Gender roles

[sour_idealist]

Now, this is... a bit of a tricky topic, so let me preface it by saying that I absolutely love the movie, okay?  But it does rely on some pretty strict gender roles in a lot of ways.

For a start: Well. Let's look at a theoretical woman. You realize that in her dreams, she's being stalked by someone who appears to be her husband. Her mental

Comments

[croik]

I haven't really thought of the exact points you bring up, but I think everyone can agree that Nolan has trouble with his female characters. Just about all his movies revolve around a man motivated by the death of his lover, and even when not his women are used more like plot points or conveniences than fully fleshed out characters. Ariadne to me especially felt like a grab bag of convenient explanations. After only two hours of knowing Cobb she correctly guessed just about everything wrong with him, even though we're meant to assume the attacking behavior of the projections was a normal consequence of her messing around. That scene where she half told Arthur off always annoyed me a little because she had no idea what she was talking about, and he was right not to take her seriously, and yet...she really was right! How was she that damn intuitive

[sour_idealist]

I actually think Ariadne is a fascinating character in herself, but at the same time a lot of that comes from things that the movie didn't explain. (For example, I think there could be a lot of interesting conversations about how exactly she's so intuitive, especially since she has no tact whatsoever. Was she lucky? Is she, in fact, there for some other purpose - say perhaps Mal was right and sent her down to fetch Cobb, or Miles hired her to incept him with the idea that he needed to come home? Is she taking a psychology class with a heavy emphasis on dreams to fulfill a college requirement?)

I suppose you're right that the question of her age didn't really fit into the movie, but it's still interesting to think about.

[staticlights]

I think the Mal/Cobb relationship is one that I definitely interpreted differently because I knew it was a movie. Had I seen something like that relationship in real life, I would've had a different set of assumptions. You know Cobb is a good guy and a family guy. The way they dress him is very American father-y. In terms of Mal, the very first time we see her, she's clearly going to be a dangerous character, but there's a softness there? And when we see Cobb and Mal on the bridge being all couple-y, we get the idea that they were happy once, but then Mal snapped. Were this L&O:SVU, I might start to think of domestic abuse, but I guess because I know that this is a Nolan film, it doesn't occur to me

[epithalamium]

Tumblr would be flooded with Secret Life of a Call Girl photomanips

Yes please.

[sour_idealist]

How come Cobb's presentation as a good, family-oriented guy makes you less likely to perceive him as an abuse victim? I realize that that sounds like a very loaded question, but I don't mean it that way, I'm genuinely curious as to where that came from. I'd assume that you didn't expect to see that kind of storyline in a Nolan movie? (I have to admit, I'd never really looked for any kind of trend in the Nolan movies until I got into this fandom, so I didn't really have any preconceived notions as to what this would involve

[staticlights]

*facepalm* sorry, I read your paragraph and I flipped it in my head, so I was writing about Cobb as the abuser, Mal as the victim.

(about storylines in Nolan movies, I guess it's mostly that I don't really associate Nolan with romantic plot lines or exploring the relationship between a man and a woman (or maybe I'm just saying that because my favourite movie is The Prestige, which is much more about the two male leads and doesn't really focus on the relationships with their wives/girlfriends)

Yeah, dream share is definitely different than university is in that it's a criminal business. I guess I see it as more of a white collar crime or at least a more intellectual crime. So definitely an unsavoury bunch, but not on the same level as drug deals and prostitutes?

I guess a woman architect would also be different in that she doesn't actually enter the dream or do anything too illegal. So her level of exposure with the blue-collar crime associated with kidnapping/breaking into/sedating the mark would be less than the Extractors.

