{"id":461,"date":"2016-12-15T23:02:09","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T04:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-117-fall16\/?p=461"},"modified":"2016-12-15T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T04:02:09","slug":"inception-gender-politics-and-perspective-answering-the-masculine-malaise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-117-fall16\/uncategorized\/inception-gender-politics-and-perspective-answering-the-masculine-malaise\/","title":{"rendered":"Inception, Gender Politics, and Perspective: Answering the Masculine Malaise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Nolan\u2019s filmography seems \u201cdriven by a deep-seated desire to satisfy the so-called ‘masculine malaise’, in which it will be understood that he offers his male (anti-)heroes the fictional means and pathways to ‘un-truths’ to transcend the limitations of their ‘fractured’ male existence\u201d (Deakin 85). The various crises of modern masculinity\u2014a set of problems ill-defined in the concrete but best named as the perception of the loss of masculine power and identity on systemic and individual levels\u2014come to a head for Nolan\u2019s characters. Leonard asserts himself and his right to vengeance in Memento<\/em>\u2019s anonymized world. Bruce Wayne transcends the confines of his playboy archetype to become a hyper-masculine hero in the Batman trilogy. And Inception<\/em>\u2019s Dom Cobb seeks to return to being a father but must first overcome his malignant deceased wife,[1]<\/a> in sum needing to defeat the feminine to reach his masculine destiny. For Cobb, does Deakin\u2019s perspective hold up? Is his \u2018masculine malaise\u2019 solved by letting him transcend reality (in whatever sense that word can describe the film) or through another solution?<\/p>\n

Answering those questions about Inception<\/em>\u2019s perspective gender politics requires answering another question first, specifically as to how the camera connects on-screen action to the audience. During dialogue, Nolan likes to shoot from the person talking at the person listening. When the conversation is between Ariadne and Cobb, he portrays them differently. As Ariadne talks, we still see her head in the corner of the shot. But as Cobb talks, he disappears as the camera watches Ariadne. The camera can be construed as coming from the man, but refuses to identify with a woman.<\/p>\n

From the opening scene, the movie constructs the world through male eyes. The movie\u2019s starting scene contains a shot of Cobb\u2019s children playing on the beach that reappears marked clearly as his memory later in the movie.[2]<\/a> This memory returns later in one of the floors of the dream world Cobb enters every night. It also is plucked from the beach and placed into different dream levels during the titular mission to indicate the fragility of his mental state. Only Cobb can see this shot; the movie begins inside his head and with his eyes. In the opening conversation with Saito, the camera does not employ the perspective reversals of Ariadne and Cobb\u2019s conversation. Instead, as the camera switches focus from Cobb to the corporate mogul and back, the camera can legitimately serve as the perspective of either. While Cobb talks, a wine glass ever-so-briefly crosses the shot\u2014an intentional yet subtle acknowledgment of the first-person perspective of the camera. The movie introduces itself as the product of masculine perspectives, and then lets Ariadne in primarily to be observed.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Fjyk83SQiRA<\/a><\/p>\n

(watch the beginning 35 seconds to see Cobb’s memory; watch closely around 2:24-2:26 to see the wine glass)<\/p>\n

If this view of the movie is right, then watching Inception<\/em> turns its viewers into men, exiting the theater having spent two hours seeing the world as men see it. The consequences of this should be clear. To name them, the movie would have forced audience identification with masculinity, likely in conjunction with perceiving the feminine as simultaneously worse-than-men and dangerous to men, and erecting one more roadblock to female representation[3]<\/a> in film.<\/p>\n

Looking at where the movie doesn\u2019t get dominated by men\u2014where it either takes the camera from masculine perspective, extends it to feminine perspectives, or does both\u2014should indicate the limits (if any) to this Mulvey-esque perception of Nolan\u2019s camera as a fundamentally male gaze. One such example comes from Ariadne\u2019s first dream creation, as Cobb teaches her the tricks of his peculiar trade. As she alters the underlying physics of the dream, she alienates Cobb\u2019s subconscious and its manifestations in \u2018projections\u2019 of people. The camera adopts her perspective so it can portray a masculine subconscious directing its antagonism at the camera. If the movie\u2019s perspective indicates a sort of audience alignment with whoever it represents, then Inception<\/em> would seem to display the fears of women threatened by strangers in public spaces. Sympathy for cat-calling victims seems to be at odds with a masculine-controlled camera. Later in the same scene, the camera ever-so-briefly adopts Ariadne\u2019s perspective again as she is stabbed by Mal. The adoption of the point-of-view shot to witness first-hand violence against women\u2014to make the viewer a victim of phallic violence\u2014seems to indicate a dynamic more complex[4]<\/a> than the masculine gendering of the camera and bond between it and the audience.<\/p>\n