Textual Analysis Of Inception

Ibnuz Zaki | 150222600012

“Inception” in View of the Genre

In movies, science fiction has always been one of my favorites. They can do almost anything beyond our current capability, while keeping on the path of the feeling of fiction, something that holds a possibility of becoming true. Science fiction in general is to be distinguished from fantasy because in fantasy, simply anything can happen. It doesn’t have the boundaries of what is possible and what is real. Fantasy is, in most occasions, a mere product of one’s imagination; while science fiction, on the other hand, also contains the part of today’s reflection, the real world.

The film “Inception” – released in 2010 – captured the imagination of many spectators as one of the best science

Some view it as mystery and suspense, while other individuals categorize it as drama, action, or adventure. Just like any other movie, the issue of genre has been subject to diverse interpretation and thus becoming an element of widespread controversy. The film “Inception” correctly falls in the history of science fiction. The first element supporting this fact is that the whole idea of the movie deals with imagined technological or scientific innovations. This also has not happened in the world's contemporary setting, but a futuristic setting where, given the current technological development, such innovations might be possible but the world is not there indeed (George, 2009). The idea of stealing ideas has not yet been realized – or at least, not yet. There are current studies in neuroscience that are not trying to find out this, but working to understand the complexities and working of the human brain; and may be in not-so-distant future, science research would bear such fruits. Leonardo DiCaprio playing Cobb is the extractor in this case. He is well known and corporate uses him to infiltrate other people's minds and extract the information they need. More evidence of science fiction is illustrated in a hotel room in the dream world where loss of gravity is experienced. The elevator cannot even move and Arthur needs to use explosives to push it. This is not scientifically possible, but it happens in this movie. In fact, if such

This approach takes into account finer details of the movie like the relationships between some semantic elements of that particular genre or between aspects of the society at large and those elements. It appreciates how isolated elements combine in any given movie to come up with the true meaning of such movie (George, 2009). This approach seeks not only an understanding as to why some aspects of any given film are so, but also examines the effects of such aspects on the audience, the information which seems valuable. This type of film examination brings a deeper look into incidences which might look insignificant in one film but holds a lot of water if compared or connected with similar incidences of other films.

Altman goes further to bringing up two more different approaches to genre criticism: ritual and ideological. The ritual approach in this sense occurs when moviemakers bent from societal pressures to produce films depicting the contemporary society such as Hollywood. He notes that this type of approach expresses audience’s desires in broader sense and it has its focus on the consumption side. With the ideological approach, the genre any movie falls into is based on simple, but generalized approaches to identifiable structures (Grant,