Semiotica Volume 2002 Issue 142 2002 (Doi 10.1515/semi.2002.076) Hirschman, Elizabeth C. - Metaphors, Archetypes, and The Biological Origins of Semiotics

Review article
Metaphors, archetypes, and the biological

origins of semiotics*
ELIZABETH C. HIRSCHMAN
That human cultural patterns and individual identities find their meaning
through the expression of semiotics is a proposition with which virtually
all readers of Semiotica are likely to agree. However, it is the source of
those cultural patterns and individual identities which does and has
proved contentious. Marcel Danesi (1999) has provided an excellent
account of current theory and findings in our field with one vivid
exception; he grounds his analysis firmly on the assumption that semiotic
meanings primarily are culturally constructed. As he states in the preface
to Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other Interesting Things, ‘This
book _ will make it obvious that homo sapiens cannot be studied
primarily in biological terms. Many of the thoughts and actions that
one would probably judge as exclusively human turn out to be shaped
by forces other than the instincts’. To the contrary, I will argue that
consumers carry forward a legacy of atavistic, biologically based
knowledge that has been with us since our species first gained
consciousness approximately thirty to sixty thousand years ago
(Mithen 1999). Jung (1959) termed this the collective unconscious (see
also Barthes 1957; Eliade 1958a, 1958b; Jacobi 1959; Randazzo 1995).
The collective unconscious
Jung first described the collective unconscious as: ‘[The] part of the
unconscious [that] is not individual, but universal _ It has contents and
modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all
individuals. It _ thus constitutes a common psychic substrate _ which
is present in every one of us’ (1959: 3–4). Jung further proposed
that the content of this collective unconscious was composed of
*Marcel Danesi, Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to
Semiotics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Semiotica 142–1/4 (2002), 315–349 0037–1998/02/0142 – 0315

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316 E. C. Hirschman
archetypes: ‘So far as the collective unconscious contents are concerned,

we are dealing with archaic, primordial types; that is, with universal
images that have existed since the remotest times’ (1959: 5). To Jung,
humans possessed these archetypal categories as part of their innate
perceptual system. He proposed that humans projected meaning onto the
world, assigning particular meanings to external stimuli that cor-
responded to pre-existing mental categories. As Jung writes, ‘It is in my
view a great mistake to suppose that the psyche of a newborn child is a
tabula rasa _ [rather] it meets sensory stimuli coming from outside not
with just any aptitudes, but with specific ones, and this results in a
particular _ pattern of perception _ These are the archetypes _ Just
as archetypes occur on the ethnological level as myths, so also are they
found in every individual’ (1959: 68).
Jung’s proposals regarding archetypes echoed Plato’s earlier
conception of ‘ideal forms’ (1959), and Immanuel Kant’s doctrine of
mental categories as discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason (1929).
As with these scholars, Jung believed that human minds were biologi-
cally structured around certain categories of meaning, i.e., archetypes,
that came to be filled with concrete exemplars as a result of life experience.
Archetypes functioned as symbolic vessels, available to carry culturally
specific meanings once they were instantiated by life events. As Jung put
it, ‘[An archetype] is a vessel which we can never empty and never fill _ It
persists throughout the ages. Archetypes are imperishable elements of the
unconscious, but they change their shape continually’ (1959: 179). Thus,
the meaning systems which we view as semiotic are co-constituted through
the interaction of biological structure with individual and cultural
experience.
The archaeological record and the collective cognitive unconscious
Although Jung’s biologically based theories of meaning have been amply

criticized since first proposed in the early 1900s (see e.g., Ellwood 1999),
strong empirical support has come from a variety of recent sources.
During the past decade cognitive archaeologists such as Flannery and
Marcus (1993) and Renfrew and Zubrow (1994) have examined knowl-
edge structures, mental maps, and the mechanics of thought using
a cross section of interpretive and quantitative approaches (e.g.,
structural analysis, computer modeling). Mithen (1999) has organized
much of this literature along evolutionary lines in The Prehistory
of the Mind. Although the first human written records originated five
thousand years ago in Sumeria, Mithen (1999) along with Donald (The

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Metaphors, archetypes and the biological origins of semiotics 317
Origins of the Modern Mind, 1991) proposes that modern humans (Homo
sapiens sapiens) evolved a sense of consciousness ‘between 60,000 and
30,000 years ago, when the first art, complex technology and religion
appeared’ (Mithen 1999: 11). It is at this point in human evolutionary
development that semiotics became possible. Humans were now able to
think metaphorically; archetypes became cognitively available to us.
For example, the first known art objects were constructed by
humans some forty thousand years ago. They include beads, necklaces,
and pendants made from ivory and bone, animal and human figures
carved in ivory, bone, and stone, and a panoply of painted and engraved
images of both naturalistic and abstract design on cave walls, most
notably at Lascaux and Chauvet in southern France (Mithen 1999).
Mithen pairs these artifacts with ethnographic work conducted among
diverse contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples by Nurit Bird-David.
Bird-David (1990) found that all the groups she studied projected human
attributes upon their physical surroundings. In essence, these societies
anthropomorphized the environment; the meanings of landscapes became
socially constructed and endowed with a variety of human qualities.
Similarly, other anthropologists have found many contemporary exam-
ples of totemism — the cultural transfer of animal traits to humans —
among hunter gatherers. As Ingold (1993) states, ‘For them, there are
not two separate worlds of persons and things, but just one world, one
environment, saturated with personal powers and embracing human
beings, the animals and plants on which they depend, and the landscape in
which they live and move’.
Mithen (1999) additionally cites anthropological and archaeological
evidence that at the sixty to thirty thousand year turning point in human
evolution, our species had evolved unique (in the domain of animals)
cognitive capabilities in the areas of biological classification (i.e., the
ability to categorize plants, animals, and natural phenomena according
to their similarities and dissimilarities), intuitive physics (i.e., the con-
cepts of solidity, gravity, and inertia), and social interaction (which we
share with monkeys and apes) (Byrne and Whiten 1988).
While at first these specialized cognitive capabilities remained
confined within their respective brain modules (see Barkow, Cosmides
and Tooby, 1992), at the sixty to thirty thousand year turning point,
humans evolved the ability to map across these previously independent
domains; for the first time, homo sapiens sapiens could produce meta-
phors that united concepts across diverse contexts of experience
(Mithen 1999). We see this evolutionary process recapitulated in the
development of modern-day human brains. As Karmiloff-Smith (1992)
proposes, the plasticity of early human development provides for cultural

