Dreaming of the Kardashians: Media Content in the Dreams of US College Students

Abstract

The neurocognitive theory of dreaming posits that there is a specific neural network for dreaming and that dream content is continuous with a dreamer's waking concerns. This article extends this model of dreaming by arguing that the continuity principle applies not only to intrapsychic states; dream content also frequently indexes significant shifts in the cultural atmosphere. A prominent but understudied exemplar of such indices is the appearance of media content in dreams. This article underscores such media content as an area worthy of anthropological scrutiny and focuses on celebrity dreams among US college students as a site for theorizing the imbrication of dreaming, self, and culture. It is argued that celebrity dreams index recent and dramatic shifts in media ecologies (including embodied engagement with smartphones and formative encounters with reality television) as well as middle‐class young women's interiorized struggles over the expectations and exhortations associated with mounting a neoliberal and feminine public self.

Shopping dreams: Oneiric imagination, consumption, and identity projects among US young adults

“…What they observe on their screens produces a repertoire of shared references and is frequent fodder for conversation. Their prosthetic engagement with new technologies and entertainments makes their exposure to commercially driven images, tropes, and enticements more neurologically-near than for previous generations and much of this material finds its way into their dreams (Sheriff, 2017(Sheriff, , 2019(Sheriff, , 2021bSheriff and Mageo, 2019).…”

“…Developing an updated model of dreaming that draws together recent insights from neuroscience and anthropology, we investigate the dreams of several US college students to show some of the ways in which young adult minds grapple with cultures of consumption in their dream worlds. Dreaming, we suggest, is a cognitively and affectively engaged simulation of waking-world social environments, activities, thoughts, and concerns-a simulation that, moreover, may pose questions not only about personal conflicts but also the larger contradictions, conundrums, and disjunctures that individuals encounter in their attempts to align their selves with their cultures and their historical moment (Mageo, 2011(Mageo, , 2018Sheriff, 2017Sheriff, , 2019Sheriff and Mageo, 2019). As anthropologists trained in political economy and professionally attuned to the phenomenology of life under global capitalism via expertise in dreaming (first author) and consumption (second author), we believe that scholars of consumption have much to gain from considering how non-waking states of consciousness engage with the objects, atmospheres, ideologies, and habits of contemporary consumer culture.…”

Young Americans’ Dreaming in the Specular Age

“…Our dream samples frequently contain abundant content from TV series, films, and video games—and the waking associations students bring to their dreams often call on these same sources. Although the presence of media content in dreams is understudied (for exceptions, see Gackenbach and Boyes ; Mageo , , , ; Sheriff ), this content is unsurprising. When New England interviewees were in middle school, they lived in homes with multiple TV sets, and they moved through public spaces that were teeming with ambient televisions.…”

“…They dream of being Kim Kardashian, tottering in designer heels, and posing for paparazzi. They dream elaborate scenes that suggest screens within screens, as when a dreamer, seated before a “studio audience” narrates her own “backstory,” shown on a screen that descends from the ceiling (see Sheriff ). Dreams such as these also evoke the profusion—first via DVDs and now via streaming services—of “bonus features” and “extras” in which the actors, directors, and writers of feature films and television series discuss the backstage processes of production, shifting out of character and into celebrity mode.…”

“…“Above and beyond the topics, issues, storylines, and character types produced by reality television,” media studies scholar Laura Grindstaff says, “what reality television is always already doing is producing the concept of performance itself, and this may be its greatest impact on viewers” (, 341). Reality television's this‐could‐be‐you conceit, while typically entertained with irony by the waking mind, holds a special affinity for the transitional space of oneiric consciousness, wherein the dreamer can try on new roles—including that of the celebrity (Sheriff ; Turner ).…”