Overview: Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime explores our relationships with family, much like Henrik Ibsen did in his time with A Doll House. However, Harrison also delves into the ways in which memory shapes our choices and future. By doing so, he attends to the new challenges we face in our psychologically conscious world.
Directions: Read Marjorie Prime, Part I (pages 1-33 in the document). Next, compose a comprehensive blog response (300 words) attending to the following questions, using direct evidence from the text: By using the conceit of a Prime, how do the characters reinvent their loved ones into what and who they want them to be? How do the Primes and the living, in turn, reinvent themselves? How are we all like Marjorie, when it come to memory retrieval? How do the ideas of Existentialism apply to these ideas and this play? Are there any questions or concepts you found interesting or confusing that you would like to explore in class?
In “Marjorie Prime” it features Marjorie, an aging woman suffering from a memory reducing disease. She has a “prime” version of her late husband, Walter who appears to be in a younger version of himself. Her daughter, Tess and her husband, Jon are conflicted on the idea of Walter Prime. Tess thinks it's very weird, especially because it is a younger version of her father but Jon believes it is helpful and is proactive in feeding it memories. With the idea of a prime, people have the ability to feed it false memories and change the truth. Especially the fact that Walter Prime is a younger version, it reinvented who Walter was. As the Prime’s learn more about themselves they are able to recreate themselves. Like the story about the dog, Tony and Tony 2, the idea of Tony eventually overlapped. Due to the overlap, the memories between the two became indistinguishable, as if it didn’t matter which Tony did what as they both fit under the idea of Tony. This is what is happening with the idea of Walter as the prime eventually joins the idea of Walter. Like they discuss in the play, memory is from the last time you remembered an event so each time the memory becomes for fuzzy, forgetting or adding details. Like Marjorie, we all suffer from some level of confusion when trying to remember the past. With existentialism, we see the idea of individualism become fuzzy with the invention of primes. Walter was an individual with his own ideas and choices but as it becomes blended with Walter Prime like it did with Tony and Tony 2, the individual becomes an idea of an individual. With that it becomes more difficult to define exactly how an individual exists as an idea and its place in the world.
ReplyDeleteIn Marjorie Prime, the characters live in a near dystopian future where those who have been long gone can be brought back in the form of holograms. These mirage like technology allows Marjorie, an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer, to reconnect with her long gone husband, only this version of him is not only significantly younger than Marjorie herself, it is also an idealized version of what he once was. This comes from the fact that the Prime is not a copy of Walter, but rather a forged facade constructed by the data shared with it by others. It’s memories and behavior thus arise from the memories of others, an often unreliable sources.
ReplyDeleteMarjorie attempts to not only relieve her younger years, but also alter them, creating a narrative that fits into her preconceived idea of what she wishes her past to look like. When talking to Walter Prime about the night she was proposed to by him, she is underwhelmed by the circumstances in which it happened, and thus suggests that they should “say we saw casablanca in an old theatre with velvet seats, and then, on the way home, you proposed.” Although Marjorie is negatively affected by her disease, she sees it as an opportunity to manufacture her life to her own liking, claiming that “by the next time we talk, it will be true.”
According to science, when humans look back into a past even, they do not think of the occurrence itself, but rather the last time they had thought about it, thus, in a sense, our memory is our most unreliable sense of self, for it can not be trusted to maintain detailed information. In a sense, we are always reinventing ourselves, like Marjorie, fabricating- whether intentionally or deliberately- a past that is likely not to resemble the truth with accuracy.
Existentialism claims that in this “doctrine of action,” a human is the decisions they take, a series of individual, yet intertwined, “undertakings,” in which one’s notion of self is continuously constructed and matured. Marjorie wishes to transform her earlier years, and with the tools she is given, the yearning women is effectively altering not only her reality, but also that of those around her. Furthermore, she is not only modifying Walter, but rather constructing a new him, real only in her mind. The fact that “existence precedes essence” would thus claim that Marjorie is only capable of creating a new Walter because Walter himself does not exist. Walter Prime has not encountered himself, surged up in the world, nor defined himself, and thus he becomes clay in the possession of the artisan, subject to the constant molding and revisions of Marjorie.
