact that the end of the film has two distinct final scenes— the moment of discussion in the hallway and then the last images of Joel and Clementine play- ing happily on the beach. Each scene exhibits a separate aspect of reconciliation. First, consider the ending dialogue of the film, which displays a penetrating insight about renewed friendship. Af- ter Clementine has left Joel’s apartment in anger and confusion (in spite of their recent series of apologies), Joel follows her into the hallway.

Joel (urgently): Wait.

Clementine (with slight exasperation): What?

Joel: I don’t know.

Clementine & Joel (impatiently talking over each other): What do you want, Joel? I don’t know, just wait. I want you to wait for just a while.

(Long pause broken by Clementine’s anguished exhale that signals to Joel that he can approach her.)

Clementine: Okay.

Joel: Really?

Clementine (sternly): I’m not a concept, Joel. I’m just a fucked-up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. I’m not perfect.

Joel (plaintively): I can’t see anything I don’t like about you right now.

Clementine (forcefully): But you will. You will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped be- cause that’s what happens with me.

Joel (with an air of wise surrender): Okay.

Clementine (softening): Okay.

Joel (with a goofy smile): Okay.27

Clementine (whose anguish has now turned to laughter): Okay.

The sheer affective power of this scene, a re- sult of excellent acting, gives this insightful dia- logue immense potency and authority. The friends have found each other, once again. And with this

Meyer Reflections on Comic Reconciliations 81

rediscovery, and the shared awareness of the im- perfect nature of their friendship, the comic con- clusion has now been reached. The last ethical connection has also been made: in the film, mem- ory leads to acts of forgiveness that between these friends lead to mutual acts of reconciliation.

Given Joel and Clementine’s lingering confu- sion about all that has just transpired, the direc- tor underlines this subtly upbeat closing dialogue by cutting from sounds of Joel’s and Clementine’s shared laughter in the hallway to a final shot of the now-again-friendly couple playing on the beach at Montauk. Whether this is a memory or a pro- jected future or perhaps both we do not know. For enhanced expressive power the exact middle of the scene of reconciliation just set out has a cue to a song, the lyrics of which underscore the emotional roots of reconciliation.28 Over the fi- nal shot of the reunited friends playing, we hear these lyrics, sung at an unhurried tempo: “Change your heart; look around you. Change your heart; it will astound you. I need your loving like the sunshine.” These lyrical reflections play over this final shot of re-attained friendship—an ongoing deeper, if also clearly imperfect, reunion—that has been provided for by the friends’ acts of reconcilia- tion. Indeed, taken together these two parts of the final scene are a discerning example of a “remar- riage” by the general standards of the comedies of remarriage. This particular interpretation rep- resents further ethical and aesthetic developments that I will examine in the next section.

So far the ethical reading of the film goes as follows. Memory is of indispensable instrumental value to ethical judgment in various ways—all of the following of which are on display in this film: without painful memories, you are prone to repeat past mistakes, resulting in further suffering; with- out painful memories you also lose much in your past that sustains you; without painful memories you forget that which is necessary to be able to forgive a friend; and without the forgiveness, the opportunity for which is itself a gift of memory, an act of friendly reconciliation remains elusive. As Montaigne suggests, without memory judgment is thwarted. And without good judgment there is lit- tle or no opportunity for eudaimonia. Eternal Sun- shine portrays the risks of unhappy, even tragic, outcomes that result from lost memory. Such risks in turn provide compelling reasons to try to avoid forgetting even quite painful parts of one’s past.

iii. comedies of remarriage, ethics, and memory

I have already called Eternal Sunshine a comedy— I will also describe how it is more precisely a twenty-first-century development of a comedy of remarriage à la Stanley Cavell.29 Both claims might well be questioned, and defending them briefly will help us further understand how this noteworthy film illuminates the role of ethics and memory in remarriage comedies. A no less author- itative source on the film than writer Charlie Kauf- man says that he “realized early on that [Eternal Sunshine] wasn’t a comedy.”30 Nonetheless, there are well-known problems with discrediting an in- terpretation of any film on the basis of a conflict- ing understanding of the film from any one ma- jor source (even an indispensable and justly pres- tigious writer for a film, the success of which is indisputably related to the story and the screen- play).31 Furthermore, in the case of Eternal Sun- shine we must remain aware, as I argued above, of how director Michel Gondry realized Kaufman’s screenplay, especially the comic conclusion.

