Hello everyone! It is a joyous day—Thanksgiving break starts soon! I hope everybody has been having the kind of dreams where you salivate over turkey (or ham, or vegan or vegetarian Thanksgiving options, if that’s more your style). Today we are going to talk about a dream from a friend of mine, Mark. It is, quite aptly, about a joyous occasion: a wedding. However, that joyous occasion comes with a strange demand. Mark needs to be painted gold.
Onto the dream!
Paint It Gold
[The following are a direct quotes from Mark, with minor edits for brevity and style]
“I had y’all [Mark is referring to me and our friends from high school here] over to hang out and swim in the pool, and everyone was outside having a good time and I was about to join in, but was stopped by my mom. She told me I had to be painted gold for some person’s wedding. She started helping me get painted gold, which was taking a while and I was standing around thinking ‘this sucks, I want to go have fun and hang out but here I am being painted gold because someone’s wedding is happening.'”
“We ran out of gold paint and my mom started looking for more, but I wasn’t allowed to go outside because the paint wasn’t dry and also I wasn’t done being painted. At that point I was starting to get really angry with the situation because I didn’t know if I was a wedding gift or if I was just a decoration for the wedding, and my mom had to go buy more gold paint which was going to take even longer.”
“I distinctly remember being told to calm down because I was making a scene kind of pacing around the family room just angrily yelling about how stupid the whole thing was. And that’s where it cuts off in my memory.”
The Analysis
In this dream where Mark is painted gold for unclear purposes, feelings of frustration and anger, most prominently, but also exposure and bewilderment are evoked. The emotional landscape of a dream is vital during analysis because the underlying emotions can begin to unlock the overarching message of the dream. It can also link the dream to events in the dreamer’s life that parallel the dream and bear similar emotional responses. Mark is angry, exposed, and flabbergasted by the demand that he be painted gold and the continuation of the ordeal. Events in Mark’s life that elicit the same or similar emotional responses may be linked to this dream.
Let’s take a closer look at the feeling of exposure. Mark says that he doesn’t know if he is a wedding gift or just a decoration for the wedding. Both questions lead back to the feeling of objectification, which is tied to exposure. Mark is made a literal object in being painted gold. He is made gaudy and bright, a shiny thing for people to look at. He is stripped of his identity as a thinking, feeling human being with the ability to connect with others, laugh, and love. The first option Mark considers for himself (gift) leads to a future of him being used as someone’s belonging. The second option Mark considers for himself (decoration) leads to a future of him being ogled at. Neither affords him the opportunity to express anywhere close to the full scope of his capacity as a human being. Mark being painted gold paints (ha) him into a corner where he is limited in his expression and limited, too, by others’ perception of him.
There is meaning in the fact that the event is a wedding, as well. A wedding is a joining of two people, and Mark is made a gift or decoration for this wedding, stripped bare of his identity as a person who can connect and love. It is almost as if Mark is being mocked, rendered inhuman and without love while two people wed as personal punishment.
Finally, there is rich symbolism in the gold paint. Gold is the color of precious stones and minerals and symbolized achievement and wealth. Paint hardens and makes the object or person being painted stiff. Mark being painted gold shows that Mark is like a trophy, a symbol to the wedding party of success, love, and prosperity. The fact that the gold and shiny paint will likely stiffen and make Mark immobile further objectifies him.
Overall, Mark’s dream tells a tale of objectification made real by way of gold paint, which symbolizes prosperity and luck in love that Mark can’t have as a painted object. Stay loose and dream lucid!