[Reader-list] Film and dreams

[Rana Dasgupta]

Dreams are often thought of as an archetypal process
of the mind to which cultural production can be
compared.  Film theory has been particularly
influenced by the possibility of comparing the image
on the screen to the imagined drama of dreamlife.

This article in Nature magazine shows that the process
works the other way round too.  People's accounts of
their dreams are very much influenced by the way that
they think the imaginary universe is "supposed" to
look.  Dreams used to look like tapestries or black
and white film; now they are in colour.  Perhaps
slightly pixellated?

R

http://www.nature.com/nsu/021223/021223-4.html

Electric dreams infect waking memories
Black and white imagery makes dreams monochrome. 
23 December 2002 
JOHN WHITFIELD 


Spend too long watching old movies this holiday
season, and your nightlife might seem a lot less
colourful. When we are surrounded by black and white
imagery, we think our dreams are monochrome, says a US
philosopher.

In surveys from the 1950s - the golden age of black
and white - most said that their dreams were never or
rarely in colour, found Eric Schwitzgebel of the
University of California, Riverside1. Before and
since, most have reported colourful dreams. 

The finding shows how little we know our own senses,
says Schwitzgebel. "This is one piece of a general
picture - our knowledge of our stream of experience is
very poor."

American dreaming in the Eisenhower era was no
different to that in any other period, Schwitzgebel
thinks. People were just more likely to believe that
they dreamed in black and white, because that
reflected the artificial dreams around them. Before
the twentieth century, dreams were often compared to
paintings or tapestries.

We know little about what a dreaming brain is up to,
comments neuroscientist Daniel Glaser of University
College London. Brain scans of sleepers might show
whether the brain regions that process colour vision
are active during vivid dreams, he says. 

Another possibility is that dream colours are
indeterminate, in the same way that a novelist can
describe something without naming its colour. They
would only become coloured, or not, in our waking
reconstruction of them. 

When people say that they dream in black and white,
they probably mean that they haven't noticed any
colours, says psychologist Mark Blagrove of the
University of Wales at Swansea, UK. 

Black and white dreaming is a concept borrowed from
technology, he agrees. "The idea that things in dreams
are in shades of grey has no meaning."

Our waking perceptions of colour are just as fluid.
Only the central patch of the retina can see in
colour, yet we perceive the whole world as coloured.
Our eyes jump around, and the brain fills in the gaps
with memory or guesswork. "Our feeling that we see in
colour could be akin to our perception of dreaming in
colour," Glaser says.

The media probably influence our dreaming lives as
much now as they did in the 1950s. Few people mention
touch in dreams, Schwitzgebel points out - that's why
people pinch themselves to see if they're awake.

But as entertainment becomes more immersive - with
virtual reality providing tactile, as well as visual,
stimulation - our dreams may come to seem more
touchy-feely. "We might start thinking our dreams are
really great," he says.
 
 
References
Schwitzgebel, E.Why did we think we dreamed in black
and white? Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science part A, 33, 649 - 660, (2002). |Article|  


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