This play is incredible. I’ve never read/watched something that so gracefully intertwines complex ideas, like about memory, with science fiction, and an interesting plot. It is truly captivating and really makes you think. Anyways, something that caught me both when we watched the scene and when I read it was when they started to talk about Toni. Walter says:
ReplyDelete“Toni Two. But soon it got shortened to just Toni. And of course it wasn’t Toni exactly. But the longer they had her, the less it mattered which Toni had run along the beach, or which Toni had dug up all the bulbs in the garden. The more time passed, the more she became the same dog in their memories.”
This quote deals with so many things, memories and what they are associated with, Toni and her complicated story, and Walter. Walter says this and he is really Toni in this example. Because at this point in Marjorie’s sickness, would it really matter if Walter had been there alive? He would have been much older than her, probably wouldn’t have been able to help much. He probably would’ve sat and recalled memories with Marjorie. Instead, she is sitting with Walter having to retell her stories and have them told back to her. It doesn’t really make a difference. Like Walter says, it doesn’t matter which Walter is in their memories, because they’ve morphed into one and the same. Almost. Marjorie obviously isn’t remembering younger Walter instead of the older one now, but it is affecting her and her life, what he is telling her and how. Anywho, it also makes you think about memory. How you have no control over your memories. Honestly, that type of thought has always scared me. I hate that we cannot remember everything in our lives. So much has happened that we have vowed never to forget or just believed that we never would that is just… gone. Into thin air, as if it had never happened. Your experiences shape you into who you are, but it would be nice to have the receipt, the memory. And the fact that they are changed with time, with conversation, and with each recollection is terrifying. In my memories, which ones have been painted over by accident? I will never know. Plus, the input of other people’s recalling the same memory also changes the memory… wow. That was all stream of consciousness so it might’ve not made perfect sense, but nonetheless, this play really makes you think.
A Prime works on the principle that an individual, a loved one, can be created through a collection of memories. Essentially by filling this AI(Artificial Intelligence) individual with the memories of their loved one they can recreate their presence. The goal of the Prime is to behave as if the person never died in the first place. The reasons for why a Prime is used can vary dramatically though. In the beginning of the film the Prime is used for Marjorie who has alzehimers. The Primes purpose was to ensure that Marjorie could have someone who she died, in this case her husband at a younger age, engage with her and talk to her. This conversion between Marjorie and her Prime undoubtedly helped Mrjorie and eased her disease - evident when she listens to the Prime to have a spoonful of peanut butter. HOwever, by the end of the movie the prime has taken place as Marjorie for Tess. After the passing of Marjorie, one can infer the Prime was used to ease the change for Tess. Tess, someone who disliked the Prime when it was used for her mom, seemed almost surprised at how much she likes the Prime. I feel as though the living also reinvent themselves in the sense that there comes a wisdom after someone passes but is essentially useless cuz the person you want to talk to has already died. It is almost ironic that one realizes the value of someone after they pass yet it is impossible to talk to them once they pass. With the Prime it is possible to get out those thoughts that one couldn't have gotten across before. Of course they're not actually speaking to their loved one but in a sense it still heals the heart I feel. In terms of memory retrieval we are a lot like Marjorie in the way we handle what we want to remember and what we want to forget. Marjorie struggles in grasping what actually happen in her life and what might be figmented through her interactions with Walter Prime. I feel like a lot of us can relate to pushing a memory that we aren't fond off away and keeping memories that we enjoy closer to the surface of remembering. Similar to how Marjorie pairs the movie with Cameron Diaz to Walter proposing to her we too connect small idiocracies to major events. Another thing that was similar is how we like to tailor certain memories to our liking. Just like Marjorie shaping some memories to be the way she wants to remember them we shape some of memories even subconsciously. One part of the movie that really tapped on the idea of existentialism is during the conversation between Walter Prime and Jon. After a discussion on how Walter differs from Walter Prime, Walter Prime states who nobody will ever be Walter Prime and nobody will ever be Water(the real one). That spoke to me in the sense that as an individual despite having the same memories there still must be something deeper that distinguishes individuals. Because if not, what distinguishes me from my friend if we had all the same memories?