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318 E. C. Hirschman
shaping of biologically hardwired cognitive capabilities, resulting in

culturally influenced (but still at basis universal) representations of
knowledge, such that perceptual links across the domains can be forged.
This model is quite consistent with the paradigmatic proposals of
Fodor (1983) and Gardner (1983), as well as those of Sperber (1994) and
Rozin (1976). As Sperber (1994) further notes, during evolution the
human mind may have additionally developed a cognitive domain that
stores only conceptual configurations, which he terms ‘a module of meta
representation’, containing ‘concepts of concepts’ and ‘representations
of representations’. These meta-representations are metaphors and anal-
ogies developed originally in one domain of activity (say, social
interaction or physical exertion) and now found useful as models for
thinking about other aspects of experience.
For example, models gained from observing animal behavior (e.g.,
stealthiness) could be transferred to human behavior (through totemic
metaphor), and models developed within human social groups (e.g.,
friendship) could be projected onto the animal and physical worlds
(through anthropomorphic metaphor). As Mithen notes, one of the
earliest known human artworks depicts just such a metaphoric transfer,
‘the ivory statuette from _ southern Germany, some thirty to thirty-three
thousand years old _ is a figure of a man with a lion’s head’ (1999: 155).
It is during this same time period that humans developed the conceptual
apparatus for religion and spirituality. Grave goods now began to include
provisions of food for the deceased, decorative beads, and especially
shells, which symbolized rebirth (Mithen 1999; Boyer 1994). Humans
became capable of conceptualizing nonphysical beings: ghosts, spirits,
and divinities, and endowing them with human, animal, plant, and other
environmental traits (Boyer 1994). Such supernatural beings could also be
endowed with rule-breaking attributes, as well; for example, they could fly
or re-arise after death, as these mental models of possibility now were
cognitively available (e.g., birds fly; flowers are reborn each spring). As
Eliade observes, ‘Every historical man carries within himself a great deal
of prehistoric humanity’ (1991: 12). Thus, while each of us may have our
semiotic representations influenced by the culture in which we are raised,
our ability to form representations at all, and to assign meaning to them,
is at basis biological and evolutionary.
Additional support from recent cognitive psychology
Zaltman (1997) reviewed a broad set of contemporary cognitive

psychology studies in support of his contentions that much consumer

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thought is both metaphoric and unconscious. Even more recently, the

two leading researchers of metaphor, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,
have compiled an extensive review of the cognitive psychology literature;
it opens with three declarative statements:
‘The mind is inherently embodied’.

‘Thought is mostly unconscious’.
‘Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical’. (1999: 3)
On the following page they state that, ‘Reason is evolutionary _ It is

not purely literal, but mostly metaphorical and imaginative’ (1999: 4).
This is because, as Mithen (1999) described, our brains first evolved
to use conceptual models developed in various domains of experience
and then gained the ability to apply these models in other domains
of experience. These metaphoric reasoning structures, just as Jung
proposed, are unconscious. They structure our thought without our
conscious awareness. As Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 18) state further,
‘Categorization is, for the most part, not a process of conscious
reasoning _ [While] a small percentage of our categories have been
formed by conscious acts, most are formed automatically and uncon-
sciously as a result of functioning in the world _ . We do not, and
cannot, have full conscious control over how we categorize’.
Thus, what Lakoff and Johnson (1999) term the cognitive unconscious1
is closely akin to, in fact analogous with, Jung’s notion of the collective
unconscious. Some specific examples will help illustrate the depth of
this analogy. Lakoff and Johnson for example, discuss at length the
metaphor of ‘a purposeful life is a journey’ which consists of goals and
destinations to be achieved and reached (1996: 61). In archetypic terms
this translates to the heroic quest structure in which the protagonist sets
out on a task or mission, overcomes obstacles and challenges, and
completes the quest (see also Gibbs 1994: 192).
Lakoff and Johnson (1999) also discuss at length our human perception
that moral justice is a balance between good and evil, all three of which
are conceptualized not only as abstract concepts, but also as archetypal
personifications in myth (e.g., God, the Devil), and as actual figures in
our culture (e.g., judges, law enforcement personnel, criminals). Evil,
they note, may also be something we perceive to exist within ourselves,
other people, or the natural or social world, as for example, cruel
intentions toward others, hurricanes, floods, dictators, or invading
armies. In myth, evil is often personified in the form of supernatural
beings or monsters, which may or may not have an actual physical
existence (e.g., werewolves, cyclops, dinosaurs, sharks).

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320 E. C. Hirschman
Lakoff and Johnson (1999) also describe the metaphoric projection of

paternal and maternal traits onto supernatural beings (e.g., God the
Father, the Virgin Mary) and note that these are examples of the
personification of experiential metaphors encountered by the individual
in human families. Of course, as Jung, Eliade, and Campbell (1959, 1970,
1974, 1988, 1990) have already proposed, such metaphoric projection
of familial relations has long been understood to populate the
mythologies of all known cultures, whether ancient or modern.
Lakoff and Johnson also observe the metaphoric links between
Light~Goodness~Health~Morality, and Dark~Evil~Disease~
Immorality, such that sin is equated with blackness, disease, and dirtiness,
while moral purity is equated with whiteness, good health, and cleanliness
(e.g., ‘Pure as the driven snow’). Further, as they comment, ‘Because
metaphorical moral models are grounded in aspects of basic experience,
they tend to be stable across cultures and over large stretches of time’
(1999: 325).
Bierlein (1994) in his analysis of parallel myths agrees with this
assessment. Although the specific names and personifications do differ
across cultures, metaphoric concepts such as Good, Evil, Male, Female,
Old, Young, Wisdom, Justice, Fertility, Jealousy, Anger, Light, Dark,
Health, and Disease appear to be fundamental to our species, a function
of evolutionary imprinting and universal human experiences.
Jung (1959) further observed that the metaphoric/archetypal images
populating the collective unconscious formed a structural pattern of
cognition that guided human thought and reasoning about the external
world: ‘These images have become embedded in a comprehensive
system of thought that ascribes an order to the world’ (1959: 8). Each
generation of human culture constructs discourse in which archetypes
are embedded; each succeeding generation adds to this compendium of
metaphorical discourse. We are born into a current of human life that
carries behaviors, stories, and archetypic patterns from the dawn of
consciousness, and we cannot think ourselves out of it; it is the material
by which and through which we make sense of ourselves and the world
(Hall 1997; Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Semiotics is composed of these
meaningful behaviors, stories, and patterns. We turn our attention now
to a specific type of semiotic expression — the narrative.
Cultural narratives and self narratives
Narratives, whether myths, folktales, fables, allegories, or everyday

