Remember, we aren’t meeting in class today (or on Monday, 10/30).
Also, your Essay #2 is now due Friday, November 10th.
Approaching Inception (2010)
Full disclosure: I love this film, so I’m biased about my interpretations. This is also the case for Interstellar (but not for Hackers, which is ok as a period piece). Inception is not only one of my favorite films, but it relates to the William Gibson short stories and relates a lot more to The Matrix.
I hope you review this section before you watch the film to help guide your thinking. Normally, with novels and short stories, I provide page numbers. I could go back and find the exact times the quotes I bring up happen, but, well, where’s the fun in that. As you watch the film, reflect on the following:
- Metaphorically, what else gets locked away in our minds that we hold onto?
- In the beginning of the film, Cobb says the strongest thing in the world is an idea. Think about it. How many wars, political battles, or discoveries are based on ideas that people pursue?
- Besides Mal, Ariadne is the only major female character in the film. Why is that? Perhaps this is a boys club, and she’s the token woman.* However, she is an architect, which gives her a godlike perspective when they’re on a mission.
- Ariadne is an obvious reference to Ariadne of Greek mythology, the goddess of the Labyrinth.
- Cobb tells Ariadne that “In a dream we create and perceive our world simultaneously.”
- To me, this means that we–outside the film–perceive the world through our own filters. These filters have been constructed by our experiences, and they affect how we see the world.
- In the song “Lithium,” Nirvana has a line “And just maybe / I’m to blame for all I’ve heard“; for the longest time, I thought Cobain was saying “hurt.” In relation to the fact that we filter the world based on our experiences, how are we to blame for all we’ve heard?
- Cobb tells Ariadne not to recreate real things because we’ll lose our grip on reality. Instead, when she builds the dream worlds, she should approximate reality. This is very important because the interpretation is that we–the audience, humans–can’t access or don’t want to access reality…we’d rather approximate it and fill it in with our own perspectives.
- When Cobb is in the basement of the chemist–where all the old men are sharing a dream–a man tells him “they come to be woken up their dream has become their reality; who are you to say otherwise“?
*Yes, Elliot Page portrayed Ariadne prior to his transition, but think about the significance of having so few female-presenting characters in the film.
As you watch the film, enjoy the action, but please recognize that there’s a deeper layer to it: what is reality? Great science fiction plays with reality.
More on Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)
After (or even before, during, and after) you watch the film, consider the following questions:
- Technology: This film is related to the rhetoric of technology, but it requires a little imagination.
- Think about the technologies involved in the film–real and fictional. While we can’t collectively enter one another’s dreams, we do collectively engage with (and within) technologies for communication (social media, internet, a variety of broadcast entertainment, etc.).
- I’m pretty sure we don’t live in the matrix, but, just like the dream world of Inception, we (well, most of us) don’t have a history of life prior to certain technological commonalities. For instance, who remembers a time before…
- cell phones (smart and not-so-smart ones)
- social media
- search engines…online
- the world wide web
- cable television
- video game consoles
- unlimited soft drink refills at restaurants
- Does Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) have a handle on reality? What clues make you think he does? What clues make you think he doesn’t?
- Cobb’s wife, Moll, appears throughout the film and thwarts the team’s progress. Does she represent guilt? If so, whose guilt and what is the guilt?
- Dreams allow our imaginations to run wild. Our dream space, our subconscious, has been considered the reckless part of our psyche, the uncontrollable part. The characters in the film seem to be able to control dreams but only to a point. If our subconscious is uncontrollable, how are they able to control as much as they can?
- Who is the actual subject of the “inception”? Remember, risk reading too much into this text and think metaphorically. What’s the real world equivalent of holding onto an idea that you can’t get rid of because it’s so much a part of your being and worldview(s)?
Next Week
We won’t meet in class on Monday, 10/30, but I’ll see you face to face on November 1st. Please note the due date change for Essay #2: it’s November 10th, so you have an extra week. I’ll have notes on Interstellar (2014) up on this website soon, so check those out before (and/or after) you watch the film.