Ever had a dream that felt uncanny or woken up from a dream with a dizzying jolt? The occurrence of dreams is far from groundbreaking, but in his 2010 Action movie, director Christopher Nolan turns our extra-ordinary dreams into an extraordinary cinematic experience, questioning the audience’s understanding of dreams and reality.
Acclaimed Leonardo di Caprio plays the main character, Dom Cobb, who enters subjects’ dreams to obtain their secrets. However, he is an international fugitive separated from his family. He is offered redemption if he can attempt the impossible “inception” — planting an idea within someone’s mind. As Cobb and his team navigate different layers of dreams to pull off their heist, Cobb will realize that their adversaries lie not only within the target’s mind – but within his own.
Cobb’s team plans to conduct the Inception within layered dreams, with time in each subsequent dreamscape running faster. Christopher Nolan exerts masterful control over cross-cutting to stitch “layers” of the dream that unfold simultaneously together. He also uses slow-motion shots to demonstrate the different speeds at which action unfolds, keeping tension taut. This unique dream mechanism is captivating but may leave the audience wondering which level of the dream they are in and wanting a rewatch, which is also part of the charm of Inception.
The mise-en-scene is a delicate balance of dream and reality; while many filmmakers would use a dreamscape to explore a wonderland-like concept, Nolan’s dreamworld seamlessly blends dream and reality. The visual effects of the scenes are stunning, with a road bending upwards, a 0 gravity hotel corridor, and a paradoxical penrose “impossible” stair in an office. With characters immersed in surreal yet photorealistic scenes, the film poses a question central to the movie’s theme: is this a dream or reality?
The plotting and pacing display similar attention to balance, with Nolan carefully balancing worldbuilding versus plot development and thrills versus character development. While action films are stereotyped as stuffed with fight sequences, explosions, and car chases, Inception retains the thrill of a “heist” style action movie while also depicting the compelling development of Cobb as he deals with the ghosts of his past. Nolan’s script is also compact and coherent. Simple dialogue between Cobb and Mal appears perfunctory but becomes central to Cobb’s character development. Small details are all revisited and shown to be significant; as parts of the story click into place, the audience is left feeling in awe of Nolan’s knack for storytelling. The introductory act is also compact, with several fight scenes and plot twists. This adheres to genre conventions by thrusting the audience into action while effectively introducing viewers to features of the ‘dream-sharing’ technology of “Inception.”
Inception is an ambitious action movie, but it manages to retain the thrill of action movies while provoking thought. However, it does require the audience to pay a lot of attention to the movie.
At least for me, Inception felt exactly like a good dream: just the right length but leaving me wanting more.
In our last humanities unit, we put all the critical thinking skills and creative ideas that we gathered over the year into investigating real-life situations. Kind of like MUN, but without crazy gavel-banging chairs and formal wear. As a final culmination of our investigation, we created a video that explained our problem in simple terms as well as explained some ways to work towards solving the issue.
I was executive producer, director, and videographer for this video and I am quite proud of the edited results:
Feel free to watch and comment on the video!
AHHHH Capstone Essay
Reading Status of Fahrenheit 451: Just finished Part 1, “The Hearth and the Salamander”, doing some fun analysis!
Check out the latest Kurzgesagt video here
16 October 1793
Marie-Antoinette, in full Marie Antoinette-Josèphe-Jeanne d’Autriche-Lorraine (Austria-Lorraine), originally German Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna von Österreich-Lothringen, was sent to the guillotines. Her last words were: “I did not do it on purpose”, after she stepped on the foot of her executioner.
Present
The French at the time of the French revolution and many people today still view Marie Antoinette as “Madame Defecit”. Many believe her apathy and frivolous and lavish spendings regardless of France’s financial system led to the downfall of the French empire. We also know her as the infamous speaker of the quote “let them eat cake”
Truth or bias?
However, Marie Antoinette was not the villain history framed her to be. The vast ocean of history is often disrupted, and while no source relating to history is perfect, some are more biased than others. For example, the much quoted phrase “Let them eat Cake” is often credited to Marie Antoinette. Many condemn her based on this sentence. However, this phrase was never uttered by her. According to Britannica, this quote had been circulating in other parts of the world, with varying details. The first person whom published this exact phrase was the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in book VI of “Confessions” (1767). However, according to Wikipedia, not only was Marie-Antoinette only 14 at that time, she was also living outside of France. And besides that, according to Britannica, the earliest known source connecting the quote with Marie Antoinette was more than 50 years after the revolution. (Here is the source)
The “Villain” Backstory
Marie Antoinette was married to Louis XVI as an inter-country alliance. Due to already-existing hostilities, when the 15 year old Austrian princess arrived in the French court, Marie Antoinette became the subject of slanders and ridicules, even being put into pornographic pamphlets. These ridicules ranged from her difficult relationship with her husband, as well as other stories such as the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace” (Oversimplified history, the French Revolution)
Perhaps, Marie Antoinette was not a cruel individual, but rather a foreigner that found it difficult to adapt to French customs. Her husband’s personal weakness and political ineptness was what eventually led Marie Antoinette to play a more prominent political role. At this case, she may have opposed reforms and revolutions, however it does not seem to have been done with malice or intentionally.
