The 'Marnie' structure

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iconogassed
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The 'Marnie' structure

Post by iconogassed »

By which I mean stories that concern the probing and/or retrieval of a traumatized protagonist's memories, and whose climax turns on a final re-enactment of said memories, but with the addition or clarification of a key piece of information that re-contextualizes everything that came before it.

I've noticed this cropping up more and more in recent years:

Remember (2015)
Lavender (2016)
The Sinner (2017) [mini-series]
Out of Blue (2018)
Reckoning (2019) [mini-series]

Many popular 'mindfuck' films bear a certain resemblance. Jacob's Ladder (1990), Dark City (1998), and Memento (2000), for example. Entries of various horror/science fiction television anthologies. I'm sure it's prevalent in more current TV than I'm aware of.

I have no idea if these have actually been increasing in frequency, but I can only imagine they will with the increasing attention paid to "trauma", and our wrestling over the primacy of eyewitness testimony while technology chips away at the veracity of what those eyes are witnessing.

It might be interesting to compare to the 'Manchurian Candidate' structure, which concerns a more deliberate conditioning/programming of the mind, usually by a nefarious organization or government, but which progresses and ends in a similar way. The original Manchurian Candidate came out a year before Marnie and, despite their dubious resemblance to the reality of the brain, have proved surprisingly resilient as psychology and psychiatry march on. (At least two of the titles I've mentioned combine both!)

I would appreciate any other examples, particularly in recent years. I mean, you have all already been programmed by me to do so, but it never hurts to ask politely.

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