Does Inception have Too Much Spectacle?

First of all, if I’m choosing too obvious a movie to analyze, I’m sorry, but I’m hoping that enough students in discussion will have seen this film to get a good discussion going.

So, when Inception was first advertised, the one thing that was most shown-off was its spectacle. We got to witness Paris folding in on itself, a city square with debris flying every which way, and a scene in a hotel hallway that was rapidly and surreally rotating. With all this flash, it could seem that this would be a film that Aristotle would hate.

However, I think that if Aristotle was somehow able to come to the year 2010 and actually sit down and watch this film, he would be impressed. Although the spectacle is perhaps what got a lot of modern Western moviegoers to come see the film, what really pulls the film, what got it an Oscar nomination, and what would impress Aristotle is its engaging plot and superb character development. Although at the begining, the plot of Inception seems to be just a heist movie with a dream-oriented twist, the first reversal comes when we realize that a greater focus of the movie is on the inner struggle of its main character, Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), meaning that Aristotle’s two most important aspects of tragedy, plot and character, are one in the same in Inception.

As Cobb prepares for one last dream-entering job that will give him the means to return home to his family, he allows Ariadne, a bright student, to join his team. Cobb proceeds to show Ariadne  (played by Ellen Page) the ropes of shared dreaming, but in turn, Ariadne learns more about Cobb by witnessing his dreams. As Ariadne learns more about Cobb’s dark past, so does the audience, and this achieves three things. First, it creates a reversal, because while Cobb is supposed to be the one helping Ariadne, it is Ariadne that discovers that Cobb is the one whose problems need resolving. Second, it allows Ariadne to achieve deeper and deeper recognition of the issues that Cobb has. Third, and most important, it creates an ingaging story and develops Cobb’s character astoundingly well, pulling the audience in so that they are interested to learn what the universal message of the film will be. I think Aristotle would be appreciative, if not thoroughly impressed.

In the closing scenes of the film, Cobb is able to step out of the shadow of his past through one last grand recognition of his own – that his wife, his real wife, is gone, and that the projection of his wife in his dreams isn’t real. He is able to let go. This final strong plot point helps most of all to get the final universal of the film across: that people, as a whole, can very easily blur the lines between reality and fabrication.

Although Inception is very well-known for its spectacle, I believe that this spectacle takes a back seat to plot and character in the end, making the film as a whole something Aristotle would appreciate.

-Christopher Hoef

The Counter-Argument: Lysistrata is not a Feminist Play

The question of whether or not Lysistrata is a feminist play was brought up in discussion today, so the fact that this can even be a discussion topic reveals that one could easily consider it to be such a play. I think that the chief argument for Lysistrata being a feminist play is that, by the end, the women in the play are shown to be stronger-willed than the men. The aim of this post will be solely to provide a thorough counter- argument against the notion that this fact contributes to Lysistrata being a feminist play.

First, although the women may outlast the men by the end of the play, in the beginning of the play, the women are shown, too, to be very flawed.  most are portrayed as lusty, weak, and non-committal. They nearly show the exact magnitude of primal need for sex as the men do for the rest of the play. The female protagonists have their flaws, and it seems as a double-standard, since in other stories, male protagonists can be great,  legendary heroes with no flaws. The fact that the women protagonists in Lysistrata can be flawed even in victory is evidence that it is not a feminist play.

Next, it was pointed out that when the women fight back against the men, they have to do so in the context that they are women, attacking the men with spindles and chamber pots and the like. This belittles the women to their roles within the house and only serves as Aristophanes making the women subservient. When Lysistrata shows great leadership and strength, the men compare her to Athena, the most masculine of the goddesses. I don’t think this is meant to compliment Lysistrata. Remember how Clytemnestra was considered to be a wicked woman presumably for being “too masculine” by killing Agamemnon by brute force in Agamemnon. I think that Aristophanes is doing the same with Lysistrata’s character. This is a misogynistic stance, not a feminist one.