ReplyDeleteThis play has an interesting take on technology, memory, the interactions between loved ones and dealing with grief. It has a Black Mirror-ish vibe to it, reminding me of the episode titled “Be Right Back” where the woman’s boyfriend dies, and she attempts to replace him with an artificial version. In both Marjorie Prime and “Be Right Back”, the technology is not exactly sufficient in replicating the human being, and results in some jarring reminders that the recreations are not truly the people they imitate. In the first act of Marjorie Prime, the prime takes on the form of Walter, but it is the younger version of Walter. As Tess says when describing Walter Prime, “it bothers me that you’re helping it pretend to be my dad - or some weird fountain of youth version of him”, to which Jon replies “that’s how she remembers him”. It is an interesting concept, because they are not trying to remember him as he necessarily was, but as Marjorie wants him to be. It is the same with how none of them talk about Damian. Jon tells the Prime about it eventually, but before that he did not even know that he had a son. This shows how they curate his memories to what they desire - Marjorie and Tess do a similar thing. They do not talk about Damian, and do their best to forget him: to rewrite the past. When it comes to memory retrieval, I am reminded of when I studied memory in AP Psych. It is interesting, as we learned that memory is not static: it can be rewritten. When prompted with leading questions, people can even remember things that they never saw happen, which is a large part of why eyewitness testimony is so unreliable. In Marjorie Prime, memory is treated as fluid, with Marjorie remembering what others tell her most of the time, and even telling Walter to change one of her memories for her, so next time when he tells her the story it will be Casablanca that they saw in theatres, and she will never know the difference as she will have forgotten both telling him to change it, and the original event. This is very similar to how we remember in real life, with memories being changed and rewritten every time we retrieve them. In terms of existentialism, Walter prime is an interesting example of the opposite of human beings. His existence does not precede his essence. He is created, filled with, and performs only in the capacity of a sort of therapist to Marjorie. He has no free will, and he does not have choices to make. This means that despite all of his similarities to humans, he can never be one himself - he does not have that ability. When it comes down to it, Primes are just fancy computers programmed to make us feel better by acting in such a way as to soothe and promote health.
ReplyDeleteObviously the death and subsequent erasure of Damien, Tess’s brother who killed himself, was not dealt with in a healthy way. There are remnants of him swirling around in Tess’s mind and having to explain that to Marjorie is bringing those tensions to the surface. Yet, she has the option to not tell her mother. She says to Jon when he says they need to remind Marjorie of her son, “Do we? To have a little peace.” When Walter comes back, it forces Marjorie and the entire family to reckon with things they would prefer to forget. He brings with him the weight of the death of their son. Humans forget for a reason. In training Primes, those memories are brought back in such a literal manner, there is literally a dead person back in your life. Yes, there should definitely be talking about of these emotions and the trauma, but bringing back a dead person is due to complicate these issues even more, not to mention extend the grieving process.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never been a fan of science fiction. When I realized I was reading science fictions stories in both this class and my contemporary texts class, I wasn’t disappointed exactly, but I wasn’t enthralled. Both this story and the one we are reading in contemporary texts, “Saying Goodbye to Yang”, are about technology that impersonates humanity, especially through the lense of family and what that means. I have come to realize that the purpose of these stories is not simply to warn of a dystopian future where technology is utilized to disrupt.. Instead, these stories reveal less about technology at all. In reality, they examine the relationships within the family, technology was just used a vehicle to open up these dialogues. When Tess is talking to Marjorie Prime, she reveals, “It feels like I made all the right choices, all my life - I woke up early, I studied for the test - and now here I am, talking to my dead mother, and the person who love me most in the whole world thinks I’m broken.” She is talking to a hologram, yet that isn't important, she is revealing vulnerable confessions that speak to her relationship with her mother. I wish she had told the real Marjorie. At its heart, this isn’t a story about any Prime, it's a story about death, love, family, and the perils of remembering.
