[This was a research paper I did for my Narratology class on dream narratives. They are a passion of mine, so if you’d ever like to discuss over a drink…]
David Boop
ENGL – Bohlen
Final paper
12/10/13
Betrayed Dreams are Made of This
When Edgar Allen Poe wrote, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” there was, most likely, little consideration to how often future creators would take those words to heart when creating their own works. Narratives in which a dream becomes part of the fabula have become common place within all forms of storytelling, be it fairy tale, novels films, comics, or poems. One has only to read the world’s oldest story, Gilgamesh, to see how dreams have been worked into fiction since there was fiction. From television’s Dallas erasing the entire ninth season under the excuse of an extended dream to 2013’s The Wolverine using a dream state to bring the character Jean Gray back from the dead, audiences have accepted the dream narrative as a common trope. But are dream narratives universal or are some accepted more than others? Of the two prime dream narratives, active knowledge and buried knowledge, the former, when presented well, is a more satisfying story form, while the latter has greater ability to leave its intended audience with a feeling of betrayal.
This paper will examine the dream narrative as it pertains to a whole narrative [“cultural artifacts that tell a story” (Bal 3).] That is to say the focalizer, or the character “who perceives” (Bal 8), spends the majority of the narrative within a dream and is not experiencing a dream as a small segment of the larger story. However, it not necessary for the entire fabula [“a series of logically and chronologically related events…” (Bal 5)] to be only in the dream state, allowing for trips to and from at any time.
By this set of criteria, a dream narrative usually takes one of two forms. The first trope, active knowledge, occurs when a focalizer (or focalizers) enter a dream state knowingly and interact with others (real or dreamed,) following a set of pre-described rules that must not be (but usually will be) broken. Examples of this in film would be Dreamscape (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984 and 2010,) and Paparika (2006). The other dream narrative, buried knowledge, happens when the focalizers have no idea they are in a dream state until a reveal that often happens near, or at, the climax, though they may suspect or are given clues along the way. Examples include The Wizard of Oz (1939), Labyrinth (1986), and Audition (1999).
Of the two, buried knowledge can leave the audience feeling they wasted their time, especially if all that they experienced through the narrative was not real. This feeling won’t happen as often if the audience has joined with the focalizer in active knowledge of the dream state. To illustrate these principals, two films, one for each trope, will be compared. Inception (2010) is a recent example of an active knowledge dream narrative, where characters enter and conflict ensues within a dream. The second trope will be demonstrated through Vanilla Sky (2001), a film that proposes a majority of the story takes place within a dream of its protagonist. Through exploration of the story and the fabula, film reviews and critical analysis, it will be shown that Inception provided an ending that is satisfactory to most audiences whereas Vanilla Sky left audiences confused, like they wasted two hours of their life.
It must also be mentioned that both films implore another trope, the “Still in the dream?” ending, which will be elaborated briefly, on but for the sake of specificity, this paper will not discuss in length. Use of this ending has become common place as “twist” or surprise, and due to its regular implementation in film and television, though now it has become cliché and trite. A more gratifying ending is one the resolves all threads and does not leave the audience wondering if there was more to see/read/hear. In this sense, the audience is not given true catharsis, or release, just a faux ending that leaves room for debate, but never a conclusion. The twist of a “Still in the dream?” ending relies heavily on audience buy-in throughout, and without that, the ending falls apart. Erlend Lavik expounds on the nature of such twists in his article, “Narrative Structure in The Sixth Sense: A New Twist in “Twist Movies”?”
“The introduction of the twist thus represents a kind of catharsis that we as viewers are invited to share by being epistemically aligned with [the main protagonists]). In general, other factors being equal, the more clues the syuzhet [the actual arrangement and presentation of audiovisual information (55)] contains without the audience being able to put two and two together, the more successful the movie” (56).
- Inception (2010)
Before one can quantify the value of different dream narratives, the first question to be asked is why work with the realms of dreams at all? Dreams by their very nature are incongruent, disjoined, and rarely linear. How then can an author recreate such madness in any way to satisfy an audience? In his lecture, “What Use Are Dreams in Fiction?” David Mitchell states, “…to write a dream and insert it into the fiction runs the risk of weakening the illusion by doubling it. In short, the suspension of disbelief will only go one layer of reality down. Two layers or more, and it pops” (431).
However, in fiction, the reader has the opportunity to build the dream world based on their own interpretation within the theater of their own mind. When the syuzhet is film, the screenwriter as author and the director as auteur, the challenge to make a believable dream location which should, by its nature be unbelievable, is increased. To capture the chaotic imagery is the greatest challenge and poses an immediate risk to the author. Mitchell backs this up, “Dreams have a lexical reputation for being more exciting than ‘Reality’, but you have to be crazily in love with someone to take more than a minute or two of hearing about theirs” (432).
