Tag Archives: Prosthetic Memory

General Media Theory

Landsberg to Lain: Power in Prosthetic Memories

2 Comments

Introduction

Serial Experiments Lain is a 1998 cyberpunk anime which follows a girl called Lain in a world where the boundary between the physical realm and the Wired – a fictionalized version of what we know as the Internet – progressively becomes more blurred. Lain grapples with confronting her digital alter egos and trying to make sense of her ever-shifting reality. While the series quickly spirals into surreality and confusion, the themes of memory, identity and mass media ring clear. The specific concept of prosthetic memories comes into view when it is revealed that the world’s chaos can be traced back to a digitally-omnipresent antagonist named Eiri, whose ability to manipulate collective memory can shape reality.  

Hence, I found that this series resonates heavily with Alison Landsberg’s 1995 paper Prosthetic Memories, in which she defines such memories as ones that are implanted instead of coming from lived experiences. While her discussion focuses on prosthetic memories as experienced through film and mass media, my blog post explores how Serial Experiments Lain extends her ideas to the modern age of the internet and social media. I go further to argue that the late-90s series prophetically illustrates how the internet is used as a powerful tool for systems of power to manipulate memory, alter reality and reshape history to the detriment of society. 

Prosthetic memories through social media

Landsberg explains that the mass media is a site for the production of prosthetic memories, with cinema in particular. As a medium that makes images available for mass consumption, it creates experiences and implants memories “which become experiences that film consumers both possess and feel possessed by” (176). Spectators witness memories depicted on screen that they have not actually lived through, prosthetically experiencing the histories of a collective past. Landsberg suggests that this complicates identity formation and results in the creation of “partial identities” (179).

Similarly, Lain is a figure whose identity is fragmented and shaped by prosthetic memories. Midway through the series, a mind-bending twist reveals that Lain is a digital entity entirely constructed by Eiri with the purpose of bridging the gap between the real world and the Wired. She grows to become a figure whose identity is shaped by the human collective unconscious present in the Wired, resulting in different “Lains” who are constructed by various people’s experiences and memories. While the Wired presents an exaggerated, more advanced version of how the Internet functions in real life, Lain’s experiences with partial identities is reflective of how our identities are shaped online. Beyond the images depicted in films as discussed by Landsberg, social media has made it so that users can easily upload documentations of their memories to the digital realm, readily accessible for others to prosthetically experience these histories and internalize them as their own.

Perception becomes reality

Landsberg explains that what is real and what is not becomes blurred when an individual’s identity is affected by prosthetic memories. She asks the question “What might it mean to say that those memories are ‘just’ from a movie?”, arguing against any attempt to distinguish between prosthetic memories and “real” ones, since anything that we experience to be real becomes our reality regardless of the source. Serial Experiments Lain echoes this point by positing that perception becomes reality, and extends this discussion to the realm of collective memories and the act of memory erasure.

“A memory is only a record. You just have to rewrite that record.” – Lain

While the series explores Landsberg’s ideas of experiencing additional memories outside of one’s own lived experience, it also explores what happens when memory is erased. As Lain becomes a powerful, God-like being that crosses between planes of reality, she grows to realize the detrimental impacts of her abilities, and uses memory manipulation as a positive force to remove herself from society’s collective memory. She continues to live on, but in a peaceful world where she was never remembered, and thus the impacts of her existence are no longer present. This bittersweet ending highlights a central idea that ripples throughout the episodes: that people only have substance within the memories of other people.

Memory as shaped by power

Following this idea that people only have substance within memories of others, could this also apply to global issues or events? Our collective memory and experience of reality is largely shaped by our engagement with social media and the images that we see online. If something is documented less or hidden from public view, society becomes prone to forgetting it, which essentially removes it from our perception, and thus our reality.

Adriaansen and Smit explain how platformization reshapes the act of remembering and forgetting through algorithmic curation. They define platformization as the way in which our pasts are actively and continuously reshaped by the infrastructures of digital platforms. They use the example of Facebook and Apple’s “Memory” features that algorithmically select old posts to surface as memories based on engagement metrics and positive content. These features strategically reconstructs individual’s memories into tailored narratives that highlight certain moments while erasing those deemed less desirable. Adriaansen and Smit also explain how, on a collective scale, algorithms aid in the dissemination of content throughout social networks, with algorithmic bias playing a part in determining which narratives gain visibility and credibility. This proliferates the spread of “fake news”, leading to collective yet false memories about public events that become part of our perceived reality and experiences (2).