When we cease to exist the world around us does not, we must understand that we are not permanent. With the concept of the primes, the physical characters have to rebuild the version of their lost relative. I think in Marjorie's sake the prime of Walter was very beneficial in keeping her content with her life, as her memories deteriorated the company and conversations with him helped her relax into her death. Marjorie in her living state was unable to care for her self, Walter Prime was able to keep her accountable “ Marjorie we both know what no dishes mean, It means I haven’t been eating”. Unlike with Tess and Jon, they had the memories of their loved ones which made it harder for them to feel comfortable with the prime because they couldn’t pick up where they left off. The living had the power to withhold information from the prime and therefore allowing them to accept the reality they want with the Primes so then it feels real. Specifically in the event when Tess is telling Marjorie Prime about her life she says “ Do I have any other children, besides you? Just me” The death of her brother Damian was so hard on her, that the way the Prime just accepted that she was an only child, didn’t sit right with her because even in her late stages the living Marjorie still had some memory of Damian. When it comes to the similarities we all have with Marjorie and memory retrieval. The opening scene with Marjorie and Walter Prime and Marjorie’s sassy remarks as they talk, and how she asks “What if we saw Casablanca instead?” This comment is something we can all relate, wishing something happened differently than it actually did. In this play, the ideas of Existentialism is very outright, discussing the ideas of the essence and existence easily exemplified with the Primes.
ReplyDeletePrime’s were built for the purpose of acting as a lost loved one. They are meant to offer comfort in place of an individual’s grief that they may experience in that time. However, a Prime is created by listening to the stories recounted by loved one’s, and therefore bound to be riddled with mistakes and accounts biased from a singular perspective.
ReplyDeleteLike when Majorie is retold the story of when Walter proposed to her, she didn’t awe over the memory of being proposed to after seeing My Best Friend’s Wedding, but instead asked “what if we saw Casablanca instead,” trying to appeal the memory in her favor. As she later says to Jon, “it's always nice to be lied to” which in a sense is what the Prime is doing when she reinvents the story to her liking, creating and being told a lie. Although she is soon approaching her death and perhaps has the right to do such, the fact of the matter is the story is untrue. Their lives are no longer reflected in their memories as the facts of their history, but as the stories they wished them to be (though memories become altered by ourselves when we will them to be different). As Marjorie comments to Walter Prime “It sounds like a fairy tale when you tell it,” to which he responds that indeed in its own way it is.
The play emphasizes on one trying to reinvent their own lives. It plays on the regrets and unfulfilled ideals that all people experience within their lifetime, and in turn the consequences of what happens when we try to deny such. It is very unlike the Existentialist modo, where one takes responsibility for their own actions to live their lives as freely and happily as they can. Instead the characters in the play try to reinvent themselves, and in the end are unhappy by what they create.
I think that the concept of “primes” is very interesting but also a little creepy. I think that it could be very useful but also could be dangerous. It is scary how the primes can remember everything and pick up on small imperfections of humans and change the way they act in order to be more human-like. I think that the real reason it scares me is because this could happen in the next few decades or so. We already have AI’s like Alexa or google home which can access the internet in seconds and answer any questions you have. This is just a more advanced version. Marjorie calls for Walter and he just appears, he is always listening and waiting for her to call. We call for alexa and she responds right away, always listening to us. The primes also have memory that is far better than the human memory. Jon and Tess have a conversation about memory in the play. They think that memory is like “sedimentary layers in the brain” which means “it’s all still there” it is just harder to dig up certain memories that are farther down. I don’t know that much about the human brain and the way that memory actually works, but I like the idea of holding on to memories forever, even if they aren't remembered always, you know that they will always be there in your mind.
ReplyDeleteSara Boese
DeleteIn Marjorie Prime, dead people can exist as robots. However, the robots are not exactly accurate reincarnations of the deceased, because they are created from people’s memories of the dead. Harrison uses these “Primes” as a way to show how people’s memories change over time, and change their truth as a result. More than this, 85 year old Majorie with Alzheimer’s is aware of this fact. For example, when Walter Prime is telling her the story of how he proposed to her, she frowns and becomes frustrated. The original story details the couple seeing “My Best Friend's Wedding” at a small, cheap theater, and Walter proposing to Majorie at the movies end. However, Majorie would rather recall a high class evening where they saw Casablanca “in an old theatre with velvet seats, and then, on the way home, [he] proposed.” She suggests that Walter Prime remember this version instead so that “then, by the next time [they] talk, it will be true.” Of course, it won’t really be true. The past cannot physically be changed, but if the memories of the original story are entirely erased, did it ever even happen? Therefore, if the only existing memory of Walter’s proposal involves Casablanca at a very nice movie theatre, who can argue that it is not true? Majorie remembers things in a twisted way: almost the truth, but not quite. Major details from her stories are missing, such as the exclusion of Damien’s suicide from the narrative about saffron flags in the wintertime. As an audience, it is easy for us to view Majorie’s altered memories (and lack thereof) as a symptom of her disease, but in reality, it is a disease from which we all suffer. Our emotions cloud our memories, and the more we remember something, the more it changes. Like making a copy of a copy of… etc., the clarity blurs with every time through.