Was she really selfish?
Other sources may characterize her as frivolous and a large spender, even when france was in financial crisis. This is true, however her lavish spendings were not the whole reason why france was led to financial downfall. One could quote Louis’ large fundings towards the American Revolution among all.
Who was she?
I would also like to present an alternate view on Marie Antoinette. Her brother, Emperor Joseph 11, described her as “honest and lovable”, and according to mental floss dot com, Marie Antoinette had founded a home for unwed mothers, visited and gave food to poor families, and during the 1787 famine, sold off royal flatware to buy grain for those in need. Besides that, she also adopted several children, and these included the child of a maid who had died, and three children of a deceased usherer. In her last letters, her thoughts only went to her children, writing to her sister that it grieved her to leave her children.
Not a winner in the end
As with her husband, Louis Capet, Marie Antoinette was sentenced to jail and later the guillotine. Her children were also imprisoned, and according to “history.com”, her 8 year old child was forced to testify that his mother molested him. She died on 16 October 1793.
Hero or villain?
To me, Marie Antoinette was no villain. A villain could be most typically characterized as an individual whom actively works to provoke, hurt, and oppress citizens, mostly those of little power; however Marie Antoinette did none of these, and in fact, many allegations made against her were French propaganda and misled claims.
Therefore, it is quite clear that Marie Antoinette was not a villain, however she was also like a hero. Although like a hero she cared for her children and orphans whom were being oppressed, in the end she was unable to put these worries of hers into action. Her last days ended with a whimper, rather than a bang, not able to do anything to save her son.
In the end, her death was not something to cheer for, like the Parisian crowd did so many years ago. Marie Antoinette, and to much extent her husband, were two immature, inexperienced teenagers thrust into the two big shoes of their predecessors (which is kind of the whole issue with primogeniture); and sadly, this would not be the last time a couple met such a cruel fate, as seen from the last of the Romanovs. (I think it’s been said that empress Alexandra Romanov found Marie Antoinette to be a parallel of herself, both young princesses in a foreign court that despised them, with husbands that were not fit for the throne. She also predicted she would die a violent death like Marie Antoinette, and guess what happened. ) (INTERESTING BLOG tying parallels between Marie Antoinette and Alexandra Romanov, as well as more background information on Marie Antoinette. However, there doesn’t seem to be a citation page, so tried to refrain from using any information raised)
Therefore, I would call Marie Antoinette a human, a human who made mistakes but still cared for those that she loved, rather than a Villain or a Hero.
This is a fictional narrative piece of work based on the events of the French Revolution. Enjoy reading! Thanks to Dr. Pou for proofreading and editing this sway!
Click here for the link
As part of a new unit of Humanities, our homeroom was split into 4 separate groups to “deep dive” into a revolution of our choice (or not really, but then the illusion of choice seems to be a motif on most revolutions). I eventually studied the French Revolution. As all revolutions tend to be, I was immediately thrown into the world of revolutionaries, angry people, contradictory actions, inept kings, and of course Violence. Things in France before the revolution had been bad for quite a period. There was an estate system that comprised of 3 “estates”, the first estate being the clergy, the second estate the nobles, and the third, everyone else. The king was above everyone and ruled with absolute power. Tax was recessive, and in fact, the first and second estates were basically exempt from tax, and the first estate even exempt from common law. The immediate catalyst to the French Revolution was the summoning of the Estates general. There was such blatant mistreatment of the third estate that they started to rise up. And thus began the bloody French revolution. I was initially enthused in studying about the French Revolution just to learn more about France so I could better understand great works of art written about the revolution such as Les Miserables and a Tale of Two cities, but for those people who are looking for a short, simplified version of the events of the French Revolution, look no further than this video!
My Movie.mp4
This “common-craft” style video was a project that Fay and I worked on together. All the drawings are original works ( beautiful aren’t they) and we did all the filming, scriptwriting, and directing by ourselves. This also includes the very PUNNY jokes in the video such as the King louis “I’m innocent! Wait no, I’m Louis XVI” (with the crowd finally yelling “no you’re Louis Capet”) and the “revolutionaries really lost their heads”. (I am so proud of writing those two
jokes) We filmed the audio separately, then filmed the visuals based on the audio. Great Thanks to Fay who woke up at 4 AM to finish the last bit of filming. I then used imovie to do final touch ups and add special effects and such. As we found that the events that transpired were quite compact (in the span of 4 years) and thus we only have date cards rather than a timeline. If you want more clarification, check out this padlet timeline. (complete with a rant about the heinenman booklet)
This process was an enriching experience and I hope you enjoy the video!
