I am viewing “Mad Men” on Netflix, spacing the time between episodes, forcing myself not to watch two in a row, trying to drag this out for as long as possible. But I can already see the end in sight, the writing on the wall. I am in the middle of the third season, and the finality of the last episode of that fourth season looms ever more near.
Yes, I understand there is likely to be a fifth season forthcoming, but by then so much will have happened, so much will have changed. This particular moment in my life, the point when I needed this particular show, this exact fix of melancholy reverie, will have passed, and the moment will be gone.
Why can there not be a forgetting pill? I would like to be able to go back to each episode with fresh eyes, to see it once more with its mysteries still intact. If only cursed memory did not leave such a trail of damage, of secrets revealed and endings laid bare, then I could go on forever enjoying the world of Don Draper, and live for all time in a long ago world that somehow, against all reason, never grows old.
Heh. I often envy your apparently amazing memory. I guess this is one case where having a less than amazing memory pays off. I’d probably just need to wait about 6 months and I’d be able to watch it all again as if it were the first time. Works great with books too! 😉
I think this is a desire that many people experience. It seems to almost always be associated with syndicated television programs, although I’ve heard it most frequently in reference to The Wire.
And yet… I can’t help but feel that fulfilling it would be deeply degenerate. I’m reminded of the finale of the film “Until the End of the World” and its bizarre take on the poppy eaters, feeding on audio-video feeds of their own dreams… such a chemical or digital utopia might be appealing while we are at our weakest, but it can embody the worst excesses of drug abuse and willful ignorance.
I too see dystopia.
The central lesson of society, capitalism and indeed history is that we must learn to choose the long term over the short term to survive in the long term, and that is what matters. Eventually a roulette wheel takes everything you have.
If we could forget, we lose sight of even the history we have lived through; the potential for abuse of forgetting pills to alter other people, to support despotic regimes (“ask him if he was tortured!”), to hide anything you want to hide… you would be opting to remove the past, to make it optional. If you think we are too short-sighted now, imagine being able to forget forever what seems unsavoury now.
I am a superb example: I forget everything already, and painfully repeat past mistakes with awful frequency.