I start with the ordinary notion of comedy as a closing feature of a narrative. For present purposes a comedy will be seen as a humorous story with a happy ending or, more subtly, a humorous story that concludes with a mere possibility of a happy future for the main protagonists.32 The latter de- scription of comedy fits some of Kaufman’s stated hopes for Eternal Sunshine: “I never wanted to be happy that they got together at the end. I didn’t necessarily want it to be sad, but I wanted to leave it up to the audience to decide.”33 Of course, the film Gondry ultimately directed is, I have argued, a comedy in the former sense—that is, it has a straightforwardly happy ending. If the dialogue is subtly happy, indicating only a bare possibility of renewed friendship, the imagery and the lyrics of the coda, as the reading in Section II shows, sug- gest that the film is, in my sense, a simple comedy, because the coda foreshadows some kind of happy future for Joel and Clementine.

Yet this claim that Eternal Sunshine is best seen as a straight-up comedy must be qualified in two ways. First of all, I understand comic “happiness” as some kind of eudaimonia. For present purposes, a comedy—simple or subtle—reaches some con- clusion with regard to the ethical well-being of the main characters, especially as this is obtained in part through their own efforts. In this sense a simple happy ending is an ending portending

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genuine human flourishing for the main protag- onists; a subtle happy ending allows only the pos- sibility of such authentic flourishing. Second, such happiness or flourishing might also be anxious or troubled. This is a point to which I shall soon re- turn, but the main idea is that happy endings might well include some genuine anxiety, future human happiness itself being a complex matter. Given these two qualifications, “happily ever after” sug- gests an ethical depth as well as an uncertain future.

Eternal Sunshine is also a kind of romantic com- edy, belonging in the final analysis to the gen- eral family of remarriage comedies first identified by Stanley Cavell. That this might be doubted is obvious—for one, between Joel and Clementine there is neither marriage nor divorce nor remar- riage. In this respect Eternal Sunshine seems a long way from a central exemplar of the remar- riage comedy like The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940). Starting to address this doubt, let me briefly discuss some comments Cavell has made regarding this subgenre. Cavell says that “mar- riage is an allegory in these films of what philoso- phers since Aristotle have thought about under the title of friendship, what it is that gives value to personal relations.”34 He notes, “Marriage in these films may . . . be taken to stand for the idea of friendship. . . . [T]he question of sealing or weav- ing together the life of romance and of friendship, while clearly taken in these films, almost without exception . . . is rarely made explicit in the pair’s conversations . . . though it should be seen as per- vading them.”35 In remarriage comedies, as dis- tinct from, say, Shakespearean comedies, friend- ship supplies the only authentic basis for marriage. Moreover, since in remarriage comedies “mar- riage” stands first of all for some conception of friendship, then the presence of literal marriage and divorce is not a necessary condition for mem- bership in the genre. One case in point here is the metaphorical nature of the first marriage and di- vorce in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) or the lack of either in Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938).

In developing and then expanding Cavell’s basic views I will focus on one main feature that clearly is central to the remarriage comedy: “the drive of its plot is not to get the central pair together, but to get them back together, together again.”36 In other words, what I take to be indispensable to remarriage comedy is some kind of reconciliation

between erstwhile lovers, spouses, or friends.37 The ethical reading so far suggests several points about what I will call “remarriage reconciliations,” the first group of which concerns comedies of remar- riage in general; the others are essentially about Eternal Sunshine.

