Although processes of colonization by the ImCon in the guise of McDonaldization appeared under many different forms in the oneiric narratives, the dreams presented and interpreted in this chapter were chosen because of some of their common particularities. First, because they are impressive and employ some typical symbolic images, for which I was able to find parallels in (equally impressive) dreams of other people, from different historical moments and places. This allowed for comparative interpretations, which not only helped to illuminate both sets of dreams, but also, and importantly, substantiated the idea that there is a fantastic and historical mutation of imaginaries under way in our global consciousness. Such mutation is conveyed in the title of this chapter, and is related to the second particularity of the dreams here. With the exception of the last dream, which depicts the totalizing logic of colonization, all these dreams are related to the human domains of the religious and the sacred. They portray one specific form of colonization: the ImCon functioning as a simulacrum of religion, or of religious imaginary, which, drawing from the symbols some dreams employed spontaneously, I called the McChurch. It signals how the ImCon’s semiotic ideology—embodied by McDonald’s—colonizes and commodifies “all that is sacred”, and takes its place; it pictures dramatically the mutation of imaginaries as “the loss of the symbolic and the passing over to the semiological” (Baudrillard, 1973/1981, p. 98) and, in fact, to the order of simulacra.
For the first dream, the prototype dream, it seemed adequate to provide a longer and more detailed interpretation, rendering explicit its hermeneutic steps and giving more attention to symbolic minutia and subjective functioning. Such procedure aimed at fulfilling two of the objectives of this work, namely, to illustrate clearly how the Jungian symbolic-hermeneutic method is applied to dreams, and to discuss more in depth the theme of subjectivity, demonstrating and drawing from the wealth of meaning dreams can offer for such. In this respect, this first interpretation gets closer to a clinical perspective. However, all the other interpretations are more concise.
9.1 The Prototype Dream: A McChurch
It was an impressive dream. I was with my teenage sister looking for a Catholic church. That church would be a future McDonald’s [franchise] that we were going to open. We pass by a street behind the church. The church is big and old, with a round, dirty roof with fallen twigs on it. There were huge apartment buildings [what we call “dovecots”] very closely surrounding the church’s grounds, which were small. We enter the church; a mass, or prayer, is taking place, and some elderly ladies and the priest stare at us as we enter. There were three floors, and we climb the stairs quickly, embarrassed; I think [to myself], “To transform a church into a McDonald’s is kind of a sin … and the church is so beautiful, full of little saints…” The place looked abandoned, one would have to make many reforms [renovations]. We climb to the second floor and look at the first floor from behind a small fence.
- 1.
Context: the dreamer’s personal details and context are withheld for reasons of secrecy. One important detail can be mentioned, though the dreamer exhibited a definite childishness.
- 2.Associations (made by the dreamer):
- (a)
Sister: a young teenager, very attached to their parents, and more childish than the dreamer.
- (b)
Church: religion, religiosity. The dreamer said that she used to go to church quite frequently with her family, but such practice (along with other Catholic familiar customs) had somehow been abandoned over the years by the family. She used to like going to church.
- (c)
McDonald’s: a nice place that she frequented.
It must be noted that, in Brazil, McDonald’s seems to have built an image in the national imaginary that is fairly different from its image in the United States and Europe: it is relatively expensive, has an upper middle-class status for consumers, and is not commonly associated with messy, dirty venues (quite the opposite). In sum, it embodies consumerism as entertainment, fun, and the “American way of life”—as a consumption dream with a more expensive patina (see Fontenelle, 2006).
Amplification of some symbols (e.g., dovecots) is given across the interpretation.
- (a)
- 3.
Serialization: I had access to several of her dreams, as dream series. The problem shown in this dream appeared in different forms in subsequent dreams, which grounds my interpretation of it and makes it more certain. (However, in the following, I do not mention other dreams of this same dreamer).
- 4.Dream as a drama:
- (a)
Dramatis personae: the dreamer, her sister, a group of elderly ladies, the priest.
- (b)
Time and space: they are not given, but one can assume it was the present (then, more than 15 years ago), and in her hometown (or at least in her country).
- (c)Dramatic structure of the dream (abbreviated):
Exposition: I was with my sister looking for a Catholic church. That church would be a future McDonald’s. We pass by a street behind the church. The church is big and old, its small ground surrounded by huge apartment buildings.
Development (Desis): We enter the church; a mass is taking place; elderly ladies and priest stare at us.
Conflict or crisis (Peripetia): We climb the stairs quickly and embarrassed; I think, “To transform a church into a McDonald’s is a sin, and the church is so beautiful”. The church looked abandoned, in need of renovations. We climb to the second floor and look at the first floor from behind a small fence.
Solution (Lysis): There is no lysis, because there is no individual attitude on the part of the dreamer regarding the problem posed by the dream, only a quasi-realization of it.
- (a)
The church, according to her associations and to common sense, represents primarily her religiosity or spirituality, which is Catholic and institutional in its (familiar) origins. Thus the church as a symbol in her dream is consistent with the way she describes her religiosity in her life and in her family: it looks abandoned, and thus “dirty”, unkempt. However, her abandonment of her religiosity does not extinguish its traditional and imposing character: it looks big and old, perhaps because it is based on an age-old, traditional institution, a cultural, symbolic imaginary that somehow still works within her, in her unconscious.
It seems there is not enough room for that religiosity to live through her, though: the grounds are small and seem to be under the pressure of the buildings surrounding it. Such apartment buildings are called “dovecots”2 because they are huge, with a number of very small apartments in which, often, large families reside—making them resemble dovecots, which are small in our country but contain an incredible number of doves, who live there with almost no space between them, and amidst their excrements and food. That is a vivid image of a social way of living that is extremely collective in nature, so much so that the expression “dovecots” alludes to beast-like, massified life, and that seems to be why the dream employed it as a symbol: it is apt to describe a form of living and a mass mentality that, as buildings, seem to occupy more and more space. So the image the dream chose conveys further meaning: her religiosity is not only abandoned and unkempt because of her carelessness, but is also oppressed and encroached upon by massifying, dehumanized collective consciousness, which appears to choke, so to speak, the already diminutive space the sacred and the symbolic have in her personality and life.
Such symbolism implies that she is identified with collective consciousness to a large extent; it seems to expand and colonize her psychic system. Her identification is clearly seen in her plan: in the same way that the buildings (collective consciousness) seem to threaten the church (religiosity) with absorption or burial, her disposition is to colonize the church; she is the McDonaldizing factor herself.