Disclaimer: As mentioned, this is a very oversimplified history. We skip past detailed explanation of the Ancien Regime and Old Estate systems and economic problems even before the French Revolution. We also skipped by some specific details and vocab that weren’t as important, such as counter revolutionaries, Girondists, war, bathtub Marat, ruthless Robespierre, and events such as the complicated succession of power throughout the revolutions.
One biggest regret I have is not mentioning Marie Antoinette, because I feel like she deserved to be mentioned. Check out my padlet for more detailed info about her!
Background music credit goes to this youtube channel in this video. The Spongebob transition card comes from this youtube channel. Facepalm effect is from this video. The song mentioned in the video (not sponsored) is Viva la Vida by Coldplay. It is allegedly said to be a new take on King Louis’ final speech on the guillotine, though I personally believe that it portrays it a bit inaccurately, since King Louis’ final words were “I’m innocent”. Nevertheless, it is an amazing song. (ignore the fact that it’s 14 years old. The song aged well.) Sound effect credits go to imovie built-in effects as well as free audio effects from Scratch (Block based coding website) Shoutout to Oversimplified History, which inspired some of the character outlines as well as being a much more detailed source than the HEINENMAN BOOKLET (COUGH)
Note: the introduction (with summary) of this book will not contain spoilers, however the notes below will. I am not entirely sure how you can “spoil” a non-fiction book since the actual event has already happened, but read with caution!
Ten Days a Madwoman by Deborah Noyes chronicles the incredible life and times of acclaimed journalist Nellie Bly (also “Pink” Elizabeth Seaman née Cochran). 
Told from a third person’s point of view, this easily digestible novel of just over 100 pages follows Nellie from the kickstart of her career, to her undercover mission to Blackwell’s asylum for the insane (this is what the title references!),
Nellie Bly’s other journaling breakthrough such as stunt reporting, traveling the world, and reporting on actual war front lines, to her death. While Nellie Bly started from the bottom and fought her way to the top regardless of social status, the book doesn’t shy away from the challenges and struggles she and many women faced during that time, such as female inequality. This inequality was deeply rooted in every aspect of their lives, such as their personal lives, making it shameful and difficult for them to divorce abusive partners; their professional lives, creating glass ceilings and barriers to advancement. The text is mainly narrative, however, with bits of non fiction excerpts tied inside, so the author still does show the social issues of the time in a quite implicit manner, which is something that I liked.
This was quite a decent non-fiction book, and as you scroll through my notes below, please note the various central ideas and themes I have noted down; following our mini-less
ons during class, I also experimented with different forms and methods of note taking, including the classic bullet points, mind maps, cause and effect…
Special shoutout to my good friend and book club member Zoey, who actually read and took notes (very hard to read notes) and discussed this book with me.
If the media quality is too blurry, please refer to this onedrive link for my notes!
If you see NB in my notes, that is a self-invented acronym for Nellie Bly (yes, I am that lazy).
Notes 1: These notes are classic bullet point style. The purple post-it notes are summaries, and others are normal notes. On this mini-lesson, we focused on identifying issues, ideas, and themes rather than note-taking technique, so I mainly just used a table to consolidate evidence.
As you can see from the notes, I was quite annoyed by many of the untied ends at the end of Nellie’s episode in the asylum. (*cue futurama fry meme*), but looking back on it, Nellie’s willing to do such dangerous with next to no guarantee probably also showed how difficult it was for her to get such an opportunity in the first place.
Notes #2 The next set of (memes) notes are a brief summary of the book so far. I believe that one of our mini-lessons was just focused on summarizing, so here is a brief summary. If you’re okay with mild spoilers, I would recommend reading the “summary” part of these, so that you can better understand the book..
It is also important to note here an ironic point in the story that I forgot to put in my notes (I ranted about it though), a non-fiction text (page 64-65) explains how Roosevelt’s island closed down 7-years after Nellie’s expose. It seems like the text intends to link Nellie’s expose to the asylum being closed down, however the inmates are actually just “relocated to a new jail on Rikers Island” (65). Ironic, much? Another worthy note is the use of Blackwell’s island in YA literature. For anyone who has read the Mortal Instruments (Cassandra Clare), Blackwell’s island is actually a major plot point in the climax of the story.
(now back to the actual book at hand)
Notes #3
This mini-page of notes centers on the narrative part of the story. We first did this practice on the book “Hidden Figures”, finding notable parts of narration and expository. We then chose one aspect (narrative or non-fiction expository text). Since my book’s main medium was narration, I picked narration.
