Sunday, November 23, 2008

Jungian archetypes in media

In a conversation today, I realized how the theory of Jungian archetypes has an association with the recent trend of going behind the mask of the superhero. In Hollywood movies the trend has turned from the behaviors of the superheroes to the motivations behind them. In all past cultures this has come at a certain point in their respective civilizations. The stories attributed to the gods are present in greek, roman, egyptian, hindu and virtually any civilizations. When religion clamped down on the muslim culture the stories about the life of mystics and pirs was born. It almost points to an innate need of a civilization to have stories about the ideals. As if the masses are trying to express their conflicts in the idealized figures that they try to emulate. This primordial need is manifesting itself in the the movies of the present also.
Batman from the times of George Clooney and Kilmer has suddenly a different mood now. Superman was explored in more detail in Smallville. Spiderman has definitely become more introspective. Star wars had to explore the origins of the dark side.
The point to notice is that the creators of all these characters had invented their past when they were brought to life initially. Spiderman's conflicts about being Parker and avenging the death of his grandfather are not new. Neither is Clark's search for his home land and the isolation that he feels new. But they were limited by the spread of the comic media. Now it is as if the whole world is re discovering these archetypes as the media reaches out to them.
There is ofcourse a finite amount of media or the interpretation of media that can be incorporated in an individual's mind. That amount of finite data, has a comprehensible number if we apply the bell curve to the human population. Neuropsychology shows us that all new information has to be interpreted, associated and then remembered. Hence within that bell curve there is all sorts of different combinations that exist. Some person might comprise his "moral good" as an expression of batman and superman, another might have a different combination. The result is a pallette of different colors that portray the internal unconscious life of an individual. Twinship to different archetypes as well as parental/environmental mirroring might also play an important part in selection of the colors that go to make a pallette.
A point to note is that people who do not watch movies are not necessarily bereft of this archetypal life. They just reach out and grab onto the archetypes that have been passed down from other sources like religion or ancestary.
Retelling stories and understanding them from different perspectives an important part of the human dillemma. Something that will continue in its myriad variations.

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