[epithalamium]

At the risk of sounding incredibly flippant and shallow, I'm going to say that if Talulah Riley ever wants to invade my personal space, I'd gladly say yes. :P

[sour_idealist]

Danger/comfort feel different in dreams.Is that really true, though - especially considering the dreams in the movie don't seem to work exactly like normal ones? (I've been assuming that is something the Somnacin does.) Cobb doesn't seem to react any differently to being shot in the first level than he reacts in Mombasa. Ariadne is just as freaked out by projection!Mal as she would be by an attacker in real life, and so are the more experienced teammates. Same with her reactions to Cobb's freight train. Arthur doesn't seem particularly calm about being taken hostage in the beginning, either. I think dreams, particularly Somnacin-induced dreams, feel entirely real while in them, and instinctive reactions would be exactly the same

[epithalamium]

Somnacin-induced dreams make reality sense rather than dream sense, yes. But the danger is not the same. I guess it's just as traumatic getting killed in dreams as getting hurt is in real life (the pain certainly is the same), but I'm thinking of Eames's reaction to when Saito gets shot in the first level: he was a bit blase about shooting Saito dead, because he was going to wake up anyway, that is, if they haven't been too heavily sedated. Ariadne's reaction when she first met Mal is understandable: she doesn't know what it means to die in shared dreams yet and she doesn't even know who Mal was. Arthur wasn't happy about getting caught because he had a job to do and to fail means trouble with Cobol in reality. By their reaction to the dangers in the Inception job, I'm thinking it's Limbo that scared them the most, which is why they were wary of dying at all in the dream

[sour_idealist]

I think people react differently not because the dream is different, but because the characters know that it won't hurt for very long or have any permanent effect if they're killed. However, pain is real, and psychological trauma inflicted because of actions in the dreamworld would probably remain. So if a character was tortured in the dreamworld - or, more to the original point, sexually assaulted - the psychological effects would be the same as if it had happened on the surface, and the responses to the threat of it would probably not change.

[sour_idealist]

Well, in short, the point I'm trying to make is: Inception relies very heavily on traditional gender roles in order to tell its story and manipulate the emotions of the audience.

[eumelia]

Your criticism is right, because yes, there are different expectations of gender roles in film as well as in real life, due to socialisation and plain ole' prejudice.

I don't think your criticism should be reduced or anything like that, but it really isn't something Nolan is alone is - perhaps he should be scrutinised more because he is a very good story teller and his female characters are reduced to plot devices when left in his hands and I've seen almost all his movies and not one female character has as much (or any) agency as a male character.

But looking at the dynamics between the characters in Inception you'd also have a totally different movie if you did an actual Gender Swap

[lion]

THANK YOU. For this. That is a brilliant summary.

http://community.livejournal.com/inception_meta/1735.html

[sour_idealist]

It is absolutely a Hollywood problem, but I think this movie in particular (and Nolan's work in general - two words: Rachel Dawes) provides a good jumping-off point. However, I have to disagree with your ideas on how the characters would be portrayed.

I'm not quite sure what your point is by bringing up the gender-flipped versions of the characters. Are you trying to say that the movie wouldn't be good if we switched the genders? Because I don't think that would be the case at all. Elements would look very different, but I don't think they're the ones you're describing. I think the movie (although excellent) would be significantly improved by challenging gender stereotypes, and I think female versions of the protagonists would be absolutely fascinating. Distinctly feminist, too, since it would give us a cast of flawed but sympathetic, expert women, most of them dedicated to their professions and happy that way. Certainly I'd say that's how the guys were presented in canon.

Cobb would be a mother fighting to return to her children; I

Re: http://community.livejournal.com/inception_meta/1735.html

[fae_boleyn]

I would love girl!Yusuf. I feel guilty for only being able to suggest Aishwarya Rai or Parminder K. Nagra as girl!Yusuf. I don't know many Indian descent actresses off the top of my head, but then I don't know many celebrities in general off the top of my head. Though for some reason I keep thinking about Olivia Wilde as girl!Arthur.

I don't think I'd want to see all of them except Cobb gender-flipped, though. It'd be more interesting if it was only some of them, and keep Ariadne as a girl. I'd like to see how it would be with having both Ariadne and at least one strong female among the experienced members. The effect would be best with girl!Arthur, I imagine. I would enjoy seeing that, to be honest.

Which makes me think of something else. You said elsewhere that A/E wouldn't have exploded as much had they both been women. What if it was a het pairing? As strong or not? Which of them do you think would be most likely to be the female character?