Nolan Superfans and Antifeminist Trolls: How Much Overlap?

Singer writes of Nolan’s fans’ approach: “If there’s a potential mistake or flaw, it’s always the viewer’s fault, never the film’s (or, Nolan forbid, the director’s).” This is all too familiar in feminist media criticism. How many times do commenters assert we’re “just looking for something to be upset about”; that is our criticism should be attributed to our own over-sensitivity rather than the actual presence of flaws in the subject?

 

Matthew McConaughey in 'Interstellar'
Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar

Christopher Nolan is undeniably an extremely talented filmmaker with a unique voice. He has a high batting average with his movies; for my money his only real stinker is The Prestige, and that still has plenty of fans. Nolan deserves his clout. Interstellar deserves its moment in the cultural spotlight.

But there is something about Christopher Nolan’s movies that warrants a devotion that is just too extreme. As noted in Matt Singer’s Screen Crush article “What Makes Nolan Fans So Intense?”, daring to speak ill of a Nolan film tends to lure the kind of trollish comments that make internet writers wake up with cold sweats. In the case of The Dark Knight Rises, apparently these rose to the level of death threats (particularly harrowing considering the mass murder at a screening of the film in Colorado).

As a feminist internet writer, I’m familiar with nasty commenters. And maybe that is why I suspect a substantial overlap between the Nolan Defense Squad and the Misandry Accusation Squad I know so well. I might be misperceiving this; I certainly don’t have any hard data to back it up. It’s clear that both groups offer plenty to the general pool of internet trolls, but that doesn’t necessitate they overlap themselves. So I look to the underlying motivations of these groups for further support.

"Why so serious?" mage from Joker poster for 'The Dark Knight'
“Why so serious?” image from Joker poster for The Dark Knight

 

Singer aptly characterizes the intensity of Nolan fans by describing their approach to his films’ critics: “If there’s a potential mistake or flaw, it’s always the viewer’s fault, never the film’s (or, Nolan forbid, the director’s).” This is all too familiar in feminist media criticism. How many times do commenters assert we’re “just looking for something to be upset about”; that is, our criticism should be attributed to our own over-sensitivity rather than the actual presence of flaws in the subject?

The similarities don’t stop there. Singer further posits:

“Looking over Nolan’s filmography you see the same archetypal protagonist reappear again and again: the moody loner who is laser-focused on his mission… perhaps Nolan’s subject matter and his preferred sort of hero resonates particularly strongly with the kind of person who might, oh I dunno, feel so passionately about a movie that they would threaten to strangle someone over it.”

What’s more, this archetypal protagonist is also always a man. Sady Doyle’s review of Interstellar described “Christopher Nolan disease”:

“There is a man. He is a sad man. His sadness makes him no less manly. The wife of this man, she is dead now…The man’s sadness, a great struggle conducted in the deep darkness of his soul, fuels his life’s grandest endeavor: The blowing-up of cool shit. In this noble pursuit of the blowing-up of things, the man’s wounds are healed and his masculinity reaffirmed.”

Matthew M crying manly tears.
Matthew M crying manly tears.

So not only do we have the celebration of Men with a Higher Purpose, we have the reassurance that unwavering devotion to this Higher Purpose redeems the masculinity of men who succumb to the weakness of emotion in the face of their immense suffering.

I’d add the third prong to Nolan Fan Intensity: that there is intellectual cache in understanding his excruciatingly complex films, and in enjoying their darker themes. If you have to have a profound understanding of theoretical physics to properly appreciate Interstellar, people who like it are smarter than people who don’t. If you can keep track of the layered narratives of Inception and Memento, it proves your cleverness over people who were confused. If the bleak worldview of his Batman trilogy appeals to you more than those other inconsequential “fun” superhero movies, you are a more serious and thoughtful person.

Community's Troy Barnes tearfully admitting "I didn't get 'Inception'"
Community’s Troy Barnes tearfully admitting “I didn’t get Inception

 

The Misandry Accusation Squad tend to have the same self-satisfied intellectual superiority complex. See: mansplaining, tone policing, unmeetable burdens of proof. And that’s where my glimmers of recognition when it comes to the Nolan Defense Squad become blaring misogynist troll warning klaxons.

