Movies and the Mind

by William Indick

  Once all of the associations are drawn out, the interpretation can begin. The black cat is leading the patient back into her childhood. Condensed within the single image of the cat are the patient’s memories of her relationship with her father, and within these memories are long repressed feelings that her father was unsympathetic, uncaring and unsupportive of his daughter’s wishes and desires. All of these issues are linked with the movie theater. Condensed within the movie theater image are the patient’s childhood dreams of a career in the movies, and her repressed feelings of regret for giving up these dreams. The movie theater in her dream is empty (unfilled), a link to her deep wish to be in the movies, a wish that has been repressed (unfulfilled). In analysis, the patient may explore her issues with her husband, who—like her father—is unsympathetic and unsupportive of her wishes, and ultimately played a decisive role in her decision to forego a film career. And finally, condensed in the image of Bugs Bunny is an association with her son. Like the cartoon on the screen, her son is now the focal center of her life, and the one issue that demands all of her attention. The patient’s wish to be on the screen is now figuratively replaced by her son, whose presence fills the screen in her dreams.

  The process described above demonstrates how a simple dream that seems meaningless may, through analysis, be interpreted as an extremely significant dream about major life issues. In keeping with Freud’s theory, at the center of the dream lies a repressed desire—in this case, the patient’s unfulfilled wish to become a movie star. A host of personal associations are condensed into each image in the dream. Every aspect of the dream is fodder for interpretation, and good analysts will leave no stone unturned in their dreamwork with their patients.

  Just as dreams are analyzed on the psychiatric couch, they can also be analyzed on the movie screen. Films are subjective expressions of imagination and fantasy, just like dreams, and they can often be analyzed in the same way that dreams are analyzed. Film itself is a visual experience much like a dream, and the parallels between movie viewing in the theater and dream viewing in our sleep are robust. The theater experience itself, a dark, quiet room filled with psychologically resonant images and sounds, is reminiscent of the unconscious mind. The dream is the personal film that our unconscious, as directors and producer, projects to us as captive audiences within our sleeping minds. Certain films, such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), are actual depictions of dreams, and are therefore ideal examples for the application of dream interpretation to film analysis. The Wizard of Oz has the added benefit of being a universally adored movie, seen by virtually every film enthusiast.

  Symbolization

  The wish or impulse at the center of the dream is typically disguised as something else. Since dreams are not conscious, they are also not rational. They are not depictions of reality, they are products of fantasy and imagination. So, as in a poem or work of art, each figure within a dream stands as a symbol for many things. Dreams use psychological symbols to purvey a plethora of meaningful information in relatively short visual sequences. Film, as a medium, is the closest reproduction of the dream state because it creates similar visual sequences using similar techniques.

  The Wizard of Oz

  Kansas

  Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) in The Wizard of Oz enters her dream after being hit on the head by a window during a twister. The traumatic experiences Dorothy endured just prior to the dream provide the neurotic conflict that is played out in her dream. Dorothy is a young girl living on a drab, colorless, boring farm in Kansas with her elderly aunt and uncle. No mention of Dorothy’s absent parents is made anywhere in the film. We don’t know if she is an orphan or if she has one or both parents living somewhere else. Nevertheless, it must be assumed that the issue of Dorothy’s parents, though never explicitly dealt with in the film, is a significant underlying issue for a young girl who wishes she were living somewhere else. Dorothy expresses this wish in her signature song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The song is a fantasy about living in an idealized fantasy world. Again, though it is never explicitly referred to, the viewer may wonder if this ideal place over the rainbow would include a loving mother and father.

  Dorothy’s wish to leave home is exacerbated when her mean neighbor, Miss Gulch (Margaret Hamilton), takes away her beloved dog, Toto. Dorothy feels an incredible amount of rage towards Miss Gulch for cruelly taking away Toto, but she cannot express this rage directly. Her desire to hurt Miss Gulch is expressed in a statement of regret: “I wish I could bite you myself!” The primary wish in Dorothy’s unconscious is her repressed desire to attack Miss Gulch.