First off, in these films a true marriage is not reducible to either a ceremonial moment in time or a legal institution. Instead such a marriage is, or is grounded in, a standing willingness to take part in a recurring series of remarriages. Put differ- ently, commitment between friends—when deep or especially trustworthy—is at times best seen as a pattern of recommitment. This repetition sug- gests something in general about reconciliation between friends; a suitable “remarriage reconcili- ation” is no one-time gesture. Such a reconciliation is, for one, an ethical disposition—a propensity for recommitment that, in order to have value, needs to be lived over and over again. A full-fledged “re- marriage reconciliation” is not a single act but a targeted disposition to reconciliation. It is in this way that such rapprochement is a crucial aspect of eudaimonia. Against this background, what Eter- nal Sunshine helps to further clarify is this: that one key to the disposition to recommitment or remar- riage or reconciliation is an acceptance, or even better a shared acceptance, of risk and even ten- sion between the friends. In Eternal Sunshine this acceptance is signaled by Joel’s modestly cheerful “Okay” at the end of the film. This is an act of ac- ceptance that “living happily ever after” takes the form of “living uncertainly ever after,” but doing so in a spirit of memory, forgiveness, and reconcil- iation.

Understood this way, the “remarriage reconcil- iation” displays how it is that happy endings are obviously just beginnings—more precisely, in this genre, happy endings are “re-beginnings” or start- overs that cry out for a memory of insult and in- jury as well as forgiveness and friendly reconcilia- tion. In classic remarriage comedies happy endings are typically second chances for a more mature couple. Such happy endings are also, in general, the least stable and the least ethically satisfying when they are not backed by a sturdy and dis- cerning disposition for reconciliation. In the clas- sic period of the Hollywood remarriage comedy, one case in point is the madcap and ultimately insecure remarriage at the end of Preston Stur- gis’s Palm Beach Story (1942). Sturgis underlines the insecurity of this particular remarriage by

Meyer Reflections on Comic Reconciliations 83

explicitly casting suspicion on the future of the principal couple’s reconciliation by following the ultimately sarcastic ending title “And they lived happily ever after” with the skeptical closing cap- tion “Or did they?” Possibly even more insecure is the nervously fraught ending of the somber re- marriage comedy His Girl Friday (1940), directed by Howard Hawks. In short, reconciliation alone (or perhaps in its limiting case in Hawks’s film mere reconnection without forgiveness) within this genre of films is no guarantee of a conven- tionally successful future for the central couple, let alone an ethically enlightened one.

It is also crucial to see that a “remarriage recon- ciliation” is not a reconciliation at all costs—least of all, as Eternal Sunshine crucially highlights, at the cost of forgetting serious problems. That way lies unhappiness, perhaps even tragedy. The ethi- cally best happy endings in this genre are grounded in reconciliations that are born of solid memory of past troubles. Furthermore, as Eternal Sunshine brings to the fore, ethically admirable comic con- clusions can include a stalwart acceptance (and best of all, a shared acceptance) of some sense of risk and some anxiety about the future of the friendship. Highlighting these insights in the main theme of reconciliation within remarriage comedy establishes for Eternal Sunshine a place among the central exemplars of this rich style. In short, Eter- nal Sunshine helps us better understand the risk and anxiety of the “remarriage reconciliation,” which is itself one key animating idea of this ethi- cally powerful genre. Consider in this respect the dialogue toward the end of The Philadelphia Story where Tracy (Katherine Hepburn) says to Dexter (Cary Grant) at the moment of their proposed re- marriage: “Dext are you sure?” Dexter: “Not in the least, but I’ll risk it, will you?” Tracy: “You bet.”

