Guestblog: Whigwham on Inception

Inception just came out on DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed a second viewing. What struck me after both viewings was the fact that, while the movie ultimately has an uplifting ending, there is something disturbing about this film which sticks with you after you watch it. It's almost like, well, the way a particularly vivid dream might stick with you hours after you wake up.

Why is it that dreams (and, thus, movies about dreams) have this disturbing effect? Perhaps it's because dreams arise from a part of ourselves which is powerful, yet also somehow alien to us. We've all had those dreams which, upon waking, leave us wondering, where in the world did that come from? And we've all done or witnessed the most strange and bizarre things in our dreams. So the disturbing nature of many of our dreams arises from the fact that this wild, incomprehensible world comes not from without, but from within. From the very core of our minds. Our dreams aren't "real", but they reflect processes in our minds which are quite real--and this itself can induce fascination, or sometimes, dread.

And I think it's this distinction--between the real and the unreal--which is at the heart of why Inception is both compelling and disturbing. The final message of the film is a powerful one. Even if the real is not what we want, even if the real is painful and causes suffering, it is finally preferable to illusion. This is ultimately an affirmation of the ancient truth that reality, as such, is good. As Aquinas put it, being is convertible with good. Just because something is real, it is good. Even if it is imperfect and causes much suffering. The terror which Inception so deftly portrays arises from the prospect of losing the ability to distinguish the real from the illusory, the real world from the dream world. In the dream world, we can construct a "reality" according to our whims and desires. But it is ultimately terrifying because it is ultimately an illusion.

This simple truth portrayed in this compelling film is particularly apt to our time. And not just as a healthy antidote to the very real inclination to construct and live in fantasy worlds (virtual reality, Second Life, World of Warcraft, or even Facebook). Perhaps one way of broadly construing our contemporary American predicament is that we are losing our ability to distinguish the real from the illusory. This plays itself out in many arenas. Our failure to distinguish between the true nature of marriage and its family-destroying opposites. Or our failure to distinguish the truth about economic relationships from their corporate, advertising-induced corruptions. Or our failure to distinguish between true national defense and imperial domination. Perhaps the problem is not the losing of a "culture war" in which traditional conceptions of reality are displaced by alternative ones. Perhaps the truth--and the terror--of our predicament is that we are by and large losing our ability to even distinguish between the real and the illusory. And, thus, we are losing our ability to wake up.

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