1.Why everyone speaks gibberish in Rayman's world.
As we all probably know, Rayman's world clearly takes place not in the real world, but in a world
that only exists within in the mind, presumably the unconscious mind. To fully understand the
assumed concept of why the characters in the game speak gibberish, lets first understand the meaning of the word "hypnagogia."
Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the hypnagogic state
of consciousness. Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include
lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.
Hypnagogic hallucinations are often auditory or have an auditory components. Like the visuals, hypnagogic sounds
vary in intensity from faint impressions to loud noises, such as crashes and bangs (exploding head syndrome)
Snatches of imagined speech are common. While typically nonsensical and fragmented, these speech events can occasionally strike the individual as apt comments on—or summations of—their thoughts at the time.
They often contain word play, neologisms and made-up names. Hypnagogic speech may manifest as the subject's own "inner voice", or as the voices of others: familiar people or strangers. More rarely, poetry or music is heard.
I relate to this, because i can often hear the auditory hallucinations, when i am tired and lay in my bed before falling into a
deep sleep. They aren't the "I HEAR VOICES IN MY HEAD AT NIGHT, AND THEY TELL ME TO KILL YOU"
type stuff, but actually very faint voices, usually spoken by people i know or have heard on
TV or what have you, and the dialogue from these voices never say anything clear or sentences
that anyone says in real life, for example "don't give that monkey a taco account" or
"the bee has blankets for hands" and incoherent words that don't make any sense or hold real meaning and often repeat a few times.
Because Rayman and the other characters are in a dream world and obviously sleep non-stop in the Glade Of DREAMS when
there are no adventures to be had, they always speak
incoherently like our minds do during and right before REM sleep. In the game, Rayman and Globox, for example, although speaking
in gibberish, can still understand what they are saying to each other. In our dreams,
alot of what doesn't make sense when we look back on the dream and wonder what the heck that was all about,
makes sense during the dream, and we can communicate properly with other people in the dream, because our unconscious mind likes to translate
our real life experiences and everyday speech into odd and jumbled up versions of it... Every word we know has different meanings in our unconscious mind.
The incoherent lyrics in the Origins song "The Lums' Dream (Glou Glou)" for example can hold different meanings for every person who hears it.
I hear "oonah nee nah glue glue....One-eyed Luther, waking a whirl. You win, holler, Wiki nurrr. " But you could hear something completely different. It could also
be translated from the original lyrics that the composer had, and then he went to sleep and remembered what his original lyrics sounded like in his dream, and then
he went with that instead.
Here's a quote from comedian Kyle Cease: "It's so bizarre that we don't realize when we're dreaming.
It's the craziest thing to me. 'Cause if the things that happened in your dream happened in your real life, you'd be like, 'this is a weird thing. It's time for me to wake up, but what's so weird, is in the dream you could be dreaming, that you're on a date with, like, a half-pirate, half-Oprah Winfrey.
And then she'll say something weird like, 'you know, I can also use my comb.' Right there, you should be like, 'that's a weird thing to say.'
But isn't it weird that we'll be in our dreams going, 'I also have a sherbet glasses comb.
Let's get on my hover bike made of fruit loops! I made it out of corn,' and she's like, 'I'll be sure to wear my umbrella.'"
2: Representations of things in Rayman's world
Fan's of the Rayman games should be familiar with the term "imaginary worlds/levels."
Those are the worlds made up of objects that pertain to things that are big parts of us, such as
Picture city/Eraser Planes (our creativity and artistic thoughts,) Gourmand Land/Candy Chateau (worlds made up of food and kitchen appliances, because food is an
important part of our lives,) and Band Land/Desert of Didgeridoos. (music is big part of most people as well.)
Because Rayman's world is a reflection of the human mind, each world reflects different parts of us, whether it be our recreational activities that
we hold dear, or everyday moods and feelings (Swamps of FORGETFULNESS, MOODY Clouds, LANGUISH Lagoon.) Anguish Languish is a type of language that turns English words into weird and jumbled up versions of it that still somehow make sense when said a certain way (which also ties into to my gibberish theory.)
for example, "A nervous sausage bag ice!" is Languish for "I never saw such big eyes!" and "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" is Languish for "Little Red Riding Hood."
Serendipity (Sea Of Serendipity) is a term that means "If it is meant to be, it will eventually find you."
In Rayman Origins, one of the most difficult parts of the game, is one of the last levels (i think) when you are in a giant clock. This is because
managing time and making time for sleep when we get older and have jobs, can be a very hard thing. Alot of us can be considered Slaves To Time without
even realizing it, and the times we had as a child with all the time in the world become nothing but a distant memory. Having alot
of time to do things we love doing (like vacations) is always something we strive for in adulthood, but the cost of living (the "almighty" dollar) often prohibits us from using our time the way we want to. Long story short, the extreme difficulty of the clock levels reflect the huge restraint that time has on our lives. You
only get 24 hours a day (12 of which we usually spend sleeping) and 365 days a year, and the fear of getting older and eventually dying is a hard thing to grasp.
My theory on Rayman 2's Menhir Hills is pretty dumb, but kinda makes sense. A menhir is a long giant rock that juts from the ground.
In that level, you ride the walking shell, trying to avoid these giant rocks that emerge from the ground in front of you. I think that the menhirs
in this case represent Nocturnal Penile Tumescence (most commonly known as Morning Wood.) This happens several times during sleep, and most
of us get irritated when our menhir is wide awake before we barely are in the morning...yeah i know, its a stretch, but that's my take on it.
Most people who play Origins and Legends notice that the Music levels differ from the ones in the original Rayman, because the instruments are all
in the desert instead of the sky like it used to be. Notice that pretty much all the instruments in the new music levels are very old and antique
instruments like bongos, djembes, clarinets I think, crooked piano keys, and those old record players with that bugle thing that Cranky Kong was playing in the beginning of DKC. Here's my theory as to why they are all in the desert: Notice what is prominently used im most pop music
and alot of other types of music that are most famous nowadays...not really anything traditional or classical anymore...just computer generated and synthetic
type stuff. All these old instruments used to be on top of the world (or in the sky in Rayman 1's case) but now the new and synthetic
generation has taken over, leaving the old instruments quite literally, left in the dust. Another more simple hunch I have, is that the Old Lady antagonist from
Origins, banished the instruments to the desert, because as we all know, she hates loud music, and that's how all that trouble in Origins happened in the first place.
Mr. Dark has the power to alter Rayman's knowledge of left and right, which is something that also gets altered or has
confused meanings in our dreams or in times of being under the influence of drugs, especially alcohol.
Ridding the world of evil and freeing the good guys is a fantasy we all have in a world that is filled with darkness, and escaping into a world of our own design
is all we can really do sometimes....plus, it's the most fun.
Welp, that's all i got at the moment...feel free to add your own thoughts. And a theory on a deeper meaning of why Rayman has no limbs would be cool too.