discourse, rely upon archetypal categories of thought to construct their

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message (Berger 1997; Bierlein 1994; Franzosi 1998; Toolan 1988). For
example, Propp (1968), Greimas (1966), and Levi-Strauss (1969, 1979,
1981) have all proposed that many narratives exhibit a fixed set of actors,
patterns, and relationships that are largely invariant across cultures.
Mythologists such as Bierlein (1994), Campbell (1959/1968, 1970, 1974,
1988, 1990), Eliade (1954, 1958a, 1965, 1963, 1959), and Frye (1970,
1963, 1983) have written extensively on the commonality of structure
in narratives across times and cultures. As Leeming notes (1990: 8) ‘If
the story of Odysseus is humanity’s story of loss and rebirth leading to
transformation, so is War and Peace in a nineteenth-century Russian
context _ As we explore myth, _ we are journeying through a world
of metaphor that breathes life into the essential human story.’
As has been noted by Gibbs (1994), Moores (1993), and Stevenson
(1995), mass media narratives such as motion pictures and television
shows serve as contemporary carriers of cultural archetypes. Filmmakers,
scriptwriters, and even advertising copywriters (see Randazzo 1995)
draw upon the pre-existing stock of cultural archetypes in their con-
struction of narratives. Further, they do so in an especially powerful
and fundamental way, as Gibbs notes below:
Like verbal metaphors, cinematic metaphors present one idea in terms of

another. _ Unlike prose or speech, film has the special property of being able to
present a variety of images concurrently. By the unobstrusive use of metaphoric
devices, the audience can follow the action without distraction, while still being
almost subliminally or unconsciously affected by cinematic tropes. Many main-
stream films employ metaphors that are embedded nonfiguratively in the ‘text’
of the narrative. In this way, metaphorical and literal levels of meaning are made
to coexist on film to a greater degree than is thought to be the case with literary
works. (1994: 185)
Additionally, both Dyer (1982, 1986) and McCracken (1989) have

observed that actors and actresses are used to personify archetypal
meanings in a culture. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s actor
Sean Connery came to signify the archetypal warrior character James
Bond (Eco 1966), just as Marilyn Monroe iconically represented the
seductive goddess archetype during the 1950s and 1960s (Dyer 1986).
Dyer remarks, ‘Stars represent typical ways of behaving, feeling, and
thinking in contemporary society, ways that have been socially, cultur-
ally, and historically constructed _ Stars are embodiments of the
social categories in which people are placed and through which we
make our lives _’ (1986: 16–17). They also may represent ourselves,
perhaps most commonly as the low-born hero who must struggle against
long odds to establish his/her place in the world (Gibbs 1994). In essence,

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322 E. C. Hirschman
film and television narratives are metaphorical vehicles (see Bordwell

1989); texts which carry a legacy of archetypal meanings with which
their consumers can implicitly identify (Frye 1963; Lakoff and Johnson
1999; Randazzo 1995).
Four consumers’ stories
I want to illustrate these proposals regarding the biological and cultural

underpinnings of semiotics by using interviews with four very different
consumers: Pamela, a 57-year-old ‘empty nest’, white suburban house-
wife; Sam, a 48-year-old, married, Jewish store owner, with two children;
Terry, a 30-year-old, white, self-described Lesbian feminist; and Julio,
a 27-year-old, unmarried, blue collar, Puerto Rican American. By exam-
ining in depth how these diverse individuals weave archetypes into
their life stories, we can obtain a glimpse of the collective/cognitive
unconscious as described by Jung, Gibbs, and Lakoff and Johnson, for
although their narratives are dissimilar in iconic content, they are
profoundly grounded in metaphor and archetype.
Pamela
Pamela begins her narrative by telling me about the motion picture

Somewhere in Time, her favorite film, which features actors Christopher
Reeve and Jane Seymour. Before discussing the plot, Pamela contextual-
izes the film’s story by relating it to the fairy tales she loved as a child.
I: Can you tell me what it was about?

P: Well, I liked it maybe because it was a fantasy and a love story and
I do like fantasy things. I guess it kind of reflected back to when
I was little, because I used to love all the fairy tales, Andersen fairy
tales. And I knew all the stories. And at one point when I was little
I actually thought I was a princess. So, I guess maybe it goes back
to that.
Somewhere in Time was about this gentleman who had gone to this
very old hotel _ And while he was there this older woman came
up to him and put a watch in his hand and said, ‘come see me’. And
he didn’t know why she was there _ Then he wandered around
the hotel, and there was this room. And the room had all the historic
artifacts and things about the hotel and pictures [of ] the way it was
a hundred years [or] maybe sixty years ago. And on the wall with

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a light on it was this picture of a beautiful young girl which in the

movie was Jane Seymour. And he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
With just this brief description, we have already encountered several

ancient metaphoric/archetypal elements of the narrative: a gentleman
(i.e., prince), an older woman (sage), a room filled with antiques (trea-
sure), and an image of a beautiful young girl (the princess). As we shall
see, the prince and princess are separated by a breach or opposition —
death — which they must overcome in order to perfect their love. As
Leeming (1990) notes, overcoming death — or mortal separation — is
one of the classic motifs of mythology.
As Pamela continues with her narrative, we learn that the old woman
who had beckoned Christopher Reeve is the beautiful young actress
whose beguiling picture he had encountered. The old woman dies, and
Reeve becomes consumed with meeting her as her youthful self. To do
this, he consults a learned professor (sage) who instructs him in time
travel, permitting Reeve to return to the 1800s and meet his beloved.
Pamela tells me,
‘And then he laid on the bed and he went into this dream state. And when he woke
up _ he was back in the era of when she was there in the hotel. And _ he saw her
walking by the river. And she had her parasol. It was like the Gibson girl with the
full dresses and everything. And he followed her. And he spoke to her, and she
turned around and they talked a little bit. Then this other man comes rushing in
and takes her away. And he (the other man) was like her director. And he would
not let her speak to [Reeve] at all.’
The hero has traveled to an earlier time (a utopian past) and has found
his true love, but also encountered a rival, an alternative suitor for her
affections. As in most tales of heroic quest (Bierlein 1994; Bodkin 1934;
Gibbs 1994; Randazzo 1995), the hero must overcome these obstacles
to prove his worth as a consort for the maiden. Reeve has overcome time,
but now must struggle with a male foe. At the story’s conclusion,
Reeve overcomes his rival, but then must pay the ultimate price — his
mortal life — to be united with his beloved. Forced back to the present
time, he chooses to die in order to regain her in the immortal world of
the spirits. As Pamela recounts:
P: And he tried again so hard to go back to her, because he loved her so

much. So he didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he didn’t do anything _ He
just sat by the window and locked the door. And everybody says,
well, we haven’t seen him for days and days, and they finally had
to break down the door and he had died in the chair.