The dream continues, there is a development: they enter the church. One may assume she still wants to carry the plan out. Despite being menaced and left aside, surprisingly the church still functions: there is a religious activity, a rite, being conducted there. The people attending the ceremony and the priest are important elements: they are elderly. This representation is probably a compensation for her (and her sister’s) childishness: while her ego consciousness (represented by herself in the dream), her identification with her sister, and her plan are portrayed as identified with collective consciousness, and thus infantile (i.e., not individual, undifferentiated), the elements representing the religious function, the elderly ladies and the priest, compensate, through their age and seriousness, her childish ego and her sister. No wonder they stare at the dreamer and her sister: in the oneiric drama, it is as if they wanted to convey, “These childish brats disrupt our sacred rite and even want to transform the holy church into a McDonald’s! The audacity!” Symbolically, this might mean that her unconscious, non-actualized adult aspects stand in opposition to her childishness (and everything it represents: her plan, her identification with consumerism, etc.).
Two ideas are of utmost importance here. First, there is an active, unconscious, and autonomous religious function in her—functioning in spite of and against her ego consciousness and her will. This recalls Jung’s theory of an autochthonous, natural religious function in the psyche, a “religious instinct” ( Jung, CW12, §14). As discussed, such religious function is connected to symbolic- and dream-thinking—the psychic form of imaginative, creative activity, expression of the unconscious psyche, its archetypes and instincts: the basal origin of “all that is sacred”. In her unconscious, it somehow still functions (at least partially, in a relatively small portion of her psychic space) through the Catholic imaginary of old.
Second, the dream implies that the possibility of a conscious actualization of her religious function is connected to transcending her childishness, her identification with her parents, and thus to the natural process of growing up, of becoming an adult.3 In her, it represents a very different attitude toward life, and consequently toward herself and the collective: it stands in opposition to consumerism, to the ImCon and its colonial force.
However, her conscious (ego) attitude regarding this problem is still unsatisfactory. Confronted with the stare of the ladies and the priest, she (and her sister) gets embarrassed. No wonder, given her plan. They seem to try to escape the problem, or perhaps to look at it from a distance, by running up the stairway. Then the ethical problem—the conflict in the oneiric drama—is enounced by her for the first time: “To transform a church into a McDonald’s is kind of a sin … and the church is so beautiful, full of little saints….”
That is the central problem presented by the dream. It contains the unconscious’ critical depiction of the relationship between the individual (subjective) and the collective (sociocultural) realms: here the subjective and objective levels of interpretation have to be seen together. The cultural realm (or collective consciousness) is portrayed as two forms of imaginary: as an old religious order (the church) and as a new imaginary, total consumerism as a colonial power (McDonald’s). The dreamer’s subjectivity is criticized and confronted with an ethical choice: how she will position herself in relation to the social world and to her own (psychological) life.
In this dream, therefore, colonization of subjectivity (its McDonaldization) appears as a possibility, a plan. Perhaps at this point the dream interpretation can focus more explicitly on this work’s research questions. First, how the dream represents the possible colonization? It appears as the dreamer’s unconscious identity with collective consciousness, with the ImCon and its ideology: as mentioned, she is herself the agent of McDonaldization. Such identity is “religious”: it can be seen as participation mystique with the ImCon. Moreover, it seems to follow her identity with childhood and the parents: in a way, here the magical world of childhood is co-opted by the dream-world of consumerism, both working through the same dynamics of unconscious identification—something that is taken for granted and happens automatically. With her plan, she would merely reproduce by default the collective imperative, the colonizing trend, the ideology—becoming mimetic with them.
The second question is, what psychological domains are colonized? As she would replicate a process that is sociocultural and global, interpretations on both subjective and objective levels are interrelated. The core idea is that her dream symbolizes the colonization of the foundations of both the individual and culture: the church as the signifying edifice of “all that is sacred”—for her, in her own psychic system—and as what used to be such symbolic edifice for Western culture, a representation of its symbolico-religious imaginaries.
Thus, seen on the subjective level, what seems to be menaced by McDonaldization is, broadly, her “inner” imaginary, the représentations collectives that form part of her own psyche; what in her and for her still functions as truly mythic and religious: a symbolic regime of signification connected to old culture, to a traditional (Catholic) social imaginary, that guides and expresses her unconscious functioning, her emotional and irrational psyche, her archetypal foundation. Thus, more specifically, what is in jeopardy is her very religious function. Her identification with the regime of consumerism illustrates that, by colonizing and replacing symbolic thinking and fantasy, the ImCon institutes a magical-religious thinking that replicates its fetishist ideology, and shapes her psyche accordingly. Just like Christianity, it can become a totalizing template for psychic functioning and behavior, thus commanding or influencing the whole of her life by signifying it.
The interpretation on the objective level would thus see the dream as symbolizing what was discussed in the theoretical part of this work as a mutation of imaginaries: proceeding with her “plan”, the dreamer would simply be replicating, in her own life and psyche, the cultural colonization of symbolic imaginaries and of “all that is sacred” effected by the ImCon, followed by its institution as a simulacrum of religion: collective consciousness defined as a new church of consumption, the McChurch.
In fact, such colonization can be seen as reflective of a general commodification of religion, which includes a concrete McDonaldization of the Catholic Church itself as an institution. Drane (2001, 2008) contends that precisely that has happened on an international (globalized) level: according to him, the Church has largely adopted and is functioning according to the McChurch’s dogmas of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Lyon (2001) analyzes the same phenomenon, but from the perspective of a cultural Disneyization of religion.
Seen culturally, the dream-image also illustrates the ImCon’s logic of colonization as that of the simulacrum: if McDonald’s represents the totalizing semiotic order and its process of commodification, its taking the church over signifies the replacement and eventual disappearance of the symbolic order. No more symbols: only logos and signs. All that is symbolic has to be commodified and replaced—within both culture and psyche.
Finally, the third research question refers to the effects of colonization. As in this dream colonization remains a possibility, one might only infer its effects, and in a very general way. The central idea and image is that the ImCon would function as an “inner church” for the dreamer. Psychologically, she would present the dynamics of unconscious identification, that is, of participation mystique with the imaginary, discussed in Chap. 5. First of all, consumerism would become “sacred” for her, her faith, a totalizing worldview; the dream-world of consumption becomes her religious world. Thus consumerism would further shape and define her ego and her unconscious psyche—her imagination, emotions, desires, dreams. Put simply, if her ego and especially her unconscious irrational functioning are McDonaldized, then her reality and her life are McDonaldized—in a way, she will function psychologically like a McDonald’s, replicating its ideology, according to its logic, following its dogmas: automatization and dehumanization resulting from the reduction of life to consumption and profit; behavior and emotions defined by consumption, homogenized, massified, reduced to the motifs of entertainment and fun; an ethics of spectacle, in which appearance is all that counts; and so on and so forth. Furthermore, because participation mystique is an unconscious, infantile state, she would remain childish, not autonomous, and dependent from constant consumption of dreams and images. In addition, one might predict that a psychic split would become more acute: within her psyche, a full separation from, and clash with, what is “elderly” in her, the principle that impulses her to grow into adulthood and its correspondent libido. Lastly, her “ subjectivity” would be reduced to being another massified consumer—a consumystic, a faithful devotee of the McChurch of consumption.