A black hole or something.
A time library or a love boat or a black hole or something.

 

Let me be very straightforward: I had no idea what was going on for 90 percent of Interstellar, and I don’t really care to spend any more time trying to figure it out. Maybe love was the fifth dimension or maybe it was gravity; maybe black holes are made of tesseracting bookshelves, maybe transporting hundreds of embryos and (presumably) only one uterus in which to gestate them on the ark to save humanity was a totally great Plan B.

(While I’m at it: Nikola Tesla was not a sorcerer. Your daddy issues cannot be resolved by opening a dream safe. You probably couldn’t be a superhero even if you were a billionaire, or at least your broken back would not heal that quickly.)

Nikola Tesla was not a sorcerer.
Nikola Tesla was not a sorcerer.

 

So,  yeah, I’m not smart enough to understand the science or lack thereof in Interstellar. But if you’re going to reject my hypothesis about Nolan fans because I can’t be bothered with theoretical physics, you’re kind of proving it for me. (Yep, that’s pretty circular logic. So is a lot of the bootstrap paradox nonsense going on in Interstellar.)

Do you think misogynist trolls and the Nolan Defense Squad overlap, or do they independently share a lot of traits? Do you have other explanations for their similarities?

 


Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who firmly believes she did get Inception.

‘Two Days, One Night’: Marion Cotillard’s Insight From the New York Film Festival

Cotillard did triple duty at the New York Film Festival Sunday to promote ‘Two Days, One Night,’ which had its U.S. premiere. (The film is Belgium’s submission for best foreign film.) At 1, in jeans and a casual but chic top, Cotillard participated in a Q&A for a standing-room crowd. At 3 she changed into Dior and walked across the street to Alice Tully Hall and joined the Dardenne Brothers as they introduced ‘Two Days, One Night’ to a sold out audience, and afterward participated in a Q&A.

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This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz

In Two Days, One Night, Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a worker in a solar panel factory who returns to work after medical leave for depression to learn she has lost her job after management forces her co-workers to choose between keeping her on staff or receiving their  1,000-Euro bonuses. After the owner of the factory agrees to a revote, Sandra spends the weekend trying to meet with each of her 12 co-workers to plead her case and persuade them to change their minds.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the veteran filmmakers who wrote and directed the film, raise global issues like wage stagnation, financial inequality, and the declining middle class, while focusing their story on a financially strapped woman desperate to keep her job.

“She’s a simple woman and very complicated at the same time,” Cotillard explained at a Q&A Sunday. “She’s just recovering from a very deep depression and she’s fragile and she’s going to discover things about herself that she didn’t expect.”

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Cotillard, who received an Oscar for disappearing into her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, in which she affected the singer’s nasal warble and her sickly hunched over physicality, makes Sandra, in her tank top and with her weary eyes, just as believable. A rare combination of movie star and character actress, Cotillard chooses roles in high-profile Hollywood films like Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), along with parts in foreign and independent films, notably Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone and James Gray’s The Immigrant, just to mention a few.

Cotillard did triple duty at the New York Film Festival Sunday to promote Two Days, One Night, which had its U.S. premiere. (The film is Belgium’s submission for best foreign film.) At 1, in jeans and a casual but chic top, Cotillard participated in a Q&A for a standing-room crowd. At 3 she changed into Dior and walked across the street to Alice Tully Hall and joined the Dardenne Brothers as they introduced Two Days, One Night to a sold out audience, and afterward participated in a Q&A. As soon as the discussion ended she glided along the red carpet in the lobby for photographers and posed for selfies with fans, some who got a bit too chummy and close, but she never flinched.

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Six things I learned about Marion Cotillard Sunday during the Q&A.


The Dardenne brothers have a long rehearsal process and take lots and lots of takes, and the actress is fine with that:

“Sometimes we would have already done 70 takes and I would ask for more… because some were sequence shots, which have to be perfect because you cannot edit… I trust them (the Dardennes) a thousand percent, so if they would have asked me to do 200 takes I would have done it because I knew there was a reason behind this amount of takes, and that was one of my best experiences as an actresses. They really offered me everything that I had always wanted in terms of relationships with directors, and today when I talk about the amount of takes, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, this is a lot,’ but on set it was never overwhelming, it was never exhausting, it was just the process of getting something, getting what they wanted to have, and for me giving them exactly what they wanted to have.”


