Inception (2010) excoriates the perplexity of reality due to the human psyche’s reliance on our empirical senses when discerning reality from illusion. Nolan achieves this via the fabrication of dreams and memories; a concept that is heavily reliant on visualisation. During the exposition and Ariadne’s “first lesson in shared dreaming”, Ariadne is oblivious to the supposed dream world in which she was residing in until Cobb enquires with the imperative “Think about it […] How did you get here?”. This exemplifies the external stimulus discussed earlier, that allows an individual to discern between reality and illusion. Immediately, Ariadne’s anagnorisis is captured by a visual hypophora – the close-up shot of the frenetic cup of coffee and spoon,
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Inception (2010) explores the moral dilemma of deceiving one’s perception via inception – planting a seed of an idea that will grow, change and define an individual. Instinctively, the human Ego prevents foreign ideas from being planted in our minds without our knowledge, similar to how white blood cells eradicate foreign invaders. Therefore, inception revolves around bypassing the Ego’s “firewall” via deception; the incognito manipulation of the human Ego to convince that an idea was constructed with free will. This autonomous germination of an idea is necessary for it to, as Eames describes, “grow naturally in your subject’s mind”, thus bypassing our psychological concept of free will. This notion is analogous to the placebo effect – the beneficial effect produced by a placebo (something that instigates a psychological change rather than a physiological change), and must therefore be due to an individual’s belief in the placebo. The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): a simulation of a prison environment with the purpose of studying the psychological effects of power on perception, exemplifies the germination process of inception. Twenty-four college students were arbitrarily divided into assigned roles as prisoners and guards, so their metamorphosis could be observed. By disorientating, depersonalising, and deindividuating the participants, they became predisposed to this fictitious reality, as the simulation became a hyperreality (just as limbo became Mal’s reality). The situation became so intense, and the role paly so realistic, that the prisoners started “behaving in pathological ways” and the guards became sadistic and abusive, hence the experiment was ceased after six days rather than the planned two weeks. In a similar manner, Nolan attempts to explore the Cartesian mind-body dualism (Rene Descartes) and how Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory that the categorical imperative
Inception (2010) explores the moral dilemma of deceiving one’s perception via inception – planting a seed of an idea that will grow, change and define an individual. Instinctively, the human Ego prevents foreign ideas from being planted in our minds without our knowledge, similar to how white blood cells eradicate foreign invaders. Therefore, inception revolves around bypassing the Ego’s “firewall” via deception; the incognito manipulation of the human Ego to convince that an idea was constructed with free will. This autonomous germination of an idea is necessary for it to, as Eames describes, “grow naturally in your subject’s mind”, thus bypassing our psychological concept of free will. This notion is analogous to the placebo effect – the beneficial effect produced by a placebo (something that instigates a psychological change rather than a physiological change), and must therefore be due to an individual’s belief in the placebo. The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): a simulation of a prison environment with the purpose of studying the psychological effects of power on perception, exemplifies the germination process of inception. Twenty-four college students were arbitrarily divided into assigned roles as prisoners and guards, so their metamorphosis could be observed. By disorientating, depersonalising, and deindividuating the participants, they became predisposed to this fictitious reality, as the simulation became a hyperreality (just as limbo became Mal’s reality). The situation became so intense, and the role paly so realistic, that the prisoners started “behaving in pathological ways” and the guards became sadistic and abusive, hence the experiment was ceased after six days rather than the planned two weeks. In a similar manner, Nolan attempts to explore the Cartesian mind-body dualism (Rene Descartes) and how Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory that the categorical imperative