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Another imaginary-TV-show dream.
Dec. 10th, 2011 12:19 pmI dreamed that Mom was describing a TV show she'd watched in the 70s to me. There was a show-within-a-show, a soap opera set in a hospital emergency room, into which people were constantly bursting with dramatic, cliched announcements. It was profoundly stupid.
But the characters in the outer show, residents of an isolated rural town, watched it obsessively. Though the creators of the soap opera knew nothing about them, and none of them had ever been there, every episode seemed to be direct commentary on their lives. Often, the soap opera characters even seemed to be giving advice directly to specific people. It was not always good advice.
The outer show focused on the people who attended a particular church, an oddly elongated brick building painted white on the inside and outside, weird and sterile-looking, windowless and yet oddly, always brightly-lit. There was art on the high walls, and people would somehow climb them, using some sort invisible hand and foot holds, to gaze into it for long, contemplative periods of time.
Some thought nothing of this - it was simply what you did at church. (There were no pews or preacher.) Others understood that they were attending a demon church. They could see that the paintings depicted horrible things, but there was something in them that they wanted to understand. So they kept going to the church with the high white walls covered with monstrous images.
There never seems to have been any transfer from one group of people to the other; the people who cannot see the darkness in the paintings never learn to see it. The protagonist is an unhappy middle-aged man in a black hat, a businessman of some kind whom most of the other churchgoers look on with suspicion and pity. He is obsessed with a tiny young woman with short red hair who is an art student, beloved by everyone for her innocence and brilliance.
The man can see the horror, and his attempts to master it have damaged him - he's lost someone, probably his wife, though it's unclear whether the person simply left him or was, somehow, killed. (There was never any actual violence in this show, or recognition of the possibility of unnatural death - but sometimes characters disappeared without explanation, and there was something dangerous about the space just outside the back doors of the church.) The man is convinced that the young woman is like him, but stronger. He thinks that she's learned the secret and survived it intact.
But she never acknowledges that there is anything strange about the paintings. The question asked every episode is always: does she know where she is, when she is in that white church?
The viewers tend to think that the answer is yes, and that he is right about her. Her dialog is inane, but the actress has an air of watchfulness and distance, as if she sees a threat everywhere. But the man is too angry and suspicious, and not very intelligent; not a good judge of people. He can never be sure. He watches the soap opera for answers.
The people around them think that he is in love with her, but if he is, it's not in any useful way; and she seems to lack the emotional capacity to reciprocate. She smiles and laughs easily, and dispenses sympathy and kindness when it seems appropriate, but there is something fundamentally dishonest about her. If she knows something, she will never voluntarily give it up.
(I assume that I had this dream because Mom was explaining "Wagon Train" to me the other day, and because - as she reminded me when I described this to her - I know she was a "Dark Shadows" fan. Also, because I am very upset about the fact that I live half an hour from this church.)
But the characters in the outer show, residents of an isolated rural town, watched it obsessively. Though the creators of the soap opera knew nothing about them, and none of them had ever been there, every episode seemed to be direct commentary on their lives. Often, the soap opera characters even seemed to be giving advice directly to specific people. It was not always good advice.
The outer show focused on the people who attended a particular church, an oddly elongated brick building painted white on the inside and outside, weird and sterile-looking, windowless and yet oddly, always brightly-lit. There was art on the high walls, and people would somehow climb them, using some sort invisible hand and foot holds, to gaze into it for long, contemplative periods of time.
Some thought nothing of this - it was simply what you did at church. (There were no pews or preacher.) Others understood that they were attending a demon church. They could see that the paintings depicted horrible things, but there was something in them that they wanted to understand. So they kept going to the church with the high white walls covered with monstrous images.
There never seems to have been any transfer from one group of people to the other; the people who cannot see the darkness in the paintings never learn to see it. The protagonist is an unhappy middle-aged man in a black hat, a businessman of some kind whom most of the other churchgoers look on with suspicion and pity. He is obsessed with a tiny young woman with short red hair who is an art student, beloved by everyone for her innocence and brilliance.
The man can see the horror, and his attempts to master it have damaged him - he's lost someone, probably his wife, though it's unclear whether the person simply left him or was, somehow, killed. (There was never any actual violence in this show, or recognition of the possibility of unnatural death - but sometimes characters disappeared without explanation, and there was something dangerous about the space just outside the back doors of the church.) The man is convinced that the young woman is like him, but stronger. He thinks that she's learned the secret and survived it intact.
But she never acknowledges that there is anything strange about the paintings. The question asked every episode is always: does she know where she is, when she is in that white church?
The viewers tend to think that the answer is yes, and that he is right about her. Her dialog is inane, but the actress has an air of watchfulness and distance, as if she sees a threat everywhere. But the man is too angry and suspicious, and not very intelligent; not a good judge of people. He can never be sure. He watches the soap opera for answers.
The people around them think that he is in love with her, but if he is, it's not in any useful way; and she seems to lack the emotional capacity to reciprocate. She smiles and laughs easily, and dispenses sympathy and kindness when it seems appropriate, but there is something fundamentally dishonest about her. If she knows something, she will never voluntarily give it up.
(I assume that I had this dream because Mom was explaining "Wagon Train" to me the other day, and because - as she reminded me when I described this to her - I know she was a "Dark Shadows" fan. Also, because I am very upset about the fact that I live half an hour from this church.)