Note: These notes contain spoilers and may be confusing if you haven’t read the book or its summary
Notes #4
This note is in the form of a mind map. The information mentioned in here spans across almost the whole book, and focuses on the central idea “societal behavior needs improvement”. My initial feedback received was to improve on this statement, so I think I’d say “societal behavior and thoughts towards women needs improvement to achieve equality” (for the better of everyone) I am generally not so keen on mind-maps, since they require visual planning, and it can be challenging to add additional information, however the creation of the mind map was certainly helpful in reviewing the book as a whole.
If you are actually willing to read through this bog of words and lines, I will have to warn you that some quotes probably entail spoilers.
Notes #5
The former of these two notes are a mini mind-map, and a mini-timeline. These two were also based on two mini-lessons during class. In my mind map, I tried to make more sense of the non-fiction excerpts that appeared within the book. (I still think they sometimes don’t make sense! This was an immense pet peeve that I didn’t even know I had (considering the fact that I also tend to info dump in my writing). Separating the non-fiction and fiction sections with different pages (and sketchy page numbers) already made the format rigid and the prose choppy, putting in random articles in different tone and referring to different time periods made everything worse. )
spoiler alert!
Notes #6
This particular page maps out a specific incident in the book and delves into the causes and effects of it. Things are rarely that simple, and as we can see the causes and effects become quite entangles. I especially found that many causes led to effects, and those effects were causes for other effects (and a tongue twister is born). Of course, I am probably no where near locating all the causes and effects, but it gives us a good look on the chaotic society of Nellie Bly’s time.
also spoiler alert!
These are the following notes from my book club read of “10 days a madwoman”, I hope you enjoyed looking through my notes. Overall, although there were some unrelated non-fiction excerpts and there were some untied loose ends, this was still a decent non-fiction book, which I would recommend you to read. Although the book’s appearance seems light and less serious, there are many layers of analysis that could be made across different maturity levels.
Of course, there is also a movie version of this book/ movie version of Nellie Bly’s life, mainly showcasing Nellie’s first stint in Blackwell’s. I personally have not watched the movie, however it seems like some viewers thought that the acting was too amateurish.
Thanks for reading my blog, and feel free to leave a comment!!
Finishing our first Humanities unit “The Plot Thickens”, we dove straight into our next unit, “the Renaissance”. One key part of the Renaissance is humanism, which is an intellectual movement that began during this period.
Of course, to best understand almost anything, it is best to take a trip and step into their shoes. Therefore, after learning about humanism and its key ideas, all of us were tasked with trying to rate how many percent humanist we are. To my great surprise, I got 92% humanist!
I do agree we a lot of the ideas raised by the humanists. I do believe in a secular leadership body, especially through history we can see how religious leadership bodies can lead to oppression against other religions and all sorts of complications. So far for this ideology I do not see any cons, though I think I want to stress that even though the leadership body shouldn’t be religious, they should understand the religions that exist in the land they govern over, as to better govern. For example, understanding certain customs like Chinese New Year and allowing officials to visit their families. I also agree with observation and inquiry, unless it’s done obnoxiously. As Albert Einstein said, “The most important thing is to never stop questioning.” Non-Rigid social system is also extremely important, as allowing place for promotion and allowing the merit to be at the top is how I believe society can improve. (Honestly, this stems from the belief of my home country, Singapore. We have no natural resources so we operate on a meritocracy).
I also agree with Individualism, especially in contrast with what we see in the Medieval times. All humans definitely have dignity and should be able to do what they want. However, the reason I rated it 4/5 as I think there is a time where society has to act as a whole to be able to get through hardships, for example working together and acting according to laws and rules during Covid-19 to flatten the infection curve. I also rated using and improving on Ancient Texts as 4/5. Unlike many millennials, I do not believe that old people are boomers, and it is important to learn from the wisdom and mistakes of ancient texts. However it’s also important to acknowledge the shortcomings of ancient texts, like concerning the historical context such as sexism and racism of the time. Besides that, it is also important to not narrow your views to searching for ancient texts but also using your own mind to come out with your own values. After all, Modern times also call for more modern solutions, and we should not build our society and guide our next generation by telling them that the greatest heights of thinking and discovery have already passed.
Overall, I really enjoyed this task and I look forward to learning more about the Renaissance. Feel free to use this infographic to calculate how much a humanist you are!
Social Media Best Times Post Infographic by Miranda Poh
Citations:
28.5 The Growth of Humanism. History Alive.
M. Lukes, Steven. “Individualism.” Britannica, Britannica, 14 Jan. 2020, ttps://www.britannica.com/topic/individualism.
All icons and fonts are from the Canva website.