Nevertheless, and to return to the dream narrative, the dream ends with the perspective of colonization: an ethical problem, the dilemma presented her by the unconscious. She half acknowledges (“kind of”) that her plan is sinful—an expression that reveals that she still functions according to the old religious imaginary; and she sees the beauty (and possibly also the sacredness) of the church. The saints probably represent many things here, but some hypotheses seem more appropriate: they are symbolic models of conduct and development that stand in complete opposition to McDonaldization; they personify the religious attitude toward life had by unique individuals.
Being conscious of the problem, she had the chance, through her will and action, of changing it, of giving it a different solution. That was the purpose of the dream: that she acknowledged that “the place looked abandoned, [and] one would have to make many renovations”. In thinking that, she still showed a truly religious attitude—which would have to be renovated instead of commodified. What was seemingly required by the unconscious was the adoption of an active stance against the collective gradient: symbolically, she would have to choose not to transform the church into a McDonald’s, but rather to preserve the church, cleanse it, reform it, and participate in its rites. The church symbolized the possibility in her of constructing a new meaning, not one based on simulacra and total consumption. New meaning which entails reconnecting to her symbolic and religious roots. Seen on the subjective level, the dream points that such possibility is inside her—it is in her unconscious religious function. The recovery of which can only be built by consciousness and action, by the individual standing against the forces of commodification: standing contra culturam.
The consequences of the opposite attitude—of actualizing the plan of colonization—may be seen in the dream-image that appears parallel to McDonaldization: as the church was menaced by dovecots, transforming it into a McDonald’s means that, symbolically, it becomes a dovecot, a deposit for atomized and dehumanized animals, who can only eat (consume) and excrete (dispose of) en masse. The dove here no longer is a symbol of the spirit (or of the soul); rather, it represents the McDonaldized consumer-subject as a perverted Pavlovian animal, the instinct debased to automatic response to stimuli. If I am not taking the dream-image too far, this would represent that, according to the dream criticism, living under the McChurch of Consumption™ means becoming an automatized pigeon-consumer amidst a mass of other identical pigeons: the perversion of both individual and social desires.
What is colonized: subjective identity; symbolico-religious function and imagination (dreamer’s “church”); her unconscious psyche.
How it is colonized: identity (participation mystique) with the ImCon as simulacrum of religion; dreamer replicates collective consciousness and the cultural mutation in the imaginary (new church is consumption).
Effects of colonization: general effects of participation mystique; massification and dehumanization; infantilization and dependence.
9.2 The Massive Temple Dream
I dreamt of a massive stone temple, like the ones that you see as the Mayan ruins. Instead of going up into it, though, you went down into it, like a hole in the ground. It went down for levels. It was simple. No electricity. Just torches, and a simple chamber at the bottom with a stone altar. I felt wonderful there, I felt like I belonged there. I remember this feeling very distinctly. It was so overwhelming that I wanted to cry. The temperature was warm, not cold. I left the temple and was searching “someone” out, to share this or get some clarification about this place. When I returned, a group of people had bricked over the entrance, and I was very stressed. I was sneaking around looking for a way in. I recall that I thought I was going to be caught “by the Christians”. The “coming soon” sign was a McDonald’s (???). They were going to build a McDonald’s over the entrance to this temple. I told “them” as they were starting to lay boards over the bricks, that something/someone (I can’t remember exactly) was down there and we couldn’t leave it down there, that it would die. They let me down there very reluctantly, and all I could think was that now they couldn’t keep me from this place. I woke up, both stressed and happy.
There are a few dreams that really stick in my memory. Most fade within a few minutes of waking. This one sticks.
It is easy to see that the theme of this dream is the same of the previous dream: the “massive stone temple” and its McDonaldization, that is, the colonization of the sacred, the symbolico-religious function, and the unconscious psyche itself by the aura of capital and the imaginary of total consumption. However, this dream presents some specific characteristics, which are well worth of our attention. Let us follow the dream narrative and its sequence to understand those characteristics.
The exposition presents a peculiar temple, massive, underground, that invites the dreamer into the depths. The dream does not refer to institutionalized and contemporary religion, as in the church, but rather to something archaic, “massive” yet simple, that seems to have been forgotten (i.e., it is unconscious). Its massiveness is analogous to the grandiosity of the church in the previous dream. Its material, stone, presents an enormously rich symbolism.4
Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1969/1990, p. 751) mention the fundamental connection of the stone symbol with the psyche: “There is a close relationship between the soul and the stone.” As an archetypal symbol, the stone stands for the stable, objective, perennial, even immortal foundations of the psyche (soul), which are always religious, that is, symbolically connected to the sacred and divine (and chthonic), and appears as such in virtually every religion and culture worldwide. In the West, its symbolism reaches its pinnacle in alchemy, where the stone (lapis) is the symbol of both the divinity and the possible wholeness of the human being (thus, a parallel symbol to Christ and the process of individuation). In sum, it is a symbol of the Self.5 Von Franz (1964) further amplifies the stone symbol, mentioning some elements (which I emphasize) that are parallel to this dream and the dreamer’s experience: “The alchemical stone (…) symbolizes something that can never be lost or dissolved, something eternal that some alchemists compared to the mystical experience of God within one’s own soul ” (p. 210; e.a.). It represents the solid, archaic, and “eternal” (i.e., suprapersonal, transcendental) foundations of the psyche, its wholeness: “a unity that merely exists, that was and is always there, unchanging. In this sense the stone symbolizes perhaps the simplest and at the same time most profound experience of the eternal and immutable a person can have” (Von Franz, 1997, p. 336; e.a).
The association with Mayan religion further stresses the archaic character: a 2000-year-old religion that defined and was the foundation of all aspects of life and reality, indeed, a very rich and truly symbolic religious imaginary that was colonized by Christianity under its imperialist form—the Spanish conquistadores.