  Toto escapes from Miss Gulch and returns to the farm. Dorothy’s connection to Toto is so strong that she decides to run away from home rather than give him up again. The viewer may wonder if Toto represents a precious link to a former life for Dorothy, a life with her parents. But even without the absent-parent issue, Dorothy’s decision to run away is easily supported by her love for Toto, her feelings of unhappiness and discontent on the farm, and her tremendous frustration and disappointment with her aunt (Clara Blandick) and uncle (Charley Grapewin), who simply allowed Miss Gulch to take away Toto without even putting up a fight. Dorothy runs away to see “beautiful cities” and “the crowned heads of Europe.” Her wish is to escape from her drab existence in Kansas and embark on the road of adventure (and possibly find her curiously absent parents, who may or may not live in the big city).

  Just before being struck on the head and floating off to dream land, Dorothy was desperately trying to get home in the treacherous winds of the twister. The conscious wish to return home is transfigured into Dorothy’s dream wish to return to Kansas. Since this wish is conscious and unrepressed, there is no need for it to be disguised or “displaced” through symbolism. The goal of returning to Kansas is explicitly expressed throughout the dream. The implicit or latent goal of Dorothy’s dream stems from her desire to hurt Miss Gulch and her need to reconnect with her absent parental figures.

  Day Residue

  The unconscious has no eyes. All of our objective experience of the real world occurs during our conscious, waking state. Therefore, in order for the unconscious to put on its picture show at night, the unconscious must borrow all of its visual material from the images and experiences perceived during the conscious state. The people and places we see during the day seep down into the unconscious and become the material for symbolism in our dream world. Like the paint and canvas for an artist, or the actors and sets for a director, “day residue” provides the visible substance used by the unconscious to compose the dream. As Dorothy enters her dream, each figure in her conscious life, through the process of day residue, is cast as a figure in her dream.

  Day Residue. Dorothy’s supportive farmhands in her conscious life are recast as supporting characters in her dream world. The Wizard of Oz (1939), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Dorothy (Judy Garland) in the foreground and, from left, the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), Lion (Bert Lahr) and Tin Man (Jack Haley) in the background.

  Over the Rainbow

  As Dorothy slips into her dream, the image of Miss Gulch riding on her bicycle is transfigured into the Wicked Witch on her broom. Dorothy’s real world has become a symbolic world. The casting of the dreadful Miss Gulch into the Wicked Witch character is parallel symbolism. Dorothy is projecting her feelings about Miss Gulch onto the Witch, so her rage, hostility and desire to hurt Miss Gulch are also projected onto the Witch. Similarly, the men who help Dorothy in her real life, the three farmhands, become the figures who help Dorothy in her dream life: Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), Tin Man (Jack Haley) and Lion (Bert Lahr). And the crafty character who redirected her home in Kansas, Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan), is cast as the cagey Wizard who is supposed to help Dorothy get back to Kansas from Oz.

  When Dorothy enters the dreamland of Oz, her first primary desire is partially fulfilled. She remarks, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” The extreme contrast between the dreary colorlessness of Kansas and the bright colo
rs of Oz makes it clear that Dorothy’s wish has come true, she is “over the rainbow.” Dorothy even meets a “crowned head”—Glinda the Good Witch (Billie Burke)—who is apparently the matron queen of Munchkin Land. Dorothy’s wish to see palaces and royalty will be completely fulfilled when she gets to the big city, Emerald City, and meets the “crowned head” of Oz, the Wizard.

