onomatoblog

1. People who stop at red lights right over the zebra crossing
2. Sinks that collect water and make the front of my shirt all wet
3. People who walk slowly
4. Antivaxxers
5. Baristas who don’t mix properly
6. Small dogs
7. Conspiracy theorists who try to sound sane (the craaazy ones I just feel sorry for)
8. Creationists
9. People who use checks
10. Websites that log me out all the time without warning.
11. People who look for plotholes in movies on purpose just to have something to whine about
12. Gossip magazines/websites
13. Store/restaurant clerks who are uppity about one’s selection/questions
14. Truck drivers
15. People who can’t differentiate between other people’s sexual preferences and their personal easthetic
16. Ie6
17. Ie7
18. Flash
19. People who use the word “scroll” to signify everything that moves on a website.
20. Graphic designers who design for web without understanding what it entails.
21. That in 2010, we still haven’t invented a contact lens that won’t make my eyes dry when I work at a computer.
22. Turn right on red
23. American guys’ jeans. I mean, really?
24. American home decoration aesthetics
25. American food culture
26. Pop-polsci books with colon:ed titles
27. Trucker hats
28. Pixie haircuts
29. Leather couches.
30. Unmoderated online forums
32. The crashiness of photoshop cs5
33. The nonexistent line system at Portage Bay Cafe in Ballard
34. People who use embarrassing euphemisms for genitalia
35. The Duck Tour tourists
36. People who think that having a penis excuses them from basic personal hygiene
37. Spiritual quotes
38. Real motivational posters (the fake kind is hilarious.)
39: New Age, and the kind of store I need to enter if I want to buy incense.
40. Any kind of art with any kind of depiction of a sunset.
41. Bedskirts.
42. People who complain about people who complain about the weather.
43, People who helpfully try to solve other people’s sexual/relationship problems by suggesting they change preferences.
44. People who refer to their spouse as their second (or third, for fourth…) child. DIVORCE OR MURDER THEM THEN DUMBASS.
45. Proponents of CBT
46. LCHF
47. People with mild cases of ev-psych. The real nutjobs have my everlasting hatred.
48. Peeling oranges.
49. Papyrus
50. Baby clothes in *ages* instead of centilong. Because all 3-m-o are the same size, yo.

Now, to begin with, we should note that this entry contains plot spoilers for Inception. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read beyond this point.

So. Ariadne.

The first time I saw Inception (and yes, there have been several), I was a little disappointed. It occurred to me that apart from Cobb, any character of the team could have just as easily been female. And they weren’t. With the exception of Ariadne, it’s a boys’ club, and it wasn’t until I read Sister Magpie’s entry (link pending on approval from her) on fandom’s reaction to the movie and to Ariadne that I really begun to love her as a character. See, as magpie writes, Ariadne and Arthur may well have been gender-switched*, and had they been, their respective relationships to Cobb has been much more stereotypical.

Perhaps more important, Nolan could just as easily have made it an all-boys-club; it wouldn’t have been unusual for a summer action movie, and Nolan’s women tend to be more like Mal – ethereal, glamorous and dead – anyway. Ariadne didn’t have to be a woman, but she is, and I am happy she is, in her own resourceful, opinionated, intelligent, feeling way.

New Yorker columnist Emma Rosenblum pities Ellen Page for having to wear the “rags” that are Ariadne’s outfits, and I go “uhh, what, now?” I don’t know what Ms Rosenblum normally wears when running around in action dreams, but I was personally very relieved to see a female character in sensible clothing. Men’s glam clothes are pretty practical; they’re usually just more fitted, expensive versions of daily wear. But women’s dressed-up, the stuff Marion Cotillard’s Mal wears, is highly unpractical. Your fall in heels, you can’t run in dresses. I love that Ariadne wears pants she can run in, t-shirts and cardigans, and that she doesn’t need to flash her curves in every single scene. Rosenblum calls it asexual (although desexualized might be a better term), I call it realistic. It’s relieving to have a female lead who does shit instead of smooches her hero boyfriend, and who wears clothes she can accomplish things in. Speaking of desexualized, by the way, didn’t Arthur steal a kiss? And didn’t Ariadne seem to like it, in a darling, smug sort of way?

The real problem with Ariadne is that she is a kind of  audience surrogate; through her ignorance, we are given answers about what is going on. A lot of the time, her dialogue is pure exposition. Now, I admit to loving exposition like I love ice cream, but with a lesser actress, it would undoubtedly have become boring, or at least tiringly transparent after a while. Not with Page. She does a great job of making her lines sound authentic. I believe her, all the way through.

And look at her. Not only is Ariadne a star student at what appears to be a prestigious Paris school, she supposedly a better Architect and maze-maker than Cobb was, she immediately calls him on his shit in a way Arthur never has. She has skills and a fetching personality, and Arthur seems to like her from the start. She is the only person in the team to question the morality of inception, and when Cobb gives up, she’s the one who takes command and makes sure they all get out alive. It pretty much doesn’t get more kick-ass than that.