In the beginning five minutes of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," the opening scene displays Alice, the main character, falling asleep to the boring lecture of her teacher. In an instant, the setting changes completely and Alice is in a mysterious "Wonderland" where she has no real purpose. The story proceeds to take on a plot basically depicting Alice in a Wonderland (i.e. her "dream-world") from which she wants to escape. The opening scene of "Alice in Wonderland" is an obvious representation of the dream-world humans fall in during sleep. Usually consisting of story-like sequences of images, sensations, and perceptions that occur during REM sleep, dreaming is an altered state of consciousness that never seems to be fully understood. In "Alice in Wonderland," Alice falls asleep and begins to dream of another world in which she is lost in. In the process, she meets many vague and mischievous characters from whom she seeks to find a way "home." This is a perfect example of how dreaming may be chaotic or fantastic, as described in Chapter 9 of the textbook. In addition, the example of dreaming in the movie expresses the notion that dreaming may sometimes hold no sole purpose or be understood; it can be just a random collection of images and stories. In Fu Manchu on Naboo, John Leo connects to a wide range of audiences by depicting many visual images of different stereotypes of people and connecting them to characters in the movie Star Wars: Episode 1. Leo doesn't make any arguments based on the heart, but he does make some valid arguments based on values, characters, and opinions. Jar Jar Binks, for example, is compared to such actors as Stepin Fetchit and Butterfly McQueen. He connects Binks" behavior in the movie with the stereotypical behavior of Black persons in the early 1900's. Another character, Watto, is portrayed as a stereotypical greedy Jewish merchant. Leo goes on to describe other characters who reflect persons from different cultures.