The fact that the temple is underground points to a connection with the earth and nature, to its natural roots; moreover, it is something that is buried, unconscious, and secluded from normal and social life. In fact, what the dreamer does finds correspondence in the mythological motif of the nekyia,6 the archetypical hero journey: descending into the depths, returning transformed, sharing the acquired knowledge.
Therefore, she descends into the unconscious depths—not only her personal unconscious but the collective unconscious, primeval, mysterious, historical, religious. Correspondingly, she enters upon an absolutely symbolic setting: archaic, autonomous, and autochthonous. There is no electricity, no man-made devices, and no people there; the torches, the light, and warmness (= libido) seem perennial as well, for they do not depend on human action—an autonomous dynamism, in stark contrast with the human deeds and the semiotic setting above.
Her feeling tone is very important: she obviously feels warm and belonging, for it is her inner roots—and at the same time mankind’s—that she is discovering. It is noteworthy that she is alone, that is, as an individual, rather than amidst the mass. This discovery and experience has always been religious and numinous (“overwhelming”); one can say her nekyia is of an initiatory kind. The altar—as the place of sacrifice, ritual, consecration: of human relationship with the divine—stands as the solid religious function and foundation deep inside her unconscious, the center of the stone temple.7 It is interesting that she does not see a divinity; one can think it is a deus absconditus, yet to be revealed and faced by her; or, alternatively, that “the center was empty”.8 In sum, she discovers (is initiated), alone and individually, her archaic religious function, a manifestation of the Self: the dream does not depict institutionalized religion, as in the church, but archetypal, and at once individual, religion—the autochthonous religious function of the psyche as the experience of her own symbolic roots: simple, perennial, giving a sense of integration, “wonderful”.
Then she leaves the temple. Her intentions are typical: like people who undergo a numinous experience, or have a “big dream” (i.e., an archetypal dream), her natural reaction is to share that experience and try to understand it. Then she is faced with collective consciousness: the crowd. She does not seem to find anyone with whom she could share her experience. Instead, the crowd (standing for the mob, “mass mentality”: consumerism’s collective consciousness) blocks access to that kind of experience and all it entails, and seeks to take its place, in an analogous image to the dovecots of the previous dream. The dreamer has a different attitude here, though; instead of going along with the crowd, identified with it and thus being instrumental for the colonization and destruction of the temple (church), as the first dreamer “planned” to do, she feels or senses the value of such experience and runs against the crowd, getting very stressed—stress resulting from her resistance, the effort of an opus contra culturam.
Interestingly enough, the menacing mass mentality that blocks access to natural, archaic religiosity was personified by “the Christians”: it is as if the primeval symbolic experience of the divinity that was once channeled and made possible by the Christian religion had become perverted. The association with Mayan religion comes to mind: an archaic symbolic religion, in which the individuals and the whole culture were “linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from outside” (Jung, MDR, p. 114), colonized by a Christianity that was more and more perverted, brutal, and imperialistic—that, in fact, was sustained by a colonial totalitarianism, the Inquisition. Then, finally, the menace appears in its final, concrete form: what buries such primordial religious experience is once again McDonald’s.
However, McDonaldization in this dream does not transform and colonize something already instituted but rather blocks access to something primal, individual, and symbolic, covering it with signs: simulacra of consumption disfiguring and burying the symbolic, religious function—in fact attempting to subjugate and replace the unconscious itself, the archetypal foundations that are the very source of religion and symbol.
In other words, this dream places McDonaldization as parallel and analogous to Christian colonization: as the Mayan religion encompassed all aspects of life, now McDonald’s—the ImCon itself—aspires and tries to do the same: to become a totalizing imaginary. It is a symbolic image of a mutation or colonization of imaginaries. Augé (1999, p. 5) points that the historical roots of such aspiration, its genealogy, are the same: “the Church’s active efforts—throughout a period which Jacques Le Goff has described as a ‘long Middle Ages’—to alter the dreams and re-fashion the imagination of peoples imbued with paganism.” That is, colonization of the dreams and imagination—of the symbolic systems, the imaginary—was an integral part of colonialism since the very beginning; through it, a thorough psychological reconfiguration of the conquered peoples was effected. That is what is represented in the dream—although now minds and imagination are colonized by simulacra and ideology, rather than by different symbols and gods and narratives. Therefore the dream recapitulates a historical fact, and warns the dreamer that it can happen to her, for it is happening globally: just as the Mayan culture was conquered and enslaved by Christianity through the forceful remaking of their animist, archaic imaginary and religion, now she is confronted with the colonization of every kind of imaginary, in fact of the inner source of the imaginary, the archetypal well, by the new simulacrum of “Christianity”: the McChurch of Consumption, the ImCon.
Through this dream, we can see again the ironic criticism of our age formulated autonomously by the unconscious, and the confrontation of imaginaries it depicts. What is “coming soon” is not the Messiah, redemption, or religious rebirth. It is the second coming of capitalism, the parousia of total commodification—the last days of religion and individuality, apotheosis of the sign and simulacra: the eschatology of final and total consumption.
That is the kernel, or main problem, of the dream. In comparison with the prototype dream, here the overwhelming process of colonization seems to happen automatically, by default, like the functioning of a mass mentality. “Christians” here are already McDonaldized: Christianity has been effectively replaced by the McChurch.9 Again, in relation to the first dream, here the attitude of the dreamer in relation to colonization is different (and shows that individual choice and action can, and do, change the situation, the conflict): she senses (unconsciously) that there is “something/someone” alive down in the temple and that it would die as a result of McDonaldization. “Something/someone” is an appropriate expression for what she experienced but that was not personified or apparent in the temple: for the Self (and its religious function) can appear personified (anthropomorphized), or as “something” impersonal (a stone, a diamond), a mandala, or as the divinity (see Jung, CW9ii). At any rate, she knows that it was something of the utmost importance. Thus the solution (lysis) of the dream narrative is positive: she goes against the gradient presented by the massified collective mentality (which embodies the colonizing force of total consumption, crystallized in the McDonald’s sign) and manages to descend once more to her profundity, to her archaic, ancestral10 symbolico-religious center, the very origin of numen and value, to her Self as her innermost individuality and source of dreams.
The feeling tone she wakes up to is in harmony with her correct attitude: now she knows there is such a place, such experience; she knows and will not forget the value of such living thing, and that it ultimately depends on her individual attitude, and thus she feels happy. We have reason to believe that, like the first dreamer, she did not understand consciously the dream—in fact, she was astounded by the dream-imagery, as her many question marks after “McDonald’s” indicate, in her narrative of the dream. Yet the feeling tone does not need to be understood to be effective. Indeed, this dream presents many of the characteristics of a “big dream”: an archetypal dream.
