Seminar: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
When Clementine erased Joel in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, moviegoers shared in the whimsy of the 21st-century flashback.
In the early years of the new millennium, Michel Gondry asked us all to indulge in the mysteries of nostalgia. Eternal Sunshine presents viewers with a new idea of the flashback, departing almost entirely from the storytelling technique associated with hard-boiled film noirs. Instead of revealing a cinematic past that explains the present, Gondry’s flashbacks invite the audience to indulge in the pleasure and pain that memories bring and to confront the fear of losing them. What are the perils of forgetting? Or, as Jim Carrey’s character asks in the film, “is there any danger of brain damage?” Gondry’s actors described him as a magician. Come explore that magic with Simmons University professor Audrey Golden in this one-night Coolidge Education seminar.
How will this work?
When you register for this virtual education seminar, the program will be presented in three parts.
By Tuesday, April 7, you'll receive an email to download and watch a pre-taped lecture, to view before the film at your convenience.
Then, you can go off and watch the film on your own. Please note, the Coolidge is not able to provide the film ourselves, but you can find out where to rent and/or stream it here.
Make sure you watch the film before the discussion, which will take place on Thursday, April 9 at 8pm EST over Zoom. Before the discussion, you can submit questions for the instructor here. You'll also have the opportunity to submit questions during the discussion!
We're moving quickly to put this new service in place, so please be patient if we run into some initial technical issues. Have more questions? Visit our FAQ page here.
About the Speaker
Audrey J. Golden is Assistant Professor of English at Simmons University, where she teaches courses in global literature and postcolonial cinema. Her love of film dates to her time as head projectionist of the Wesleyan University cinema, where she also earned a B.A. in film studies. She earned a J.D. from Wake Forest University School of Law and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. As a lawyer and literature scholar, her research focuses on the connections between international human rights law and postcolonial fiction. She regularly teaches and writes on literature and film from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