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I: He died?
P: He had died in the chair. And then you see the scene where his spirit
came and he met her and she put out her hand and they went off
together _
I: So then she comes [to get him] and they go?
P: Yes. And they go off to heaven or whatever you want to say. They
show them walking away together and he was happy _ It’s a
wonderful movie. It’s sad, yet it’s happy. It has just so many beautiful
moments in it and it makes you think, you know. Sometimes things
don’t always go well, but at the end you will be happy. So you’re
going back and forth, back and forth. I guess maybe that’s why I
like it, because it’s what life really would be, really is, with your
hardships. When you really love somebody, it doesn’t always work
out the way you want it to.
Pamela’s account of the movie’s archetypic structure is consistent with

Radway’s (1987) treatise on women’s romantic fiction. For Pamela there
have been few opportunities to experience herself as a princess; she
states that her life has been one of fulfilling her responsibilities as a
wife and mother. Though she gains a sense of satisfaction from these
duties, she yearns also to be the sought-after maiden, the enshrined
goddess whom worthy princes seek out and sacrifice themselves for
(Baring and Cashford 1991).
I: You said when you were a little girl you had a lot of fairy tales,
could you give me a for instance?
P: For instance a fairly tale? I guess my favorite one was Cinderella.
I always loved Cinderella.
I: Did you used to dress up and pretend you were Cinderella?
P: Oh yes, I’d always do shows and plays and always pretend. Always
had costumes and things and we’d pretend all the time.
I: How did your endings end up? Were they happy?
P: Oh, of course.
I: And what happened in your endings that made them happy?
P: The same thing, almost always the same thing, where your prince
would come. The era I was brought up in [was when] all the great
musicals were around. So everything was happy, and people would
burst out singing and they would dance and everything. I thought
this was great. If I ever met a guy, I hoped he would sing and
dance with me. And that never happened. But, you know, you would
go to the movies at that time and you’d almost get, you’d get lost in
them. And life was a little bit better then, too. Because you were

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treated with more respect by guys. And they would open the door.
They would take you nice places. You didn’t have to worry about a
lot of things; you were treated like a lady and the movies reflected
that.
This passage introduces a second central theme in Pamela’s inter-

view — and a key archetype around which she organizes her experi-
ence — that of utopia (see especially Eliade 1991 for a discussion of
utopian metaphors and archetypes). As was hinted at in Somewhere in
Time and becomes increasingly explicit throughout my interview with
Pamela, she contrasts the flawed, corrupted, decadent society of today
with the perfect, harmonious, beautiful, happy society of yesterday — a
nostalgic vision of the past which she uses to structure her views of life and
morality (see also Randazzo 1995, for examples of advertising campaigns
that incorporate the utopian archetype).
Although the idea of utopia appears to be an innate archetype (in that
all known cultures exhibit this concept), each culture generates its own
utopian myths; Leeming for example, describes the utopia envisioned by
the Hopi of Arizona:
‘Within the San Francisco Peaks, the Kachinas live. They have a very beautiful
world. The corn grows thickly every year; the squashes and melons grow at
every joint of the vines; nobody knows how many different kinds of beans the
Kachinas have. There are lakes of water — there are springs too — where the
cattails grow tall and sweet. The hills are covered with all the plants the Hopi’s
use: wild spinach and wild potatoes for food, rabbit brush and yucca for
baskets _ Highest up of all grow the sacred trees, blue spruce and juniper,
mountain mahogany and pinon. The Kachinas can go out and gather everything
they need. _’ (1990: 72)
In this utopian vision, the iconography focuses upon an abundance of

vegetal life, water, and food — everything a desert-dwelling people
experience as a scarcity. In Pamela’s version of utopia, people are
well-dressed, well-bred, and happy. They dwell in beautiful gardens and
sing songs of happiness and hope.
I guess my other favorite movie was Easter Parade, with Judy Garland. I think
that was because when I was a little girl and growing up, Easter was a beautiful
time of year. People dressed up, everybody wore hats and everybody wore gloves
and everybody had pocketbooks to match. And you always had to have a nice
Easter outfit. Everybody, of course, went to church. And then usually you would
go walk up to the parks and you would walk in the gardens and it was a beautiful
time in April, and the spring flowers would be coming up _ [Back then] people

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326 E. C. Hirschman
did not dress in relaxed clothes, people dressed up. Even when I went to work,
you wore heels, you wore dresses. Even in high school we were not allowed to wear
pants to school. You were a lady and you were treated as such and you dressed
nice all the time. If you went anywhere, if you went out to dinner, you always had
your hat. You had gloves and a pocketbook and shoes; everything matched. So I
kind of miss that, I think. Everybody’s too casual. And sometimes when you
should be dressed up, you don’t see the people dressing up like they did. And I
guess maybe that’s why I like these movies.
Pamela connects the beauty and natural rebirth of Easter/spring with

the beauty and perfection of a society in which ‘everything matched’,
where everyone followed the rules and life was harmonious. In her
utopia, there is no ethnic discord, no political strife, no hatred, anger, or
poverty. Dyer (1985) proposes that ‘escapist’ cinema, especially musicals
such as Easter Parade, represents a utopian emotional quest by the
consumer. ‘The utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies.
It presents what utopia would feel like’. He also notes that such cine-
matic narratives construct their utopian vision through ‘nonrepresenta-
tional signs — color, texture, movement, rhythm, melody, camerawork’
(1985: 222–223).
Pamela’s narrative echoes this directly:
Years ago when you went to the movies and saw a movie, when you left
the movie you felt really good. You felt happy inside and you felt like you
were singing songs _ When you go to a movie today _ you don’t come out
feeling hey, I would like to be like this one or I would like to be like that one.
You don’t feel like that. And there really aren’t that many good songs anymore
like there used to be. Most of those songs years ago, they’re still here.
People still sing them. The Christmas songs. ‘White Christmas’, too. I don’t think
that one will ever go away. Irving Berlin wrote that, and I think that will be here
forever. Most of those [earlier] songs will stay. But the songs today will come
and go.
Here Pamela constructs an explicit contrast between the utopian

vision of a happy, perfect past — represented in her favorite
musicals — and the flawed, unhappy society of today. She even foresees
a divinity, an immortality, in the songs from these utopian cinematic
productions, whereas those from the imperfect films of today ‘will come
and go’.
Just as Dyer (1985) proposed, Pamela locates the essence of her utopian
archetype in the ‘colors, textures _ melody’ of its cinematic representa-
tion. One of her favorite actresses, Vera Ellen, appeared in White
Christmas. To Pamela, Ellen was the princess/goddess who inhabited the
perfect realm of this film.

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P: I like White Christmas because my favorite person Vera Ellen [was

in it]. I admired her way back when I was young because she was
such a fabulous dancer. She could really dance and sing and act. She
could do anything. And I guess the movie she’s well known in is
White Christmas, but she was in many movies. She danced a lot with
Gene Kelly in a lot of movies.
I: Is there one dance that sticks out in your mind that you really
liked?
P: Well, I guess it was in White Christmas. And I don’t know what
the name of the music is that she danced to, but she wore, like it was
a full skirt with crinoline. It was purple and pink underneath. It was so
beautiful. And the way she turned and dipped the crinoline and just
the moves she made. Then of course at the end in White Christmas, it
was Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney. And I think Donald
O’Connor was in that and Vera Ellen. And at the end they were at a
ski resort, and they were all dressed up in Christmas with the red
velvet with the white fur, and it started snowing with the Christmas
tree; it was just a beautiful scene.
The visual and emotional perfection of this scene, coupled with its
linkage to a primary Christian holiday ( just as with Easter Parade),
provides us an important insight into Pamela’s self narrative. Her
personal and cultural archetypic motifs are joined with one of the deepest
human metaphors — the death of the year at the winter solstice and its
rebirth in the spring (Bierlein 1994; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Mithen
1999; Gibbs 1994). As Campbell (1974) and Jung and Kerenyi (1949)
note, virtually all human societies have constructed mythological
narratives around these annual natural events.
Dyer (1985) further observes that utopian cinema possesses the
qualities of transparency and community. Transparency is a quality of
relationships between represented characters (e.g., true love) and between
performer and audience (sincerity), while community is ‘togetherness, a
sense of belonging’ (1985: 225). Pamela cites these qualities when
discussing her favorite motion pictures and television shows (e.g.,
Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman):
I: What is it that attracts you to them?