Finally, while the women may be stronger than the men by the end of the play, their cause was never one of asserting women’s rights. If they went on their sex-strike to call for rights as women, then maybe it could be argued that Lysistrata is a feminist play, but this is not the aim of the sex-strike. The aim of the sex-strike is to end the war between the Athenians and Spartans, so the question of giving women more rights was secondary, and the real issue of the play was political. Aristophanes included women protagonists for humor, not to argue for feminism. Because the women’s strength is belittled to a mere tool for humor and political satire, Lysistrata is not a feminist play.

This was a rather long post, but I had many counterpoints against Lysistrata as a feminist play. I hope that my putting all of the reasons on this post, I can allow everyone to really see the full spectrum of evidence against Lysistrata as a feminist play.

-Christopher Hoef

Justice and Expediency as One in the Same: 6.80.2

Last week in dicussion, Perry brought up the question of whether or not Justice and Expediency, although opposing buzzwords of the time, were really exact opposites. I have found a passage from Hermocrates convincing the Carmarinaeans to fight with the Syracusians against the Athenians, and in this passage, 6.80.2 in Thucydides, seems to depict Justice and Expediency as one in the same:

“Practically it is not as fair as it pretends to be. If the canquished be defeated, and the victor conquer, through your refusing to join, what is the effect of your abstention but to leave the former to perish unaided, and to allow the latter to offend unhindered? And yet it were more honorable to join those who are not only the injured party, but your own kindred, and by doing so to defend the common interests of Sicily and save your friends the Athenians from doing wrong.”

In one fluid motion, Hermocrates cites the merits of both Justice and Expediency as he appeals for the Carmarinaeans’ aid. In the same sentence, he urges them to fight against the Athenians lest they be unjust and “leave the former [Syracusians] to perish unaided” and also hazardous to their own self interest and “allow the latter [Athenians] to offend unhindered,” with the Carmarinaeans themselves being the next to be offended. Again, in one sentence, Hermocrates appeals to both the Carmarinaens’ self-interest by stating they will “defend the common interests of Sicily” and the idea of the Justice of saving “your friends the Athenians from doing wrong.” Hermocrates makes a very effective argument and shows his skill by revealing the possibility that Justice and Expediency are the same thing. Therefore, one should we wary of a speechgiver’s ability to utilize both sides of the argument and be able to see past such pretenses, and also realize that two sides of an argument may be only one point after all.

-Christopher Hoef

Pericles is Master of Rhetoric, Balance of Justice and Expediency

In lecture Thursday, we read about a debate between Cleon and his speech about Justice and Diodotus with his speech about Expediency, or Self-Interest. With the Mytilenians spared, it seems that Expediency, standing on its own, defeats Justice, which Cleon had to butress with Expediency just to make a full argument. However, long before this, I found that one other Greek was a master of arguing both – Pericles. Pericles seems deep down to be a moralist, but alongside his points about Justice, makes points about Expediency, because he knows that Expediency is more appealing to his audience. Therefore, it is this ability to argue for Justice using the pretext of Expediency that makes the rhetoric of Pericles so strong, as he is master of both. Between the debate of Cleon and Diodotus, and the rhetoric of Pericles, it will be interesting how speeches about Justice and Expediency will be wielded to shape public opinion for the rest of Thucydides’ Histories.

-Christopher Hoef

Herodotus: Historian or Storyteller?

The most interesting thing to be about the Histories of Herodotus so far is the writing style. Herodotus seems to keep an exact, objective record of of the history and ethnicities of the Greek region (and he seems to have a special curiosity for the different ethnicities). He also ventured to different areas to gain information, as well as comparing same stories from two different sources and determining which one is correct (a process that, with the theme of “knowing and unknowing” could be a blog post in itself). However, in many ways, the  Histories are presented as a story. They are presented in a way that follows a key group of people (such as Croesus, Cyrus, or Xerxes), and then branching out from a story of those people to show their lineage, and therefore another time, or other ethnicities through the people they meet. There are also some recurring Greek literary themes throughout the Histories,  namely, how certain characters all go through the same process of ate leading to hubris, which leads to nemesis. Overall, through the mixture of literary devices and the presentation of the events as historical fact, the Histories provide a unique presentation among the Greek writings we have read.

