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The Shadow as Hero — Jung’s Archetypes At the Movies

posted by Mike Shur

With the untimely passing of Heath Ledger, the already immense anticipation of ”The Dark Knight” film has been driven to a fever pitch.  Even the History Channel has a special called “Batman Unmasked:  The Psychology of the Dark Knight”  that delves into the psychological development and motivations of Bruce Wayne/Batman.  What type *is* the Batman, or Bruce Wayne for that matter?  Some great speculation here. 

 Then today a good friend of mine sent me the link to the next most anticipation movie in the world of geekdom — “The Watchmen“.

  These two movie “events” (big happenings for us nerds!) are a blaring bat signal announcing not just Gen X’s love of comics, but the intensely archetypal developments in post-modern art even at the level of “pulp reading” and popular movies.  Though few are comfortable talking about their counseling or psychiatric sessions, everyone can’t help but compare notes on the latest venture into the archetypal world presented by mainstream movies and graphic novels.

This would hardly be surprising to Carl Jung.  This is the man who said:
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” And what are post-modern anti-hero myths than views within rather than without.

As much as I wanted to write about Batman as Bruce Wayne’s shadow/id run amok, there is no shortage of the Dark Knight’s psyche on display in books, blogs, and on geek-brains everywhere.  So I looked deeper and found an academic article that looks at a variety of comic heroes, male and female, as part of three separate hero traditions:  Campbell’s (the most familiar and influential), as well as Otto Rank and Lord Raglan.  These three traditions trace the hero’s journey, hero’s birth, and hero’s death, respectively.

“The Dark Knight” will be a huge money-maker and a great critical success, of this I have no doubt, because it touches on, more fearlessly than most, our darkest and least accepted parts:  fear, powerlessness, revenge, savagery, unrequited love, as well as unswerving devotion, belief in the goodness of Man, coming into our destiny.

I will end on a small confession:  of all the heroes in the Justice League of America, I always wanted to be Batman.  He was the smartest, the wiliest, the one with the fewest powers but the best gadgets.  The other heroes were mostly loners, but Batman came with a partner, Robin.  The other heroes relied on their super-human powers, but Batman had only his wits, his technology, and his foresight.  We are none of us Superman, but in the 21st century we are all Batman.