What is colonized: symbolico-religious functioning; dreamer’s own unconscious psyche, including the collective unconscious, and in fact her Self—her innermost individuality.
How it is colonized: signs cover and replace the symbolic; reflects cultural process of colonization of imaginaries and institution of consumption as a totalizing “religious” imaginary (as a mass mentality).
Effects of colonization: analogous to the previous dream, but here the dream indicates that the symbolico-religious function and the Self would die in her—they would be effaced.
Next two archetypal dreams are presented, dreams had by historical figures, Walter Benjamin and C. G. Jung, in different historical and cultural (European) contexts. Although they do not refer directly to consumption and its imaginary, they present images, symbols, and meanings that are analogous to the others’ dreams in this chapter. Furthermore, they also portray the opposite of colonization: like in the beginning of the dream above, they symbolize the rediscovery and possible rescue of the symbolic and religious—both within the person and in culture. Thus, comparing and contrasting how the oneiric symbolic representations and their meanings appeared then, in their context, and now, in the contemporary consumption dreams, can be useful for understanding and illuminating further the historical character and the enormous significance of the colonization of “all that is sacred”.
9.3 Underground Works: Walter Benjamin’s Dream
In a dream, I saw barren terrain. It was the marketplace at Weimar. Excavations were in progress. I, too, scraped about in the sand. Then the tip of a church steeple came to light. Delighted, I thought to myself: a Mexican shrine from the time of pre-animism, from the Anaquivitzli. I awoke laughing. (Ana = ἀνά; vi = vie; witz [joke] = Mexican church [!]). (Benjamin, 1928/1996b, p. 455)
Having only this short oneiric narrative and a few associations, it is difficult to ascertain an interpretation. Yet, its main theme seems clear and is parallel to the “massive temple” dream: here Benjamin discovers the temple, the sacred—what he called “mythic forces”—in its primordial form (pre-animist), also underground, underneath the marketplace. One might venture the idea that, in the same way that McDonald’s stood for consumerism in the previous dream, here the temple is buried under the signifying market: it is capitalist culture that overlays the original symbolico-religious foundations.
Weimar obviously represents Benjamin’s immense German cultural heritage: the main historical origin, foundation, and apogee of his contemporary collective consciousness. Thus it is meaningful that even Weimar appears as a barren terrain: it is as if the marketplace—the establishment of capitalism—had dried up even such symbolical and cultural wealth, at least on the surface: it establishes itself atop all that is sacred, feeding off the very spring of culture and leaving the colonized soil arid, sterile, without seeds. This image seems analogous to the previous dream, in which the symbolico-religious spring would actually die if buried (colonized) by total consumerism.
Such spring is symbolized as a church that, fantastically enough, again appears in the guise of an archaic Mexican temple, this time pre-animist. The concept of pre-animism comes from the British anthropologist R. R. Marett, and refers to the primordial and universal stage of religion characterized by belief in and emotional reaction to the supernatural, impersonal, and dynamic power, mana . Therefore the characterization of the temple as “pre-animist” in Benjamin’s dream confirms what was argued in relation to the “massive temple”: both temples refer symbolically to the source of primordial mana , or numina—the archetypal-symbolic foundation, the collective unconscious as archaic ontology of all the sacred and the psyche.
Moreover, the temple being “Mexican” symbolizes the same as “Mayan” in the previous dream: according to Kraniauskas (1994), Benjamin’s interest in ancient Mexican culture was mainly associated with the imperialism and colonialism to which it was subjected. That is, his dream-image repeats the theme of colonization of the sacred and its primeval source by capitalism, and presents the same analogy with Christianity’s colonialism of religious imaginaries.
Based on such hermeneutic discussion, the interpretation of Benjamin’s dream can be summarized under two complementary forms. An interpretation on the objective level would propose that Benjamin, through his dreams, view, and works (his archaeological “excavations”), finds in his culture, underlying all the history and cultural wealth of Weimar,11 its original and primeval religious origins—what gives birth to all culture: the archetypal symbol. On a more subjective level, the dream is quite similar to the previous one: the archetypal shrine represents his own underground religious function. That is, underneath the whole cultural legacy that constituted Benjamin’s psyche (the German collective consciousness within him), he, like the previous dreamer, finds and brings to light the sacred, buried in the depths of the unconscious: the primordial pre-animistic religious function, the holy foundation of his psyche.
Common to both interpretative levels, however, is the idea that, from a seemingly barren cultural terrain, Benjamin unearths the archetypal: the seed that represents the “suppressed past” (Benjamin, 1940) of mankind, the symbolico-religious capacity in each one’s psyche that virtually contains our entire history. A beautiful image, the typical Benjaminian task: to rescue the symbolic seeds of the past, the origins of the sacred—both in himself, in the profundity of his psyche, and in his specific culture. The effects that such discovery of the inner sacred grounds causes seem analogous to the previous dreamer’s experience—Benjamin is delighted and wakes up laughing, probably touched, having discovered life, the sacred,12 in the undergrounds.
Thus, if Nietzsche had denounced that the gods had been “murdered in the marketplace”—the archetypal-symbolic killed by a rationalist capitalist culture—Benjamin, in his epoch, could still discover the gods underneath that same marketplace.13 For, contra Nietzsche, the “gods” never die; as long as there exists a human psyche, the source of their numinosity and symbol will be there, deep down, autonomous, and alive. As in the previous dream, here the gods are not dead: they have just been buried.
Thus, if seen on a cultural level, both dreams represent the colonization of imaginaries in their different epochs—both depicting how capitalism-consumerism buries and conquers the sacred, the symbolic imaginaries, following the colonial ethos of Christianity, and assumes their places and roles. In fact, such symbolic image is also historical: colonization traditionally involved the conquerors building their temples on top of the conquered people’s sanctuaries—the main sign and reminder of conquest and subjugation for the colonized people was, therefore, that their religious-symbolic imaginary had been erased and replaced.
This historical and ontological relation between capitalism and Christianity as colonizing imaginaries, symbolized by the dreams, was in fact theorized by Benjamin: “The Christianity of the reformation period did not favour the development of capitalism, but transformed itself into capitalism” (Benjamin, 1921/1996a, p. 290). The corollary of this post-Weberian theory is that capitalism became a religion—a cultic religion that, as argued regarding the ImCon, subjugates all meaning and signification: “ Capitalism is a pure religious cult, perhaps the most extreme there ever was. Within it everything only has meaning in direct relation to the cult”—a cult celebrated “sans trêve et sans merci” (p. 288). In some sense, Benjamin described what all the dreams above symbolize: cultic capitalism-consumerism burying the mythico-religious imaginaries, taking their place “as a sort of diabolic religion” (Löwy, 2010)—a phantasmagoric, ideological imaginary that intoxicated collective consciousness.
