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.

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.

About Coolidge Education Seminars

Want to learn more about some of your favorite classic films? Before select Big Screen Classics events register for the Coolidge Education seminar, which includes a 30 minute lecture before the film from an expert and a reserved seat at the screening of the film.