-Christopher Hoef

Lion and Wolf – Agamemnon Metaphor Analysis

In lines 1258-1259 of the play Agamemnon, Cassandra uses a metaphor in part of her prophesy of what is to happen in Argos between Aegisthus, Clytemnestra, and Agamemnon. Specifically, she says, “this is the woman-lioness, who goes to bed/ with the wolf, when her proud lion ranges far away.” It is fairly obvious that the “woman-lioness” is Clytemnestra, the “wolf” is Aegisthus, and the “proud lion” is Agamemnon, but why these labels are chosen is what I’m interested in. It was not uncommon for any of the characters to be compared to lions in Agamemnon, for all three of the characters involved here were, at some time or other, compared to lions. Here, though, the label of the lion is given to both Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, but not Aegisthus, despite the fact that the consensus among the chorus seems to be that only Clytemnestra is in the wrong, and Agamemnon is, in comparison, the innocent victim. Perhaps this is meant to show that it is Agamemnon and Clytemnestra who are the assertive, powerful ones, and that Aegisthus is not, or that Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are both at a sort of class status above Aegisthus.

I am also interested in the idea of classifying Aegisthus as a wolf specifically. At one other time, Aegisthus is compared to a “strengthless lion” Perhaps the wolf is simply supposed to be weaker than the lion, or that Clytemnestra bedding down with Aegisthus is as unnatural as a lion bedding with a wolf. That’s as much as I can think of in terms of that symbolism, but if anyone else has any ideas about what a wolf, specifically, would symbolize in aincient Greek society.

-Christopher Hoef

Is Homer Really Two People?

I just wanted to make a quick post this week, despite the fact that I don’t think we have to, what with the midterm being this week. What I just found interesting is that what I wrote for my Iliad paper and my Odyssey essay in the midterm that each poem tried to make the exact opposite arguments. I argued that in The Iliaid, Homer wanted his audience to accept war as glorious and a natural part of the human condition, but for my midterm essay, I argued that in The Odyssey, Homer aimed to make war seem pointless and that it tried to give other ways of gaining glory. It got me thinking, and to me, it really is a sort of proof, or at the very least strong evidence, that Homer was probably actually two people – that the person who composed The Iliad, and the person who composed The Odyssey are different.

I don’t know, what does everyone else in the discussion group think? If you want to comment on this, what would be great! (Maybe we can get a kind of conversation going…)

-Christopher Hoef

Deus Ex Machina: The End of The Odyssey

Although I don’t entirely like the ending of The Odyssey, I do understand somewhat what Homer was trying to convey with it. With Odysseus and his family about to go to battle with the people of Ithica, it seems incredibly forced that Athena just rushes in to make peace. This certainly seems like lazy writing. It is both literally and figuratively, a Deus Ex Machina. “Deus Ex Machina,” for those in the class who are unfamiliar to the term, comes from the Latin for “god in the machine,” for when gods were lowered onto the stage of a Greek play in a moment of divine intervention. However, the term Deus Ex Machina has now come to mean anything in a narrative in which an outside force randomly solves an apparently unsolvable problem,  seemingly from out of nowhere (think Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the Knights of the Round Table are only saved from a cave monster because the animator drawing it abruptly has a heart-attack, causing the monster to disappear). This, understandably, is usually considered to be a poor choice of a literary device (just look at the TvTropes page on the subject), so why does Homer utilize it here. Well, go back to the definition of Deus Ex Machina, which says that it is often used to  “solve an apparently unsolvable problem”. The problem, in this case, is the fighting between Odysseus’s family and the people of Ithica, or even combat in general. Perhaps, Homer uses this Deus Ex Machina to prove to us that we cannot solve the human tendency towards combat ourselves, we need a goddess to actually come down from the heavens and make peace for us. Therefore, maybe Homer was just trying to state his belief in the insatiable combativeness of humans. However, just because I understand this part of the poem’s ending, I still don’t entirely like it, as I think that Homer could have used something other than Deus Ex Machina to prove a point.