Serial Experiments Lain extends Landsberg concept of prosthetic memories to the modern age of the Internet, and illustrates how social media is a prominent site for memory construction and the shaping of our collective reality. The power of memory manipulation that Eiri, and consequently Lain, hold, make them figures that are allegorical of these systems of power and regimes that enforce censorship in attempts to make us remember and forget. While there is no God-like entity that can literally extract and implant memories into the minds of individuals (hopefully), the erasure and fabrication of narratives happen all the time, subtly but surely. Hence, it remains important for us to look through the cracks and think critically about the information we engage with online so that we don’t fall into a perception of reality that blinds us from truth.

By: Adela Lynge

References

Adriaansen, Robbert-Jan, and Rik Smit. “Collective memory and social media.” Current Opinion in Psychology, vol. 65, Oct. 2025, pp. 1–4,

Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Body & Society, 1995. pp. 175-189.



General Media Theory

Can a Film Give You False Memories? Prosthetic Memory in Monster

12 Comments

I was about forty minutes into watching Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2023 film, Monster, when my understanding of the film completely altered. The pieces seemed to fit together so seamlessly, so inevitably. I was certain I had a grasp of who the monster was in the film until the film restarted and the same scenes were depicted through different lenses. The feelings I felt while the tone of the narrative shifted encapsulate why this film is now one of my all-time favourites. The uncomfortable, almost physical sensation of a memory changing was beautifully illustrated once the first part of the film closed out and began again with a new perspective. Not just my understanding, but my actual recollection of what I had witnessed had completely changed—the scenes I had experienced as sinister now carried entirely different emotional weight.

This unsettling experience is precisely what media theorist Alison Landsberg describes as “prosthetic memory,” where the memories we acquire do not come from lived experiences, but rather through cinema and mass media while still feeling deeply personal and emotionally resonant with our physical bodies. Landsberg argues that prosthetic memories allow us experiential access to the lives and perspectives that we haven’t lived through cinema.

Cinema has the powerful capability of building empathy across social, cultural, and historical divides. Following Benjamin and Kracauer, Landsberg claims that the cinematic experience “has an individual, bodily component at the same time that it is circumscribed by its collectivity.” (Landsberg, 180) The publicity of cinema allows individual bodies to form new means of collectivity through prostheses and prosthetic memories. Oftentimes, what we witness on film actually becomes part of one’s “personal archive of experience,” (Landsberg, 179) and can alter our overall sentiments towards the film and the movie-watching experience altogether. Monster take advantage of our memory. It doesn’t just give access to unfamiliar experiences, but forces us in participating in the very stigmatization the film ultimately condemns. What if the real power of Kore-eda’s film lies not in revealing who the “monster” actually is, but in making us feel what it’s like to have named one?

Landsberg discusses the concept of ‘emotional possession,’ where an individual identifies with the plot so much that they are carried away from the usual trend of conduct (Landsberg, 179) to describe the potential cinema has in emotionally resonating with individuals. Monster’s three part structure reveals different perspectives of the same event, first from the perspective of mother, Saori, then from teacher, Mr. Hori, and finally from the perspective of her son and his friend, Minato and Yori. The film takes advantage of traditional film technique, the Rashomon Effect, to reveal different aspects of the truth as the film progresses. This technique takes advantage of the idea of the unreliable narrator, where notions of memory and the truth are blurred based on differing perspectives and subjective views of one central event (Prince). By following one character per act, each section allows audiences to emotionally connect with the section’s protagonist, investing their emotional possession on that one character as that is the narrative they are initially exposed to. It is easy for movie-watchers to immediately assume what they first watch is true, thanks to imaginative identification, where audiences often project themselves on to the film’s protagonist (Landsberg, 179). The initial emotional investment in the first character, Saori, in the first act weighs more as the movie progresses and more perspectives and truths unravel. Further more, it makes the tone switch as the perspectives change more impactful, as it brings tension and surprise when it is revealed that nothing is really what it seems. Each retelling of the event doesn’t just add information, but it overwrites our experiential memory of what truly happened. What we first see from the perspective of Saori now becomes completely different in the eyes of Mr. Hori. We don’t understand the truth until we follow the children’s lenses, which even ends ambiguously. Because of the realism in Monster’s narrative, it becomes even more difficult for audiences to distinguish between truth and fiction, between the cinematic world and our society. The film deals with topics of intimacy, self-discovery, and innocence through perspective and memories. Upon my first screening of this film, it was compelling to see how the initial mystery of a teacher hitting a schoolboy unravelled into an exploration of two young children’s relationship with themselves, each other, and their surroundings. It was something I could have anticipated, when looking through the narrative from only one set of memories. 

