Metaphor Of The Dream State - Essay Example

?Metaphor of the dream Introduction Surrealism is an artistic movement and an aesthetic viewpoint that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious. Art thrives on creativity; creators of the arts should therefore have the freedom to imagine and create realistic yet imaginative works. This way, art would become beautiful and wide enough to accommodate every thought provided it is well conceived and has an absence of reality by borrowing certain concepts from the real life. Introduced for the first time in film making by Director Luis Banuel and artist Salvador Dali in their debut Un Chien Andalou , the concept in the film misses reality in the plot in relation to the conventional world. This therefore gives the developers the authority to stretch the truth but still obtain some relevance among their target audience. Discrete charm of the Bourgeoisie is yet another film that borrows the concept and develops a plot that has a minimal semblance with reality. The sequence of ideas in the film is unrealistic and can only occur in either a dream or a film in which the developer directs the ideas and the series of events, as he deems necessary. Otherwise, the plot of the film is unrealistic and cannot claim relevance in the real society. The director develops a systematic yet illusionary plot that addresses a number of themes most of which are real. Just as any other work of art, films must always represent the societies in which they exist. The directors and scriptwriters exist in the society. Furthermore, they target the society to provide an audience to their creations. To earn effectiveness of representation, they must therefore ensure that the write scripts and develop films that address familiar social issues. Such therefore earn their creations a degree of relevance with their audience thereby appreciation. Following this understanding, the directors and developers of the film address familiar themes but they attempt to create a society in which the events flow oblivious of the normal social provisions. The film has several linked thematic areas that it addresses in an exciting twist of events. The first part of the film is more realistic and immediately earns relevance among any audience group. This early part of the film addresses the five gatherings of friends who try to find a meal but face a number of challenges all of which succeed in obstructing their meals. The latter parts of the film on the other hand take the audience from reality by introducing the dreams of the characters into play. It is unrealistic that the dreams and illusions of the characters influence their actions in real life as the director tries to portray it. The film uses the middle class thereby obliterating the lower classes in the society. This is the first illusion that the developer deliberately ignores. By ignoring other social classes, the developers of the film create an illusionary society only achievable in a dream state. The societies consist of different social classes, each of such class face different issues and solve their problems differently. The social status is an important determinant of the social structure. An ideal society must therefore have the poor, the middle class and the rich. The development of this film deliberately ignores the other classes thereby creating a conflict. By doing this, they address issues that affect the specific class thereby ignoring other social and economic issues affecting other classes a feature that results in bias. Throughout the film, the groups of friends share ideas that are only familiar to their social class obviously ignoring other issues affecting the other economic classes. When the director later introduces the bishop, they treat him with conspicuous contempt owing to their lack of understanding of other social classes. The first theme that comes out naturally is friendship and relationships. There are different forms of relationship that the director develops in the film. The bourgeoisie couple the Thevenot’s in the first scene accompanies their friend and colleague Ray. In this scene, there are two types of relationships the couple and the friendship. The two have different degrees of trust and therefore relate differently. Because of their friendship, the Thevenot’s decide to accompany their friend to a party. This implies that the two had a mutual understanding and common interests thereby enabling Rey to invite his friends to a dinner party at his friend’s home. Through this, the director espouses different attributes of friendship key among which is loyalty and trust. Friends must trust one another; they show such by showing concern for each other thereby facilitating such social gatherings as dinner parties. Another obvious development of a dream state is the series of ill luck that the group of friends meets in their quest for a dinner. The visitors arrive a day earlier, their hosts, the Senechals cannot arrange a dinner for them, and they therefore decide to find the meal in a nearby inn. This is a bizarre occurrence but not entirely impossible. Just as explained earlier, the film incorporates realistic and possible ideas in impractical events. The failure of the hosts to find food for their visitors is realistic and natural. The party of middle class friends therefore sets out in search of food. They however visit an inn after another and in all the cases fail to find food. The different institutions have different reasons for turning down their clients thereby prompting their clients to leave. This part of the story is unrealistic and only possible in a dream. The modern society is entrepreneurial, a street may not therefore have an operational facility at any time of either a day or night. Most countries in the western world have twenty-four hour economies thereby having inns and stores that operate at any time of day or night. In such a society, the party could not therefore go without food in the restaurants that they visited in the night. However, in the film, just as in any other work of art, the developer regulates both the characters and the events in order to earn effectiveness of communication. In doing this, they therefore manipulate their storylines often eliminating reality from them purposely to communicate. The developers of the film employ the same tactics. The developer controls the events purposely to suit the themes he communicates. He does this by creating the excuses that the hotel managers give the clients. Some of the excuses do not sound realistic but as the developer would have it, the clients leave without having their meal. This is only achievable in films and works of fiction in which the developer is in control of the packaging of information and further designs the response from the respondents. One of the most conspicuous