P: I guess maybe the simple times and how people treated each other.
People relied on each other more and _ it always shows them happy
and together. And they didn’t have much, but they still were happy
and they had each other. And that’s all that mattered. They didn’t
need a whole lot of things.

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Pamela describes Jane Seymour, the actress who portrays Dr. Quinn
and who also starred in Somewhere in Time, as embodying the feminine
ideals she values:
I: Now is she [Jane Seymour] your favorite? What do you like about
her?
P: I think because she has the beauty and she has the finesse and she just
seems to be very ladylike. Some of the women today are not very
ladylike. [But] she always dresses where she’s covered up. She doesn’t
have to say, hey, look at me, I’m a woman. Expose herself to say I’m
a woman, I’m feminine.
I: She doesn’t have to flaunt it?
P: No. No. And she’s a very beautiful lady _ Even after having twins,
she went right back into shape. She’s got a gorgeous shape. And her
hair is down to her knees. She never cuts her hair _ She’s just a very
sweet person. Everybody that has interviewed her or talked to her all
like her. She’s just very down to earth.
Pamela’s comment that Jane Seymour is ‘beautiful, kind, and very

down to earth’ references a primary cognitive metaphor (Lakoff and
Johnson 1999) drawn from human experience — the Earth Mother
(see also Baring and Cashford 1991; Gimbutas 1989; Randazzo 1995).
As Leeming (1990) notes, one of the earliest divine figures was Gaia/
Earth Mother, an all-powerful goddess who gave birth to all forms of
animal and plant life. Gaia’s meaning as an archetype was split into two
aspects, the positive aspect was the figure of the Nurturant Goddess
or Madonna, who cares for and nurtures life. In this aspect, Gaia is
often iconically represented by virgins, princesses, or beautiful young
women who are caring, loving, and helpful (Billington and Green 1996;
Gimbutas 1989). Jane Seymour represents this aspect of the Earth
Mother to Pamela. Her beauty, long flowing hair, and maternal ability
suggest to Pamela a divine, but kind, figure who is liked by all who
encounter her. Seymour’s role as Dr. Quinn further feeds into this image,
as in this guise she is more knowledgeable than the other characters on
the show and regularly ‘works miracles’ by restoring life to the sick and
dying.
The negative aspect of Gaia/Earth Mother is her power to destroy
life in general, and especially to devour men (Campbell 1974; Jung
1964; and see especially Billington and Green 1996). We will encounter
some examples of this destructive female archetype in the other
transcripts.

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Sam
Sam is a 47-year-old, Jewish store proprietor; he is married with two

teenaged children. His ethnic heritage is that of a people whose history has
been filled with apocalyptic events and divine interventions (Frye 1983);
several of Sam’s extended family members perished in the Holocaust. This
heritage has guided Sam toward a different archetypal structure in his
personal narrative. Much of Sam’s narrative is centered around issues of
moral justice and courage in the face of evil. His favorite motion picture is
To Kill a Mockingbird, which Sam believes ‘has so many examples of how
we should really live our life. It’s sort of like a Bible on the screen, in terms
of the right relationships we should have _’
Sam’s allusion to the Judeo-Christian Bible is a meaningful one;
that text teaches by way of parable, just as this film does: biblical
allegories and some motion pictures utilize archetypal categories to
communicate a moral message, instructing about what is just and how to
live a righteous life (Frye 1983; Lakoff and Johnson 1999). As Sam
recounts the story of To Kill a Mockingbird, he cites several types of
moral behavior, ultimately concluding that the essence of morality lies
in the equality of worth among different social categories of people.
I think the story starts off in a southern town. And he’s [Atticus] a single parent,
which is pretty unusual at the time. His wife had passed away, so now he’s raising
these two children. In addition, he’s an attorney. And that’s kind of unusual,
because this town is very poor. There are not many professionals. Everyone else is
either a farmer or maybe a shop owner.
But he’s an extremely educated person, and he has an incredible reputation. The
reputation that he’s developed is not because of his intelligence or, you know,
anything monetary, because he’s as poor as almost everyone else around him. He
does not have much in terms of material wealth, although if he wished to, he could
have. But he’s there because he serves an important need. He defends and looks
after the rights of the people. And because of that, he’s given a case to defend of a
black man who’s accused of raping a white woman.
The minute he takes this on, he knows that not only is he putting himself at
personal risk for his own life, but also his children who he loves dearly. And he
raises [his children] in a very interesting way. They don’t call him Dad, they call
him Atticus. They’re on a first-name basis. It’s a very respect-oriented type of
thing. And it’s unusual for the times, because in those times people didn’t speak to
their parents that way. And a movie about this kind of a race issue was pretty
unusual at the time, also.
Sam continues his story by noting that Atticus’s son does not respect
him, because his father always tries to resolve disputes ‘with words and
reasoning instead of fighting’. However, as Sam notes, the father chooses

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to seek a moral solution to a problem, because it is the civilized thing to

do, not because he is a coward.
There’s a part in the movie when there’s a mad dog who’s threatening the house
and Atticus comes back with the sheriff. And all of a sudden they’re watching this
threatening dog. And the sheriff stops and asks Atticus to take the shot. And his
son Jim can’t understand what the heck is going on here. My father’s a wuss, you
know. And Atticus shoots and kills the dog the first shot. And then the sheriff talks
to Jim saying, ‘you know your father’s the best shot in this whole area’. And
Atticus looks at him and tells him to hush and don’t mention that. He’s just a very
humble person. He doesn’t need to brag. He doesn’t need to impress anybody. He
just does what he has to do to make things right or as right as possible. He’s truly
a man. He’s truly a human being.
The role of Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird was performed by actor

