Forgetting Forwards: Film and the Weirdness of Trauma Research

an interview that "when I saw Straw Dogs by Sam Peckinpah, I walked out in the middle of the movie during the rape scene. . . .It took me 10 years to rewatch the movie." 1 No's own film Irrversible (2002) contains a rape scene that may surpass Peckinpah's in the intensity of its effect on audiences.Asked why people remember the rape more than anything else in his film, he offers a preliminary trauma theory: "Violence generates adrenaline, and adrenaline fixes the memory.When people see a movie that contains moments of simulated violence, you'll have an adrenaline rush, and those memories are much more printed in your memory." 2 Whether the violence is actual or simulated, then, the adrenaline and the memory imprint are real.If unwelcome memories of this imprint arise involuntarily, they are called "intrusions" or "flashbacks" and are considered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder of memory.This disordering is the focus of Irrversible.Sometimes adrenaline's imprint is so extensive that it overwrites itself.Rather than intrusion's involuntary remembering, there can be redaction's involuntary forgetting, the imprint not erased but obscured by a black blankness, at least until later.That's what happened in my case.A few years ago, I watched Straw Dogs (1971) for a project on transatlantic adaptation.Until then, I'd have sworn I'd never seen it.Queasily, though, I recognized it all-smelling the cigarette smoke and dank carpet of our neighbors' 1970s party room, hearing the rattle of the rented cine projector.I felt in my stomach the old alert I'd learnt: a girl is prey in a predatory world.In horror groups, a frequent topic is genre initiation: how young were you when you saw your first horror movie?How excessive was it?