Ideology of dreams

Let's imagine a movie, which would begin with "the end." Then — closing titles on the creen, emotional soundtrack in the background. Banal shots of people in cinema theatre, close shots of faces en face in a pale light, then scenes with audience leaving their comfy chairs, slowly moving towards the exit, dispersing in the street. And only then the usual movie would begin — like a continuous, naturally choreographed movement of the characters (the "screen-people") — moving away from the screen. Movement with respect to screen. Screen as a technology of an impossible transition.

Speaking of transitions — Inception has got an interesting episode: Cobb (DiCaprio) and Adriane (Ellen Page) are talking at the table in a street cafe, Adriane is told that she is dreaming, she wakes up in shock, but they immediately resume the conversation as if the sensations of waking up, or, actually, the whole phenomenon of waking-up was some sort of inevitable (but not necessary) artifact of a human life, almost at its mundane, physi(ologi)cal level. Jumping to and fro the dream here is a question of technology, a technically solvable problem. This technology of transition functions as something essential, but not important (like during the immersion in the screen, the surrounding physicality looses its importance, although we still need it). The economy is clear: without technology of transition there would be no access to dreams, but the transition must be ignored and repressed (controlled, ergonomic, effective), otherwise there would be no chance to smuggle the consciousness into the dream. And on top of that, things need to be under control. And that's a hell-of-a-job.


So, there must be some driving story, a thread which ties and connects alternating experiences. The thread which keeps the realities together.  Every watchable Hollywood is familiarly ideological: jobs are being done, people are being killed, some action above and below the law, some sex (or the absence of sex, which was elevated into the state-of-art in The X-Files) and at the end of the day peace returns to the institution (family, state, country, government). The status quo and punto stabile are recombined.

Even amidst all of that mess during the hardcore transitions between states of dreaming and being awake, a protagonist almost never looses the sense of orientation — both, identity-wise, and reality-wise. In the world of Inception, understandings such as "my family," "my country," "a job," "value," "money," "world," "real" — all of them remain unchanged, unquestioned, and unquestionable.  Protagonist shows no hesitation to identify them. All the constructs of political and social realities — the framework, the base — remain intact.

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I wonder, how often we dream about politics? Do you dream about the topics such as, say, Middle East Crisis? Or NATO? Do you retain the political stories in your dreams? Let's make it a rethorical question.