Gregory Peck. In a transference of identification similar to what Pamela
earlier expressed toward actress Jane Seymour, Sam views Gregory Peck
as iconically representing the motion picture characters he has portrayed.
You can’t create this character. You have to be this person. Which gets back to
why I’d have loved to have an opportunity to have met [Gregory Peck]. In his
whole Hollywood career you don’t hear much about him. He just does great
movies. And there’s no notoriety. There’s no major hoopla about him. And then
there’s a movie called Gentlemen’s Agreement. He takes on a role of being Jewish
and lives through the anti-Semitism, not understanding what it is until he actually
gets involved and then truly learns about what it feels like to be Jewish _ . And he
lives this and takes the punishment upon himself to understand _ It took a lot of
guts as an actor to do this, because it could have been very easy for him to be
blacklisted; for him to be put in a situation where no one would ever want to give
him another role. So he personally was sacrificing at that point _ . He plays
extraordinarily difficult roles. And why they’re extraordinarily difficult is because
he’s putting himself in situations where he’s never been before, yet he plays it to
such a degree where you feel he had to have lived it somehow.
This passage illustrates well the metaphoric impact which motion

pictures and television programs are capable of having on consumers.
Here the actor has come to personify for Sam the archetype he has
portrayed in fiction. Jung (1964; 1985; 1989; 1990a, 1990b) suggests that
humans need to believe that such people (e.g., the righteous man) do exist
and are present in society. A second film which carried this same
archetypic figure was Schindler’s List, which because of its relevance to his
own people’s history, was deeply moving to Sam.
There’s movies I can’t watch over and over, but I still think they’re required
viewing. Schindler’s List is required viewing. It doesn’t make you feel good. It

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hurts you terribly, and the more you understand the Holocaust, the more you
understand man’s inhumanity to man. I mean, this is a movie that makes you sick,
makes you disgusted in a lot of ways. And it’s not even close to really
demonstrating the horrors, because no one can possibly do that. It’s just a
small dose.
You look at Germany, which was one of the most cultured countries in Europe
and the world at the time. They were so far ahead of what other people were
thinking and doing. Yet they were able to be transposed into a merciless killing
machine, whose goal was to torment and torture people and put them to death,
take away everything that was theirs, their culture, just because this was a
madman’s dream. And they allowed themselves to be put into this position and
believe it. A society that will bear the scars of it forever.
In this passage Sam views archetypal evil as represented by the

Holocaust so incomprehensible and so unjustifiable that it can only be
contained by inoculating society with small doses of its poison on a
regular basis; only by experiencing ‘small’ evils can we avoid the return of
overwhelming evil (see Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Gibbs 1994). Acting out
the evil through myth is one of the most common ways that humans have
dealt with it through the ages. Eliade (1991: 38) states,
Indeed, a good many texts liken the enemies who are attacking national territory
to ghosts, demons or the powers of chaos _ . Because they attack and endanger
the equilibrium and the very life of the city (or of any other inhabited and
organized territory), enemies are assimilated to demonic powers, trying to
reincorporate the microcosm into the state of chaos _ . The destruction of an
established order _ was equivalent to a regression into chaos _ . Let us note
that these same images are still invoked in our own days when people want to
formulate the dangers that menace a certain type of civilization; there is much talk
of ‘chaos’, of ‘disorder’, of the ‘dark ages’ into which our world is subsiding.
Schindler’s List also features a heroic figure, Oskar Schindler, who

managed to save several thousand Jewish Germans by using them in his
factories during World War II. As Sam describes him,
He put his life at risk in order to make this happen. He saved people. He made
sacrifices _ in terms of the risks that he took to be able to keep these people alive,
so that they could produce the next generations. He just put his life on the line to
save people, because he knew it was the right thing to do, which is truly amazing.
And I think we can learn tremendous amounts from this. We should all learn,
number one, that we can’t tolerate this kind of thing ever again happening. We
have to go out of our way to prevent it. We have to help people in need when their
time occurs. And God forbid, if it does happen, when these people come to your
country, when they come here because maybe this is the only place that they can
survive, we should try to do our best to help them so that maybe they can get

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themselves together and that their families will be able to prosper, because they
may have so much to offer the world.
Our species relies at critical points on the existence of heroes who will,
even at risk to their own lives, step forward to save others. Randazzo
discusses at length the type of hero which Sam admires; this is the
archetypal Good Father who defends ‘order, reason, law and provides for
and protects his family (and society in general). The Good Father is the
selfless defender of truth and justice, he who is willing to die for what he
believes in and/or in the service of those who cannot defend themselves’
(1995: 101).
The ancient Greek gods Cronos and Zeus are early examples of the
Good Father archetype. This aspect of masculinity represents the positive
facets of patriarchy; the dominant male as a wise, just, law-giving, and
law-enforcing figure (see also Lakoff and Johnson 1999). The biblical
character of Moses risking his life to save his ‘family’ (the Hebrews) from
bondage is another prime example. Jung terms this archetypic figure the
wise man or sage: ‘he is the enlightener, the master and teacher’(1959: 37)’.
Sam’s self-narrative also contained a second, strongly developed
archetype — the anima. To Jung (1959, 1964, 1990b) the anima
represented the female principle, especially as it was projected by or
developed in men. In current U.S. culture, men are being encouraged to
develop their feminine ‘side’, their anima, in order to grow into more
complete beings (see e.g., Randazzo 1995; Hirschman 1987). This is
termed androgyny in men, where both masculine and feminine traits are
encouraged as part of the male psyche. Sam recognizes this metaphoric
element as an important part of his own personality:
There are some movies that I just find are pleasing. And I watch them because
they’re just beautiful movies and they’re nice stories, they’re interesting
stories _ I really liked Mystic Pizza. I’m going to get to my feminine side of
things. Mystic Pizza is really just fun. But nice things happen, and I like that a lot,
that nice things take place. I also really like Fried Green Tomatoes, and I really like
this movie I just saw called Spitfire Grill. They’re movies about hope and about
good things happening to people. And it’s great to see good things happen to
people. It makes me feel real good. I would like to believe that people can find
happiness and stand up for what they think is right and still enjoy themselves.
These movies are not as serious as that other stuff is. I mean, I like message
movies, but I also like movies that can be fun _ [ In Spitfire Grill ] there’s a much
larger story going on about this girl who comes to live there and her relationship
with another woman and a bonding that takes place. And also a bonding that
takes place between a whole town and these people. It’s very nice and you would
like to see, you know, more of America like that. And you want to see the good
person, the deserving, get something like that.

