As Netflix’s new series, The Sandman, notes, we spend a third of our lives in sleep and dream. In popular culture, The Sandman is a folkloric being who helps us drift off to the land of nod where he controls whether we have nightmares or dreams. He is also the centre of Neil Gaiman’s popular comic book series (1989-96), which the new series is based on.
The embodiment of dream as a mythological or literary character has variously been presented as benevolent or sinister, and these contradictory representations reflect our uneasy relationship with the nature and meaning of dreams and nightmares.
