Memento-a theory (2)

The split self, in Memento, becomes supremely postmodern, for there is no dominant, no objective, no ‘real’ self that constitutes identity. Leonard chooses his own subjective identity, that of the detective, and his final speech of the film indicates the necessity of this choice for everyone in the postmodern world – man must create himself – ‘We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different.’The space of a fictional world is a construct, just as the characters and objects that occupy it are, or the actions that unfold within it. Typically, in realist and modernist writing, this spatial construct is organized around a perceiving subject, either a character or the viewing position adopted by a disembodied narrator. (McHale 45)
McHale goes on to say that in postmodernist fiction, ‘space…is less constructed than deconstructed by the text, or rather constructed and deconstructed at the same time’ (McHale, 45), and this is a result of the complication in the presentation of the narrator figure, which in Falling Angel and Memento is the detective. The theory that in postmodernity, identity is subjective and self-constructed, a text of thoughts and language to create an image of oneself, suggests equally that the textual worlds these characters narrate are also subjective and fluctuating constructs, likely (as in both the film and novel) to prove as unstable and ultimately ‘false’ as the detectives’ identities. McHale refers to work by sociologists such as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, who believe that ‘social reality is a fictional construct,’ a ‘jigsaw puzzle of “subuniverses of meaning”’ (McHale 37) all jostling for position as the dominant world-view. These concepts work perfectly in our analysis of Memento as a postmodernist text, for the textual ‘world’ created in the film is forced, through the narrative’s reversal, to be constantly erased, reconstructed and revised. Each new segment of linear narrative action (lasting only a few minutes) successfully alters the audience’s perception of the previous segment, and is erased in its turn by the next. Throughout the story, each ‘objective’ reality is called into question almost as soon as it is created, and the audience is left wondering whether anyone can be trusted as giving the ‘truth’. We are forced to suspect Teddy, Natalie, and finally Leonard himself, and though the narrative sections are interspersed with a seemingly more constant reality (scenes shown in black and white and usually with Leonard on the phone), even this ‘truth’ is finally undermined when Leonard reads one of his own tattoos which tells him to ‘never answer the phone.’ Our faith in this particular world, which has lasted thus far, is broken as Leonard slams down the phone.