-Christopher Hoef

Homer the Swineherd – The Odyssey Passage Summary

In the discussion group, Joe hinted that Homer would try to place himself in the story of The Odyssey somehow, and I think I’ve found the character that Homer uses as his avatar in the poem. In lines 437-541 of Book 15, Eumaeus the swineherd gives his life’s story and how he got to Ithaca. To me, Eumaeus does not seem like a terribly important character, and certainly not one with very much high royal status in Odysseus’s kingdom. As such, it puzzled me as to why the audience is told this relitively long story (over 100 lines) about his life. I came to the conclusion that this might have been how Homer places himself within his own story – by creating a character who has a similar history or temperment to him. Homer wouldn’t want to put himself on the level of the great heroes of his story, so he would put himself in as nothing more than a swineherd, however, to make himself stand out somewhat, he states that Eumaeus was Odysseus’s most loyal swineherd, and he makes Eumaeus somewhat important to the success of the heroes. What’s more, Homer refers to Eumaeus endearingly, and in the second person, as the poem includes lines like, “you answered him, Eumaeus, loyal swineherd” (16.68). This makes it seem that Eumaeus is dear to Homer, as if Eumaeus is his double, or that the two are very similar. In any case, I think all of the importance and endearment placed on this one seemingly unimportant character is an indication that, perhaps, Eumaeus is a version of Homer that the poet himself decided to place in The Odyssey.

-Christopher Hoef

Odysseus’s Confusing Actions – Odyssey Passage Summary

The passage that most interested me in the first eight books of the Odyssey is a rather short one, but a puzzling one nonetheless. By the time the events of book 5 are shown to us, Odysseus was trapped on Calypso’s island for 7 years, a time over which Calypso slept with Odysseus and tried to make him her husband. However, by lines 249-251 of book 5, Calypso has allowed Odysseus to build his own boat and sail away, pleasing Odysseus. This last fact is what makes the following passage so interesting. Lines 249-251 of book 9 read, “the sun set and the arkness swept the earth./ And now, withdrawing into the cavern’s deep recesses,/ long in each other’s arms they lost themselves in love.” The fascination that I have wiht this passage is not so much that Odysseus sleeps with Calypso again, as he has done so for the past 7 years, but that he does so this time with full knowledge that he is not Calypso’s prisoner anymore, and that he could just build a boat and sail away. The fact that Odysseus beds Calypso when he could just go free makes me wonder whether or not he really is dead-set on being faithful to Penelope. With this I doubt that Odysseus has all that much guilt or shame about cheating on Penelope, and perhaps within the annuls of Greek ideals, Odysseus is not really doing anything wrong. Many ideas regarding this passage arose when I mentioned it is class, and I’m glad everyone had something to say. It seemed that every argument in the discussion about the passage stated “he just slept with her because she had to,” “he’s doing it for his own kleos,” and “he’s doing it for his own pleasure.” The first option, that he did it this last time beacause his was forced, itn’t true, as Odysseus is no longer Calypso’s prisoner at this point – Calypso says so herself. Before the discussion, I had accepted the third idea that Odysseus did it for his own pleasure, but afterwards, I’m starting to thing that it could have been considered alright or even favorable in aincient Greece, so I now tend to agree with the second option, that Odysseus did it for his own kleos. In any case, this passage did interest me, and it got me to looking for passages regarding Homer’s opinion of adultery for the rest of the poem.

-Christopher Hoef