On whether she worried about going too deep into a role and how hard it was for her to come back when the movie is over:

“For Piaf it was kind of difficult because it was the first time I went that deep, and I immersed myself entirely for months into somebody else’s… But I’ve learned a lot trying to get back to my life after La Vie en Rose, so now I know that I need a process to come back to my life, and this process is as interesting as getting into someone, and now it’s part of how I work.”


On how she prepared for celebrity:

“I don’t think you are prepared for this very real weird thing actually… But at the same time it, when you’re an actor you’re looking for a connection with a lot of people you might never meet, but you want to tell a story, and you want this story to touch many people as a kind of connection… When I started in acting and people recognized me in the street it was so weird, but I didn’t know how to take it so I would run away. That was super weird. I felt very paranoid. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. And I’m a very sensitive person, and sometimes it would be too much, but I’m kind of used to it. It’s just a different connection to people. (She laughed.) And I like it.”


She admits to being drawn to playing dark and difficult women with big problems. (Next up is Lady Macbeth.):

“Unfortunately yes. When they offered me the role of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, I said yes right away without my brain being involved in this decision, and then I started to think, and I was like, ‘Oh wow, yeah, here we go again. Drama! Drama! Drama!’ I must be, yeah, attracted to the darkness for sure. But sometimes I’m having very sane, not schizophrenic conversations with myself, but still conversations with myself, thinking when are you going to stop playing people who are so fucked up? And I have no answer. I’m just waiting for sudden light. It’ll come. It’ll come.”

She did have a brief but memorable appearance in Anchorman 2 starring Will Ferrell and directed by Adam McKay, but it seems she needed help loosening up:
“All these guys are my idols, so that was kind of crazy for me. When they asked me I didn’t even read anything, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll be there.’ I mean being on a set with Will Ferrell was a dream, and I was freaked out in that huge field, and Adam McKay was like super far away giving me lines, like new lines over this megaphone, I could barely understand what he was saying. Can I say that I was hungover? So it was part of me being in a disastrous state and at the same time having a lot of fun.”

She doesn’t think she was that great in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris:
“That was a tough experience for me actually because it took me a long time to actually believe that I was on a set with Woody Allen… I met Woody Allen five days before we started shooting, and we didn’t really exchange things. We discussed a little bit about the vision of this character, but I had very little information, and then being on set with him I was so scared that I wouldn’t be good enough… I was always scared that he wouldn’t get what he wanted because we had talked so little, and I think that I might have misunderstood what he wanted at the beginning, and I knew that he was not very happy, which does stay with me and so yeah, I felt very uncomfortable… It was not very easy for me either to be in front of an actress like an rabbit in the light (sic)… I’m very happy that I worked with him… I could have done better.”

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

Ellen Page Is Like the Coolest Actress We Know, and She Doesn’t Even Have to Try

Page explained that she has a sense of responsibility that compels her to be honest and ethical as a person and a public figure. This same integrity will help her to continue her dedication to playing strong, interesting, dimensional characters that speak to young women. She sets her standards high with her roles and looks for stories with uniqueness, depth, and a message.

This guest post by Angelina Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

Ellen Page already had an acting career in Canada when she came to the states to make her debut in Hard Candy. The young, bright actress kicked off her career in America with a controversial role that many found to be extremely unsettling. Teenage honor student Hayley decides to take justice into her own hands when a local girl goes missing. She uses her wit to overpower the voyeuristic pedophile character played by Patrick Wilson. Page sports a red hoody as if to conjure images of Little Red Riding Hood but, she is somewhat of a wolf in Red’s clothing. She is not to be underestimated.

Hard Candy movie poster
Hard Candy movie poster

 

Hayley is intelligent, confident, and sure of herself in a way that I had never seen before in a character her age. It was extremely empowering to watch the film as a 12-year-old girl with my nose in a book and 90s girl punk blasting in my ears.

