"Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself"

Margaret Atwood suggests that popular art serves as a reflection of society’s collective subconscious, operating not as a tool for analysis but as an expressive outlet for shared hopes, fears, and desires. Through the metaphor of a “dream,” she highlights how popular art emerges organically, much like dreams arise from the mind, shaped by cultural fantasies, anxieties, and aspirations, rather than by a conscious decision to understand or critique itself. Popular art, then, is not introspective. It does not question its own assumptions or examine the deeper roots of its images and stories. Its primary function is to entertain, comfort, and reinforce prevailing values.

Society’s “dream” manifests in recurring genres, archetypes, and storylines, a mythic landscape where familiar tropes play out to satisfy emotional drives and cultural needs. Superheroes saving the world, romantic comedies resolving all conflict through love, or dystopian futures warning against unchecked power are embodiments of societal wishes and cautions. These narratives do not interrogate their own origins; instead, they reaffirm what audiences already believe or feel. Popular art offers escape, catharsis, and identification, but rarely invites ambiguity or confrontation of uncomfortable truths.

Self-examination is markedly absent from this sphere. While individual creators may be reflective or self-aware, the broader machinery of popular entertainment streamlines complexity in favor of clarity and gratification. It is in avant-garde works, satire, or subversive art that self-examination is more likely to surface, spaces where art becomes conscious of its own mechanisms, biases, and cultural implications. Atwood’s point is not to disparage popular art, but to delineate its social function: it dreams society’s dreams aloud, providing symbolic coherence and comfort. The collective never looks in the mirror in these works; instead, it dreams without awareness, outwardly vivid but inwardly unexamined, reaffirming rather than interrogating the cultural status quo.