Plan: Dreams and philosophical realism

In popular culture

An artist's illustration of Saint Joseph dreaming.

Self-portrait of a Dreamer

Modern popular culture often conceives of dreams, like Freud, as expressions of the dreamer's deepest fears and desires.^[41] The film version of The Wizard of Oz (1939) depicts a full-color dream that causes Dorothy to perceive her black-and-white reality and those with whom she shares it in a new way. In films such as Spellbound (1945), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and Inception (2010), the protagonists must extract vital clues from surreal dreams.^[42]

Most dreams in popular culture are, however, not symbolic, but straightforward and realistic depictions of their dreamer's fears and desires.^[42] Dream scenes may be indistinguishable from those set in the dreamer's real world, a narrative device that undermines the dreamer's and the audience's sense of security^[42] and allows horror film protagonists, such as those of Carrie (1976), Friday the 13th (1980) or An American Werewolf in London (1981) to be suddenly attacked by dark forces while resting in seemingly safe places.^[42]

In speculative fiction, the line between dreams and reality may be blurred even more in the service of the story.^[42] Dreams may be psychically invaded or manipulated (Dreamscape, 1984; the Nightmare on Elm Street films, 1984–2010; Inception, 2010) or even come literally true (as in The Lathe of Heaven, 1971). In Ursula K. Le Guin's book, The Lathe of Heaven (1971), the protagonist finds that his "effective" dreams can retroactively change reality. Peter Weir's 1977 Australian film The Last Wave makes a simple and straightforward postulate about the premonitory nature of dreams (from one of his Aboriginal characters) that "... dreams are the shadow of something real". In Kyell Gold's novel Green Fairy from the Dangerous Spirits series, the protagonist, Sol, experiences the memories of a dancer who died 100 years before through Absinthe induced dreams and after each dream something from it materializes into his reality. Such stories play to audiences' experiences with their own dreams, which feel as real to them.^[42]

Neurobiology