60 Variations on the Rashomon effect
I saw Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon as an undergraduate at Berkeley in the early ’60s. That film and Toshiro Mifune (lead actor) were unlike anything I had seen before.
Rashomon focuses on a murder. Several witnesses describe that murder, but each in surprisingly different ways. Through Kurosawa’s eyes, we understand that those differences reflect the subjective perceptions of individual witnesses and their own self-interests.
A similar theme of different views appeared in Laurence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, which I read in Berkeley. And, of course, the classic parable of the blind men and an elephant arises repeatedly in life. All show that memories and interpretations can be observer-specific.
The underlying concept of Kurosawa’s film is now called The Rashomon Effect and refers to the different – often contradictory – recollections of witnesses of events. However, there is a variation on that concept, namely sometimes when two people have shared an experience, one recalls it as profound while the other has no memory of it! This effect probably has a name, but if so, I either never encountered it or perhaps “have no memory of it.” Below are two examples from my encounters.
The first started when I took a public speaking class in my sophomore year in high school. The only people I remember in the class was the teacher (Mr. Ross), and two fellow students (Jean, who was a neighbor, and Ed – the key to this story).
One day, Ed must have been causing horsing around in class, and Mr. Ross spotted an opportunity to ‘discipline’ Ed. He said,
“Ed, please come to the front of the class and give an impromptu speech on why children should be seen and not heard.”
This was a clever way to keep all of us in line. And I was relieved Mr. Ross hadn’t asked me to give that talk when I was out of order!
Background note: This event occurred around 1960, near the height of the Cold War with Russia.
Ed went to the front of the class and started speaking. He said something to the effect that:
“The year is 2000. The United States of America is now a colony of Russia. Democracy, free speech, religion, and free press are gone. Communists rule our country with an iron fist.”
Ed then reported that historians had struggled to understand how this tragedy had happened. How could a totalitarian and authoritarian government have subjugated our great democracy – our bastion of liberty? How could our precious freedoms have been taken away?
Ed then shared the answer:
“Historians finally concluded that the fall of the United States traces to the impact of those educators and teachers who promulgated the view that children should be seen but not heard.”
I was stunned. Ed’s impromptu response was brilliant. Mr. Ross had put Ed on the spot, but Ed turned it right back on Mr. Ross. It was one of the two best comebacks I’ve ever heard (see also Chapter 33). And Ed was a high school sophomore!
Ed’s speech was an eye-opener for me. It was the first time I’d seen one of my contemporaries do something original and exceptional. When challenged, he responded with cleverness, elegance, and humor. In so doing, Ed raised the bar for me of what constitutes excellence. I knew I couldn’t match Ed’s verbal and mental quickness, but Ed had set an example I could strive for. That was a gift and a lesson.
I recently decided to contact Ed and tell him how much his response had meant to me. I had trouble finding him but finally left a message. He called back after a few days.
I thanked him for his response to Mr. Ross, and I told him why was important experience for me.
To my surprise, Ed said that he has no memory of this event, even though he distinctly remembers Mr. Ross and credits him for much of what he learned about public speaking. While that event was important to me, it was not to Ed.
A similar sequence of events started at Deep Springs, when a student from Cornell came out for the summer. Dave was a gifted linguist and a gifted pianist. We were talking once about what we wanted to do with our lives, and I said that if I could do anything in life, I would be a concert pianist. Dave asked, do you play? I said no. He responded,
“It’s late to start, but if you want, I’ll give you piano lessons this summer.”
I jumped on this offer, and Dave ordered some sheet music (Ana Magdalena songbook of Bach, Mikrokosmos of Bartók).
I struggled through the music. I could play notes but was unable to transform a sequence of notes into music.
At the end of the summer, I confessed to David,
“I can listen to music, I can hear it, but I just can’t play it.”
David thought for a moment and then responded:
“Well, Ray, just keep listening.”
It was the appropriate advice and a perfect life lesson. David’s comment has given me much amusement and insight over the years. Do what you can do well, and don’t pout over what you can’t.
In 2004, I decided to contact David. I wanted to thank him for those piano lessons and for his concluding comment. We hadn’t been in touch since Deep Springs, but I tracked him down in New Mexico. He wrote that he has no memory either of trying to teach me to play the piano or of his final words. I was stunned – my memory of both is so vivid.
How should I interpret these two independent experiences? They were important to me, but not to Ed or to Dave!
Did these experiences occur? I’m sure they did, but I appreciate that memories can mutate or excised. Assuming that these events did occur, why didn’t my friends remember them? Both are off-scale smart and show no evidence of being forgetful, despite our shared ages.
Humans can sometimes suppress (forget) or modify their recollection of unpleasant events – this is a form of self-deception. But I don’t think that Ed or Dave would have found these shared events unpleasant. [My piano playing was bad but not that bad.]
More likely, an experience that proves to be important to one person (at least in hindsight) can nonetheless be trivial – and hence easily forgettable – to another. Perhaps they were concentrating on issues more important to them at the time.
In some cases, one can check with a third person. No one witnessed David’s comment, but other students in the public speaking class were witnessed. I remembered one student (Jean) and tried to locate her to see if she remembered Ed’s response. Unfortunately, she had died a few years ago.
I wish Ed and David had remembered these events, as sharing and clarifying memories with them would have been fun. And perhaps they would share memories of me that I’d forgotten.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether these two events did occur. Real or imagined, they were and will be important to me.