In the year 2012, the
following movies have or will be released: The Avengers, The Amazing
Spiderman, The Dark Knight Rises, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman,
Dark Shadows, and Breaking
Dawn Pt II. The following TV
shows are on basic cable: Grimm, Once Upon a Time and The Vampire Diaries.
Why are these old fairy
tales, hero plotlines, and fantasies still relevant in 2012?
The repopularization of
these legends and tales is perhaps in part due to a nostalgic search for the
timeless in a rapidly evolving, tech-savvy culture. Yet what is most
interesting about these stories is that people genuinely enjoy them even
centuries after their genesis. There is something relatable about these
familiar characters and figures.
These recurring figures
and images echo what psychiatrist Carl Jung, one of Freud’s students and
contemporaries, identifies as archetypes within the collective unconscious. He
explains:
“In
addition to our immediate consciousness…there exists a second psychic system of
a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all
individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is
inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only
become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic
contents.”[1]
Jung argues the
collective unconscious originates in prehistoric humankind and contains
archetypes—mythic symbols common in all cultures and which hold similar
significance across communities—that present themselves in dreams, mythology,
religious parables, and fairy tales. Common archetypal figures include the
shadow, the anima-animus (feminine and masculine qualities), the mother, the
child, the maiden, and the wise old man.[2]
Modern fantasies in 2012
access these archetypes and the meaning they hold that is relevant today. The
evil queen in Mirror Mirror and
Snow White and the Huntsman invokes
the animus within all women who represents reason, power, and strength. Michael
Caine’s Alfred in The Dark Knight Rises embodies the wise old man who counsels and guides. Dark Shadows’s
Dr. Julia Hoffman represents the
mother archetype who nurtures with love and ambivalence.
Perhaps, then, the
resurrection of fantasy films and shows is not due to the need for escape or
for returning to something lost. Perhaps instead it is because, even in 2012,
there are mythic elements we will always be able to relate to that helps us
better understand our own unconscious and the collective unconscious inherent
across cultures.
[2] Wilson M. Hudson. “Jung on Myth and the Mythic.”
The Sunny Slopes of Long Ago.
(Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 2000), 186.
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