According to Espen, nonlinear means ‘narratives that lacked or subverted a straightforward story line’. Considering this explanation, it can be said that Memento is a cybertext. As we saw, the movie was not definitely nonlinear, with the scenes going back and forth, consisting by the incidents happened in the past and future.
However, it is also difficult to assert that Memento is truly a cybertext. That is because the audience of the movie can never make choices. Even if we want to advice Leonard not to kill the man, or not to meet Natalie, or something else, that’s impossible. The audiences have to sit and just let the movie go. In this sense, the nature of cybertext is not seen in Memento. The audience should be safe and impotent.
But, is the audience of Memento really safe?
Because after we saw the movie, everyone looked puzzled, or, was trying to find out the consequence somehow (Maybe that’s because we’re USP students?). The audience of Memento cannot make a choice in reality, but they can, in their head. We keep on thinking - what if Leonard had made a different choice? Will his destiny change?
This is the same in ergodic literature. The reader/player can make choices, however, they also have to suffer of not choosing the other question.
What is different from other movies, and Memento then? Any movie can give the audience an impatient feeling towards the characters not choosing A rather than B. The most different thing about Memento is because of the way the story is told, and thus makes the audiences get confused and make them get into a ‘labyrinth’.
Cybertext can be enjoyed many times by choosing a different answer every time you play. This cannot be experienced in ‘normal movies’, but as I said in my first blog, Memento should – and can – be watched again. Every time we see the movie, we are sure to get a different feeling (I haven’t tried yet though).
It would be clear for me if I conclude that Memento is a cybertext, but still I have this question fuzzing in my mind – can it be defined as interactive, even if we can't choose the choices in the movie??
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I can see your argument for Memento being a cybertext, but I don't think Aarseth would agree. :) I think he takes it a step further - that the reader needs to make actual mechanical effort - such as jumping to a different page, re-ordering cards, or clicking on a hyperlink - for the work to be ergodic. Memento requires mental, but not mechanical, effort...
As to whether its interactive, that's also a difficult question - I'd say no, its very engaging and requires mental participation from the reader, but there are not any actualy choices (besides choices of interpretation).
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