But the Nic Cage character didn’t ASK to see how his life could have turned out differently. He was HAPPY as a rich, selfish prick. He didn’t WANT to leave his yuppie existence to become a middle class suburban father of 3. He was FORCED to enter that alternate reality. And just when he finally learned to care about the new people in his life, the whole thing was exposed as an illusion.
The Spirits who visited Ebenezer Scrooge never toyed with him to that degree.
Due to the number of crossovers, a large chunk of the American televised canon is the dream of the autistic kid in St. Elsewhere. Tommy Westphall, A Multiverse Explored has the details.
The cliché was driven into the ground by the start of the 20th century. One of the most famous books of the era was Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887, a socialist utopia. The narrator ostensibly builds a suspended animation chamber and wakes up 113 years later. But it was all a dream, and he’s stuck in the horrors of 1887 Boston. The moral: we can change all that!
People claim that Looking Backward was the third best-selling novel of the century, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur, so it was incredibly influential. It wasn’t first, though. Edward Bleiler’s definitive *Science Fiction: The Early Years *lists a hundred or so entries in the index under Dream, It was only a. And that’s not including Delirium, It was all. The Early Years are those before the Hugo Gernsback age of science fiction. The volume that covers that, Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years, lists only about 20 entries under Dream, It was all a, so even by then writers understood that the device had been beaten into the ground and could used properly only for comic effect.
St. Elsewhere was a neat twist, but nobody believed it at the time or since. And I remember giving up on Philip K. Dick after reading one book that ended it was all somebody else’s dream.
The earliest use of this cliché was probably in Chuang Tzu’s “butterfly” anecdote, circa 4th century BC:
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari ended as the dream of a mental patient. I remember laughing at the last line on the titles where the psychiatrist says, “I think I know how to treat him now.”
How 'bout a shot upside the head, Doc?
To be fair, that’s not how it originally ended. It was an example of German Expressionist cinema, and generations of critics have complained about the studio insisting on that “explanatory” ending, which they thought was necessary, because otherwise the audience would be confused.
Another “it’s only a dream” ending that really didn’t make a lot of sense was the original Invaders from Mars. I’m not a big fan of this film, which I don’t think deserves the lofty status it’s received, and i really don’t see the point of the “it’s only a dream” ending, especially when it’s immediately subverted. Why couldn’t it simply be a straight story?
William Golding’s Pincher Martin.
And The Bad Seed didn’t originally end with Rhoda getting struck by lightning either, but it still counts as a dumb ending.
As with so many other cliches, Joss Whedon used it to good effect in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Or did he?
In the episode Normal Again, it seems that Buffy wakes up in a psychiatric hospital, and she’s been suffering from delusions that she’s a Vampire Slayer and has invented a slew of sidekicks to help her in her quest. In other words, the whole series we’ve been watching for 6 years is a dream. As the episode progresses, her psychiatrist encourages her to kill her sidekicks when she slips into delusions, so that she can be normal again and live her real life with her mother (dead in her delusions) and her father (absent in her delusions). Ultimately, she must make the choice of whether to stay in her dream world or return to the real one. The catch is that her “delusion” explains that the “real” world is the dream, caused by demon venom.
She makes her choice, but there’s great debate among fans as to whether she chooses the dream or reality.
Wait. Nobody has come up with “Last season of Lost” yet?
Shame on you, guys.
Forget Lost! I’m surprised nobody has mentioned St. Elsewhere yet.
Apparently there’s some website that talks in depth about the St. Elsewhere ending and its implications…
“Oh shit! That’s Bobby in the shower. Aww, fuck you Dallas!”
I read somewhere that The Wizard of Oz once had a slightly longer ending. Dorothy is home realizing “it was all a dream” but then the camera pans down to show the ruby slippers.
Assuming it’s true (I’ve never seen it) instead of tacking on the dream explanation, the PTB just cut out the “it was all real” ending.
Back in 5th grade, we all wrote books. We wrote the stories, illustrated them, and had fun with the laminator to get them all book-like. I can’t remember a lot about my story, but I do recall it featuring a 50 foot long crocodile that had my intrepid hero cornered after a spirited chase. For the life of me I could figure out how to finish it, so I came up with … “and then he woke up and it was all a dream.”
I thought I was a fucking genius! Turns out I was a 10 year old hack and I didn’t even know it.
See post #3.
Okay, now I have to check dates.
That’s 1890. It beats The Wizard by about ten years.
That’s 1865. Even older.
I missed picking up the quote for *Journey to the Center of the Earth *by Jules Verne; but it’s the oldest one mentioned so far, from 1964.
If it counts, congrats to Greg Charles.
And dates aside, this is the one that works best.
Hey, at 400 BC, Chuang Tzu has 'em all beat.
Sometimes it being a dream is the whole point of the thing, which allows the creator greater freedom. In these cases, it’s only playing fair if the creator tells you right off the bat that it’s a dream. This was the case with teo of cartoonist Winsor McKay’s comic strips from the early 20th century – Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Both were adapted as animated cartoons, as well.
Bob Clampett used the “invading the Dream” idea in his last Bugs Bunny cartoon, 1946’s The Big Snooze.
Let’s not forget the greatest work of art based on the theme of waking up and finding out it was all a dream. I refer, of course, to “I Kissed A Girl” by Kary Perry.