Sometimes I have strange little "commercials" in my dreams, esthetically influenced by the quick edits and banal content of television advertising. I've had them as long as I can remember, though I suspect they originated during my early teenage years when I had a habit of falling asleep while listening to top 40 radio. Somehow, the periodic commercial breaks of that radio format, with the additional influence of 1970's network television, percolated into my subconscious and entrenched itself there permanently, so that, even now, decades later, sometimes my dreams have commercial breaks. Call them dreammercials.
Last night's (or rather, this early morning's) dreammercial was for a children's board game called "Retail in Wabasha." I think this is the consequence of reading some newspaper article about the desperate state of small-town America retail during the current economic downturn. But where did Wabasha come from? That's an Arcata-sized town on the Mississippi Rivier in Minnesota, a few hours southeast from Minneapolis. But Wabasha wasn't specifically in the article I read.
The dreammercial begins with an aerial view pan moving up the Mississippi at dusk. The lights of the little houses below are coming on. It's a Wintery landscape, everything thickly blanketed in snow. An announcer's voices proclaims: "Imagine you're trying to run your own retail establishment somewhere in America's heartland!"
Quick cut to children and parents clustered cozily around a kitchen table. Pure stereotypes: Mom, Dad, 2.1 children, the cute dog grinning up from below. They're playing a board game. There's one of those clear plastic bubbles that "rolls dice" for you without releasing the dice into the environment — a gimick that allows them to charge more for dice. And one of the children rolls and excitedly moves a token on the board. The details of the board are not clear. It looks a bit like Snakes n Ladders. Hmm… maybe it should look like Monopoly.
Quick cut to a woman in a small shop at a desolate-looking mall. She's counting inventory with a clipboard. 1, 2, 3 green dresses. 1, 2 yellow dresses. She's slightly overweight, and looks chipper. A customer comes in. The announcer drones on about something.
Quick cut to the family playing the game at the table. The Dad says, "Thank goodness for the women's clothing sector!" He grins triumphantly, and moves his token on the board. The boy frowns, clearly having lost a turn in some way.
Cheerful music swells. The announcer says some more. Quick cut to a reverse aerial pan away from wintery Wabasha. Second cut to a picture of the game in its box on a shelf in a big-box store, and the same family choosing the game and putting it into their shopping cart.
"So much fun!" suggests the announcer. "Enjoy it today," or something like that. The title of the game, on the box, as the camera comes in for a close-up: "Retail in Wabasha."
Really? I have dreams like that? Disturbing. And… even more disturbing, I'm not embarrassed to share them with the world? Heh. What does the dream mean?
Maybe it was the homemade kimchibokkeumbap I had for dinner last night. It was delicious.
