"Start from the beginning."
~"Live Together, Die Alone," by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse
Last night I watched the movie Inception. Right now I'm not going to delve into the arguments about whether or not the whole movie was a dream, what was real and what was not, whose dream it was, who was real, who was being messed with, et cetera. (Although I do want to put in a plug for the idea that maybe the whole thing is Mol's dream, considering it was her totem and I didn't see many people suggest that idea).
I'm going to set that sort of discussion aside and discuss the idea of inception itself. (The definition of "inception" is interesting by the way. It means the beginning, the origin. It's an alpha point.)
I want to talk about the idea of planting the seed of an idea in someone else's mind. You don't need to be able to hack into people's dreams to give them ideas. Planting an idea in a person's mind, the characters point out, can usually be traced back to the original outside person who gave you that idea. It's much trickier to get someone to think or do something and have no idea that they didn't come up with it all on their own. Maybe multiple seeds have to be planted by many people...maybe a simpler form of the idea has to be planted in an unrelated context. There's a lot of psychology involved. Maybe someone even suggests an opposing idea in the anticipation that it will be rejected or "seen through." The art of "idea planting" is a type of con. There's a hook, there are staged events, there are often multiple twists, and then the mark does exactly what you planned--or else you need to have a backup plan or two.
Inception not only shows how an idea might be planted, but it also offers us various ways that a person who might be "waking up" to the idea that someone is manipulating them might be distracted:
- S/he is told that they are being manipulated, and that becomes part of the con.
- The con artists achieve buy in. They "recruit" the mark to open up doorways into hir own subconscious.
- The mark is told that it isn't about them at all when it IS (or it is all about them when it ISN'T).
- The mark is bribed by offering them things that they care the most about in the world.
- The mark is offered a choice, but it is a choice where the person offering already feels confident of the way that the mark will answer.
What do you think?
