Dreamstate: What are Movies Really Selling?
2020, (00:15:35), digital, color, soundDreamstate: What Are Movies Really Selling? is a short, scripted documentary about the hidden ideologies within popular, blockbuster movies and their unconscious effects on audiences.
The film begins by explaining that 'dreamstate' is an effect caused by watching moving images, where the audience's minds release a level of critical thinking and subjectivity, forming an emotional connection to the movie in order to have a more enjoyable viewing experience. The film aims to expose popular movies as propaganda selling a consumer lifestyle aesthetic through the on-screen presentation of “norms” or “culture.”
Dreamstate focuses on the critically overlooked movie genre of romantic comedies, as a pragmatic example of the Hollywood film industry and its products. Often considered to be ‘chick-flicks,’ films in this genre are often treated as being simply surface level. This connotation trivializes the targeted female audience, negating the fact that romantic comedies can be one of the most insidious instances of promoting oppressive patriarchal hierarchies and unsustainable consumerism. Dreamstate, focuses its analysis on the 2004 fantasy-romantic-comedy 13 Going on 30, giving the audience examples and tools that can be directly applied to their own media consumption.
Elizabeth Green first began making this work after noticing a lack of entertaining, cinematic film theory documentaries that foregrounded a critical, female gaze. Her vision for this piece is that it will go on to spread knowledge in an accessible way, outside of an institution, to audiences who do not have a background in film theory.
Dreamstate, itself is also aware of its own propaganda, and utilizes its final moments as a call for a more conscious consumption of media.
Produced in part with Hampshire College & Elain Mayes Grant
© Elizabeth Green 2024