This form of prosthesis extends viewers’ relationship to the film itself, rather than just the content and the watcher. As Landsberg emphasises, the nature of cinema gives us access to experiential knowledge and perspectives that we would otherwise not have access to. Unlike traditional flashback scenes, Kore-eda forces us to relive these moments through multiple different characters. By forcing us to “remember” the same scenes with different emotional contexts, audiences are given a bodily, highly sensory experience of having the wrong assumption about someone. What we knew at the end of the first act is never the lasting impression we have once the film ends. Oftentimes, the ‘truth’ lies within adults, those who are mature and of sound mind and children’s perspectives are ignored or seen through a childish lens. Monster plays with the idea of children as the truth and as critics. As children are more capable of being influenced by the world around us, and have little to no filters at a young age, this critique comes from innocence and wonder. Kore-eda gives us prosthetic access to these children’s perspectives, which are the very perspectives that the past two acts have misinterpreted.

As director Kore-eda explains, the poster features the two children ‘looking our way and they’re evaluating us adults and they’re saying, “Hey you’re creating this world with monsters everywhere and that’s our world.”‘ (Fernandes) This is the political power of prosthetic memory that Landsberg describes: by literally making us experience what we’ve been missing. By witnessing the third and final act, we are able to feel the consequences of that exclusion. We carry the prosthetic memory of having participated in a world that creates monsters by refusing to see through children’s eyes.

The prosthetic memory that Monster implants in us is not just the children’s stories of what they witness, but the experiential knowledge of what we dismiss, damage, and mislabel as ‘monstrous.’ It forces us to use this movie and apply it to our own society and how we are so quick to critique others based on one perspective—but more than that, we now carry a memory of having done exactly that, of having gotten it wrong, that feels as real and uncomfortable as our own lived mistakes.

Sources

Fernandes, Marriska. “Monster’s Hirokazu Kore-Eda on the Two Entities in His Films: ‘Children and Dead People.’” Toronto Film Critics Association, 25 Sept. 2023, torontofilmcritics.com/features/monsters-hirokazu-kore-eda-on-the-two-entities-in-his-films-children-and-dead-people/.

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.

Prince, Stephen. The Rashomon Effect | Current | The Criterion Collection, 6 Nov. 2012, www.criterion.com/current/posts/195-the-rashomon-effect.

Critical Response

We Don’t Just Watch Disney—We Become it

10 Comments

In Bridghet’s blog post Guys, He’s Literally Me, the author writes about how prosthetic memories, proposed by Alison Landsberg, can be imagined through films to shape identities that lived memories do. The article further argues how this mechanism may also enforce confirmation bias when being uncritical about who they identify with. Referencing to American Psycho and the modern “Sigma Male” trend, the author shows that viewers do not always empathize with the intended subject of the film, instead adopting the film as a means of validating misogyny, narcissistic masculinity, and entitlement. Thus, films double in their effects: they have the capacity to build empathy and understanding, but they can also maintain oppressive social narratives and reproduce damaging identities when audiences misread them or internalize them selectively .This dynamic is not unique to American Psycho or Sigma Male culture.

“We’re promoting merchandise to adults as well as little girls,” said the company’s director of licensing in 1987, referring to products that had been created for the 50th anniversary of Snow White (Tait). I couldn’t help but wonder, do we grow out of Disney—or does Disney simply grow into us? 91% self-identified “Disney adults” expected to remain Disney adults for life, showing how prosthetic memory and identity production by media is structural, not individual. It is not simply just building a nostalgic childhood, as one may naturally think. It is an actual lived, long-lasting identity.

