Reaction Papers: Inception and Women's Rights

Fatemeh Halabisaz

2013-14444

I Dreamed a Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream

It is a fact universally acknowledged that the older a bottle of wine is, the better it tastes. The same goes for the movie Inception—the more times you watch it, the better it gets. How do I describe a movie so epic with mere adjectives? I could say that it was AWEsome, grand, original, creative, action-packed, intelligent, new, complex, and praise-worthy, but that wouldn’t do it justice. Simply put, it is one of my favorite movies—ever.

In the movie, they introduce you to this new kind of technology wherein one could be aware that they are dreaming and wherein they could experience living in a dream world with other people. Here, they could create and destroy their own worlds. Here, they could BREAK PHYSICS. What makes Cobb’s story unique, though, is that he uses and takes advantage of this new technology by actually planting an idea in a powerful person’s head. This is vital for a rival company’s CEO because, as Cobb repeatedly said in the movie, once an idea is planted inside a person’s mind, it would spread like cancer. And, this idea could even in a very short time destroy competition. One of my favorite aspects about this film is that you get to see average people break physics. Like, for example, Ariadne got to bend roads lined with buildings. Another example was when Arthur was defying gravity in the hotel scene when they were on the second dream layer.

Having watched this movie a couple of times already, it always makes me wonder: how would the real world react to such revolutionary technology? Would we use it so that people would be able to see their dead loved ones again? Would we use it to cure mental illnesses, somehow? In short, would we use it for good? I think that we could, but we wouldn’t. People are naturally power-hungry. We would use it exactly how Cobb used it—to destroy competition and to gain more power.

When technology as powerful as this becomes a reality, I really do hope that my assumptions are wrong. I hope that when the day comes that we can teleport, read people’s minds or visit the dreamscapes of other people, we would opt to use these technologies for the good of the world and nothing else. 

Talk on Women’s Rights and Cybercrime

Women’s rights can be violated not just in real life but also in the cyberspace. Do all women know when they’re already being violated? No, unfortunately, because a lot of women are being harassed and bullied online or with the use of a form of technology without them even knowing that they are already being victimized.

Nowadays, a lot of women’s rights cases are already being brought to people’s attention. These include rape, domestic violence and physical abuse. This is good, I think, because now women are being heard. However, it is unfortunate that not a lot of people, not even women, know that they can be victimized online or with the use of technology. Not a lot of people are aware that they can fight, legally, against cyber bullying, victim-shaming (“slut-shaming”) or video and photo voyeurism. For example, I had a friend who confided in me that there was a guy stalking her online. This happened 2 years ago, though, so we had no idea how to handle the situation. The worst part was that she began blaming herself for what was happening to her instead of blaming the guy! Her other close friend even told her that it must have been her fault because the guy might have been too attracted to her pictures. Another example is when a girl is bullied online for posting pictures of herself “revealing” clothing. It especially angers me when people assume that it is the rape victim’s fault for being raped because of what she was wearing, instead of putting the blame entirely on the one who DID the horrid act in the first place. Another example that is worth noting is the extremely sexist “funny posts” on 9gag.com. That website contains countless posts about how “stupid” women are and how much of a “burden” they are to men. Frankly, that site should filter the posts being posted there because, really, it might give 9gag audiences the idea that women ARE what the site shows they are.

For the second part of the lecture, we talked about cybercrime again. After the lecture, I think I am all for repealing the whole cybercrime law entirely. It is unnecessary, not carefully thought of and it may lead to victim blaming again.