  The appearance of Glinda at the beginning of the dream is a bit perplexing, as this woman is not day residue—she doesn’t appear in Dorothy’s conscious life. But Glinda’s role as mother figure to young Dorothy is clearly the symbolic function of her character. Glinda is a very maternal figure, providing love, nurturance, aid and advice to Dorothy and to the childlike Munchkins. The Munchkins may even be interpreted as a symbol of Dorothy’s childhood, a dreamlike memory in which she lived under the watchful eye of her loving mother. As a projection of Dorothy’s wish for a mother, Glinda is everything a young girl would dream of. Glinda is beautiful, loving and kind. There is even a resemblance between Dorothy and Glinda—they both have fair skin with rosy cheeks, blue eyes and auburn hair. And to complete her maternal role, Glinda is Dorothy’s guide and link to her lost father figure.

  The Wizard

  Dorothy encounters an enigmatic father figure, but he is merely an illusion. The Wizard tells Dorothy that he will only help her return to Kansas (her conscious state) if she brings him the Wicked Witch’s broom. The message behind the Wizard’s charge is that Dorothy must purge herself of her feelings of hostility towards Miss Gulch, by killing the symbolic figure of the Wicked Witch. In the end, all of Dorothy’s wishes are fulfilled in her dream. Dorothy experiences the big city (Emerald City). She encounters royalty (Glinda and the Wizard), who also serve as symbolic parental figures for Dorothy. And she also releases all of her pent-up hostility against Miss Gulch by killing the Witch. Dorothy wakes up, liberated of her earlier neuroses and conflicts, and perfectly content with her boring home and oldfangled aunt and uncle.

  Vanilla Sky

  The Wizard of Oz is a classic, timeless film about a young girl’s dream. Not surprisingly, the film has been psychoanalyzed more times than Woody Allen. Recently, another popular film has been made about a dream. Vanilla Sky (2001), Cameron Crowe’s remake of the Spanish film Abre los Ojos [“Open Your Eyes”] (1997), is a movie that takes place completely within a dream. The bits of conscious reality that arise are seen through the memories and reflections of the main character. He recounts them in his dream to an imaginary psychiatrist. In many ways, Vanilla Sky is much more complex and sophisticated than The Wizard of Oz. But at the core of the film, the main character David Aames (Tom Cruise) is dealing with the same issues as Dorothy Gale.

  First, David and Dorothy share the dubious honor of having literary allusions for last names. Dorothy Gale is swept into her dream world by a twister—a powerful gale of wind. David Aames is in a dream world, but he is coming into awareness of the fact that his life is not real. David’s aim is to discover the basic truth of his existence and to escape the dream of his life. Vanilla Sky is an elaborate tapestry of scenes representing disjointed pieces in the puzzle of David’s life. With the help of his psychiatrist (Kurt Russell), David must interpret his dream and put all of these pieces together in order to figure out the truth about his existence.

  Backstory

  David’s father was a billionaire media magnate who was always too busy to spend any time with his only son. David’s mother was a beautiful artist with a particular penchant for Monet landscapes featuring surreal, cloud-covered “vanilla skies.” David loses his parents as a child in a tragic plane crash, inheriting his father’s multi-billion dollar media empire. In the First Act, Julie (Cameron Diaz), David’s jilted lover, intentionally crashes her car in a fit of jealous rage with David in the passenger seat. David’s gorgeous face is horribly mutilated. Unable to adjust to life after his disfigurement, David alienates himself from his best friend (Jason Lee), and he is rejected by Sophia (Penélope Cruz), the girl he loves. In a pit of despair, he commits suicide—but only after he arranges for his body to be cryogenically frozen in a state of “lucid dreaming.” While David’s body lies frozen, his brain is free to dream without ever waking into consciousness.

  The Lucid Dream

  The Life Extension company that monitors David’s frozen dream state was kind enough to erase his memory of the suicide. In his lucid dream, David is free to fulfill all of his wishes. He reconnects with Sophia and they share a life together. David’s desire for Sophia represents his deep longing for maternal love. The link between David’s mother and Sophia is made through the “vanilla sky” symbolism, the Monet imagery that David associated with his mother, and which appears in the background behind Sophia’s loving, nurturing face. Like Dorothy’s dream in The Wizard of Oz, David’s dream fulfills a deep wish to reconnect with his long-lost parents. David’s lucid dream fulfills some other wishes as well. Doctors perform a miracle surgery that reconstructs his face, and David restores his relationships with his best friend and colleagues. But the dream begins to go awry when David indulges his darkest impulse.