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Sam finds a similar theme in Fried Green Tomatoes:
And there’s a parallel between Fried Green Tomatoes and Spitfire Grill. They
develop this incredible bonding where they truly, truly love each other and support
each other through life. It’s a funny thing because people who read the book
indicate that there’s a homosexual, lesbian relationship between the two women,
but so what? If there is or isn’t, it’s irrelevant. They just love each other _ What
does it matter if people love each other? They love each other and how they
demonstrate it is really their personal belief. But they truly save each other and
give themselves meaningful lives.
Analogously, in Driving Miss Daisy, Sam focuses on the affection

between an elderly Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur.
The relationship there is just a wonderful one between Morgan Freeman and
Jessica Tandy. She’s an older Jewish woman in the South and he’s an older black
man in the South who’s driving her car. And for a while it’s not really clear who’s
taking care of who and who’s running the show. But they are an incredible study
together. And they develop from what is a ‘work for me’ relationship, where she
doesn’t trust him at the beginning, to find out what a wonderfully trusting friend
he is. And when they leave this world, they leave this world as friends _ These
people have truly gotten to love each other and care deeply for each other.
To Sam, the most admirable, inspiring relationships are those that

construct love across racial, religious, social, or political barriers. His self-
narrative works to overcome human divisions; he believes in the essential
communality — and goodness — of the human spirit, what Lakoff and
Johnson term the ‘Family of Man Metaphor’ (1999: 317). As he notes
elsewhere in his interview, Sam likes characters who ‘come in and fill an
emotional void’ in someone’s life. Although Sam is well aware that there
are gaping ‘voids’ in the modern world, he believes we are better off
attempting to close them one by one, than to ignore their presence. He
searches for film and television stories that enact this process. As Lakoff
and Johnson comment, such narratives ‘project family moral structure
onto a universal moral structure; the moral obligations toward family
members are transformed into universal moral obligations toward all
human beings’ (1999: 317).
Terry
Terry, age 30, is a self-described ‘radical feminist lesbian’, and much of her
self-narrative is grounded in the experience of growing up as a gay woman
in a patriarchal, heterosexual culture. Terry’s struggles, however, have not

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hardened her, but rather made her especially sensitive to love shared
between two people (much like Sam) and to the need for each person,
regardless of gender or sexual orientation, to be respected as an individual
and to have a sense of empowerment. Her favorite motion picture is Fried
Green Tomatoes.
There is a little girl named Idgy and she looks up to her brother, Buddy, and he
is killed by a train. That’s the beginning. It becomes a love story between Idgy and
this woman, Ruth. [Through Ruth], Idgy is finally able to trust again. The plot
thickens as Idgy is accused of killing Ruth’s ex-husband (Frank Bennett), who is
completely abusive to her. Through the whole thing Idgy stands up to Frank
Bennett. She stands up to him very publicly, which is why she is accused of his
murder. Her strength is also shown because she basically stands up to the KKK,
and all these issues of racism are explored through the film. It’s working in a series
of flashbacks in the conversation between Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates back to
Idgy and Ruth. Every time they go back to the Kathy Bates character, you can tell
she is gaining strength and empowerment from the story of these women who, in
the face of even greater odds and in an even harder time to live, stood up for what
they believed is right. She is able to, in rather humorous ways, implement that in
her own life by being more honest and asking for her needs to be met by her
husband, as well as just being more affirmative and not apologizing for her
existence. This is probably the most extreme women’s picture, because it explores
these three generations of women. It’s not often that you find such developed
female characters in a film.
To Terry, the character of Idgy was heroic in the same way that the
character of Atticus was heroic to Sam in To Kill a Mockingbird; both
Idgy and Atticus represent the archetypal figure who will insist on justice
in an unjust world. In Fried Green Tomatoes, Idgy’s strength of moral
commitment is shown to not only rescue her girlfriend, Ruth, but also to
feed forward into the present time by rescuing an unhappy, submissive
housewife (Kathy Bates’s character) from an unfulfilling life. Terry is
further drawn to the movie’s story by its inclusion of a lesbian
relationship. ‘There is also usually a lack of lesbian characters [in current
cinema] and I think Ruth and Idgy’s relationship was explored in a very
tasteful way that was about love and commitment and strength, as
opposed to someone’s much more negative interpretation of it’.
Another of Terry’s favorite films was Thelma and Louise, in which two
formerly submissive, unempowered women become transformed into
what is usually a male archetypal figure — the outlaw:
The two main female characters are Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. Geena
Davis is a housewife in a very unhappy situation with her controlling husband. She
is planning to go away for the weekend with Louise. It turns into this whole wild,

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crazy adventure that is sort of more a mental journey for the two of them than the
actual physical journey they take with the car. What happens next _ is on their
way they stop and Thelma is nearly raped by this really horrible man _ Louise,
having been raped before in her life, is really angered by the situation and she
shoots him and kills him, which is very, very hard for Thelma. They take off on the
run in the car and just really get to know each other by communicating as women
and trying to talk about their experiences, so they can empower each other. There
are a few other subplots. There is a nice cop that is trying to help them along the
way. He believes they are innocent. Not every male character is bad, but Thelma’s
husband is certainly bad. The rapist is certainly bad, and this very cute Brad Pitt
she runs into on the road doesn’t seem to be bad, until he steals their money.
After a long journey, they drive off a cliff fearing that they would otherwise be
jailed for life.
I: How did you react to it?
T: Very strongly. I was completely shocked, but at the same time I saw
the necessity in ending it that way, because you needed something
that powerful to end the film. You couldn’t just have them go to jail
or something.
Much like male protagonists in the films Spartacus and Malcom X, the
female characters in Thelma and Louise die as martyrs to a worthy, moral
cause (Jung 1959, 1990b). As Lakoff and Johnson (1999) note, part of the
cognitive unconscious is metaphorically responsive to those who are
willing to die to achieve a just outcome. In recent twentieth-century
history, Gandhi and Martin Luther King have served as icons
representing this same ideal. To Terry, Thelma and Louise were slain
by patriarchy, by misogyny, by all of the enduring inequality and injustice
that still pervades relationships between men and women (see also
Billington and Green 1996; Randazzo 1995).
Another especially significant film for Terry was Aliens.
Here’s a very quick plot synopsis. There is an alien. Sigourney Weaver must des-
troy it and she not only must destroy it, but she must protect this child. So having
her as a mothering figure, yet someone who is in this army with large weapons
fighting this large Evil is really interesting and is really putting together different
roles and different stereotypes. Then they play off the use of her as a female again
in the third one, when they have her ship crash land at an all-male prison, where
she must endure the most extreme patriarchal order of all and still be the one that
is taking responsibility for destroying the alien, and she mobilizes these people to
help her do it. The movies use so many different ways to exhibit her strength.
I: Are you saying this movie is about strength in a way?

T: It’s a lot about power and struggle and playing with the gender roles
and the expectations of male and female.

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I: How about the other characters in the movie?

