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Speaking of this, when was the last time you watched Inception? I watched it sometime last year and something about it really troubled me: the relationship between Cobb and Mal https://t.co/orkQRe5i6A
It’s not very intuitive until you think about it: If you want to change someone’s mind, you can’t get them to change every little detail of their entire worldview over the course of one conversation. Rather you have to pick one point that you think will gnaw at them from inside https://t.co/X8U9fC2sL6
Cobb introduced Mal (who by all accounts was a lovely person) to lucid dreaming Together, they spent 50+ years (a few hours IRL) in Limbo Cobb then incepted the idea in her that her reality was a dream She continued to believe this when she woke up, and so she killed herself https://t.co/pWwx32bR0A
Throughout the movie, Cobb’s subconscious projection of Mal (who is the “villain”) sabotages him and his efforts She’s portrayed as a sort of crazy possessive ex-wife But really if she’s crazy it’s a lot to do with the fact that he messed with her mind https://t.co/3AlMDBsSPn
Cobb then later introduces Ariadne (the young woman protégé) to lucid dreaming, and she is the one who shoots Mal in Limbo Which is also... hmm 🤔 https://t.co/jkwzxonjtz
Ultimately the movie is about Cobb’s relationship with his guilt for what he has done, him forgiving himself for what he did to Mal. She exists primarily as a projection of his subconscious; she doesn’t actually have a voice of her own, we don’t actually know what *she* thinks https://t.co/5YT2ITxjgV
I think what troubled me on my second viewing was how none of this occurred to me the first time I watched it. I just sorta took Cobb’s story at face value. Only on second watch 7 years later did I realize there’s this glaring gap in the story; we never actually hear Mal’s side https://t.co/zs80KXJJD5
Nolan’s films can often also be read as a meta-commentary about film and storytelling: the filmmaker bringing the audience into the dream (the movie), etc. It feels relevant to juxtapose this with the reality that women-written stories & women’s POVs are underrepresented in media https://t.co/ATwetT7yrM
So here’s a thought to consider: IF women sometimes seem a little mad, what if it’s *because* they’ve been fed this warped diet of information that’s dominated by male fantasies, expectations, projections? (Hint: it probably begins with “woman was made for man...”) https://t.co/sEQ7Jw1C9S
