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I've been watching the Netflix series “The Sandman” for a while and I love it. Especially during the content of the roles of "Dream" (or Morpheus), "John" and "Desire".
Well, actually while watching it I thought John would become the villain throughout this season, but I found that John's role had to end in EP 5 (a bit disappointing, but the rest of other episodes were fun too).
What I love about these three characters is because of necessity of their existence that can reflect a certain philosophy of life.
In the story of the sandman, "Dream" and "Desire" are brothers who are like rivals. Until then, it is the Desire himself who may be behind the scenes or observing Dream's life with a secret encounter with John.
(I'm not sure if Desire is involved in the Dream's problem here or not. But Desire seemed to look at him with a sneer and look like secretly doing something to make Dream in trouble)
If anyone has watched this series, it can be seen that "Dream" is the representative of "dream" while "Desire" is the representative of "desire" and has a twin named "Despair" representing "despair"
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At first, I want to talk about "Desire" and "Despair". I feel that the author put the relationship between the two characters well. Desire and despair can seem like very different things. But from the point of view of a psychologist like me, and also psychoanalyst named Adam Phillip, could said about this kind of thing that "Desire can also lead to suffering."
That is because desire can cause us to often face disappointment and unfulfilled desires. Especially when we talk about living in the real world where we find that many things don't go as our heart desires.
Moreover, If we take a closer look at our daily life experiences. We may find that at times when we are satisfied or fulfilled, we did not make our suffering disappear forever. It might be lowered for a moment. But concerns about our long life still remain. Despair comes together for a moment when we see that satisfaction and fulfillment is only a temporary occurrence.
I think we can give a clear example in the case of people who "Fear of happiness" (Cherophobia). That is because we may find that these people view happiness similar to the motto as “The higher it is, the colder it is” or “The higher it is, the more it hurts.”.
That's because they already saw that happiness that arises from fulfillment is not long lasting. And one day it will disappear, leaving only memories. Ultimately, it may result in these people being unable to enjoy the happiness that comes through their present moment, but they were drowned in the future (also past). In the end, they are faced with 'desperation' deeply within their hearts but more vivid than their initial desires.
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At this point, we may see that how “Desire” and “Despair” are related and how they can influence our mind. But desire is something that we cannot give up, as well as the existence of Desire and Despair in The Sandman who always exists as 'The Endless' (I think these siblings are called 'The Endless' because we can't find the end of these concepts if the world still has organisms.)
Therefore, I think the author already knows that "dream" or "Dream" is someone/something that fills the small gap in people's mind. That's because if we look at the ideas we have about dreams, such as Sigmund Freud's theory, we may find that “A dream is something that fulfills the desires deep in our hearts.”
It can be seen that when dreams can fulfill our desires in the dream world the importance of a desire or “Desire” immediately vanished for a period of time. And I think that's why the desire don't like Dream's face so much.
In addition, when we talk about nightmares it may not be very clear how these types of dreams fulfill or diminish the importance of our desire, especially in the nightmares of past traumatic events in PTSD patients. But the perception that these are nightmares is not reality, it can also alleviate the feeling of despair for dreamer.
Moreover, in Freud's theory of dreams, nightmares are a mental preparation for us to face bad situations and to find more ways to cope with real dangers. It may also be a remedy for residual feelings (The unsettled knot) of the dreamer in indirect form as well!
Therefore, the conflict of "Dream", "Desire" and "Despair" is something that always has to happen. There is no end (endless) of these rivalry brothers. (mainly Dream and Desire because Despair has not been greatly reduced. And even we face a nightmare, we are still hopeless in the real world)
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What I love the most about this story is the arrival of "John", an ordinary human who fights against the endless like Dream. The role of "John" is interesting for me. That's because he was the one who elucidate the conflict between "Dream" and "Desire" more vivid.
At first, some people (like me) might not understand why John would become an enemy with Dream. Is that just because he wants Dream's ruby? (Ruby are the tools that contain Dream's powers to make dreams come true.)
But John's story was told makes us see that he has an issue about being lied to by his own mother (not telling the truth) about his identity. Although at the last minute of her life she decided to tell the truth and gave him an amulet to save his life, he was still very obsessed with lie as unacceptable.
Even though John met Rosemary who told him that people might lie because they were scared. But that didn't make John change his mind from his original purpose of wanting the power of rubies to make his dreams come true, the dream that is to make everyone speak the truth, really be themselves, and at that time was the moment when desire was allowed to be released!
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In the 5th episode (“24/7”) tells the world where John's dreams come true. It is told through a visual depiction of the situation in a restaurant where John sit. And at the same time, there was news on TV telling what was happening outside.
John took some time to observe the people in the restaurant. He discover that they each have secrets or thoughts that cannot be told, caused the people in those restaurants to act awkward, uncomfortable, and "insincere" to each other, which, of course, was against John's ideals. So he used ruby in his hand to make everyone speak and express their desires honestly… at that moment the disaster of the 5th episode happened.
I loved what Dream told John: “That's not a lie. It's a dream,” and he describes the dreams of the people in those restaurants.
What Dream showed John was "dreams are things give people 'hope'" and certainly their dreams could be contradict with their deep desires sometimes. However, at least they still have dreams to alleviate their suffering at that moment.
'Dream' and 'Hope' became the same thing, makes people choose to lie or hide something because they believe that it would be better or something better would happen. (dreaming about a better future) Therefore, dreams become inspiring to people as much as they “lie” or “deceive” us.
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I said that I liked the role of "John" because he was the representative of someone who coming to say that "Dreams are lie" because when people have dreams we can deceive our inner desires and distort many aspects of our minds unconsciously. For example, deception of despair that allows us to taste it (despair) in our dreams but at the same time people could know that "It's just a dream" or could learn "How to deal with despair" in dream.
Dream work is complex and utterly deception. That's because in psychoanalysis theory could believe that a lot of times we don't really dream of one thing sincerely, but the process of dreaming has a mechanism of condensation, displacement and using symbols to lure us away from the true meaning of the dreams.
(In psychoanalysis, there is also a therapeutic technique that analyze and interpret dreams to heal patients because we believe that if we can understand our own minds more we can find that what reason made us sick and what options are there to solve our own problems.)
However, the deception of dreams also have a hidden purpose: to protect the dreamer while sleeping. More difficult to reach the true meaning of the dream, the mind more doesn't have to bear too much tension until the mind is broken. And also the gradually interpretation of the dream is safer for the dreamer than directly discussing the traumatic experience as well.
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Jessada Klinpull