Calli, for reals? I was despairing of finding anyone to go with me. What's your weekend look like?

TB, thanks for chiming in. That's a genre with which I am not familiar.

Fair enough. But he does also go to dead.

...as a tragic antagonist, killed by the hero mostly in self-defense. Very different fate. As I'm parsing fridging, agency and type of death is key. I think widening the definition to include any kind of death that has emotional impact is sloppy and weakens the point. The original list was of female superhero who had been killed, maimed, or depowered.

By that definition, is Nolan a fridger? IDK. But he might want to find another well.

From the archive site of Women in Refrigerators:

An important point: This isn't about assessing blame about an individual story or the treatment of an individual character and it's certainly not about personal attacks on the creators who kindly shared their thoughts on this phenomenon. It's about the trend, its meaning and relevance, if any. Plus, it's just fun to talk about refrigerators with dead people in them. I don't know why.

Sure, smonster! Saturday I'm shopping with amyth but Sunday's pretty clear.

Dent gets more agency than Rachel, but in the end, his death is also about Batman's misery and angst.

I think Nolan likes to kill people to upset his antagonist. Women work most easily, but he's cut a swathe through casts.

an article about Nolan as a director:

[link]

Nolan is clearly comfortable writing and directing movies from a man's perspective and exploring the male psyche - especially as the psyche relates to loneliness, isolation and loss. I don't particularly have a problem with that. his movies entertain me and I like them.

I also have to say that the women character deaths in the movies of Nolan have driven character motivation in such a way that make it believable and obsessive. What else could drive the obsession in "The Prestige" except that shit? That movie goes to some dark dark places and I almost feel like the first woman's character death isn't even the worst of it.

"Memento" had to be structured like that in order for the movie to work. So I don't really feel like they are capricious and not in service of the plot.

I think one woman's character in "Inception" could have had more meat to it, but I am still going back and forth on whether that was intentional or not.

Yeah, just looking back at his movies, I think many more men are killed than women, numerically speaking, though we don't necessarily see them. For instance, think of all the John G.'s in Memento or all the Hugh Jackmans in The Prestige. Heh. Not that Nolan couldn't do better by women, but I agree with ita. There's a lot of killin'.

I think one woman's character in "Inception" could have had more meat to it, but I am still going back and forth on whether that was intentional or not.

Isn't that something that applies to almost all the characters, though? And lends itself to one interpretation of the plot (not one I share)? Just the breakdown where the people are referred to as "The Mark" "The Forger" "The Point Man" "The Architect", etc, depersonalises them. And I think we only get into Cobb's head because he's the protagonist, Mal's head (inasmuch as we do) because she's the catalyst, and Fischer's head because he's the mark. Everyone else is similarly loosely drawn.

Yeah, just looking back at his movies, I think many more men are killed than women, numerically speaking, though we don't necessarily see them.

But it's not just a body count thing. It's the deaths of women as plot motivators.

In "Inception", I think some of the others are a bit more well-rounded in comparison to the one character. That character exists almost totally as the viewer's surrogate. Which is fine and all, but I wouldn't call any of the others quite that.

That character exists almost totally as the viewer's surrogate.

I think she functions more as a prod to the protagonist, honestly. I didn't feel she lasted very long as the person asking my questions, because she leapt very quickly to the one with the insights. And although I came out of it with a major crush on Arthur, I don't think I know anything more about him than I do about her. In fact, even if she is just a surrogate, that's more than Saito or Eames or Yusuf are. They're just job descriptions.