  Just as Dorothy wants to hurt Miss Gulch for taking away Toto, David wants to hurt Julie for ruining his life. The tremendous rage and hostility that David harbors for Julie, despite the fact that she is dead, lives on in David’s unconscious and returns to haunt him. But, since his life is a dream, Julie’s return is a surreal apparition in which she gradually replaces his lover, Sophia.

  At this point, the dream becomes a nightmare. All of David’s well-crafted illusions fall apart. At the climax of this psychotic sequence, everything David sees transforms into something else. Vivid images from the past flash indiscriminately before his eyes. His associations flow freely as a long repressed memory of his father hitting him as a child rises from the depths of his unconscious. As David makes love with Sophia, she is transfigured into Julie. Since David is now in the deepest, darkest part of the unconscious, logic and reason do not exist. His desire for Sophia is meshed with his desire for Julie. His hatred and rage towards Julie for destroying his face is meshed with his anger towards Sophia for rejecting him. Sex and aggression, love and hate, reality and fantasy—all become intertwined in the moment of homicidal madness, when David kills Julie/Sophia as he is making love to her. David fulfills his wish to kill Julie, but in actuality, David never killed anyone but himself.

  Open Your Eyes

  The plot of the film is told through the recollections of David, who is in a prison cell speaking to his psychiatrist, Dr. McCabe. In this part of his dream, David is in prison for murdering Sophia. The psychiatrist is trying to determine if David is legally insane. The theme of being in prison for a crime is clever in its irony. Though David never killed Sophia, he is guilty. David is guilty of killing himself, and it is this tremendous sense of guilt that snaps the thread of David’s dream fabric. Now he is in a prison of his own mind, speaking to an imaginary psychiatrist and trying to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Of course, everything in David’s life is fantasy—a fact that every figure in his dream keeps telling him in obscured appeals to his rational side. At every turn, a different character tells David: “Wake up,” “Be real,” “Take control of your life” and “Open your eyes!”

  Most of these appeals come from McCabe, who also plays the role of father figure. McCabe is merely David’s projection of a good father, a wish fulfillment of the father he never knew. McCabe plays the part well. He is warm, protective, wise, caring, insightful and always talking about his kids. At one point, McCabe says, “I care about you, David … you’ve become like family to me.” McCabe completes his role as a mentoring father figure, guiding David to a realization that his perception of reality is distorted. But since McCabe is just a part of David’s psyche, he cannot give him the outside information he needs to get an objective perspective on his situation. This information comes from Tech Support (Noah Taylor), an official representative of the Life Extension company, which has been monitor
ing David’s malfunctioning dream.

  Tech Support explains to David that every figure in his dream was day residue. The figure of Sophia, the girl on whom he projected his wishes for motherly love, is associated through the symbolism of the Monet-inspired “vanilla skies.” The warm and protective psychiatrist, inspired by Gregory Peck’s character from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), is associated with David’s wish for a father. There is even day residue of the Life Extension company—he repeatedly sees the infomercial for the company on television. In the end, Tech Support tells David how to wake up from his dream state. David has always had a fear of heights, a link to his parents’ death in a plane crash. David must overcome his fear of heights by jumping off a tall building. In doing so, David experiences a final wish fulfillment. Flying through the air symbolically satisfies his desire to be free of his dream life. And overcoming his fear of heights symbolizes the fact that David has finally purged himself of his old neuroses and anxieties. Like Dorothy waking up in her bedroom in Kansas, David is ready to open his eyes and enter a new life.

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  Archetypes of Oz