Has Joseph Gordon-Levitt Read Inception Fanfic?
An investigation.
Here is an exhaustive list of things I know about Joseph Gordon-Levitt:
Despite appearances to the contrary, he’s (allegedly) not part-Asian.
His online presence is the off-putting hybrid of a nostalgia mining Tweetdecker, Tumblr circa 2011, and some guy you went to high school with who’s trying to become the next big tech overlord via motivational quotes on LinkedIn.
Scroll through Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s account for just 30 seconds and the posting pattern reveals itself: a throwback or behind the scenes photo of a popular movie followed by links promoting projects on HitRecord, the collaborative production company/media platform/artist collective/insert-more-buzzwords-here that he founded and owns. If you think I’m painting a very vague picture of HitRecord, you’d be correct. I don’t really know what is, and based on this quote from Joseph Gordon-Levitt attempting to describe HitRecord’s mission, I’d say I’m not alone in my confusion:
“It’s less about, ‘OK, you are trying to monetize your creativity and we will help you build your creative career and break you into Hollywood,’ but rather, ‘You are a creative human being, because creativity is a human universal, and it’s one of the things that makes humans happy and feel meaning in their lives, and we think the culture of our community helps people find their creative selves by collaborating on projects and that’s valuable.‘”
Hope that helps!
There’s no way that whatever Joseph Gordon-Levitt is trying to sell in the quote above is not a scam, so naturally HitRecord has come under fire for crowdsourcing writing, animation, music, and video work on spec, meaning work done for free in the hopes of maybe getting paid for it someday. In an effort to distract us from his calls for (likely) uncompensated creative labor, he’s resorted to reposting images of other celebrities that he probably got off Pinterest – film grain filter and all. The best part is that these generic, obligatory posts consistently receive more engagement than his HitRecord bait.
But wait, you may ask, isn’t Joseph Gordon-Levitt … an actor? Why doesn’t he just post photos of stuff he’s starred in? To answer your first question: yes, he still acts. He’s currently portraying Uber founder Travis Kalanick in a ripped-from-the-headlines Showtime series that I will never watch (if you want disgraced mogul content, I recommend The Dropout on Hulu). Though, on second thought, does playing a morally bankrupt tech bro count as “acting” for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or is it just another Tuesday?
As for whether he posts about movies and TV shows he’s been in – of course he does. One of his favorite walks down memory lane is Inception, which we know Christopher Nolan directed because the protagonist’s wife is dead. But instead of sharing cast photos or fun anecdotes about goofing off in between takes, his hey-remember-when-I-was-in-Inception reminders all focus on an aspect of the film that’s pure subtext: the sexual tension between his character, Arthur, and Tom Hardy’s character, Eames.
Arthur and Eames are proof positive of a timeless fandom truth: if you put two white men together on screen (they don’t even have to look at or talk to each other much), at least 20 fics about them falling in love will be online before the end of the week. In a movie with a runtime of over two hours, their interactions don’t even add up to three minutes:
Still, there’s just enough here to get people’s imaginations off and running – hints at a shared history and friction that could turn into sparks; opposites attract archetypes (uptight vs. impulsive); and, of course, Eames calling Arthur “darling.” Christopher Nolan thought he was creating a profound story about the unconscious mind walking the tightrope between reality and dreams, but what he was actually doing was building a fictional universe for writers to flood with romance. All that stuff about the philosophy of the dreams is just set dressing for the Arthur and Eames show, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt knows it.
In a 2010 interview with LGBTQ news source The Advocate that was published the same day as Inception’s U.S. release, he was asked about a potential frisson of attraction between his and Hardy’s characters:
That “[Laughs]” was a portent of pandering to come. Before most people had even seen the movie, he got a preview of how audiences would read Arthur and Eames’s dynamic. And so, whenever he finds himself in a silly goofy mood, he fans the ship’s flames. Whether it’s fun or weird of him to do so is none of my concern. What I care about is how likely it is that he’s ever read any Arthur/Eames fanfic. Joseph Gordon-Levitt strikes me as the type of person who would 100% read erotic fiction about himself or one of his characters (he’d probably solicit voice actors on Twitter to perform it and then not pay them), and isn’t HitRecord’s philosophy all about worshiping at the altar of creativity or whatever? It doesn’t get more collaborative or transformative than fanfiction. Don’t just take my word for it, though – let’s consider the evidence.
Exhibit A (2017):
This seems like a case of name searching more than anything else. He was probably just excited to see someone talking about him and his work positively instead of dragging HitRecord. I think this also marks the point where he realized how much lingering Inception goodwill he could capitalize on.
Exhibit B (2018):
Creating headcanons (ideas held by fans that are not explicitly supported by sanctioned text or other media) is peak shipper behavior. You know what else isn’t explicitly supported by the text of Inception? Arthur and Eames’s explicit fanfic exploits.
Exhibit C (2021), which belongs on my list of Things I Just Decided Are Queerbaiting:
Posting something this horny, unprompted, during a pandemic that saw many people pick up new hobbies is highly suspicious to me. Could one of those newly acquired pastimes be reading fanfic about his character getting the gawk gawk 9000? Drop the AO3 user name, king!!
yeah he's definitely read inception fanfic, as everyone should. the quality of inception fanfic is low key astounding