A Camera, a Radio and a High-Tech Mechanism to Erase Memories, or How to Deceive Reality in Robin Williams' Movies
A Camera, a Radio and a High-Tech Mechanism to Erase Memories, or How to Deceive Reality in Robin Williams' Movies

Summary/Abstract: We build reality whilst transforming it through the means of memory. This is commonplace knowledge. What happens though when we intervene in the structures of memory in brutal ways? When we try to change the past by projecting onto it those things we would have liked to happen; when the world in which we live becomes a mode of overcoming, through the power of imagination, the closures constitutive of a universe of suicide and despair? The above is a relevant theme in the movies featuring Robin William.Most of these are placed against a fantasy-filled background , the characters that he embodies trying to convince us, somehow, that the price of watching those movies is that our world would be changed forever. For this study, we chose three movies that we find to be most immediately relevant for the given theme: Jakob the Liar (1999), directed by Peter Kassovitz, the story of a Polish Jew during the Second World War period, who manages to save his community with the help of a non-existent radio; One Hour Photo (2002), directed by Mark Romanek, a movie in which a character named Sy Parrish is fantasizing about being the favourite “Uncle Sy” in a family he is obsessed with; and The Final Cut (2004), directed by Omar Naim. The latter is a modern vision of a futuristic world in which microchips try to protect users from themselves and their bitter memories by erasing all negative thoughts. In all these representations, reality is dictated by an impossible ideal, but being unhappy proves to be something inherent in humans.

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