Despite this risk, or maybe because of it, authors continue to create dream narratives. Is it because dream narratives provide a chance for the author to break with conventional logic that can tie down a traditional narrative? Christopher Nolan, screenwriter and director of Inception explains his own desire to break with convention, “I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well” (Geoff). Again, Mitchell agrees, “Flesh-and-blood people dream. Why not have fictional characters do the same? Especially if the fictional dream can be harnessed to a practical dramatic purpose, such as facilitating a plot twist – as distinct from being the plot” (436).
When working within the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, despite the ability to go beyond the known world into the speculative, there are natural rules that still apply to the fabula. Within science fiction especially, there has to be an inherent logic that suggests that if the science being shown does not currently exist, it could within the projected allotment of time, or at a minimum, be available on another world with a different development structure. In many dream narratives, science is used as a deus ex-machina to move the actors from the real world into the dream world. Films like Inception or The Cell (2000) take it a step farther and push the science fiction into the realm of science fantasy by creating dream linking devices that share more in common with magic than technology.
There also seems to be a psychological need to explore these dreams in narratives as much as there is a need to explore them in ourselves. Dream analysis was a hallmark of Freud and still is a lucrative business today. As characters desire to achieve goals within the story structure, we hope to achieve goals within our own dreams. John Beebe examined how Hollywood uses dreams in his essay, “Finding Our Way in the Dark.” Beebe summons Carl Jung while exploring the similarities between our own dream journey with that of a focalizer’s, “For those who know Jungian psychology well, it is axiomatic that sooner or later the ego’s struggle with the shadow has to end in a loss: the shadow gets away and we never succeed in finally controlling our unconscious enough to realize all our goals” (93).
Controlling the unconscious is the main theme of Inception. In the story, Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio,) is the leader of a team of “extractors,” mercenaries who can enter dreams and retrieve a person’s deepest secrets. Usually, they are hired to bring information out, but Cobb is tasked with inserting a suggestion inside the mind, which beforehand had never been done successfully. Cobb leads his team into the dream world but refuses to create the dream scape they must navigate. He is harboring a secret; responsibility for his wife’s death. Mal (Marion Cotillard) regularly appears while Cobb is in the dreamscape to sabotage his plans, much the way guilt does in reality. Ultimately, Cobb must accept his role in her death to be able to save his team and accomplish his goal.
Each dreamscape is designed by an architect. For this “final” mission, Ariadne (Ellen Page) is the dream builder. As Cobb teaches her, he explains the nature that locations she creates must be a labyrinth to protect the dream invaders from the dreamer’s subconscious. In dream theory, the maze “reflects the dreamer’s confusion in waking life. It is a place where people feel lost and wonder which way to go” (Runyeon). Nolan explains the necessity of mazes in his work,
“I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze. Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don’t want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it’s frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting…I quite like to be in that maze” (Boucher).
This is important as it allows the actors to be in control while in the dream. Each chooses a token to use to identify if they are still in the dream or not, a tool for the audience to know when they are witnessing a dream. The plot allows for clear delineations between the real world and the dream world, so at no point, save for the aforementioned “twist ending,” does the audience have to guess what is reality and what is not. Even at the point where Cobb goes down the rabbit hole of his target’s subconscious four levels, which is previously unheard of, and the audience follows a multi-layered narrative for each level, they are aware that what they are seeing is a dream.
- Vanilla Sky (2001)
Unlike Inception, Vanilla Sky (based on the Spanish film Abre Los Ojos or Open Your Eyes) doesn’t involve a focalizer entering and leaving the dream state, despite an opening dream sequence where David Aames (Tom Cruise) walks out of his condo into an empty Times Square. He wakes to a “reality” filled with people and his perfect life, a life that becomes distorted as the film progresses. A disfiguring accident could be driving Aames insane, leading to him kill the one true love of his life…or did he? Reality continues to fracture, and the audience is led to believe that it is all part of a conspiracy to rob the wealthy Aames of his empire. It is revealed at the conclusion that Aames has been dead for some time, and his cryogenically frozen body has been allowed to dream a world of his choosing. The program has a glitch which caused the schism in the dream reality. It can be fixed or Aames can be revived and discover what 150 years in the future has to offer. He chooses to “open his eyes,” but like Inception, the audience is left with doubt as to what really happened.
