are slow motion dream disasters a new thing?

January 8, 2007 8:39 PM

do dream sequences set in slow motion (as in horrific-but-un-stoppable-accidents) pre-date the use of slow motion photography? specifically, are there pre-film literary references to dream events taking place in slow motion? (yes, a question similar to this one, but i'm interested in slow motion in the dream-scape here).
posted by garfy3 to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Dreams seem to be a side effect of preventive maintenance which is done to the brain, mostly having to do with organization of memory. Because of the subjective experience of dreaming, and the fact that in dreams we want to move around, animals (including us) have evolved so that while we dream there's a neural block on voluntary muscle control.

In other words, the forebrain sends signals to the motor control center saying "run" or "jump" or "swing the arm", but the motor control ignores them because the presence of sleep hormones represents an override.

It's possible to be dreaming while not quite asleep, sort of a mixed neurological state, so that you're partially aware of what your body is really doing even though the hormones are still present and still are causing the motor control center to ignore movement signals, and even though you're still dreaming. I think that's the main source of that "slow motion" feel; it's because you subjectively are urgently trying to move, and are partially aware of the fact that your body isn't responding to it.

Needless to say, the mechanisms I just described predate the invention of movies by some tens of millions years.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:06 AM on January 9, 2007

Narcotics.
posted by IronLizard at 1:47 AM on January 9, 2007

SCDB: Thanks for the historical perspective. It certainly re-frames the question for me, making it apparent that there's good reason to see the source of "slow motion" dreams as more of a physiological phenomenon than an "i learned it from watching the tv" phenomenon.
posted by garfy3 at 6:19 PM on January 9, 2007

I always thought a lot of those medieval dream allegories like Piers Plowman felt like dream sequences. Ditto Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. So I guess I would look back at dream narratives in literature in the middle ages.
posted by media_itoku at 6:29 PM on January 9, 2007

Oh, also.. there are a lot of great "fight sequences" in Old English lit - the Battle of Maldon, Beowulf etc. Because of the way the poems work (lots of alliterative genealogies in the middle of action) it really does feel very stop-motion.
posted by media_itoku at 6:31 PM on January 9, 2007