And, if these dreams portray essentially the same phenomenon in distinct epochs, it is indeed vital to remind of its historical consequences for Benjamin’s time and culture. As mentioned, the outcome of such mutation of imaginaries was devastating: capitalism as a religion mutated into Nazism—a truly totalitarian imaginary based upon the manipulation of religious and mythic forces, of the irrational, the German collective unconscious. Then ideology really became a nihilistic religion. Only a few years after Benjamin recorded this dream, the archaic “mythic forces” buried in the German psyche—the ghosts of the marketplace reawakened with the Traumschlaf of capitalism—would take Weimar and almost all of Europe by storm. No more pre-animist shrines: Weimar became Buchenwald.
9.4 Underground Divinity: Jung’s Dream
[Jung] found himself in a meadow with a stone-lined hole in the ground. Finding some stairs, he descended into it, and found himself in a chamber. Here there was a golden throne with what appeared to be a tree trunk of skin and flesh, with an eye on the top. He then heard his mother’s voice exclaim that this was the “man-eater.” He was unsure whether she meant that this figure actually devoured children or was identical with Christ. This profoundly affected his image of Christ. Years later, he realized that this figure was a penis and, later still, that it was in fact a ritual phallus, and that the setting was an underground temple. He came to see this dream as an initiation “in the secrets of the earth.” (p. 194; e.a.)
Jung had this dream when he was only four years old; it deeply affected him and occupied him all his life. The parallels to the massive temple dream are obvious.15 The mysterious, numinous atmosphere is the same (although probably much more pronounced in Jung’s dream), as well as the character of initiation. The main difference is that here there is absolutely no hint of colonization of the temple.
On the contrary, there occurs an actual epiphany. Instead of an empty altar, and instead of what Jung called the failed symbol of “Lord Jesus”, here the divinity becomes manifest in the guise of the phallus, which “seems to be a subterranean God ‘not to be named’”, the “underground counterpart” (Jung, MDR, p. 28) of the Christian divinity: the archetypal symbol of chthonic and masculine creative force. The symbolism of the phallus, being archetypal, appears across all cultures and ages. “The phallus is the source of life and libido, the creator and worker of miracles, and as such it was worshipped everywhere” (Jung, CW5, §147). In the ancient Hindu imaginaries, for instance, it had (and still has) a fundamental role as the omnipresent lingam.
One can notice that this dream also presents a problematization of Christianity. Indeed, the broad historical (and actually familiar) context of Jung’s dream was the ruin of Christianity and its faiths, the volatilization of the sacred announced by Marx . Hegel and Nietzsche had announced the death of God; as Benjamin contended, Catholicism was turning into the desacralized religion of capitalism . Thus , whereas the gods were dead for culture—its symbolic imaginaries vanishing, decaying, withering away—the dream revealed their very sources in the depths of the psyche, of Nature (the “meadows”) within us: the unconscious,16 our archetypal psychic rhizome.
Compared with Benjamin’s dream , in which he had to excavate culture, in Jung’s late nineteenth-century Europe, it was still possible to find the sacred in Nature (both without and within), untouched, un-colonized, uncommodified: pure symbol and mana, pure archetype. Far from representing the barren terrain instituted by the market, here the meadows hide the archaic procreative power itself, enduring and eternal. Neither Jung nor Benjamin, however, ever dreamed that a day would come when such roots would be in jeopardy of being seized and replaced by consumerism in the spectacular form of McDonaldization.
The presumable subjective effects that such colonization—of the archetypal foundation underground and its manifestations—would represent can be seen in all the dreams analyzed so far. Yet, they become clearer if one compares them to the way such foundation appeared in Jung’s dream, and the importance it had for him.
Seen theoretically, what appears in the underground is the archetype that organizes and impulses libido, as creative energy, and thereby the whole psyche. It is manifest as a god-image, one of the transcendental dominants that, as religious symbols, have always guided all human action. It simply symbolizes one’s own living roots within, the connection with Nature, the basal foundation of being.
Accordingly, this dream of an archetypal creative divinity defined Jung’s theory, practice, and, in fact, his whole life.17 To understand the fact symbolized by the dream—that our psychic roots are archetypal and universal—and to formulate a whole psychological theory grounded on it came to constitute his life task, indeed, his destiny.
Can destiny be colonized?
9.5 Underground Divinity II: A Ronald McDonald Dream
I had this dream when I was very young … about 4 or 5. I went downstairs in my basement before carpet was put in; it was dark. All of a sudden there appeared this giant column (like the ones at the White House). The strange thing about the column was that a giant head was on it. It wasn’t just any head, it was Ronald McDonald’s head. It looked like a robot. The Ronald McDonald suddenly said in a robot voice, “You may go … now”. So I ran upstairs and I was freaking out.
Quite frankly, I found this dream specimen one of the most meaningful and telling dreams I have ever seen. The parallel with Jung’s dream is astounding: both dreamers had the dreams at more or less the same age18; their imagery and narratives are quite analogous; and their meanings could not be more apart.
The oneiric narrative begins with the motif of descent, this time into the basement: here it is in his house, rather than in Nature. As a symbol, the house represents his personality, his psyche.19 Yet, being a five-year-old child, and the house being in fact the parents’ house, it also represents his family’s mentality, its specific psychological atmosphere20 that shapes and informs the child’s psyche, for he is part of it, in participation mystique. The basement is obviously the unconscious, what is underneath and dark, analogous to “the underground” in the other dreams: the hidden foundations. However, being immediately below normal everyday consciousness, it probably stands for the more personal unconscious—as seen in Chap. 2, the complexes that, reflecting the représentations collectives, form the psychic layer that functions as the connection with the archetypal-instinctual foundation, and expresses it.