Aames quest has no obvious goal other than survival, though the theme can clearly be seen as rebirth. Aames is a shallow playboy with no regard for his friends or his immense wealth. He finds the key to his salvation in Sofia (Penelope Cruz) just before the accident that changed him. The outside then reflects the monster within. Sofia supposedly helps him heal inside and out, however, this is a lie, and he never became a whole person while alive. It is only through images of that reality imposing themselves on his perfect reality that the audience, not Aames, starts to suspect all is but a dream. Says Beebe;
“I believe the dream connoisseur can learn to experience the difference between upsetting imagery that points to a real existential problem—the developmental demand to transition from one stage of life to another, whether or not we are ready—and the more suspect terrifying images that point to the possibility that we have been self-deceived in what we have taken for reality. It would appear that whatever it is that addresses us in dreams is just as ruthless in deconstructing the fictions by which we live as it is in tallying the toll of our individuation” (95).
Cameron Crowe, auteur, tells why he chose to make Vanilla Sky, “I’d always written my own original screenplays, but Open Your Eyes, with its open-ended and impressionistic themes, felt like a great song for our ‘band’ to cover” (Crowe). Open-ended doesn’t equal disjointed and the actor’s slide from reality to dream to reality is jarring. As the computer program overrides Aames will, a battle for control over the dream narrative erupts. The protagonist “has been proceeding in the assumption that things are a certain way, but they are not that way. Suddenly, the way they really are surfaces in a dream. Or, more precisely, a dream exposes the fictitious quality of the way we thought they were” (Beebe 95). This would be clearer if Aames saw in the narrative sense [“seeing a difference that changes the fabula, makes the character different” (Bal 19)] earlier on, but neither he nor the audience are treated to the reveal until the very end, causing viewers to question everything they viewed. Mack Bolan – Executioner author Michael A. Black finds this appalling, “An author cheats his readers (or audience) if he pulls the old “it was all a dream” rabbit out of his hat at the climax” (Black).
- Analysis
A multi-level narrative is one where the secondary narratives flow and connect to the main narrative. Take for instance, Star Wars (1977). While the principal narrative, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is one of boy into man, a secondary narrative comes from Leah (Carrie Fisher) fighting for freedom, while a third narrative tells the redemption of Han Solo (Harrison Ford). Each feeds the main story, yet each are compelling enough to hold the audience’s interest. Some narratives, such as Playing by Heart (1998), a complex story of eleven people, each with their own story and agendas, that come together at the climax.
The dream narrative can come into conflict with the multi-layered narrative when the audience is made to think the story is a single-layer narrative that is actually a multi-layered narrative hidden behind a dream. At that point, a viewer or reader can feel like the author was trying to pull a fast one on them, deliberately obscuring clues as to trick the audience and thus give the reveal a bigger punch. “I’m smarter than you!” says the auteur who announces the whole story t’was nothing more than a dream. “Here’s the real story. Bet you feel dumb now?” Says Black,
“To me, it smacks of lazy writing. I never go back to a show, author, or director who leaves me feeling cheated after the final act. I keep thinking of all the time I invested trying to figure out the writer’s plot, only to find out somebody had been dealing from the bottom of the deck. Play fair with your reader or your audience, or don’t play at all” (Black).
A comparison of reviews on Inception and Vanilla Sky validate this theory. Late movie critic Roger Ebert said Vanilla Sky “requires the audience to do some heavy lifting. It has one of those plots that doubles back on itself like an Escher staircase. You get along splendidly one step at a time, but when you get to the top floor you find yourself on the bottom landing. If it’s any consolation, its hero is as baffled as we are” (Ebert) and yet regarded Inception as one the best films he’d ever seen, “Maybe there’s a hole in Inception, […] but I can’t find it” (Ebert).
He wasn’t alone. Fellow critics responded similarly to Vanilla Sky. “Leonard Maltin said […] ‘I was really disappointed. The confusion led me nowhere. I didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.’ Co-host, Todd Newton, added, ‘I got lost and the ending comes in and I thought – ok, now it’s all going to be pieced together for me. Nothing!’” (FilmThreat.com). Vanilla Sky was voted the most confusing film of all time in a poll run by LoveFilm. Editor Helen Cowley said: “It’s clear that dreaming is the biggest cause of confusion for viewers. Switching from reality to dream sequences pulls the wool over our eyes and leaves us searching for the truth” (LoveFilm.com).
On the opposite side, Justin Chang of Variety had this to say about Inception, “If Inception is a metaphysical puzzle, it’s also a metaphorical one: It’s hard not to draw connections between Cobb’s dream-weaving and Nolan’s filmmaking — an activity devoted to constructing a simulacrum of reality, intended to seduce us, mess with our heads and leave a lasting impression. Mission accomplished” (Chang).
