Saturday, May 9, 2009
Dreams and Memories - Dark City Volume III
I was watching and episode of MASH today called Dreams, in which we see what each of the characters dreams about after hours of operating and lo and behold, they simply cannot escape the memories of war. So I began to wonder, since I haven't been able to stop thinking about Dark City and all of its interesting little messages since friday, what do dreams have to do with memories? We suppose (quite logically) that dreams are the subconsious memories we don't know we have until they surface during REM (is that right?) sleep. But if we erase someone's memories, would their subconcious go, too? In Dark City, we see that the Strangers never allow the characters to really sleep (except during Tuning, but that, as we know, is not sleep) because all the action is going on during the night (or rather, let us be technical and call it the eternal day). Is that where the Strangers went wrong? Was that place they should have been looking in (because we all know it's not "the heart" - I mean if we think it's there then we might as well go back to Shakespearean times when the liver was the love organ) actually the subconcious (in whatever layer it is you feel "it" resides - I'm betting on the id).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You think about these things very deeply Irina, and probably very accurately but I must admit that your thoughts are quite deep and philosophical.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you are battling with these unanswered and possibly unanswerable questions is quite a commitment but I do credit you with taking it.
The one thing I will tell you and I don't mean this insultingly but mainly just that I believe that you to realize that it is only a movie -- a sci-fi movie at that, so not everything has to make sense to us now.
Also nice MASH tie-in.
I'm not sure how to respond to your comment, though it made me think about dreams in this way. I have had many experiences during dreams where I question whether or not I am awake. In fact, on three occasions, the first two when I was 18 and the third just last year, I experienced what is called "lucid dreaming" a rare experience where one become aware in a dream and is thus able to control the events. In all three incidents, the actvity that I wanted to participate in was (no Yuriy, wrong again) flying. As soon as I realized that I could control the action of the dream, I raised both hands up like a diver on the verge of a dive and took off into the air. Alas, I woke up much too soon. The last time the experience of waking was interesting because the change from the physical position I was in in the dream to the one that I was in in my bed was so different that it was a shock.
ReplyDeleteI have only had the experience once of being fully awake and wondering if I was dreaming. It was when I was around 9 year old, or thereabouts. I was at a relative's house and she was playing an organ and a bunch of us were singing along to some old tunes. The situation was so strange that I expereinced an altered state of consciousness, and started to wonder, with total seriousness, whether I wasn't dreaming the whole thing. I recall leaning over to my mother and telling her how I felt, but she just smiled, failing to grasp that I was experiencing something profound.