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Remember
An analysis of Torchwood 2.05 “Adam”
Contains major spoilers!
1. Analysis of memory and forgetting
[1.1] In Torchwood 2.05 “Adam,” the Torchwood team has a new colleague: Adam. He’s their new best friend: Jack’s confidant (he recruited Adam 3 years ago!), Tosh’s lover (it’s the 1-year anniversary of their first kiss!), all-around great guy. He’s even in a clip or two in the show’s opening credits. But despite all their memories of times shared, our heroes have only known him for 2 days. Adam is an alien who only has reality when others have memory of him. He feeds that memory into people by touch, and by so doing, he constitutes his own existence.
[1.2] Torchwood 2.05 “Adam” is interesting to me because of the ways it explores the fascinating historical idea of the trace. In addition, it explores the idea that memories comprise the person, and if one alters, so the other necessarily must. The character of the aptly named Adam takes this one step further: memories literally create a person, and without them, he is literally nothing. He would disappear, his existence restricted, doomed to drift in the Vortex. To exist, he must construct false memories in others, thereby creating a false reality in a house of cards that, as we learn, can’t be sustained for long.
[1.3] Paul Ricoeur, in Memory, History, Forgetting, notes that there are three kinds of trace: the kind of trace associated with our brains, which can be analyzed by brain scans and neuroscientific analysis; the trace of affect, or the inscription of something onto the soul; and the more usual documentary trace, which comprises written records, archives, and writing. In “Adam,” all three kinds of trace are in evidence, with the last kind, documentary trace, resulting in Adam’s discovery and downfall. (more…)
