"Screen" is one of the many terms which cinema, TV and psychoanalysis share. Leaving aside the most common meaning of "screen" in psychoanalysis as a type of childhood memory, I would like to refer to another use of the term ‘screen’ that presents a strong connection between dream, the cinematic and television experiences. Ernst Aeppli pointed out in 1944 that the events in a dream take place in a luminous field which is surrounded and framed by a large, dark space. In Aeppli's description of dreams there is a clear analogy to the cinema theatre and the television viewing room. This analogy soon found confirmation in American psychoanalyst Bertand D. Lewin's work. In 1948 Lewin reported the existence of a special structure, the dream screen, distinguished from the rest of the dream and defined as the blank background upon which the dream picture appears to be projected. According to Lewin, the dream screen represents the idea of sleep itself. But what is of particular interest to me in this poem which follows is the analogy between the dream or oneiric screen and the cinematic or TV screen. The analogy is that both dreamer and spectator who focus mainly on the images, are largely unaware of the screen's presence; at times, of course, the spectator becomes conscious of the screen, the frame. The dark exterior becomes perceptible both in dreams, in films and with TV. In the cinematic experience, during the projection of a film, the spectator may suddenly remember that she or he is at the cinema and thus return to perceiving the screen. The process is similar with television, although obviously there are many variations. The analogy is only partial. -Laura Rascaroli, "Strange Visions: Kathryn Bigelow's Metafiction,"Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1998. Awareness and unawareness oscillates in front of those everpresent screens, expansive in evening’s wellbeing with the enriching lighted box, its celluloid safety, its toothpaste smiles, none of the predictable wonder of my ordinary life. Conscious of being at the cinema, of watching the projection on screen, of watching the TV or even being in a dream, there’s an indistinguishability of activity and passivity. Vision--mirror of the world--now a new type of mirror, reflecting everything but one’s own body, reflection of a world, looking glass, simultaneously a viewed object and a viewing subject. And the dream: unscripted, flawed, plausible, burrowing like a mole, playing with my conscience in the sealed and hushed casket of my soul, turning the key deftly and then it is gone. Ron Price July 7th 2006.
