another _Inception_ question

[alexandra_thorn]

It almost seemed clear, but we've had a few debates/explorations of the question, so maybe it isn't.


What is the nature of the behavior of "totem" objects in the movie _Inception_?
Why is it so bad if someone holds your totem object? (what possible consequences are there?)
What are the differences between behavior of totem objects: in your dream, in someone else's dream, and in "top level" physical reality?
Is there any difference between the general behavior of Mal's top versus other totem objects?

Comments

[vestigialvisage]

One of my bigger gripes with Inception is that I believe their use of totems is inconsistent.

Totems are (according to my memory of the movie) defined as "an object that has properties only you know about, such that no one else can construct a dream reality where your totem will behave correctly." (I don't remember the details well enough to say anything about how your dream versus someone else's dream would interact with a totem.)

However, the totem that Leo uses doesn't actually fit with that definition. That totem is introduced as something that behaves oddly if and only if you are in a dream... which is the inverse of the behavior a totem should have. On top of that Leo tells other people the secret property of his totem.

[alexandra_thorn]

Tim and I also struggled to try to understand what was going on with the totems.

The best interpretation that I've been able to come up with is that in the general case, the totem is a physical object that has been manipulated to have non-intuitive behavior that no one but the owner will know about it (altered center of mass, etc.). As long as only you know how the object is expected to behave, only you can dream the correct behavior for the object, so you are able to distinguish between your own dream and someone else's.

As far as I can tell, Mal's top was different from the others. This makes *some* sense from a plot standpoint, because she was the one who came up with original idea. As far as I could tell, her top had no special properties at the top level, but that she could tell that she was dreaming (and not at the top level) by spinning it: only in a dream could it have the magical property of spinning forever. I'm not sure whether this was supposed to enable her to distinguish between her dream and someone else's, but I guess that maybe when she and Cobb were futzing around in Dream there weren't necessarily that may people with the technology to hijack dreams.

It's plausible enough to me that she would have come up with this idea to have an object that behaved differently in dream from physical reality and that her collaborators would have modified the design a bit.

That said, I'm not sure how the distinction between your dream and someone else's is supposed to work when anyone in the dream has the ability to manipulate the physics of the dream world. Couldn't you be in someone else's dream and nevertheless assign the appropriate behaviors to your totem object? Or maybe you can't manipulate Dream unintentionally?

As for Cobb telling people what the top did, I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that he was talking about it because it *wasn't* his totem: it was Mal's and she was presumed dead. So there might have been an implication that he had his own totem that he didn't talk about. Or it might be that he'd already gone off the deep end and was breaking all of the rules anyway...

I have had not much sleep, so this may be slightly incoherent...

[metahacker]

My own take on the inconsistency in the movie:

The thing to remember is, all the rules that the protagonist tells "us" (in the form of Ariadne, who is the proxy for the audience) are at best bendable and at worst completely wrong. (See Arthur's comment to that effect...) He's making it up as he goes along, and pretending that this is reality. This became ridiculously apparent when he explains away exactly how his totem works to Ariadne--he's telling the audience, so that later we can construct a dream (mental fantasy) that he can live on in. He's dead, you see, and only lives on it the dreams of others--yours, for example. Or, possibly Mal's...

On to more-traditional explanations.

As first explained, the idea is that if someone else knows your totem, they can construct a dream which will fool you into thinking it is reality. As you say in comments, something which has been altered in a non-standard way. Mal's totem (when it is her totem) is not used for this purpose, or maybe it is: she locks away her ability to tell reality from dream, so she can forget that she is trapped in a dream. I don't think she conceived of using it defensively, against someone trying to make her confuse reality and dream--I think she just conceived of it as a self-check, not assuming an attacker. Cobb generalized it from there.

Re: I have had not much sleep, so this may be slightly incoherent...

[alexandra_thorn]

He's dead, you see, and only lives on it the dreams of others--yours, for example. Or, possibly Mal's...

I think dead men don't dream (and don't inject themselves into the dreams of others) : )

Re: I have had not much sleep, so this may be slightly incoherent...

[alexandra_thorn]

More seriously, your "traditional" explanation fits neatly with my explanation above. Can I assume that you wrote it without reading the other comments?