Dreaming in Australia -or- Amerika and Planet Hollywood

Dreamer: Gary, 18, Australian male

John

There was this really odd dream that I had one evening when I was about 15. I am Austrialian.

It was almost like a movie or something like that. It was set in America, well somehow it started out that there was this big park which had a ranger's house in the middle of it. Inside the house lived a ranger, his wife (both of which were white and middle aged), and a female exchange student (blue eyes, blonde hair, about 18) from the American countryside...I think.

In the park when the dream started, there was a whole mass of people celebrating something like 4th of July, or something big like that in the daytime in the park, and then all of a sudden, the American flag on a flagpole near the ranger's house is shot down by this guy who is blonde, and who looks like a mixture of the Lone Ranger, Zorro and Robin (from Batman). He is wearing a black eye mask. Someone yells or says something like, 'That's that John boy!" Somehow he gets away.

Well I trudge along through the crowd in a trench coat, as if I'm some sort of police detective. I say things to the ranger, his wife and the exchange student, 'Don't worry, this will be all right, I'll sort everything out."

Then, I'm walking eastwards out of the park to some shops nearby and step into a news agency, and there's this guy asking me all these questions...I don't know what they're about, but I just think to myself, 'Ok...that's cool!"

Then I walk from the news agency and walk back to the ranger's house.

The whole crowd is gone, and the only people there are him and his wife. They tell me that the exchange student (I think her name was something like Jill) has been kidnapped, and they assume that Fred could have kidnapped her.

SO, I say 'Ok, I'll go and get to the bottom of this!" I walk southwest out from the ranger's house in the park, and go through this nice-looking track, like a bicycle or jogging track, and come along this massive mansion. I walk up to the mansion and this lady (who looks like Mrs Drysdale from the original episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies) walks out of her house and walks up to me and tells me in a posh voice that she wants to help me track down 'John." So I say okay and she walks with me. Along the way, she's telling me that she thinks that the exchange student is John's sister.

We walk around her house, walk through a bit of the park which is in the south, and then a diagonal line from the south to the east which ends us coming up through behind the shops in a dark alley.

Then out of no where, 'Jill' pops out in front of us wearing a black eye mask and points a silver pistol towards us. Then the ranger, his wife, and the newsagent pop out of no where wearing black eye masks and pointing silver pistols towards us. Then, I think they shoot us, but I don't remember because I wake up. That's a very odd dream...I don't know what that was about at all. I actually live in Australia. I've never been to the States before.

Mr. Hagen's Reply: Amerika and the Daily Planet

It's interesting to see how much influence the American media and culture industries (i.e. TV, film, news) of Planet Hollywood have on the social unconscious of Australians. Much of your dream, seems like a commercially exported potpourri of images of America as viewed through the optics of Australian or American television. Certainly some dreams are plain and simply entertainment. In terms of popular culture we can hear the tribal drum of the American National Anthem playing itself out in your dream.

Batman (video trailer), (listen to Batman TV theme song), Zorro (video trailer of film The Mask of Zorro), (listen to Zorro TV theme song), Although all these TV series such as The Lone Ranger and the Beverly Hillbillies (video clip of TV series) in your dream are dated (50s and 60s), they are still evidently playing and amusing somewhere in the multi-channel TV universe. Of course as can be seen many of these TV series have become film franchises.

The narrative of your dream is that of a detective novel such as crime, mystery or film noir. The Lone Ranger (video trailer), Zorro and Robin are crime fighters and masked men of the "hard boiled" genre. Conventional wisdom about these characters is that they closely fit with the view of how America sees itself as a nation ("home of the brave and land of the free"): believers in law and justice, needing rugged individuals who are ready and willing to use force to subdue a presumably lawless and evil enemy, and acting as a "lone" voice of reason in the world.

It occurs to me that a similar commercially successful figure out of the 1980s was Rambo (see video trailer). Sylvester Stallone's unstable Vietnam War veteran is another vigilante justice-seeker. On October 28, 2005, CNN confirmed on their website Stallone's plans to produce the fourth Rambo film. Superman (video trailer Superman Returns), (original opening of TV series) working for a daily metropolitan newspaper The Daily Planet, is another durable lone figure in pursuit of "truth, justice and the American way." We live in a Global Village where the media connects us all, small wonder that media influences our dreams whereever we are. The German music group Rammstein has produced a song Amerika (watch music video) which is critical of American cultural imperialism and Planet Hollywood.

Other interpretations have been posted at the IIDR website provides more insight into the influences of media;

You seem to identify with these characters. You are eighteen years old, is this social role (Crime Stopper) a vocation that you thinking about?

Hope these thoughts are of help and provide some insight,
Mark H.

All material Copyright 2006 International Institute for Dream Research. All rights reserved.