The most interesting connection within the dark and nightmarish film “Eraser Head” was the relationship between the title (and correlating scene) and the man who seems to be controlling the world. In reference to literature, the controller it obviously the author. He gave life to everyone, as if they are all characters in his grand narrative.
In the title scene, when Henry’s head is extracted like an aging Swiss cheese, then literally turned into eraser tips for pencils, the author dies, because his character’s mind is wiped clean. With no mind, there is no character. With no character, there is no story. With no story, there is no author—he has no purpose.
Another level to this poor artist’s inescapable demise comes from the characters and the readers in the film co-inhabiting the same plane. They are equals and interact with each other they same way they interact among themselves. If then, a character can rightly be called an “eraser head” then a reader, as an equal can be called the same. As a reader though, the title takes on another meaning.
Readers erase, or forget works of literature. Therefore, reproduced stories are always new when they are read again. This perpetuates the idea that there are no new ideas, and thus, if all ideas are reproductions of potentially pre-read texts, then there is no single author.
In this light, I think this film is balanced somewhere between modernism and postmodernism. The author is fighting his downfall and trying to create something new out of something that is very much like that which is consuming it. [Modernism] At the same time, he fails, and the film is left to a pluralistic audience of viewers. [Postmodernism]
3 comments:
I could definitely see where you are going with the controller of the levers being a creator of the world shown. This would also work as in the end it seems as though he is dying, being electrocuted perhaps? By that time what plot we have had really taken it's own turn and for a film like this, the death of the author is extremely important. And Lynch is good at that, and good at not saying what his work is about or what it means.
For me, the eraser bit had more to do with the state of human thought and consciousness. (Maybe this is a little trite and obvious but it's what struck me.) The whole idea of taking brain matter from a human- something that traditionally is supposed to create and remember- and use it to make something that erases is very potent and uncomfortable. The material i use to remember the film is transformed into something that erases. The act of erasing is very loaded in the first place, never mind how long the frame lingers on the rubbing away of pencil. I see writing as = ideas and if the state of human thought at the time had deteriorated to a point where the vehicle for thought can counter what it is intended for, what does that say about how we have been impacted?
and after seeing the rest of the film, i would have to say that although it does have a certain depthlessness and lack of teleological arch, it still comes across as surrealist to me. It reminded me of Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and while i don't claim to know a great deal about surrealist film, it is characterized by "incongruous juxtaposition" and non sequitur which it seems Eraserhead if full of.
"IS full of." why can't you edit comments? dude. okay. signing off.
People don't always forget/erase what they read, usually they retain a little of what they read but lose details, or sometimes it gets hidden in their subconscious. If the reader is also a writer then sometimes what they read pops up in what they write, sometimes without the writer realizing it at the time. I know I've done that before. So in a sense nothing is completly forgotten. This also goes with the idea that in lit nothing is new, but rather recycled. We learn from the past.
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