Disney films have been producing similar “prosthetic identities” for decades—often in ways that also affirm harmful cultural scripts. Disney’s narratives generate extraordinarily powerful memories in childhood audiences: for many people, these films become their earliest emotional templates for love, heroism, gender, and belonging. If Landesberg argues that films allow us to “construct narratives for ourselves,”(186) Disney arguably teaches us who we are supposed to want to become.

Take the “princess” narrative: Disney’s heroines repeatedly enact the prosthetic memory of transformation-an ordinary girl becomes the chosen one, love is fate, goodness is destiny. Children adopt those feelings, internalize the desire, and carry that prosthetic memory into adulthood. But, like the men who selectively identify with Bateman, audiences often internalize the surface fantasy and neglect the critique. For example, the early Disney canon accidentally supports the fantasy of male entitlement and female reward: the prince’s perseverance is framed as love, not stubbornness, and the princess’s silence or sacrifice becomes virtue, not constraint. The audiences “remember” these roles even without living them. The result can be the same confirmation bias, except directed toward romance, gender norms, happiness, and competition.

Disney has also perfected the art of extending these memories beyond the screen and into everyday consumption. Through theme parks, merchandise, streaming platforms, and curated nostalgia, Disney provides an entire ecosystem where these identities are reinforced repeatedly. Visiting Disneyland becomes a ritual–wearing themed dresses, buying branded products becomes an act of belonging, and nostalgia becomes a commodity that is constantly renewed. In the same manner that Sigma Males “perform” masculinity through imitation, Disney fans perform their identity through participation in a shared fantasy world that blurs the line between media and lived memory. This shows that prosthetic identity is not just emotional or psychological. It is economic, cultural, and social, quietly infiltrating every aspect of our community.

Interestingly enough, Disney has recently attempted to revise this prosthetic memory. Films like Frozen and Moana actively resist the earlier narratives of entitlement or rescue (Mendelson). In other words, Disney knows that people don’t just watch princess movies—they model themselves after them. Disney has had to become aware of film’s power not just to teach empathy, but to reinforce bias.

Taking the author’s argument further, the problem isn’t just that audiences identify with Bateman incorrectly–it’s that culture conditions us to look for ourselves in the narratives to confirm the scripts we already carry, whether that’s the Sigma Male fantasy, the Nice Guy narrative, or the Disney princess myth. Prosthetic memories can produce empathy, but they also produce archetypes that get recycled across media and across identity.

What Bridghet’s post reveals—and what Disney makes even clearer—is that prosthetic memory is not neutral. It can produce empathy, or entitlement. It can create community, or isolation. Perhaps the task for filmmakers and audiences isn’t to stop identifying with characters, but to become more aware of what we are being trained to desire in the first place. So I agree with the author’s conclusion that film produces identity as much as emotion. Still, I would add that even the most seemingly innocuous films, especially Disney films, have always been doing the same kind of cultural work that American Psycho does: shaping what we think we are, who we think is heroic, and what futures we believe we deserve.

Works Cited

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.

Mendelson, Scott. “Why ‘little Mermaid’ May Mark the End of Disney’s Remake Factory Hits: Analysis.” TheWrap, 1 June 2023, www.thewrap.com/disney-remake-little-mermaid-moana-frozen/.

Tait, Amelia. “The ‘Disney Adult’ Industrial Complex.” New Statesman, New Statesman, 26 Feb. 2024, www.newstatesman.com/culture/2024/02/disney-adult-superfan-industrial-complex#:~:text=Far%20more%20common%20answers%20include,%E2%80%9Cmakes%20me%20feel%20happy%E2%80%9D.

Cover art: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/118430665278991259/

Written by Gina Chang

Other

Guys, He’s Literally Me.

11 Comments

“And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.” – Patrick Bateman (American Psycho, 2000).

Alison Landesberg suggests in her essay Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner the experiences an audience member has watching a film is equally impactful and informative as lived experiences. These simulated experiences cultivate identity and these memories without the lived experience encourage the formation of new opinions. Landesberg explains that these memories build empathy because they give opportunity for audiences to visually put themselves in others’ shoes. However, these movies do not just induce empathy, but encourage confirmation biases and inspire toxic behaviors as well.

