in your dreams
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
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.