Now, how does an appreciation of the genre of comedies of remarriage help us deepen our un- derstanding of the relation between ethics and memory in Eternal Sunshine? First of all, “anx- ious happy endings” are indeed a kind of classic, if not always fully appreciated, conclusion for come- dies of remarriage. This kind of anxious or unquiet happy ending helps better explain the significance, and the possible trajectories, of the comic conclu- sion in Eternal Sunshine. Comedies of remarriage emphasize how seemingly endless, but not mind- less, repetition of commitment is the form that commitment must often take to achieve the goal of

long-term, flourishing friendship. Given this em- phasis, Joel’s insight at the end of the film has the deepest ethical value when it is seen as a kind of suitable “remarriage reconciliation.” The recon- ciliation in the first part of the final scene has, for one, less significance as an isolated act and considerably more ethical value as evidence of a discerning disposition to recommitment. The film suggests that Joel wisely initiates acceptance of an imperfect past and future with Clementine, and also critically with himself as her partner (a point to which I will return in Section iv). In doing so Joel does signal a crucial understanding of the po- tentially jarring nature of their friendship. But it would be a mistake to assume that this single act of acceptance (important though it is) represents all of the ethical concerns presented by the anxious happy ending of Eternal Sunshine.

If there must be a disposition for recommitment within this, or most any, successful long-term ro- mantic friendship, then Joel’s and Clementine’s re- vealing series of “Okays” might also be taken to signal their (beginning) allegiance to the deeper insight that a disposition for reconciliation is a cardinal virtue of true friendship. Alternatively, they might not be understood to go beyond a one-time assent to taking the calculated risk of a flawed, or even a failed, future with each other. Neither of these readings of this simple (but, since also anxious, far from obvious or simple-minded) comic ending seems required. Kaufman is right about this point at least: the audience may de- cide for itself if Joel and Clementine are likely to persist as a romantic or even a friendly couple. What is, however, beyond dispute (and thereby not up to the audience to decide) is that if this, or perhaps most any, romantic couple is to remain within a flourishing friendship, they must live by a key insight of the remarriage comedy—that when commitment between friends and lovers takes its most admirable and trustworthy form, it becomes a discerning disposition to recommitment. This still somewhat general form of “remarriage recon- ciliation” is deepened when the remarriages be- come sensitive to a further level of complexity: over the course of an entire lifetime together the friends must continually reconcile themselves to their changing needs, both as individuals and as a couple. Ultimately, it is in the service of this deeper form of reconciliation that memory serves one of its highest ethical callings. Memory can lead not only to an act of reconciliation but also to a stable

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and discerning disposition to reconnect with one’s closest friends in light of a fully remembered past and an ever-evolving and often anxiety-provoking complex of future needs.

In summary, the remarriage comedy—in both classic and contemporary manifestations—is an ethically significant genre at the heart of which lies the “remarriage reconciliation.” This particu- lar type of reconciliation presents a crucial point of inquiry into some of the most significant and complex relations between memory and an ethics of intimate relations. It also provides an essential opportunity for understanding the ethical and aes- thetic aspects of what I have called “anxious happy endings.” As of this writing, Eternal Sunshine is arguably the most instructive and also the most canonical twenty-first-century comedy of remar- riage. Understanding Eternal Sunshine within the context of the central concerns of the genre of re- marriage comedy is crucial to understanding the full ethical import of the anxious comic ending of this admirable film. Moreover, Eternal Sunshine clearly belongs in this intriguing genre because it adds depth to our understanding of the central idea of the “remarriage reconciliation,” including its emphasis on self-aware and mutual acceptance of personal and shared anxiety regarding the cou- ple’s past and future friendship.

iv. the anxious happy ending, memory, and personhood

As already outlined, memory is instrumental to good judgment in part by helping enable desirable outcomes, including the avoidance of repeated er- ror and suffering as well as the realization of for- giveness between persons in close-knit commu- nity. It is also important, as mentioned in Mar- galit’s discussion of ethics and memory, to see that being a “person” can be seen as an achievement.38

