Your Name Here (1960)

The short film Your Name Here begins by deindividuating the film and forcing the watcher to fill in spaces of the video with their own personal invention. The narrator talks about how humanity accomplished so much from the birth of the Homo Sapien to the current times, but there was still something missing. Then, all of a sudden, all of the problems that humanity faces are solved by the invention of one unnamed product. A couple at the beginning of the video that was previously distraught is suddenly happy due to the invention of the unnamed product. The unnamed product is supposed to be your own creation, something made by the viewer which has the potential to become a success and change the world.

The film suggests that nothing we do is really unique. It is saying in so many words that we are unfulfilled and that we will always be unfulfilled until “that thing” is made to appease our wants. However, there will never be one creation that will completely pacify our desires as a nation and as a world. For students of our current information and communication infrastructure, it shows that we as individuals may need to stop chasing this dream of absolute completion. We continue to buy the latest technology in an effort to be the most updated in the world of technical science. In reality, there is no conceivable way to be completely updated. We waste money, time, and thought on these contraptions but they grow old even as we wait for their release.

What we can take away from this film is that for one point, no one object, idea, creation, or what have you will really end world problems. There is no one solution, but many tiny, segmented solutions which work consecutively to solve a larger problem. For another point, we will never be caught up to innovation and technology, so we should put less weight on trying to be the best-updated and simply exist in the moment and cease trying to do our best to exist in the future. We can all take time to learn that there is no one solution and technology is not the end all be all of life.