Several celebrities were invited and showed-up during this time. There were maybe five or eight of them, but the only two I can remember are Josh Brolin and B.B. King.
(Weirdly I was more surprised that BB didn’t bring Lucille than I was that he was alive).
There must have been a costume aspect to the event because some of the crew and talent were in costume. Brolin had sprayed his entire head with purple spray-on hair color, invoking Thanos.
Much of the dream was milling about, meeting people and setting things up, but the part I remember most was sitting-down with Brolin for a cup of coffee and discussing his portrayal of Thanos.
He said that most audiences didn’t really understand Thanos, at which point I thought he was going to start defending him, but no.
“…because the films deliberately misled them. Not that Thanos isn’t a villain, but by framing him right off the bat as the embodiment of evil, the film triggers something in some people which attracts them to the villain character. You could see this after the first film was released, there was even memes saying “Thanos did nothing wrong”.
“Thanos is clearly a fascist, someone who thinks you can do good using violence. Violence can stop something bad, but it can’t build something good. By turning Thanos into a Snidely Whiplash-style cartoon villain, the films enabled audiences to take his side, defend him and in doing so, defend fascism.”
When I woke-up that sentence was stuck in my head, so I’ll repeat it here:
“Violence can stop something bad, but it can’t build something good”
Violence isn’t a means to an end if the end is something good. At best it can be a means to a beginning, but it’s never enough to make things right.
It’s hard to concentrate on something good when someone is trying to kill you, so you often need to stop that before you can get to work on the good stuff. Violence is the stupidest way to go about anything, but it is sometimes the only way to stop the thing harming you (history provides countless examples supporting this fact).
That said, it’s never going to result in something good, and anyone who is under the illusion that it can is wrong (history proves this as well). If you want good things for this world, don’t follow in their footsteps.
Something else I gained from this dream is a concise definition of fascism. Since I first heard the word “fascist” the definitions I’ve found have always been referential, such as “Hitler was a fascist”. Hitler also considered himself a socialist, so as definitions go, this sort of thing isn’t a great test.
But this quote from Brolin (well, dream Brolin) really nails it, so I’ll repeat it as well:
“… a fascist, someone who thinks you can do good using violence.”
This test passes for every fascist I can think of, and I think serves as a reliable litmus stripfor evaluating one’s behavior (if one desires to avoid being a fascist). Anytime violence is considered, apply this test to avoid sliding into the rank pit of fascism.
I feel like there’s more to say about all this but I think I’ll stop here for now. I’m going to apply these new (at least to me) ideas in the field and see how they hold-up.