On this view, being a (fuller or more admirable) person is an accomplishment realized with the aid of memory.39 Memory is essential to personhood when the notion of a person is ethical—that is, neither that of a bare human being nor a ratio- nal agent. Instead, a person is an individual whose ethical identity is constituted, in part, by his or her close relations. In this sense a person’s achieve- ment of personhood is dependent on some appro- priation of past relations, which is in turn depen- dent, in various ways, on memory. In the context of an ethics of thick relations, to forget much, or even

some crucial parts, of one’s intimate relations is to fail to fully realize—or if part of a downward trend to begin to lose—one’s personhood. Consider the deep loss when an aging parent does not recognize one of his or her grown children. In short, memory is essential to being a person in the first place. One conspicuous reason for this is that memory is es- sential for a person’s maintaining and developing intimate relations.

I will explicate this by focusing on the ethical value of what I have called the anxious happy end- ing. A fuller appreciation of the anxious happy ending has value for an individual (and his or her friendships) because it is a critical vantage point from which to view the state of his or her intimate relations and ethical identity. In this regard an anx- ious happy ending can be central to the achieve- ment of his or her full personhood. When the pro- cess of becoming a fuller person includes an anx- ious happy ending to one episode of a life story, this particular conclusion is less a final event than an opportunity within an incomplete process. An anxious happy ending is also an underappreciated aesthetic notion which, given the present focus, is grounded in a remarriage reconciliation.40 The two main features of anxious happy endings are anxi- ety and incompleteness, both of which are typically connected with memory of past problems. Having already indicated how anxiety and unease can ac- company a “happy ending,” I will elaborate here on the necessary incompleteness of the anxious “happy ending.” Clearly enough, happy endings can be, and often should be, viewed as beginnings. Indeed, one is tempted to say that happy endings typically should be viewed as beginnings because the very happiness they promise depends on also viewing the ending as a beginning.

The main advantage that results from seeing the anxious happy ending as a beginning is the contrast that this kind of unfinished ending provides with the more static comic resolution. In a typical comic resolution, a largely new and better society is cre- ated or rediscovered in service of the complete overcoming of an alternative unhappy social or- der. In Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) the vicious alternate world of “Pottersville,” dominated by selfishness and brutish pleasure, is overcome by the film’s final evocation of the co- operative utopia of Bedford Falls wherein George Bailey finds affirmation for his life. The point is not that Capra’s film lacks a sense of uncertainty about the future of the larger world; its very strength is

Meyer Reflections on Comic Reconciliations 85

that it is quite well attuned to worries about the kind of society the audience might inhabit after the end of World War II. But the attractions of the utopian version of Bedford Falls are largely nostal- gic, and nostalgia itself is one standard distortion of memory, creating as it does a misleading ide- alization of a seemingly familiar past. Moreover, Capra’s film fails to use the uncertainty that gives it some of its undeniable power in the service of a more nuanced comic conclusion. The unquestion- able popularity of such comic resolutions, wherein the main problems of the story are solved or their clear solution is reliably foretold, may be a direct function of their static or settled nature.

Yet, static happy endings, especially corny comic conclusions, invite little or no further re- flection on the happy resolution of the story.41

Nonetheless, whatever legitimate satisfactions such happy resolutions give rise to, they also tend to be undercut by a lingering sense that the con- clusion was either contrived or one-dimensional. Roughly, if the conclusion is judged to be contrived (say, via the use of a deus ex machina), then at some level the plot failed to be convincing. If, however, the conclusion is judged one-dimensional, then the plot may have some convincing features, but it still tends be undermined somewhat by its association with elements of melodrama (for instance, when the overt goals of the plot so emphatically drive a particular character’s destiny that there is no seri- ous chance for a strongly realized character to ac- tually deepen the story). While static happy end- ings are often a kind of straightjacket for comic characters, anxious happy endings tend to ease this predicament by allowing comic characters and their stories to breathe with some of the reality and uncertainty of the human condition.42 One main problem with the static resolution is that, when predominant, it tends to narrow the view of the way endings function as beginnings.