At any rate, it is in these inner psychic recesses that, like Jung, the dreamer is confronted with a similar and sudden epiphany of an underground divinity. It appears as a column, presumably made of stone, with a giant head on top. If one proceeds with a thorough amplification of such symbol, the parallels with the previous dream (including the “divine” character of the apparition) become clear.
stele, the pillar with the head on top, is supposed to have given the name to this peculiar god. (…) But Hermes is also phallic, his first statues in Greece were just phallic poles. A stele (…) with a head on top was called a herm. And in the archaic tradition, they were always characterized by a phallus in the center [and were] worshiped in the way of a lingam, or phallus. (Jung, SVI, pp. 910–924)
In Hebrew these sacred stones or pillars are called matzevot; they appear in several places in the Old Testament. In Genesis (28:18, 31:45, 35:14, 35:20), for instance, it is said that Jacob erected four matzevot. Deuteronomy 16:22, however, later connects them to a prohibition: “You shall not erect a stone pillar” (a matzevah), “for such the Lord your G-d detests”: the pillars came to be the structures that signified idol-worship, that is, they essentially symbolized idolatry, the worship of false deities—of images that were simulations.
This last meaning provides the key for interpretation. The dream seems to use the symbol of column with head in all three senses, of stele, god-image, and matzevah: it symbolizes a false god, a simulation in the form of image. Ronald McDonald, and the dream-world it signifies, does not bear any relation whatsoever with any true religious symbols, gods, or referents: it is a creature of imagineering, a simulated replacement for the sacred. Thus, instead of a numinous, invisible presence, as in the massive temple dream, and instead of an archetypal phallus, as in Jung’s dream, here the underground divinity is a simulacrum of god, one of the maximum signifying idols of consumerism as a simulation of religion.
the question returns to religion and the simulacrum of divinity: “I forbade that there be any simulacra in the temples because the divinity that animates nature can never be represented.” Indeed it can be. But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme power that is simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or does it volatilize itself in the simulacra that, alone, deploy their power and pomp of fascination—the visible machinery of icons substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? (Baudrillard, 1981/1994, p. 4; e.a.)
Having volatilized and colonized all that is sacred and symbolic, in the dream technological capitalism-consumerism seemingly answers Baudrillard’s essential question: “But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say can be reduced to the signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum” (p. 6; e.a.). As argued, such weightless machinery of icons corresponds to the imaginary of consumption as a religion of simulacra—symbolized in a child’s dream as an artificial clown, an unchained and tremendously fun commodity-sign. A sort of ominous oneiric confirmation of Baudrillard’s claim: “God is not dead, he has become hyperreal” (p. 159).
Again, if such hypothetical interpretation makes sense, in this dream the ImCon’s totalizing ideology seems to function as an inner psychic deity, or dominant. Just like in Jung’s dream, it operates as a primordial image “underground”—like the numinous archetypes, “the foundation stones of the psychic structure” (Jung, CW9ii, §40; e.a.), here it appears as a structural (“column”) foundation of the child’s own psychic “basement” (which is in fact his family’s unconscious mentality, which reproduces a tendency of his whole culture).
Even though a dream is only a possibility, one can imagine the mighty subjective effects this kind of colonization can represent. In essence, they would be equivalent to those mentioned in relation to Jung’s dream: functioning like an archetype, the ideology defines the dreamer’s whole psychic functioning—it coordinates, organizes, and directs his perception, his libido, his creativity, his goals, his psyche; it precedes reality. That is, it possibly defines his destiny.
But, returning to the specificity of the dream, it is Ronald McDonald that embodies such ideology, manifest as a phantasmagoric automaton, “a neo-Orwellian, mechanical” (Mestrovic, 1997, p. 26 ) deity. Thus what characterizes the McDonaldization of psyche here is not merely what Ritzer (2000) called “instrumental rationality”, but the automaton: the mechanization and automation of the psyche. As it rules over the basement (the foundations), it is an apt symbol for Guattari’s (1979/2010) machinic unconscious. Therefore everything that was discussed (in Chap. 6) about the McDonaldization of the emotional, the imagination, the irrational, and so on applies to this dream symbol and can be seen as possible effects. However, Ronald seems to rule from the unconscious: it is a “giant head” that commands the dreamer (“You may go now”), which probably means that the goal is ruling the whole psyche, the mind. That would imply mutating the dreamer into a head that is a commodity-sign and functions automatically, only expressing itself (its voice) mechanically, reproducing (echoing) the ImCon’s industrialized discourse, its ideology, like a robot.
Yet, perhaps the most important effect is what is more specific to Ronald: it symbolizes the totalization of emotions as automatized simulations. It is like having Chief Happiness Officer as a dominant in your underground psyche: you shall always be happy, fun, and mightily entertaining. That is, a consumer-subject whose emotions are reduced to “I’m lovin’ it” and “havin’ fun”, a commodified being who automatically replicates a “postemotional society” (Mestrovic, 1997) characterized by the “McDonaldization of emotion, the abolishment of the boundaries between authentic and inauthentic feelings” (Vester, 1999, p. 26), the mass production of dead, abstracted, prepackaged emotions as “happy meals” (Mestrovic, 1997, p. xi).
To summarize, the dream alerts that the dominant unconscious force for the child is to become a consumer as an automaton-clown: an identification that is not merely dehumanizing, but inhuman. In fact this image means not mere ego identification, but mimesis with the imaginary, at the level of simulacra. It starts with the unconscious psyche being colonized: here it effectively becomes an underground temple of consumption, a McChurch—the foundation of a consumer as homo simulacrum. As McDonald’s 2001 slogan in Canada ran, There’s a Little McDonald’s in Everyone. Indeed.
Lastly, some final words comparing these last dreams in cultural terms. As André Vieira (Feb 2012, personal communication) pointed, juxtaposing Jung’s and Benjamin’s dreams with the other consumption dreams (and especially with this last dream) unveils an enormous difference of societies and epochs: through their symbols, they reflect social worlds and historical moments (Europe at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century; and America and Brazil at the beginning of the twenty-first century) that seem amazingly different, even antagonistic. As argued throughout this work, such juxtaposition appears to illuminate a thorough mutation of imaginaries. In this last dream, such mutation may be seen condensed in the column, symbolizing the (social and symbolic) structuring role for each subjective psyche: it is associated with the White House but appears as an icon of a global megacorporation. Perhaps this means that, within consumption society (but especially in the United States), the mythic power, the main signifying and structuring institution, foundation stone, or dominating imaginary, is obviously not religion or the Church any longer, but not even the state (= White House), where it used to be projected: it is in the image, in the psychic control or “government” it effectuates both without and within. The social power to command is in the imaginary of consumption: not in a pre-animist religious source, not in the archetypal creativity of a divinity; the gods have disappeared, and what governs and defines the subject is McChurch and Ronald McDonald.
