In Popular Culture
The absence of retrospective memory creates an amnesia that has frequently been a key element in plot lines in television, film and novels. Some examples are:
- Remember Me, a novel by Sophie Kinsella, in which amnesia is caused by trauma.
- The Bourne Identity, a novel by Robert Ludlum and a film adaptation, in which amnesia is caused by trauma.
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film by Michel Gondry, in which amnesia is caused by a company who are hired to erase painful memories.
Memory is frequently the subject of many wise quotations. The following are some examples relating to retrospective memory (or lack thereof):
- Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.-Oscar Wilde
- Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.-Sholem Asch
Read more about this topic: Retrospective Memory
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)