Confirmation bias is defined by the Northeastern University Library as “the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.” Therefore, if a man believes that they are exceedingly charismatic but utterly self-reliant they will only experience information or experiences that will affirm these self-proclaimed behavioral traits. 

Top of the corporate ladder, disciplined, in a relationship with an heiress, and does as he pleases with others, the dream life. Just one character flaw, if you would call it as such, he likes to “dissect girls”. Hello Patrick Bateman, the poster boy of the Sigma Male.

 A Sigma Male can be defined as a lone wolf, someone who is defined as the “rarest of males (Rose, 2024)”. They are essentially better than everyone, they are logical, confident, women love them and they don’t care; they are not just better than everyone they are above. Sigma Males can be a form of narcissism. Men watch American Psycho and internalize the experiences Bateman lived and say “I could be as successful as him, he is literally me.” Landesberg states films induce empathy from a viewer. However, if one is empathizing with Patrick Bateman and seeing similarities I do not think they are digesting these films critically. While films can promote empathy, there needs to be a recognition of audiences that are not looking to empathize with another person’s lived experience. 

The book American Psycho was written by a queer man Bret Easton Ellis, and the film was directed by a woman. It could deduce that this film was not trying to establish this character that depicts masculinity, rather the opposite. One could say that Patrick Bateman is a satirical depiction of the greed of climbing the ranks of capitalism, as well as the deliberate overlooking of warning signs of dangerous men. “White men can get away with anything. Though that is not what the self-proclaimed Sigma Males take away from the narrative of American Psycho. They see Bateman’s confidence, his logic, his class and not just strive to see themselves in his character, they see themselves as Patrick Bateman (minus the murder tendencies). There is a confirmation bias men use when watching films that highlight men without looking at the deeper meaning. Their analysis is surface-level because they are just looking at themselves. Audiences that see the socially toxic parts of themselves can perpetuate social oppression. These narratives men take away from American Psycho can often be harmful for women. 

Another archetype of men that has been formally labeled via digital media is the “Nice Guy.” Many men try to separate themselves from the “common.” That is why Sigma Males try to emulate the “lone wolf”, someone who does not need anyone. While Nice Guys differentiate themselves from other men, they hear the gross behaviors of other men and act opposingly. However, because they recognize these traits, they believe women owe them the attention because “they are not like other guys.” An example of this would be the male lead of 500 Days of Summer. Though the female lead of the film established many throughout the term of their relationship, the male lead thought she owed him a relationship because he invested so much time with her. Many audiences empathized with the male lead and villainized the female lead. Thus, perpetuating the harmful narrative that women should give in to something they do not want because a man wanted.

Landesberg does clarify that she wants to emphasize that audiences should take away the sentiments of films rather than unquestioningly validate their own pasts. Just like any experience, it could be collective yet the individual will form a unique perspective. While movies are a beautiful way to view a new narrative with a moral that needs to be emphasized, many should realize that they can be just as harmful as they are helpful. Landesberg does a great job describing the positive effects of films yet her argument lacked a contrasting point. Films and media have hyperbolized and affirmed a spectrum of behaviors. Which has radicalized and divided as much as it has connected communities.

As a filmmaker I believe that films can create a narrative of empathy that connects the world, yet there is a need in the world to study context as well as the film itself. There are identities being built from the prosthetic memory received from film, Landesberg emphasizes empathy and I emphasize systematic oppression. There is a trend where viewers of these Sigma Male films are alienating themselves from others and they are developing a disdain for others. Audiences are not seeing the larger picture, they are perpetuating the thoughts that are internalized not just in them but in societal systems.  

Works Cited

American Psycho. Directed by Mary Harron, Lions Gate Films, 2000.

Fake News/Misinformation/Disinformation: What is Confirmation Bias?. Northeastern University Library, https://subjectguides.lib.neu.edu/fakenews/bias.

500 Days of Summer. Directed by Mark Webb, Fox Searchlight Picture, 2009

Landesberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.  Columbia University Press, 2004. 

Rose, Steven. The sad, stupid rise of the sigma male: how toxic masculinity took over social media. The Guardian, 12 Jun, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/12/the-sad-stupid-rise-of-the-sigma-male-how-toxic-masculinity-took-over-social-media.