If that is so, then the fact that the dream shows the underground deity as a simulacrum reflects culture, the ImCon as a simulacrum of religion and its pantheon of icons. It hints at an ontological mutation of the subject (becoming a simulacrum) that mirrors a cultural mutation (a culture of simulacra) that is typically American, but clearly going global (as McDonaldization, indeed a McWorld).
Of course this is just a dream, a child’s dream—but, if seen with the other dreams presented here, it begs the frightening question: is it possible that such religion of signs and simulacra may indeed be becoming the totalizing definer of our culture, and as such be replacing every historical, symbolical, and cultural root in the psyche? That would mean that, like this dreamer’s psyche, minds are being colonized from the cradle by the market divinities, their absolute simulacra enshrined within. A structural colonization of the psyche since early childhood: the dream of mass-producing subjects as McConsumers.
What is colonized: unconscious psyche (personal unconscious, but also archetype, primordial image); emotions; libido; hints at possible colonization of mind, of whole subject.
How it is colonized: ImCon appears to function as a deity, an archetype (within the unconscious); structural colonization of the psyche.
Effects of colonization: ideology defines psychic and emotional functioning as if it were an archetypal substratum; replication of the ImCon, as machinization and automation of the subject.
9.6 McDonaldization of the Country
I am watching the news when they announce that McDonald’s is being nationalized. Then I am out driving around, and I come to this big fortified McDonald’s, which was just like a big army base. I knew that someone had to do something or else McDonald’s would take over the country … so I attacked the McDonald’s armed only with a spork.
This dream seems fairly self-explanatory. Again, the interpretations on the subjective and objective levels can and ought to be seen as complementary and interrelated: one mirrors the other. The dream theme is McDonald’s “taking over the country”. Thus, seen on the objective level (i.e., culturally), it symbolizes the possibility of a complete McDonaldization of the whole of American culture, the entire country; all its imaginaries, its collective consciousness totalized by the imaginary of consumption. Surprisingly, the ImCon’s imperialist colonial power is shown as a military one. This image is probably analogous to the association with the White House in the previous dream: the main institutions that used to signify sociocultural power (the state, the army, the Church) appear McDonaldized; again, what holds power (or governs) now is the image—and consumption.
On an interpretation on the subjective level, the dream means that the ImCon is about to take over the dreamer’s psychic “country”; his psychological Lebenswelt is in danger of being McDonaldized. In fact the dream implies a forceful colonization of his whole psychic system, a full identification with collective consciousness; but, given his ego attitude of resistance, perhaps one can assume that what is in danger is primarily his ego. Nevertheless, as some of his other dreams revealed a deep identification with cultural icons (i.e., with commodities from the culture industry), both hypotheses should be considered. At any rate, the value of this dream lies more in its depiction of the cultural colonization (i.e., on its cultural critique; on its meaning on an objective level).
It is noticeable that total colonization is just announced as a normal fact—and through mass media. The dreamer’s immediate response is to move, to do something (drive around); this foreshadows his later reaction (to resist). Then the power of McDonaldization is revealed as equivalent to the army in a war of conquest. Contrasting with its imaginary of mindless fun, fantasy, and food, here it is presented as a fortified war machine, hierarchical, ruthless, rational, and so on which as a matter of fact it also is.
The dreamer attempts to resist by fighting such colossal power with the spork: the dream (i.e., the unconscious) is again being sarcastic. Fighting with useless weapons is a typical dream motif (Jung, CW18, §477). What should be a symbol, the weapon against the semiotic imaginary, uniting different meanings and the opposites (spoon and fork, thrown together into “spork”), here has already been commodified into an InCom sign: a tool used to consume their products. The fact that he is “armed” with it means that he can only be another McConsumer. There are only signs; there is no way out, “all forms of escape are eventually co-opted” (Mestrovic, 1997, p. 147). If one can only fight back with the tools of colonization, there is no possible movement contra culturam: total colonization is inexorable.
However, perhaps the dreamer can still attempt to resist precisely because the colonization, however total, remains on the surface, in contrast with the previous dreams. That is probably why the dream does not mention any religious aspects (which would be related to the depths, to the unconscious psyche), but more of a war-like scenario above—a war of images and signs. Regardless, there is no lysis, no solution: the likely effect is that everything will be colonized, and the dreamer is foredoomed to becoming a citizen of McCountry. We can presume it will be a fully entertaining and fun experience.
What is colonized: the whole “country”. Psychologically, ego consciousness.
How it is colonized: as a natural fact (it simply happens), but also “militarily”—the imaginary appears as a supreme power (like the army).
Effects of colonization: total colonization (it is portrayed as a total imaginary). For the subject,: it becomes impossible to resist, to live differently.
9.7 Final Remarks
Reiterating, the dreams analyzed in this chapter focused on forms of colonization by the ImCon related to the psychic symbolico-religious function—that is, to imagination and fantasy, to the unconscious psyche. However, several other dreams researched presented many other instances of McDonaldization. For example, in two of them the dreamers were to celebrate their marriages at McDonald’s,21 which, just like in the dreams above, did not appear as a real church, but functioned as one. Thus they can be seen as a complementary depiction of the McDonaldization of cultural rites and institutions, of the sacred and symbolic, and of the automation and commodification of emotions, in fact of our main symbol of emotional relationship, of love as a sacred institution. In other dreams, McDonald’s also appeared as destructive technological artifacts (in one dream it appeared as a toy) that “possessed” consumers (possesses = commands, takes full control of the psyche); in a dream it shares the scene with Wal-Mart, signifying devastating invasions by aliens or animal monsters. There were also an incredible number of dreams in which Ronald McDonald appeared as a scary, at times terrifying, image. Some were reoccurring nightmares, had since childhood,22 in which Ronald figured as a source of evil, or as a ghost, a menacing invisible presence (a phantasmagoria). A particularly meaningful dream showed the characters of McDonaldland, including Ronald as a mighty giant, as demigods in a childish world, with whom the dreamer identified, fascinated. This McDreamworld of consumption apparently became the dreamer’s own imaginary: later he dreams frequently that he lives alone in a secluded, empty part of a dark shopping mall.23
However, the McChurch dreams above were chosen because, in my opinion, they represented the deepest and most important form of colonization: the ImCon becoming a simulacrum of religion within the subjects’ psyches. An attempted colonization of their inner worlds, aiming at turning their lives into McDreams, their psychic structure and functioning determined by the ideology of consumption. As the last dream portrays, such process happens alongside the colonization of the “outer” world; both are essential for the globalitarian objective of consumerism: in dominating the “country” (the whole of culture) and its subjects (as a mass that reproduces its ideology), everything becomes an ImCon dreamscape—a totalizing imaginary.