I know I have many dreams where color is important, especially the recurring one where I’m wearing a red realtor’s jacket to a formal new year’s eve party and wishing I’d picked up my dark suit from the cleaners.
I don’t recall any B&W dreams, but I do know sometimes I’ve hung out with the Three Stooges (note: watch out for eye pokes). I didn’t think this was strange in the dream.
Is it natural to dream of B&W film stars as you see them on cable, or would your mind colorize them for you?
I’ve dreamed in B&W only one time, and it was really interesting.
If you think of the mind as being a TV, and the dream as being the video in your VCR, this is how it went:
My character was talking to someone, when that person reminded me of a terrible car accident that I had been in years earlier (only in the dream, not IRL). When I started thinking about the accident, the scene shifted to a flashback of the event–and the flashback was in B&W! Just the way flashbacks are sometimes depicted on TV and in movies.
I can remember a fairly recent black-and-white dream…last year, when I was really pumped up about seeing The Blair Witch Project, just before its release, all I’d seen were the trailers, which were primarily in black and white. I had a Blair Witch-related dream (no, nothing spooky happened, it was mostly just locations and the like, plus a feeling of dread that something bad was gonna happen that never did) that was in black and white. Very strange, dreaming without color…
I usually dream in vivid color, but had one BW dream, at about 9 years old. It was a dream featuring Laurel and Hardy. It wasn’t a rehash of any movie I’d seen, though I loved them. I guess I just decided to make my own, and used the appropriate style.
I think it is a mistake to assume that most dreams could be said to have colour or not. Dreams are not movies, they are more like the experience of movies.
Real (non-dream) experiences come to us through our sense organs and go through a lot of pre-processing before they reach our conscious selves. I think it most likely that dreams are creations at the conscious level (if that’s not a contradiction - I hope you know what I mean) and will only refer to those aspects of the dreamed-of situation which are relevant. Therefore, if in the course of a dream the subjec of colour does not come up it will not exist in the dream at all. Any attempt to ‘replay’ the dream after waking, hoping to analyze it for colour is pointless.
I see no reason why a dream of the Three Stooges should not be perceived as B&W as that is a notable feature of them which may well occur to the dreamer.
[off topic]I dream in shades of brwonish greys about Michael Jackson and Diana Ross (lookin in the mirror. Built outta flies i tell you. Does that count? [/off topic]
[off topic]I dream in shades of brwonish greys about Michael Jackson and Diana Ross (lookin in the mirror). Built outta flies i tell you. Does that count?
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-What’s right is only half of what’s wrong- George Harrison - Old Brown Shoe
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