Metacritic.com, a site dedicated to keeping track of movie reviews, gave Vanilla Sky an average rating of 45 out of 100 (based on 33 professional reviews.) Conversely, Inception received a 75 out of 100 (based on 44 professional reviews.) 33 reviews were positive, with only 9 mixed or negative. Vanilla Sky invoked only 12 positive with 21 mixed to negative reviews. (Metacritic.com).
It is not only the critics, but the audience that feels tricked by Crowe’s piece. JulieB posted on Metacritic.com “You realize that you spent the whole movie thinking that the details and plot twists were important when they really didn’t matter at all” (Metacritic.com). In fact, a majority of Metacritic.com users gave Vanilla Sky a 7.1 out of 10 rating, whereas reception to Inception proved more positive with an 8.5. Usamah posted, “Inception is One GREAT sci-fi psychological thrillers. One of THE best in the genre. Christopher Nolan has created a masterpiece with perfect direction, phenomenal acting, great script, mind bending scenes and an action packed story being the key ingredients, making it a must-see movie…!” (Metacritic.com).
- Conclusion
TVtropes.org has a page dedicated to the trope, “All Was a Dream” where they warn, “Normally, [this trope] really grates on the audience […] If it’s done badly, expect some audience members to be seriously annoyed […] Even if it’s done well, it may require a lot of willing suspension of disbelief, since real dreams are weirder” (Tvtropes.org)
Are people the same as they in their dreams? Do they make the same decisions in their subconscious that they would in the waking world? If so, why wouldn’t characters in a story? And if the audience is led to understand the narrative is based on the subconscious, how can they believe that focalizer’s choices when they are awake? It takes a masterful stroke of the author’s hand to overcome this betrayal of character. In the short fiction, “The Story” by Amy Bloom, the author tells the reader in two places everything they’d read up to that point was a lie. This makes the story hard to read for some and a masterful work of prose to others. Even with its revelation of a dream narrative at about the 90% mark, Vanilla Sky is still not a universally panned film. It has supporters as vehemently passionate about it as the supporters of Inception.
In the days of self-publishing, it is hard to defend the old adage “no film gets made in a vacuum” or “No book goes out without being seen by an editor” though that is safe to say of the films contrasted here. Both were seen by producers and distributors before release and the final versions seem to be the one the auteurs wanted the public to view. So why then do more people find the buried knowledge dream narrative a disappointment than an active knowledge one?
It comes down to expectations. An audience is fed so much before it releases that they go into it with very specific expectations. No one wants to go into a romance only to find out half-way through the film is actually a horror, nor a comedy that ends in tragedy. Vanilla Sky did not present itself as a science fiction, nor even a fantasy. Trailers show a romantic comedy that turns into something of a thriller. It could be audiences thought they were going to the next Ghost (1990), not, as it turned out, Jacob’s Ladder (1990). Inception’s trailer makes it very clear that all or part of its action-packed narrative will take place in the dreamscape.
Does that mean audiences do not like surprises? No, they just don’t like to be fooled. Originality is welcome in a multiplex filled with reboots and sequels. H. Porter Abbott states, “…half of what gives life to expectations is their violation, for which the common word again is surprise. Conversely, directors, screen-adapters, audiences themselves, can force a story to conform to expectations” (58). Mieke Bal writes in her book, Narratology, that “We tend to notice only what we already know, unless the deviation from the expectation is strongly enhanced” (122).
By 2010, Nolen was well-known for his deviations. The Prestige (2006) and Memento (2000) are well recognized for their twists. Crowe, on the other hand, still riding the fame of Jerry Maquire (1996), had just come off the successful Almost Famous (2000). Surprises, twists, science fiction. None of these terms were associated with Crowe. These facts may have contributed to the negative reaction to Vanilla Sky, but truthfully, no one wants to spend six seasons living vicariously through a cast of characters on a mysterious island only to discover everyone is actually dead and in limbo, ala Lost (2004-2010). “If expectations are fulfilled or questions answered, we say that closure occurs” (Abbott 58). Ultimately, active knowledge in a dream narrative is just more satisfying.
Despite a film slate filled with overused tropes, there is still room for originality. Trying to fix a stagnant plot by revealing it as a dream narrative does not actually fix anything and can leave a narrative to be as two-faced as Iago from Othello. It is better to let the audience know early on what’s real and what’s a dream; and trust that they will come along for the ride.
Works Cited:
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Beebe, John. “Finding Our Way in the Dark.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 50.1. 28 Jan 2005. pp.91–101. Society for Analytical Psychology. London, UK. Web. 10 Dec 2013.
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