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Page delivers a layered performance as she commands vulnerability and even turns it into a strength. Her acting skill is obvious as she carries the film with her co-star Wilson. The majority of the scenes are dialogue-rich and only contain the two actors and a single house as the set. Both characters are complex, relatable, and completely human. This movie is unique, in that it does not do the work for you; it really makes you think. Hard Candy drove audiences to play out their own scenarios and call their own ideas about morality and nature vs. nurture into question. It was a daring role selection for the young Page.

Page’s character Hayley declares with tears and determination in her eyes, “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.” This role was for survivors, for women, for those that have simply had enough. Although violent justice isn’t something that all survivors necessarily wish for, the film brought attention to the subject of rape culture during a time when its existence was completely ignored. The dialogue confronts victim-blaming and addresses that law enforcement, along with society as whole, don’t do their part to stop terrible things from happening or seeking justice when they do.

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The film is multifaceted, but it is definitely a comforting story for every girl in need of a good revenge fantasy.

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Ellen Page had a smaller part as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand. Although her part is small, Kitty Pryde uses her ability to phase through walls to assist the team of mutants. She is a badass when she faces off against The Juggernaut, a much larger enemy, and manages to be a hero. Hopefully we will be able to see more development in the Kitty Pryde character in X-Men: Days of Future Past, set to be released in summer 2014.

Her biggest role and somewhat of a fame catalyst was Juno MacGuff in Juno. This heartfelt comedy follows a quick-witted high schooler through an unplanned pregnancy. This adult issue is handled well by Juno as she tries to continue to be a teen. She takes the disapproval of her classmates in stride with clever, sarcastic humor. Her parents are accepting and nurturing and help her through the process. Although character Juno makesthe choice to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, some people were upset about the message in the film, claiming that it was pro-life. Page responded publicly to these concerns when she told The Guardian, “I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what’s funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don’t love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don’t want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do – go back to clothes hangers?” Page’s skills in Juno earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her performance runs the gamut of emotions from side-stitch humorous to deeply moving.

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The next underrated film Page starred in was Whip Itshe plays Bliss Cavendar. Whip It is a story about a girl from a small town trying to find her niche and navigating the murky, adolescent waters of self discovery, early romance, friendship, and parental approval. Her mother wants her to devote her time to beauty pageants, and Bliss wants to find herself and hang out with rough, tough roller derby girls.

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This film shows women being aggressive, competitive, and joining together over the love of the game and in the spirit of sisterhood.

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Roller derby is a sport that allows women an outlet to express their athleticism, excludes men, and takes all kinds. Women of all shapes can find a home in the pack. Not only can any body type find a place, but any body type can be an asset. I’m glad the film was made and that it brought derby into the public eye, but it’s unfortunate that there was little diversity shown in the cast. Whip It is definitely a fun, inspirational girl power flick.

Later, Page played the role of Ariadne in Inception alongside star Leonardo DiCaprio. Page plays the intellectually driven, adventurous architect who is necessary to complete the team that illegally searches the sleeping consciousness in order to obtain information.

Recently Page delivered an incredible speech at a Human Rights Campaign about her struggle as a closeted gay person and her hopes for a better future. Although I do not fully support Human Rights Campaign for many reasons, mostly their lack of dedication to the queer community as a whole, Page gave an important speech worth listening to.

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She made me proud of my generation and very sure that she is one of the great actresses of my time. Page said in her speech, “I’m here today because I am gay and because maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.”

Page explained that she has a sense of responsibility that compels her to be honest and ethical as a person and a public figure. This same integrity will help her to continue her dedication to playing strong, interesting, dimensional characters that speak to young women. She sets her standards high with her roles and looks for stories with uniqueness, depth, and a message. Ellen Page earned her spot as a Great Actress by demonstrating a commitment to progressive roles and speaking well about the issues within her films and the issues that women face. She is an excellent role model and icon as well as a self-declared feminist.

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Angelina Rodriguez studies Sociology at Fairmont State University. In her free time she thinks about things and pets puppies.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Inception

This review by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on August 30, 2010.