ReplyDeleteThis play was different to watch because it is very modern. It is similar to a science fiction movie in that it predicts what would happen with more technological advances than we currently have. A major flaw, or potential benefit, in the making of a Prime is that they aren’t truly the person. They may look and sound like the person, yet everything they know is based off of what they have been told. People can recreate their loved ones with just the best parts of them, leaving out their annoying traits. Along with this though, is that none of the memories are actually from the real person’s perspective, and they can’t actually have feelings like humans. When someone is remembering a heartfelt moment, like their wedding day, with a Prime, they would never be hearing their spouse’s side of the story again. They can recreate things to be however they want it to be, therefore altering what the think is reality. This works both ways, as the people can change what the Prime thinks, and the Prime can change what the people think, particularly if they have Alzheimer’s like Marjory does in the play. Marjory likes to dream that things happened perfectly, and wants to change the memories. All of us change our memories to some extent every time we think of them, remembering not the memory itself, but the last time we thought of it. This may make happy memories seem far more perfect in memory than they were in reality, which is exactly what marjory attempts to do when she asks if Walter Prime can just tell her the better story next time she wants to hear it. This also brings into question the control people have over their life, if someone can simply recreate them after they are dead. Especially for people with low self esteem, this if used in a real situation, would likely add to the unrealistic expectations society has set for people.
ReplyDeleteThe only other things I wanted to discuss would be the ethics of doing this. Would it be fair to the person who passed away to essentially clone them into an unrealistically perfect version of themselves? Would it be helpful, or harmful to the healing process someone goes through after the loss of a loved one? And, on a different note, could this technology easily backfire and create problems in a society?
Okay, after reading the first part of the play, it has only solidified my feelings about the story. The movie is surprisingly on point in comparison with the play, though that is probably because it is a play and not a novel that makes it so easy to replicate on script. What freaks me out is that the concept of talking to a robot about your dead relative so they can be some sort of version of them. The Prime is like a doppelganger that will assume their lives in the stead of the dead person. And it feels so off, even if they can seem like the real deal for a time. Especially when the family is so tense as is. I can really see Tess’s point, as watching my mother talk to a young version of my dead father would be weird too. But at the same time I totally understand Jon’s point. If it was something that helped my ill mother in her last days, then what’s wrong with it? But I think Tess is more uncomfortable with it because it’s her mother, and she already has some inset issues. Dealing with her brother’s death alone is something that messed up her entire family, which likely influenced her own mothering style and led to the strained relationship between her and her daughter. And if your refuge from this story is that it’s set in like 2050 or something, I have news for you. If you watched the Super Bowl last night, you may have seen the commercial about the old man talking to Google about his late wife, specifically saying all these traits about her so he won’t forget them. And Google’s response? “Okay, I’ll remember that next time.” The age of the Prime is NOW and soon we’ll be talking to holograms. (Big thanks to Sara Boese for pointing this out to me last night, she’s the genius here!!!!!!!!!!)