themes that the development of the film communicates is hypocrisy. The characters belong to the same social class; they therefore have many features in common and share some of their interests. Such an occurrence creates a scenario in which the characters cannot easily influence the actions of their friends. They therefore live in pretense, as they cannot easily correct one another. The film follows an illogical plot in which the characters accept every occurrence despite its nature most of which are contradictory and impossible. Such an occurrence is illusionary; in most cases in the real world, some friends are trustworthy enough to oppose their friends in order to develop a mutually constructive relationship. The middle class consists of literate and financially stable people. It is therefore ironic and realistically impossible for such a group to behave in the manner that the film depicts. However, as the film progresses to the dreams of some of the characters, the subsequent character presents an amount of resistance to the hypocrisy that the film developer portrays at the beginning. The bishop for example learns of the murder of his father and acts naturally, after offering a prayer; he instantly kills the alleged offender. The same is applicable to the soldier who learns of his father’s murder through his mother’s ghost. He also decides to kill the culprit. The acts of violence at the end of the film are unprecedented in the film. The developer chooses the character to execute such murders effectively. The soldier for example is familiar to murders owing to the nature of his profession. It is human nature to react impulsively especially at the receipt of emotional information. The brutal murders of the fathers of the two characters are such emotional occurrences, which compel the characters to react as they do by opting to assert revenge for their fathers by killing the culprits. The soldier and the bishop at the advanced level of the development of the film break the conventional flow of hypocrisy by opposing the conventional occurrence. However, this is ironical. The bishop and the soldier are poor and may not possess as much knowledge as the other characters in the film. It thus becomes ironical for such characters to act humanly by showing the human feelings and opposing conventions while the middle class, which consists of educated members of the society, portray the highest level of hypocrisy. The developer is categorical of their reaction. Unlike in the conventional society in which people report offenders to the law enforcers and therefore wait for the legal action the characters in the film are authoritative enough to execute their culprits. This is conspicuously illusionary, while it is human nature to react as the characters do, it is unrealistic to act so and most people always opt to report such offenders to the law enforcers. On the rare occasions that the offended react as the two in the film, such characters face prosecution. However, in the film, the two do not face any legal action after killing the culprits. This is deliberate as the film developers try to communicate their ideas. He therefore gains the autonomy over the storyline making the characters authoritative enough to kill the culprits yet do not account for the murders legally. This aspect of the storyline is unrealistic and only achievable either in dreams or in films in which cases the characters do not have the complete control of selves. The middle class citizens in the film indulge in very unscrupulous businesses. This is an obvious portrayal of their manner less nature. They live oblivious of the ethical values of the societies. The lack of moral values is evident when bourgeoisie friends visit their other friends the Senechals for lunch. After welcoming their visitors, the couple leaves them without any lunch as they make way to make love. Despite being human, sexual acts are discrete and never rank higher than keeping visitors company. Couples have enough time on their own to get intimate thereby making it unrealistic that this special couple would decide to act this way in the presence of their visitors. Furthermore, they leave the house to do so in their garden. This is the height of carelessness and show of social immaturity. However, through their actions the developer makes it evident that the other visitors also had their own misbehaviors as they all leave at once thinking that the couple had fled a possible police ambush since they peddled drugs. The sequences of events in the scene are unrealistic and only achievable in dreams where the characters do not control their actions (Kinder, 1999). In addition to the unprecedented of both the hosts and the visitors, the scene further introduces the presence of the law enforcers. This therefore develops a natural society however, the ineffectiveness of the police in apprehending the drug peddlers borrows criticism from subsequent events in which the two characters kill their respective culprits yet face no legal action. This implies that despite the presence of the police, they exhibit greater levels of ineffectiveness at apprehending the criminals thereby developing a safer society. This is unrealistic; the law enforcers especially in the developed world in which the film is set is effective enough. They may have a number of inefficiencies but they have the resources to investigate and apprehend the state offenders. Additionally, such countries have effective laws that govern the human interaction. Therefore, it is only in dream states that the developer manages to construct such an unrealistic storyline yet obtain relevance among an audience. The incorporation of dreams and illusions in the storyline further makes the film illusionary. The developer deliberately incorporates dreams and illusions in the storyline through the two final characters, the soldier and the bishop. The soldier receives visitations from his dead mother’s ghost. The ghost manages to tell him his father’s murderer thereby requesting him to kill the culprit. Ghosts do not exist in the real world; such are relevant in folklore among other child stars. By incorporating such in the film, the developer introduces a supernatural being in order to validate some of the illegal actions, which the characters commit, a common feature of literature in which the artists develop reputable characters. The artists therefore employ every mechanism of validating negative actions that such characters commit. Through the ghost he makes it known that the culprit murdered the soldier’s father. The ghost further requests the soldier to kill the man thereby taking blame of the soldier. Such a series of events is only applicable in a dream state or in films as is the case alongside. Reference Kinder, M. (1999). Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read More