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Othello and Inception

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It is true, I am pretty obsessed with Inception but at least its not something worse. I had an exciting conversation about the movie with Ry and Nick a few days back and then I went and saw it again last night with a sold out crowd. It sure made the most since the thirdtime around and I found it even more exciting after some discussions we have been having in Shakespeare class.

So I am working on my final paper for the class and it is all about Iago and how he manipulates Othellointo believing all sorts of bad things and then it all ends in tragedy. Well, as I was watching Inception it hit me! Iago never just tells Othello - "hey Des is cheatin' so go show her who is boss!" As a matter of fact - I have only counted at most 3 out right lies Iago tells. Everything else is just him inferring things and Othello "filling in the rest" with his own "projections" of what is really going on. Thus, like the team in the film did with Fisher, Iago is manipulating the very "being" of Othello's nature. Iago uses imagined concepts and connects them to physical things (lie about Cassio's dreaming and the lost Handkerchief) just like the Inception folks connected ideas to the little paper windmill. In both cases "the dream is real" because the dreamers act upon the impressions and once they have acted it becomes reality to them. My teacher referred me to Heidegger to better understand the concept of the multiplicity of worlds and all that. Yes, I understand I won't understand - at least not right away - but it is really interesting and exciting for me!

Comments

  1. David WilliamsDecember 8, 2010 at 8:35 PM

    I love seeing you (and all learners) get excited about seeing connections between things that they didn't see before.

    ReplyDelete

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