ReplyDeleteIn reading Majorie Prime, I was kind of unnerved by the concept of a “Prime”. I understand that in the case of Majorie it is to help with her alzheimers and take care of her, and of that piece I am more accepting, but there are many parts of the primes that I do not like. I kind of agree with the point that Tess makes of “why does she need to be pacified?” in some ways the primes almost seem too perfect. Majorie and Walter prime will never get in an argument and there will never be some aspects of being human included in a prime because they are undesirable. This idea of modifying things to make them perfect is actually reflected in the play as well. At one point Majorie even requests that Walter Prime changes her memory to make it so that they saw a different movie. This kind of behavior is how she is altering the memory of Walter so that his prime is essentially the ideal version of him. I do not like the concept of this because even though it is engaging to Majorie, it can distort her view of reality. There has to be some kind of mental effect to spending time with a non-real idealized version of a real human being. This causes the primes to reinvent themselves, and in turn Majorie changes herself a little to make more of a perfect situation. When it comes to memory retrieval, we are very similar to Majorie. Granted her memory is far worse than ours, we have the same ways of remembering things. When she has Walter tell stories, she begins to remember more details of them, and her memory is jogged. Similarly, when we share stories with our friends we all remember them differently so we can pool our memories. Majorie pools her memories with the prime because each day she forgets new things so the prime can remind her of what she is forgetting. When looking at this play and existentialism in the same lense, there are some interesting connections to be drawn. When we compare our existence to the existence of a prime, we are very different. They are formed by people feeding them information about the person they are replicating, we are our own person. However, when they evolve to be more human-like, it becomes harder to tell if they are real or not. In the start of the play, it was easy to mistake Walter prime for a real being. The true difference between us and a fully developed prime is our soul and consciousness. These are qualities that they cannot adopt.
ReplyDeleteThis play is truly a work of art. I feel like we all want to remember things a certain way, like how Marjorie wants to remember the way her husband proposed to her by taking her to a classic movie in a nice theater, she thinks it was after they saw my best friends wedding, when in reality, it wasn’t even that romantic. It was them in bed after being intimate with one another, and he just asked her. It was a heartfelt moment, yes, but it was nice to over exaggerated. It reinvents who they are because it distorts reality, if they keep remembering events in the way they wanted them to happen, eventually it will become a reality, no one will remember how it actually happen, they just remember the stories of the events that were told. I think that in a way we all do this, we want to remember things the way we want to remember, good or bad. We may add some details that make it good or bad, but for us those details mean something, and bring comfort to us in some ways. It’s nice when things go the way we want us to go, even if it is a lie. They do lose some individualism, they lose the idea of who they are, rather they obtain knowledge about themselves from other people. The me who I am changes depending on who you ask. Like if you asked my math teacher who I was, I can only imagine that he would say I’m hardworking, quiet, and shy, but if you were to ask my art teachers, they would say I never have nothing to say, I’m very bubbly and I am hardworking. The only thing that matches is I’m hardworking, and if I were to get information about myself from one or the other, my personality would change.
ReplyDeleteIn the play, characters use Primes as a way to remember and communicate with their loved ones after they have passed away. Marjorie has a Prime for her late husband Walter in order to help her with her memory since she has dementia. Marjorie teaches Walter Prime about the real Walter by telling him stories about them. Marjorie tells Walter Prime her version of what happened, thus creating her own version of Walter, not another version of the real Walter. One scene that was especially interesting to me was the scene where Walter tells Marjorie about the time he proposed to her. Walter tells Marjorie about how he proposed to her while they were watching My Best Friend’s Wedding and Marjorie suggests that they change the story to say that they were watching Casablanca. This was very interesting to me because Walter Prime was supposed to be helping Marjorie with her memory. Marjorie just wants someone to talk to and Walter Prime becomes that. Marjorie has Walter as a sense of comfort. I was also struck by the fact that Marjorie chose her Prime to look like Walter when he was young, not the age he was when he died. This further shows how Marjorie was able to create a new version of Walter and remember him however she chooses to. Marjorie wants to remember when Walter was young. This could possibly be because it was before Damien died, or because they were happier back then. Another interesting concept to explore in Marjorie Prime is the idea of memory. Jon and Tess get Walter Prime for Marjorie in order to help her with her memory. However, the stories that Walter Prime tells Marjorie are not actually his memories. They are versions of Marjorie’s and Jon’s memories. These memories have also been changed over time as memory fades. I think that Marjorie likes keeping Walter Prime around not because he helps her remember, but he keeps her company. Marjorie needs a friend, and with Walter Prime she is able to create her own friend, feeding him information to recite back to her later. This play is a very scary and interesting topic for me especially because it does not seem far off from our realm of possibility.
