Top Ten Miraculous Fictional Head Injuries

Top Ten Miraculous Fictional Head Injuries

Fiction is full of miracles caused by hitting people on the head. Reality is still catching up.

#4. Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

black-and-white-oz-croppedWhen Dorothy fell off a fence, hit her head, and traveled to a distant land of flying monkeys, apple-chucking trees and loveable singing little people, she didn’t just kill two tyrants liberating both the East and West of Oz. She didn’t just perform the first recorded heart, brain and courage transplants.

She didn’t just take an allegory about 19th century agrarian populism and separate it enough from the source material that it could later be re-imagined into a totally different allegory about the coming-of-age experiences of adolescent women. She didn’t just set up the bright and cheery “before” picture for Judy Garland’s late-career contrapasso.

She also converted the entire world from black and white to color.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzVA974TWaQ

The initial effect was not permanent — as the immediate affect of the head-wound wore off, the world eventually returned to black and white. But Judy Garland spent much of her life in self-destruction, and, sure enough, the effects of Dorothy’s lapsarian injury eventually took hold across the world, so that the previous world of black and white only persisted in the most boring and pretentious corners of existence.

11 Comments on “Top Ten Miraculous Fictional Head Injuries”

  1. Ryan #

    The most miraculous thing about Leonard’s injury in Memento is that he is able to remember that he has amnesia. How is it that his head injury stops him from forming new memories, but the doctors were able to inform him of his condition? I haven’t been able to watch the movie since I noticed that inconsistency.
    I think that there’s actually a chapter in the Sacks book that deals with anterograde amnesia. The man with the affliction, when confronted with his reality, becomes horrified for ten or fifteen minutes, then slips back into the time ten or fifteen years in the past just before he developed the brain damage. Great read, btw.

    Reply

  2. fenzel #

    Yeah, Leonard talks about this discrepancy at some point in _Memento_ – about if his condition is what he tends to think it is, he shouldn’t be able to remember the actual accident, and how therefore it might not be brain damage – he might just have psychological blocks. A software rather than a hardware problem, as it were.

    If that’s true, it potentially changes a lot of the moral implications of what Leonard has done over the course of the movie. But it’s left a bit open-ended.

    Reply

  3. Gab #

    Oh snap.

    I just remembered _50 First Dates_. Similar memory loss to _Memento_. Imagine being a woman and waking up with no idea why you’re clearly multiple months pregnant…

    Reply

  4. fenzel #

    If I wake up being a woman, do I have to like _Moulin Rouge_?

    Because that would be a dealbreaker.

    Reply

  5. Lanthanide #

    I remember Guy Pearce from The Adventures of Prascilla! Queen of the Desert.

    Reply

  6. Amy #

    It wasn’t Naruto that caused Gaara’s ego death and subsequent alliance with the light side of the force…it was that toad Gamabunta. I think he secretes a hallucinogenic substance from his glands. Gaara embraced his shadow side (Shukaku) and went on to become the Hero. Yep. That’s what happened. Or should have anyway. Most people I know who have experienced head trauma end up worse for the wear. But the toad juice on the other hand…

    Reply

  7. fenzel #

    @Lanthanide

    Not _To Wong Fu: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar_?

    It’s so weird that that kind of movie also has a movie pair – like you’ve got Armageddon and Deep Impact, Volcano and Dante’s Peak, Valkyrie and Defiance, and a whole bunch of action stars in drag.

    @Amy

    I frickin’ love Gamabunta. All fictional characters should get to drink sake with the giant toad boss of the Yakuza.

    Reply

  8. Ingrid #

    Very entertaining!!

    Reply

  9. Ambelina #

    Is this about serious head injuries or just when people bump their heads? Because if it is non seriuos injuries, the scene in Stir of Echoes where Kevin Bacon’s wife goes into the basement to check if the water heater is lit then gets up and bangs her head on…something above her, that really got me i felt it.

    Reply

Add a Comment