Blowhard, Esq. writes:
Ira Glass on why he hates dream sequences: “I hate symbolism…I’m against symbolism…I feel like symbolism comes out of English-class thinking that has no place in our entertainment.”
Interview is here. Glass’s comments are around the 33:00 mark.
Blowhard, Esq.
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Uncouth Reflections 
does he think dreams aren’t real, aren’t more real than our waking lives?
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His main gripe is that he thinks dream sequences don’t work narratively. The symbolism is usually clunky and heavy-handed. Whatever is trying to be conveyed by the dream sequence should just be worked out in “regular” scenes.
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Dream sequences are typically pretty boring and seem coarse compared with the crazy subtle reality of dreams. On the other hand, unless Birbiglia’s movie is a spoken word recording à la Spalding Gray, I don’t know how they’re going to avoid them. [Watches trailer.] There’s one dream sequence in the trailer, and I’ll bet there’s at least one more for the climactic scene. I’ve avoided the interviews since I know I’ll go see it anyway, but the trailer makes it look more promising than I’d expected.
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I was being just a little facetious since I tend to think dreams are in fact the real thing. It is part and parcel of all the stuff being written up now on how our lives are ruled by our unconscious, just not the way Freud thought. Can you imagine how hard it must be for our “real” brain processing all the real stuff inside us to come to grips with the unreal world of sensory images? Yikes, it would have to work overtime, which I suspect it is doing in REM.
But yeah I would have to agree that dream sequences typically fall short because no matter how odd they seem, our waking mind feels compelled to convert them to an understandable narrative, with the result that the sequence feels false. It is just darn hard to recreate the dream world in ways that let you suspend disbelief about the dream act itself.
Eraserhead has always done that for me. Some of The Company of Wolves, too. Not too many others.
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I guess I see his point. Still, dream sequences can be great. Why throw out such a great convention? Who wants to live in a world without Bunuel dream sequences? Or without Berkeley’s great “The Lullaby of Broadway”? In movies, the dream sequence often has a stylistic or formal purpose rather than a narrative one. It’s used to provide a break from or counterpoint to the realism of the main course. And isn’t it true that movies are uniquely suited to presenting dream sequences?
This sort of reminds me of that old bit of wisdom which holds that filmmakers should never use voiceovers. But who would gripe about the voiceovers in “Jules and Jim,” or “The Magnificent Ambersons”? Or in Sacha Guitry’s work? Or in Chris Marker’s?
I don’t mind symbolism either, though it can definitely be overdone, and it definitely gets over-emphasized in English class. I recall Kael writing something like, “Why do so many people make such a big deal of symbolism? It’s not like it’s hard to do.”
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Regarding dream sequences, I agree with you. I like their non-linear, surreal nature.
And I can’t say I have anything against symbolism per se either, other than people focusing on it too much to the exclusion of other things. I just appreciated the contrarian nature of the comment. Plus, shucking the English-class mentality is always welcome, IMO.
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Screw English class.
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And there’s always the case to be made that movies themselves — not just the dream sequences — have some connection to dreams …
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