The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

Continue reading –>

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Inception

This review of Inception originally appeared on Bitch Flicks in August 2010, when the film was in theatres.
The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

SPOILER ALERT

So, what makes Mal so bad? In life, she was his faithful wife (for all we know) and mother of his two children. In the film, she’s not even a real woman, but a figment of Cobb’s imagination, haunting him with her suicide. (Note: For a better version of this story, see Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or the crappy Soderbergh adaptation starring George Clooney.) Her constant appearances threaten Cobb’s inception task, and while we can imagine a suicide haunting this hard-working man, we learn the much uglier truth later: while developing his theory of “inception,” Cobb used Mal as his first test subject–planting the idea in her mind that reality was not what she believed it to be. Now we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife, driving her kill herself–yet she’s the evil one.

What makes Ariadne so pure? It’s simple, really. We know she was a brilliant student of architecture, and…and…and…that’s it. The film needed an architectural dream space that wouldn’t be marred by trauma, or memory, or the like, so the natural choice would be for a computer program to design it, right? But a computer program couldn’t also counsel Cobb through the trauma of his wife’s suicide and, ultimately, coach him through killing her apparition. She is invested in getting through the job, as her life depends on it, but why does she give a damn about Cobb? Because she’s a woman architect, and women are nurturing creatures, right? So, we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife and threatens to kill his entire team through self-sabotage over guilt, but luckily he has one good woman to pull him through.

Is it possible to look differently at these two characters? Even if you read the movie as an allegory of filmmaking/storytelling, we’re still left with women who are sidekicks, and who serve merely as plot devices. Maria of The Hathor Legacy writes
In other words, even if you refute the realism of the film and its characters, you’re still left with some major gender trouble. Is Cobb a sympathetic character? No. Do we want his big inception job to work? Don’t care. What I care about, for the purposes of this review, is that we have–yet again–a successful mainstream movie that relies on tired tropes of female characters.

Other interesting takes on Inception:

Movie Review: Inception

The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

SPOILER ALERT

So, what makes Mal so bad? In life, she was his faithful wife (for all we know) and mother of his two children. In the film, she’s not even a real woman, but a figment of Cobb’s imagination, haunting him with her suicide. (Note: For a better version of this story, see Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or the crappy Soderbergh adaptation starring George Clooney.) Her constant appearances threaten Cobb’s inception task, and while we can imagine a suicide haunting this hard-working man, we learn the much uglier truth later: while developing his theory of “inception,” Cobb used Mal as his first test subject–planting the idea in her mind that reality was not what she believed it to be. Now we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife, driving her kill herself–yet she’s the evil one.

What makes Ariadne so pure? It’s simple, really. We know she was a brilliant student of architecture, and…and…and…that’s it. The film needed an architectural dream space that wouldn’t be marred by trauma, or memory, or the like, so the natural choice would be for a computer program to design it, right? But a computer program couldn’t also counsel Cobb through the trauma of his wife’s suicide and, ultimately, coach him through killing her apparition. She is invested in getting through the job, as her life depends on it, but why does she give a damn about Cobb? Because she’s a woman architect, and women are nurturing creatures, right? So, we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife and threatens to kill his entire team through self-sabotage over guilt, but luckily he has one good woman to pull him through.

Is it possible to look differently at these two characters? Even if you read the movie as an allegory of filmmaking/storytelling, we’re still left with women who are sidekicks, and who serve merely as plot devices. Maria of The Hathor Legacy writes

Both Mal and Ariadne are symbols, not real characters, and I think this is reflected in the kinds of lines and characterization each is offered. In a movie where businessmen are dryly humorous, several million dollars are devoted to a man’s daddy-issues, and Dom’s nostalgic love for family is symbolized through a honey-heavy shot of golden light haloing his young moppets’ heads, the wooden-ness and flatness of the lines offered these characters is startlingly noticeable.

In other words, even if you refute the realism of the film and its characters, you’re still left with some major gender trouble. Is Cobb a sympathetic character? No. Do we want his big inception job to work? Don’t care. What I care about, for the purposes of this review, is that we have–yet again–a successful mainstream movie that relies on tired tropes of female characters.

Other interesting takes on Inception: