Dream Country
The third volume of the Sandman series isn't an overarching arc at all. Rather it collects four individual stories into a single collection. Given that, I'm going to take each story separately.
Calliope: Initially, this was one of my favorite stories in Sandman. When I was first collecting the series (a process that took me years), I revisited this story again and again. In later years it lost it's shine somewhat, and I became hugely critical of it. Now I think I've landed somewhere in the middle.
This is a story of exploitation. Calliope is a muse who has been captured. She's held hostage by an author who literally rapes her as a way of getting new ideas. When he sells her to another author rather than setting her free, as he'd promised, she loses her last shred of hope and asks Dream to help her.
My issue with this story basically comes down to Calliope and her treatment, both by the fictional authors who hold her hostage (Erasmus Fry and Richard Madoc) and the actual author who tells her story (Neil Gaiman). It's not that stories of exploitation shouldn't be told. But it's all too easy to engage in that exploitation while trying to show that it's a bad thing. Calliope spends nearly the entire story naked. It's not meant to be tantalizing, but some people can't filter a naked body through any filter other than sexual attraction. And while it's clearly an act of power and violation, her rape is shown on page.
The biggest problem is that Calliope has no agency at all. She asks the fates for help, and when they can offer none, she turns to her ex-lover, Morpheus. But this isn't really her story. It is, ultimately, about Morpheus' newfound capacity for compassion and forgiveness. His decision to save Calliope is really just a preamble to his decision to forgive Nada, which kicks off the events of Season of Mists.
It's frustrating that Calliope has so little to do in her own story. Dream was able to save himself in the first issue, and it would have been nice for Calliope to have something to do in her own rescue. Which isn't to say the story is all bad. Making Madoc's rape of her literal is perhaps a bit on the nose, but it does drive the metaphor home. He's clearly in the wrong from the very beginning - an entitled author who wants to take a short-cut to success. And his punishment - a flood of ideas followed by their complete cessation - is a thing of beauty. If Hell, as some interpretations have it, is nothing more than being cut off from God completely, then Madoc's severance from Dream is a form of Hell for him.
There are things to like about this story. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely comfortable with it again. I certainly won't love it the way I did when I was a teenager. But I can appreciate it for what it is, and the environment it was created in.
A Dream of a Thousand Cats: This is the story that I'm currently obsessed with. The first time I read this story I didn't really get it. Ditto the second and seventh and twentieth. (I don't know that I've read this twenty times, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised.) It always seemed like a cute little story about some cats with a pipe dream. Who doesn't like cats? But the idea that if a mere thousand of them can share a single dream, they can change the world always seemed a bit laughable, a bit trite.
Then Trump was elected president. When I came through the despair, I started to see this story in a new light. Looking around at the world, I started to see how real change is usually effected by small groups of people. I began to understand how difficult it is for a group of people to truly share a dream or a vision, and how powerful it is when they do.
There's this mistaken belief that sharing a dream means agreeing on all the details. There's a lot of fighting right now, as people try to figure out which details are important. Some people want to focus to be on economics and class while others argue that markers like race or gender are more important. And smaller groups shout desperately lest they be drowned out by the larger movements. Some people want to focus on problems that seem to have quickly attainable solutions while others are pushing for more significant change to help more people. Some people celebrate partial victories and others are quick to remind them of how much work to be done. Changing the world is a difficult, complicated process, and there's no way to make everyone happy.
But if a single, simple idea can pierce through the noise, it can unite us. We don't have to agree on the details, we just have to share the dream. Of equality. Of safety. Of freedom. And when enough people believe, the world can't help but change.
This is the story I carry in my heart these days. It's a reminder to find commonality with your friends and neighbors. To believe with all your might that you can change the world. To understand that every little bit helps and that allies can be found anywhere and everywhere. That once you hit a critical mass of supporters - real, true supporters - you will achieve your goals.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Back in Men of Good Fortune, we saw Dream make a deal with William Shakespeare, who was bemoaning the inferior quality of his plays. In this issue, that details of that deal begin to come in to focus. Dream granted Shakespeare with the ability to write captivating plays, plays that would long outlive him. In return he got to commission two plays. Here we see the first of those plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Dream has dictated the location and audience of the inaugural performance of the play. The stage is a hill in the middle of nowhere. The audience is the Fairy Court, the very people the play is about. The fairies give a running commentary on the play, teasing each other about their appearances and delighting that something that never happened can, never-the-less, be true.
The truth is that I've never really connected with this story. I learned about this play in middle school (I may have even read some of it), but I've never been a huge fan of Shakespeare. Not that I dislike him, just that I don't really click with him. And so this story falls a bit flat for me.
Still, it does a good job of illustrating the static nature of Dream, his resistance to change. He commissions the play so that the fairy court won't be forgotten, even as they take their leave of our world. He wants them to be remembered, and his medium is stories. Titania and Oberon couldn't care less about their legacy, making this almost a vanity project for Dream. But while he keeps their memories alive, he can't actually keep them around.
Facade: This might be the first story in which Dream doesn't appear at all, not even a mention. Instead his sister, Death, takes the stage to help a woman in the only way she knows how. Urania Blackwell was transformed into the superhero Element Girl in the course of her work, and life was all downhill from there. Feeling like a freak, she rarely leaves her apartment. Her sole connection with humanity is her weekly phone call with the man in charge of getting her her disability checks. When a rare lunch out to see an old friend ends in disaster and humiliation, Urania finds herself in an even darker place than before.
Death happens to be passing by, and she offers the only help she can. Part of Urania's despair is that she can't see any way out of her current life. She can't envision a future where her circumstances have changed. Nor can she see an end to her suffering. She's hit a point where she just wants her life to end, but even that seems beyond her grasp, thanks to her super powers.
Death, kind, compassionate Death who is there for everyone sooner or later, shows her how to die. And there's an argument to be made for the right to die. Death offers Urania a way out, and Urania gladly takes it. But five minutes later she receives a telephone call, and you're left wondering what would have happened if she'd waited. Would she have found the strength to get through one more day, to eventually leave her apartment and rebuild a life worth living? Or is exiting early the happiest ending she could have hoped for?
Calliope: Initially, this was one of my favorite stories in Sandman. When I was first collecting the series (a process that took me years), I revisited this story again and again. In later years it lost it's shine somewhat, and I became hugely critical of it. Now I think I've landed somewhere in the middle.
This is a story of exploitation. Calliope is a muse who has been captured. She's held hostage by an author who literally rapes her as a way of getting new ideas. When he sells her to another author rather than setting her free, as he'd promised, she loses her last shred of hope and asks Dream to help her.
My issue with this story basically comes down to Calliope and her treatment, both by the fictional authors who hold her hostage (Erasmus Fry and Richard Madoc) and the actual author who tells her story (Neil Gaiman). It's not that stories of exploitation shouldn't be told. But it's all too easy to engage in that exploitation while trying to show that it's a bad thing. Calliope spends nearly the entire story naked. It's not meant to be tantalizing, but some people can't filter a naked body through any filter other than sexual attraction. And while it's clearly an act of power and violation, her rape is shown on page.
The biggest problem is that Calliope has no agency at all. She asks the fates for help, and when they can offer none, she turns to her ex-lover, Morpheus. But this isn't really her story. It is, ultimately, about Morpheus' newfound capacity for compassion and forgiveness. His decision to save Calliope is really just a preamble to his decision to forgive Nada, which kicks off the events of Season of Mists.
It's frustrating that Calliope has so little to do in her own story. Dream was able to save himself in the first issue, and it would have been nice for Calliope to have something to do in her own rescue. Which isn't to say the story is all bad. Making Madoc's rape of her literal is perhaps a bit on the nose, but it does drive the metaphor home. He's clearly in the wrong from the very beginning - an entitled author who wants to take a short-cut to success. And his punishment - a flood of ideas followed by their complete cessation - is a thing of beauty. If Hell, as some interpretations have it, is nothing more than being cut off from God completely, then Madoc's severance from Dream is a form of Hell for him.
There are things to like about this story. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely comfortable with it again. I certainly won't love it the way I did when I was a teenager. But I can appreciate it for what it is, and the environment it was created in.
A Dream of a Thousand Cats: This is the story that I'm currently obsessed with. The first time I read this story I didn't really get it. Ditto the second and seventh and twentieth. (I don't know that I've read this twenty times, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised.) It always seemed like a cute little story about some cats with a pipe dream. Who doesn't like cats? But the idea that if a mere thousand of them can share a single dream, they can change the world always seemed a bit laughable, a bit trite.
Then Trump was elected president. When I came through the despair, I started to see this story in a new light. Looking around at the world, I started to see how real change is usually effected by small groups of people. I began to understand how difficult it is for a group of people to truly share a dream or a vision, and how powerful it is when they do.
There's this mistaken belief that sharing a dream means agreeing on all the details. There's a lot of fighting right now, as people try to figure out which details are important. Some people want to focus to be on economics and class while others argue that markers like race or gender are more important. And smaller groups shout desperately lest they be drowned out by the larger movements. Some people want to focus on problems that seem to have quickly attainable solutions while others are pushing for more significant change to help more people. Some people celebrate partial victories and others are quick to remind them of how much work to be done. Changing the world is a difficult, complicated process, and there's no way to make everyone happy.
But if a single, simple idea can pierce through the noise, it can unite us. We don't have to agree on the details, we just have to share the dream. Of equality. Of safety. Of freedom. And when enough people believe, the world can't help but change.
This is the story I carry in my heart these days. It's a reminder to find commonality with your friends and neighbors. To believe with all your might that you can change the world. To understand that every little bit helps and that allies can be found anywhere and everywhere. That once you hit a critical mass of supporters - real, true supporters - you will achieve your goals.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Back in Men of Good Fortune, we saw Dream make a deal with William Shakespeare, who was bemoaning the inferior quality of his plays. In this issue, that details of that deal begin to come in to focus. Dream granted Shakespeare with the ability to write captivating plays, plays that would long outlive him. In return he got to commission two plays. Here we see the first of those plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Dream has dictated the location and audience of the inaugural performance of the play. The stage is a hill in the middle of nowhere. The audience is the Fairy Court, the very people the play is about. The fairies give a running commentary on the play, teasing each other about their appearances and delighting that something that never happened can, never-the-less, be true.
The truth is that I've never really connected with this story. I learned about this play in middle school (I may have even read some of it), but I've never been a huge fan of Shakespeare. Not that I dislike him, just that I don't really click with him. And so this story falls a bit flat for me.
Still, it does a good job of illustrating the static nature of Dream, his resistance to change. He commissions the play so that the fairy court won't be forgotten, even as they take their leave of our world. He wants them to be remembered, and his medium is stories. Titania and Oberon couldn't care less about their legacy, making this almost a vanity project for Dream. But while he keeps their memories alive, he can't actually keep them around.
Facade: This might be the first story in which Dream doesn't appear at all, not even a mention. Instead his sister, Death, takes the stage to help a woman in the only way she knows how. Urania Blackwell was transformed into the superhero Element Girl in the course of her work, and life was all downhill from there. Feeling like a freak, she rarely leaves her apartment. Her sole connection with humanity is her weekly phone call with the man in charge of getting her her disability checks. When a rare lunch out to see an old friend ends in disaster and humiliation, Urania finds herself in an even darker place than before.
Death happens to be passing by, and she offers the only help she can. Part of Urania's despair is that she can't see any way out of her current life. She can't envision a future where her circumstances have changed. Nor can she see an end to her suffering. She's hit a point where she just wants her life to end, but even that seems beyond her grasp, thanks to her super powers.
Death, kind, compassionate Death who is there for everyone sooner or later, shows her how to die. And there's an argument to be made for the right to die. Death offers Urania a way out, and Urania gladly takes it. But five minutes later she receives a telephone call, and you're left wondering what would have happened if she'd waited. Would she have found the strength to get through one more day, to eventually leave her apartment and rebuild a life worth living? Or is exiting early the happiest ending she could have hoped for?
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