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 is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)