in your dreams

In Your Dreams BY INGRID LIU / December 15, 2010

In the world of the 19th century,

the topic of slavery seemed to be

floating around the atmosphere.

Not a revolt was powerful enough

to topple that particular subject,

but one intense enough to

threaten the government. Then

the story is over, the dream was

ended, and the moment had

passed. “In Your Dreams” takes

place in America of the 1800s

when President Abraham Lincoln

was still alive in the memory.

The film doesn‟t open with a large

canvas, but with a small one.

Jim scurried past the room into

the kitchen to finish simmering his owner‟s soup, and is told “I need it right now, hustle quick.”

The owner‟s introduction is an example of Class Consciousness and the matter of Slavery that

illustrates the fact of no Freedom of your own will if you are a slave during the Civil War. Jim is

restricted from the outside world, left alone in the house, being told what to do. Slowly, we

learn that his owner is believed to have taught Jim a varsity of the way of life day by day,

gaining the trust from Jim as his belief started growing stronger and stronger.

So deep was his belief that Jim had the notion of assassinating President Abraham Lincoln.

Jim did not want to be separated from his owner after all the thick and thin they have suffered

through together. As a slave, he couldn‟t do much. His limitation comes from a major category,

the color of skin. Similar with the political figure, John Wilkes Booth, their thoughts laid in the

same direction, but as an African and engaged in the enslavement in America, Jim was

confined to follow his own belief.

One day, Jim‟s owner notifies Jim of the Underground Railroad figure, Harriet Tubman;

however, Jim was uninterested in such topic, therefore he did not pay attention to the

Underground Railroad business. Jim‟s owner then encouraged him to travel and migrate to the

west where Lincoln stays at, trails of Lewis and Clark, who made country‟s Westward

Expansion within two years. Jim is then engaged in Human Movement and Migration. Along

the arduous journey, he encountered the Sioux Tribe. Their horses aided his pathway to

Washington. Here we can sense immediately of the Communication and Transportation

Revolution. The railroads were clearly still under construction as the city is striving to pace

towards Urbanization and the Construction of Modern City, building the states into a nation of

Industrialization and Urbanization.

The film leads to no showy plots, but only simple concepts. The story of romance, of course, is

needed in every movie. In “In Your Dreams”, Jim meets a woman who fights for her own place

in a society. She was very well literate and excels at giving the best speeches in her own tribe.

Her Gender Role wasn‟t important, but it struck her that she must work hard for it to gain

herself a position, and assist the role of women in the society just like the great Queen Victoria

of Britain, which she had seen in the painting of Thomas Sully. Continuing seeking her identity,

Jim finds himself gradually falling heads over heels in love with her.

Soon after, Jim reached Washington and starts planning his murder plot. The film intensifies,

tying back to the events that had earlier happened, even more motivating for Jim in his murder.

This is not an action film, but a movie about conquer and loss, and the feeling that history has

moved on. Jim symbolizes Democracy and the power of belief, fighting and searching the way

to reconciliation and acceptance in the society, for he believed that „freedom is slavery‟. Jim is

done with the past. He cannot change his past, but only his future.

The movement of Jim‟s soul clearly portrays Walt Whitman’s For you O Democracy. The

struggles towards his own future just like us, each individual teenager fighting their way out of

their shell. The depiction of Taiwan‟s politics between Ma Ying Jeou and Chen Shui Bian, the

fight between democracy, the fight between China and our own world, all holds itself under the

same condition. The resistance of human‟s invasion in Avatar‟s land and the effort of fighting of

their own freedom of keeping their land of ancestors. Moreover, as the humans use

technologies from industrialization to take down Avatar ‟s trees, they had defended themselves.

Humans wanted to expand their resource as a matter of imperialism, disregarding Avatar and

his tribe, the difference between the colors of their blue skin and human‟s skin isn‟t one of a

kind; Avatar overcomes this violence. And lastly, the promise between Jim and his own soul

maintained in his own war. Jim and his dreams, one man, one slave, one death.