ReplyDeleteThe play Marjorie Prime has this interesting concept of ‘primes’ which are holograms that basically act and look like your loved ones that you lost. I thought this was more scary than interesting because you obviously aren’t talking to the actual person but the hologram looks, sounds, and acts exactly like the person. It’s crazy because I feel like technology these days are getting so advanced this could actually be a thing. Am I totally against it? Well no but also I would not be totally for it. I actually find it intriguing that the primes don’t know every single thing that has happened to the person’s life so they can be fed false memories which changes a lot about the prime and how it would act. I found it kind of funny though how each person started having individual conversations with the prime almost like he was their therapist. What i found crazy though is when Marjorie died Tess had started talking to her prime! She was never a fan of it when Marjorie did it so I didn’t see it coming, as well as Jon talking to a prime WHEN TESS died! You know what I did find a bit interesting. The fact that the whole purpose of the prime was to help Marjorie with her memory since she was experiencing her first symptoms of Alzheimer’s because basically he only comforted her. She was the one that was helping the prime with the memories. She would talk all day about memories she had with her family and made sure the young Walter would remember them. I like how this play is a mix of Sci-Fi and family relationships. I have never read anything like this in English class and even though it was a bit scary it was at least different than what we usually read.
ReplyDeleteThe play, Majorie Prime, as well as the movie were both two pieces of art that I thoroughly enjoyed a lot. They both were really similar to each other and didn’t have a lot of differences between them and told the same plot - the way I thought it would play out anyways. The play kind of freaked me out in a way with the idea of “primes” because one day, it could be possible for them to be existent in our world. Now, there will most likely not be human primes which are physically apparent in front of someone, but it could be possible within technology considering what it is capable of today. I find it interesting, yet also really creepy because I think that with a prime, comes the problem with coping. While watching the movie, and reading the play, I kept thinking, if I were to have a prime of a loved one, whether in the future or immediately after someone passed away in the past, how could I ever cope with it? I feel as if I would always rely on the Prime to help me get through their death. Although this is partly good because the Prime is also supposed to help others cope with their feelings - as Majorie did with her husband - I think that it doesn’t allow for pure coping with death - which I think allows for growth in one’s life as well. I know that if one of my loved ones passed away, of course I would want to see them again but it makes that coping process so much harder because you are holding onto a relationship that is technically not real anymore. You could also tell the Prime lies as to how you want to remember that loved one, but when in reality, you know him/her for what happened and how the relationship affected you, and nothing could change that. Besides this, I think a Prime would also be a good way to hold onto the relationship mentally and in your heart because you are explaining everything about them to its Prime so it can understand more, helping for one to grief (grief to the point of when they reach acceptance) and so you can have the ability to say a “goodbye” if not given the chance. I love science fiction so this play was especially interesting to me because it is modern and I could definitely picture it realistically happening in our world one day - which is also really scary!
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the primes seemed really interesting and positive to me at first. But as the movie progressed I began to move away from my original impression. Death is a terrifying concept for pretty much everyone. It's the fear of the unknown that pushes people to come up with outlandish and absurd ideas. We are terrified of the memories of our loved ones fading away, whether it is because they have died or because your own memory is failing you. I like how we made lots of connections between Marjorie Prime and Black Mirror. Because they are centered around the same concept- our technological future... that isn't actually that futuristic. They are centered around the ideas that sound good in theory but in execution they cause a whole spell of problems. Like the idea of having the memory of a loved one live on seems wonerful, but first off I find it kind of creepy. But diving deeper, it isn't really them, its just the version of them you created in your head. This connects to the idea that there isn't really one version of everyone. There are endless perceptions of everyone based off of their age and interactions and mood and ughhh SO much more. Clearly this is very overwhelming and makes the somewhat simple concept of a prime become something not simple at all. I think that is it especially eerie at the end of the movie when they are all sitting in the room together. Like there is nothing more that can be added to their consciousness. And at the same time, there is probably a dead body in the house but nobody knows. Ugh so creepy.
ReplyDeleteMarjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison was a very interesting story for me to read. I am fascinated by technology and the impacts it can make on people’s lives. But as I have gotten older, I have also started to focus my attention to the negative impacts of technological advances. The concept of a Prime is very interesting in the sense that it can bring a loved one back or provide closure for people, but the biggest issue I saw with the Prime was how it was affected by its surroundings. In Marjorie Prime, we saw how over time Walter Prime became more and more like the actual Walter by better understanding its surroundings. Because the Prime can improve itself over time, there will be people who use the Prime to create alternative versions of their loved ones. I feel that subconsciously people will inject false narratives into their Primes. Over time, these false narratives will build up, and to an outsider who knew the person the Prime was replicating and the Prime itself, they would be easily able to tell them apart. But the person mostly interacting with the Prime, would not be able to tell the two apart because in their mind they would justify this new actions of the Prime as what the actual person would do. I feel that down the road, a Prime that is adjusted could do more harm than good, in the sense, that it will play tricks with their mind and might cause them to change their personality.
ReplyDeleteWhat the primes show is that in order to be at ease with ourselves, humans must come to terms with those in their lives. It was much easier for the characters to express their true love for their loved ones once they were dead, but that is because it was easier. The “deep responsibilities” of a person in anguish include coming to terms with loved ones. It is sometimes very hard to tell a person you love them when they are alive and with you, whether it be explicitly or implicitly. I personally think that such actions are an essential part of life in terms of displaying the feelings that we are intended to feel, making our lives vivid and meaningful. What the primes do is they make it easier for people to avoid sharing their feelings because in a sense, their loved ones never die. It was very easy for Tess to come to terms with her mother as a prime, which is what she feared most of all. The characters could hold their feelings for the primes who they know will not have an emotional reaction, thus reducing the intensity of such actions. But, in having the primes as an emotion doll, we cannot experience the intense feelings of having others affected by our own feelings, happy or sad, which is one of the most beautiful parts of life.
ReplyDeleteThat is, in essence, the downside to the primes that exceeds physical needs or desires. Marjorie showed how the primes could be used for good. Her emotional needs were more or less met in a way that would have been impossible with her memory loss and old age. This brought up the dilemma of whether or not it was okay to change a person's memories if it made them happier. For Marjoire, it was okay. She could control what she told Walter so that she didn’t erase any regrets or difficult feelings while changing the little things to polish the good parts in her life (i.e. the proposal). Even so, it still did not allow her to show her love for Tess that Tess needed to be at ease, but that's something she wouldn’t have been able to do with or without the primes (due to her age and condition). But, it brings into light what our lives could be like if we didn’t have regrets because we pushed them from our accepting consciousness. Similar to how we would lessen our ability to feel if we don’t express our feelings to our loved ones, I think that pushing away our regrets would cause us to lose our sense of forlornness and despair, as well as our sense of wonder and adventure.
This is a very interesting yet terrifying concept to me. I appreciate technology and see all the wonderful advancements it has made in the world but this is one instance that I do not approve of using it. I can’t help but be reminded of the show “Black Mirror” when reading this which leaves me to think seriously about the possibilities that the show presents. For example, there is an episode in season 3 that deals with a similar concept using technology to allow elderly people to revisit the past inhabited by people who have died. It is a form of nostalgia therapy that I know I would be drawn to if I were in such a situation though I know it would just cause more pain. I am a very nostalgic person and I tend to hold on to the past instead of focusing on the present. I treasure memories more so than any other aspect of life. I use music and TV as sources of comfort with the reminder of past memories. I hoard old pictures on my phone and often revisit home videos as a way to relive the simpler past. Though I see the dangers of the primes. Honestly, I see them as a great disrespect to the real people who have passed. The primes themselves are not accurate re-creations of the people from the past. They are constructed from other people’s opinions and perspectives having nothing to do with the actual person. The primes provide a coping mechanism for people still living to dodge grief in attempt to continue with life as if nothing happened. I do see the the positive in the use of a prime to say things that you wish you had said after a person has passed. To be able to get closure and move on is very beneficial though the existence of the prime itself does not help in moving on. It prolongs grief and does not allow a person to understand how to live without their loved one. I know it sounds incredibly harsh to say that someone needs to simply “move on” and I understand the desire of primes but I think they cause more pain than healing in the end. The play and the movie have encouraged me to think deeply about this concept and what it would mean in my life.
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