The main aesthetic point here (that there are two chief ways in which endings can function as beginnings: static resolutions and anxious start- overs) is made even sharper with the focus of the remarriage comedy on re-beginnings. An empha- sis on happy endings as more or less static resolu- tions is radically opposed by the remarriage com- edy’s underscoring of the continuity and the un- certainty of change. The start-over-again style of happy ending essential to the remarriage comedy tends to be antithetical to any radical break with the past or with our honest memory of it. The very

uncertainty of the future that results from this kind of recollected continuity with past problems (and the disavowal of a view of a future that is simply resolved or otherwise fully harmonized) is central to what the remarriage re-beginning emphasizes within film comedy in general. The ethical read- ing of Eternal Sunshine offers a case study on this point, one upshot of which is this: just as the hu- morous is more powerful when it is aptly paired with the serious, the comic gains some aesthetic import to the extent to which it approaches the dilemmas that give life to tragedy.

At the end of Eternal Sunshine Joel’s reappro- priation of his own ethical identity is a function of his ability to realize some of the wisdom of the anxious happy ending. At the point reached by the precoda finale of Eternal Sunshine, Joel does realize actual, if tentative, progress in achiev- ing or recovering his ethical identity—indeed this is one reason to view the coda as an image of both past and future friendship. His personal eth- ical progress is due to his start-over with his old friend (who is, crucially, let us recall, an Aris- totelian “other self” and thereby, for one, an in- valuable reflection of Joel’s better self). This re- newed friendship creates a higher and more trust- worthy level of self-awareness for Joel, and it does so here via an uncompromised memory of past difficulty. Even if clarified in the light of reconcil- iation, Joel’s and Clementine’s uncertain futures are also overcast by a keen awareness of their past problems. And, typical of an anxious happy ending, no reliance is placed upon an unconvinc- ing hope that all problems have been or can be solved.

Nonetheless, Joel and Clementine’s anxious re- marriage does display a quiet hope. This is so, in part, because as a couple their ethical identity can be, by the time of the comic conclusion, located within their joint effort to start again without for- getting, to start again in search of happiness amidst insecurity. At the end of Eternal Sunshine Joel and Clementine as separate persons also can be seen to pursue individual identities that embrace anxiety and uncertainty. Here starting over with the same person is starting over both with the same friend and with a self sharply aware of his or her own his- tory. Such starting over is opposed to starting all over again, as it were, from scratch; and it is one admirable and trustworthy way to seek personal flourishing. Such a restart foregrounds the role of memory in the search for ethical identity.43 The

86 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

anxious remarriage at the end of Eternal Sunshine is admirable because it is joined with a wise accep- tance of human limits, an acceptance that is in turn made acute by an unsparing memory of a shared past. In effect this ethical perspective applied to the entire genre of remarriage comedies pays a further aesthetic dividend. This wisdom of ground- ing human aspiration in unstinting remembrance of frailty and failure is perhaps one of the chief claims to aesthetic eminence (often reserved by some, like Aristotle and Hegel, for tragedy alone) that comedy can make.

v. conclusion: the dignity of comedy and the ethics of memory

This reading of Eternal Sunshine is evidence that comedies of remarriage thrive in the twenty-first century. Like the best classic remarriage comedies, Eternal Sunshine also supplies the comic depth necessary for ethical study—here a compelling study in the ethics of memory and the aesthetics of anxious happy endings. Margalit’s own reflec- tions on ethics and memory suggest to him that “[e]ven the project of remembering the gloomi- est of memories is a hopeful project. It ultimately rejects the pessimistic thought that all will be for- gotten.”44 This ethical reading of Eternal Sunshine adds something significant to Margalit’s decidedly modest rejection of pessimism. Since holding on to certain memories is an admirable trait and an as- pect of human flourishing, it should be easier to see how at their best the re-beginnings, the recon- ciliations, and the remarriages that are essential here to the anxious happy ending provide us an encouraging vision of comic consolation. Indeed, they present a kind of unromanticized yet astutely hopeful comedy, because such a comedy strives to live within the open-ended and memory-laden boundaries of our less than ideal lives.45

MICHAEL J. MEYER Department of Philosophy Santa Clara University Santa Clara, California 95053

internet: mmeyer@scu.edu

1. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Harvard University Press, 2002).

2. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, p. 7; Bernard

Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1985), chaps. 8–9.

3. For an account that focuses on the morality (but not the ethics) of memory, see Christopher Grau, “Eternal Sun- shine of the Spotless Mind and the Morality of Memory,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 119–133.

4. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ost- wald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962).

5. I do not discuss here this question: are remember- ing and forgetting properly subjects of ethical evaluation? Basically, I think it would take my discussion too far afield to take up this question in any detail. But I also endorse Margalit’s discussion of this point (The Ethics of Memory, pp. 56–58) wherein he notes that the uncontroversial prac- tice of giving promises evaluative weight shows that mem- ory is a proper subject of ethical evaluation. In short, tak- ing promises seriously requires that memory be a subject of normative evaluation. What I do add here to his account of this general issue is the qualification “try to hold on to certain memories.” I believe that such an effort is generally presumed to be, at least prima facie, a proper source of nor- mative evaluation, since there is much one can in fact do to make such an effort (keeping pictures, writing journals, collecting old letters, and the like). Note that it is crucial to the plot of Eternal Sunshine that such journals and letters be destroyed.

6. Montaigne, The Essays of Michel De Montaigne, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Press, 1987), p. 738.

7. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, pp. 56–58. 8. George Santayana, “Reason in Common Sense,” in

Life of Reason (New York: Scribners, 1905), p. 285. 9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Focus Fea-

tures Universal Studios, 2004); Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket Press, 2004). Dialogue cited throughout this article has been transcribed by the author directly from the film and is only cited to page numbers in this text when it does in fact coincide with The Shooting Script. Unless otherwise noted, descriptions of intonation or in- tention that parenthetically characterize cited dialogue are my interpretations of the film and not director’s or writer’s instructions.

10. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 33. The character- ization “destructive love affairs” comes from a clever faux commercial for Lacuna Inc. (“Don’t forget, with Lacuna you can forget”), which is an extra feature on the DVD.

11. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 34. 12. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 58. 13. A detail cut from the film but in The Shooting Script

(p. 107) is that the tragedy of Mary’s affair was to have been further magnified by an abortion.

14. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 38. 15. On my reading the film clearly encourages the au-

dience to root for Joel in this attempt to try to retain his memories; the analysis that follows will elaborate this read- ing.

16. “I’m erasing you and I’m happy,” Joel says early on in the process; Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 44.

17. The filmmakers’ view of the importance of this par- ticular scene (as well as some of how and why it was rewrit- ten) is attested to by Charlie Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 140.

18. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, pp. 125–129.

Meyer Reflections on Comic Reconciliations 87

19. What I call Mary’s “restoration of recollection” is, to be more precise, symbolic. Joel and Clementine do not ac- tually regain their memories as memories. All they are given by Mary is evidence (the tapes) that they had certain past experiences, evidence that they had memories of each other and then had them erased. So, at most what they have access to are a kind of “quasi-memories,” beliefs that may function like some memories. In essence, the film asks the audience to view all of this as a kind of metaphorical restoration of memory.

20. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, pp. 125–127. 21. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 9. Even though

Clementine’s response reveals at best ironic ambivalence about her nominal relation to forgiveness (she responds in anguish, “It hardly fits. I’m a vindictive little bitch, truth be told” [The Shooting Script, p. 9]), she is revealed at the end of the story to be more forgiving than her harsh view of herself here suggests.

22. This fact about how to understand what the audi- ence is presented during the erasure process is stated by Dr. Mierzwiak himself. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 62.

23. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, p. 237. 24. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, p. 219. 25. One standard account of forgiveness—the forswear-

ing of negative reactive attitudes like resentment—is found in Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

26. It should be said that this restoration of friendship could also make it possible to end or downgrade a friendship in a way that is not acrimonious but friendly. This is not to conflate friendship and friendliness, even less to suggest that one must restore a friendship in order to end it. It is simply to note that, between former friends, a friendly end to relations typically shows a flicker of the former friendship in addition to the general virtue of kindness.

27. Joel’s smile is as important, and in a way as affect- ing, as Clementine’s laughter. On the importance of the lucid smile of self-awareness (and the relation between this and laughter) see Simon Critchley, On Humor (Thinking in Ac- tion) (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 107–111.

28. The song is “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” by James Warren (EMI, 2005).

29. Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Holly- wood Comedy of Remarriage (Harvard University Press, 1981).

30. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 136. 31. While a film is, in this respect, more complex than

a single-author literary work, an excellent recent discussion of this complex topic is Steven Davies, “Author’s Intentions, Literary Interpretation, and Literary Value,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (2006): 223–247. The strategy of the present analysis is, in Davies’s terms, a “value-maximizing” one with an additional focus, as outlined above, on specifi- cally ethical concerns.

32. The place of humor within the genre of comedy is a very complex matter. Since my analysis does not turn on uncovering much of this complexity, I will leave this topic unexamined except to basically endorse the view of humor within comedy that Gerald Mast called the “comic climate.” See Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, 2nd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1979), especially pp. 9–13.

33. Kaufman, The Shooting Script, p. 143. 34. Stanley Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters

on a Register of the Moral Life (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 5.

35. Cavell, Cities of Words, p. 39. 36. Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness, p. 2 (emphasis in orig-

inal). 37. Other key features include that “upon separation

the woman tries a regressive tack, usually that of accepting as a husband a simpler [man]” (Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness, p. 31). In this connection consider Clementine’s relations with the adolescent figure of Patrick. Second, “a running quarrel is forcing apart a pair who recognize themselves as having known one another forever” (ibid.). In this connection con- sider the dream sequence where Joel and Clementine, or at least Joel’s memory of her, return to Joel’s childhood. Finally, for the closing locale of a “green world” as a symbolic spa- tial location for ethical transformation, consider the scene on the beach at Montauk in the coda.

38. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, p. 46. 39. There is an obvious ambiguity here between the

achievement of personhood, understood as a threshold no- tion, and the achievement of one’s highest possible degree of personhood understood not as a threshold but as an as- cending matter of degree. As the difference between these two notions of the achievement of personhood is not cen- tral to the larger matter at hand, I will not unpack it further here except to note the prima facie ethical admirability of ever-higher degrees of personhood.

40. Anxious happy endings are decidedly not limited to remarriage comedies. In film comedy one of the most powerful and enduring is Charlie Chaplin’s justly famous ending for City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931).

41. The sobriquet “capracorn” does seem to fit Capra’s tendency toward more static comic resolutions, especially Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Wash- ington (1939), and Meet John Doe (1941).

42. Two points of clarification are perhaps worth men- tioning here. First of all, I have introduced a pair of basic distinctions: subtle versus simple happy endings as well as anxious versus static happy endings. These can be seen to cut across each other, as one might have either an anxious subtle happy ending or an anxious simple happy ending. I think Eternal Sunshine as it was shot (with the coda) is of the latter type, but it would have been of the former type without the coda. Second, another manifestation of the dif- ference between the static comic resolution and the anxious happy ending exhibits itself as a general tendency to read any ambiguous ending in one or another of these two basic ways.

43. This point can be understood on several (in- creasingly complex) levels because both the self and the friend are somewhat changed by the action of the story. On this point see Cavell’s discussion of The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) in his Pursuits of Happiness, pp. 47–70.

44. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, p. 82. 45. I would like to thank Robert Lovering, Robert

Audi, Mark Ravizza, Daniel Ostrov, Larry Nelson, Lori Zink, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for help- ful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts of this article.