Looking for the quick fix in the Spotless Fahrenheit

“Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be alone? We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” Something important, something real, the point that was the backbone to the novel Fahrenheit 451, a novel that struggles with the loss of great literature and with it the loss of humanity in the sense of individualism, and in a sense a loss of a relationship with the self. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind also deals with loss, the loss of memory, the loss of past relationships gone wrong, the loss of the realness in life, and in a sense a loss of self. Common ground is found here, both Fahrenheit and Eternal Sunshine both deal with the loss of something, something important, something real. In a way this can be used in society today, it can be seen in the way people live their lives always finding the easy way out and how this quick fix is never the best answer in life because every time it is used we lose a little bit or ourselves in the process. Which now brings us to the ultimate failure in this process of the quick fix, the ultimate failure comes in the part of the individual, the fickle person whose happiness is only temporary and soon needs to see what he is missing because that’s just what the individual does making everything that he has goes through with the quick fix ultimately pointless.

Both Fahrenheit 451 and Eternal Sunshine can be used to examine humanity. On one hand, Fahrenheit offers us a view of what can happen when a society is mislead and turns their back on something that was taken for granted from the start of time. This is why Fahrenheit does not lose its significance in time, with the changing of time and the changing of styles, people tend to gravitate to what is new and what is hip, and books tend to stay on the sideline like a used handbag. With technology advancing (beginning to serve the same duty the firemen do), they burn books in our mind by turning off our need for books and leaning toward the side where we spend less time in the library and more time on the internet, to make our lives a little easier. And in doing so we turn off our minds to great literature, we dumb ourselves down to the so-called-MTV-generation status and in a sense start losing value in society. The result being people begin to talk down to us (can anyone say Mildred?), and we make it harder on ourselves to be taken seriously, but also we make it harder for us to actually listen. Since we can do everything on our cell phones nowadays, we start looking for the easy ways out, the quick fixes. So now the challenge is brought up with the search for a book in the library for a research paper, the self sufficient person is now gone with the quick fix.

If Match.com can find us a mate, then why can’t someone get rid of a bad relationship for us? In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind people were actually given that option with Lacuna, Inc. If people did not like the course their relationship was taking, then, all they needed to do was simply have their memory erased of that one particular person. Which is exactly what Joel does (following Clementine), here we see the new millennium at its finest. In Fahrenheit the firemen are used to burn the books that stop (or are supposed to stop) individualism. Well here we see the binary opposite in a way while still seeing that same dumb down we see in Fahrenheit. In Spotless, individualism is promoted with Lacuna, Inc. seen here catering to the individual, that 21st century kind of person who does not have time to be bothered with the complexities of remembering about old relationship gone bad. But by catering to people and trying to keep them happy, (which is ultimately what Lacuna is trying to strive for) are they not robbing them of the experiences needed to deal with another relationship if the same problems arise. In the same sense that searching for that book in the library needed for that research paper, so is that bad relationship needed in order to become more self sufficient for that next relationship, after all we can’t date the internet. Would the individual not lose a sense of their self if one day they should wake up and suddenly that guy that cheated on that girl with her mother was not even a distant memory?

When dealing with the pain of something or challenge of something else, the individual gets a sense of their own being. So in turn that needed self discovery is now taken away when a quick fix comes along thinking it can keep society happy. But it does not work in Fahrenheit 451 and it does not work in Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind. The simple reason for this is, happiness does not exist and cannot exist without the suffering one must go through to find the happiness first. In Fahrenheit the books offered the threat of people beginning to think differently from one another and when that happens a person becomes an individual and then the hierarchies form, and soon people are unhappy. The quick fix, turn on the family and have families focus on them versus Shakespeare. This does not work, first off because they fail to get rid of all the books in the world, and second because the firemen forget to realize that people are fickle, in order for them to lose interest in the next best thing, they need a complete lobotomy first (as even Beatty had books in his home). In Eternal Sunshine, the problem was the heartache of a bad relationship; the solution was deletion of that particular which should now make the person as happy as they were. And in a sense they were offering new leases on life. Except, those new leases did not last. Why? Because the people ultimately found themselves back in the same situation, which is exactly what happens with Joel and Clementine, who eventually find themselves in the same situation, same relationship. Which is exactly what happens in Fahrenheit the exact same thing the firemen were trying to shield society from was thrown in their faces at the end.

Fahrenheit 451 and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless offer society a view at themselves in a sense. The people in Fahrenheit were sufficed with the quick fix of the outlawed books and the family in order to prevent hierarchy and promote peace. Just like we’re happy today with the internet searches instead of searching libraries for the same information needed for that research paper. Just like the people in Eternal Sunshine were sufficed with memory erasing in place of the heartbreak needed to move on and grow stronger within their own selves, like people who use Match.com today instead of going the old fashioned route of looking for a mate in a social setting. These quick fixes are all soon pointless as people will eventually (if by choice or by force) go in search of what they have either avoided or tried to avoid because that’s what the person does. Whether he or she are of the modern persuasion or are of a time that has passed the end result is the same. Everything that the firefighters went through failed and everything Lacuna tried to do for their patients failed. Because unless we can cure fickleness everything else is just pointless, it is all just pointlessness in the spotless mind.