T: That was used quite well. In the second one they set up a whole
familial thing which is actually restored at the end. I mentioned that
there is a child to have her as a mother, but there is also a man that is
sort of this father. Just as she ends up taking care of the child, she
ends up taking care of him as well and protecting him. She is the one
that gets them safely to the ship and then goes to kill the alien with all
this gear. Not only do they set up that whole family for her to be in,
which is usually completely in contrast to that kind of a female
character, but they have her protecting him as well.
I: What do you like about this movie?
T: Because of the strong character that you can identify with, although
it’s in the fantastic realm or science fiction realm. People don’t fight
aliens. That’s almost in a way why it’s easier to identify your struggles
with her, because it’s a made-up struggle against an Evil, against a
Power. You can translate that into whatever that means for you, as
opposed to if it was dealing with an issue specifically like rape in
Thelma and Louise. This leaves you more open for interpretation for
what evil she actually is fighting.
Terry’s description in the passage above connects to the metaphor of

the monster (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). At the archetypal level, the alien
monster in Aliens is equivalent to the rapist in Thelma and Louise, the
KKK and Frank Bennett in Fried Green Tomatoes, the bigotry of white
Southern society in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Nazis in Schindler’s
List. It is this same monster springing from the collective cognitive
unconscious that animates the shark in Jaws, the whale in Moby Dick,
Frankenstein’s monster, the Cyclops in The Odyssey, King Kong,
Godzilla, Dracula, the Romans and Phillistines of the Bible, the child
Damien in The Omen, and the evils of ‘advanced capitalism’ identified
by Lukacs, Jameson, and Marx (see e.g., Wood 1985). The monster is
whatever society or the individual views as threatening its survival, its ability
to achieve and maintain selfhood. For modern women, this may be the
patriarchal order; for Jews, the remnants of anti-Semitism; for people of
color, the oppression of white society, and so forth. The monster, like
the hero, has multitudinous masks, but at its metaphorical core it is the
same for everyone (Eliade 1991; Wood 1985).
In order to defeat the monster, the hero must be both courageous and
strong; strength may come from physical prowess and/or force of intellect.
For Terry, heroism is grounded in female figures who use their wits and
their strength of character to defeat evil. Her heroines resemble the
mythic/historical figures of Joan of Arc and the Greek goddess Athena

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(Bierlien 1994; Leeming 1990). Both of these female characters acted as

virginal warriors; women whose female sexuality was dormant and who
instead were motivated by the Jungian male principle, the animus, to
battle evil in whatever monstrous form it took (Jung 1959). Sigourney
Weaver’s character, Ripley, in Alien, Aliens, Aliens III, and Alien Resurrec-
tion, was a recent iconic representation of this archetype, as noted by
Terry. A living representation of this same metaphoric category is actress
Jodie Foster, who for Terry, personifies the animus female figure.
I: Who would you say your favorite movie actors and actresses are?
T: Start with Jodie Foster.
I: What do you think about Jodie Foster?
T: As a person I have a great deal of respect for her, because she’s been
an actress ever since she was a young child. She is a Yale graduate
and now she has her own production company, which is quite
successful, and she has directed a number of wonderful films as well,
and she is a lesbian. I think her acting is excellent and her directing, as
well.
I: What do you think of her in the characters she plays?
T: I think she chooses very good roles _ She chooses to portray very
strong women, female characters in a number of different situations,
so they have to express [their strength] in different ways. One of the
first of this type being a 13-year-old prostitute and having to deal
with that situation.
I: What was the name of it?
T: Taxicab [sic]. She was also a rape victim in The Accused. Then the
role that she received most recognition for was in Silence of the
Lambs. She played an aspiring FBI agent. She was the only woman in
this position as far as contrasting her with the males in the academy.
Also matching her with the brilliance of Hannibal Lecter who was an
incarcerated psychopath _ revealed how intelligent and strong she
is. In Nell, she plays a wild child raised outside of societal control and
as it turns out, once somebody could communicate with her, she is
quite intelligent and quite kind and certainly has more of a sense of
herself than any woman living in society possibly could.
Julio
Julio, age 24, moved to the continental United States six years ago from
Puerto Rico; in order to enter a university, he had to attend two
additional years of U.S. high school and is now enrolled as an

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undergraduate senior in college. In his homeland, Julio was one of eight

brothers and sisters; his parents are separated and Julio’s uncle served as
the primary father figure in his adolescence. A recurring theme
throughout his interview was being in the position of the underdog, the
heroic protagonist who begins his quest at a great disadvantage and must
overcome extraordinary obstacles to reach his goal. Julio’s favorite
motion picture is Rocky (and its sequels).
I: Can you tell me what those movies are about?

J: Actually they mean a lot _ When I was younger, I was pretty fat.
I remember going to J. C. Penney’s to get pants and stuff for school.
I used to get ‘husky’ sizes all the time. And my grandmother used
to feed me too much. When I saw the Rocky movies, especially like
the first Rocky movie, it meant that underdog theme, of being
the underdog and going against what everybody says and stuff. Like
in the Rocky movie, I found out that if you really want something and
you try that hard to do it, you can accomplish anything.
I: Can you tell me what the movie was about? What happens in the
movie?
J: It starts with a story of this guy, who is played by Sylvester Stallone,
named Rocky Balboa. And in the very beginning, he was a nobody. I
mean, all he did was walk the streets _ He had no purpose in life. But
he did have one thing that he liked which was boxing. By some rare
chance, he got a chance for the title, which is the one thing that any
boxer or any athlete, you know, that’s your chance. That is your
dream come true. I mean, he got it by chance, but he worked hard,
very hard for it. And you could see all through the movie all the stuff
he goes through, not just physically, but mentally to prepare for this
fight. And the other guy, his name was Apollo Creed _ he was the
champion. He just thought that, oh, look at this guy, who does he
think he is? He was just too overconfident _ And that’s what
brought him down. And this guy, Rocky Balboa, worked so hard for
it, he wanted it more. And you could tell he wanted it more. And that
applies to what I said before — if you really want something and you
work for it, chances are, you’re going to get it. Like I said, growing
up, I was pretty fat. And I started getting into the game of basketball.
And I liked it a lot, but I wasn’t physically fit for it. All that weight.
So after I saw Rocky, it just made me want to get better.
I: Get more physically fit?
J: Not only physically, but mentally too. I used to work out with a
Rocky tape, with that song. I used to work out at night. We used to
have this carpet; and the carpet had I would say 12 to 15 divisions.

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I would put on the Rocky tape along with some other tapes every
night, and I would run for five minutes on each one until I was
soaking wet from sweat. And I lost a lot of weight. I went from being
very fat to being very thin. And I think the Rocky movies helped me a
lot. Rocky III complements that first one, because when you’re the
best you take everything for granted. You’ve got to remember that
you’ve always got to keep on your toes, keep getting yourself better.
And it applies to life itself, too.
I: In what sense?
J: Anything you do, whether it be a business or restaurant, anything you
want to do, you want to be the best at it. And if you make it and
you’re up there, you can’t just stand back and relax. You’ve always
got to keep striving to make yourself better.
Campbell (1959, 1990) has written extensively on the hero myth, in

which the protagonist must leave the ordinary world, venture forth
in search of his/her goal, overcome a series of dangerous challenges, and
then return, bringing new knowledge and powers. The heroic tale is what
James Joyce termed a monomyth, a structure which emerges from the
cognitive unconscious (see Gibbs 1994; Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
The heroic quest pattern is believed to represent development of the
individual’s persona which must progress from its frail, vulnerable,
unknowing state at birth, pass through a series of physical, mental, and
emotional obstacles during childhood and adolescence, and emerge as a
competent, fully developed adult (Bierlein 1994; Gibbs 1994). Thus, the
heroic quest is the cognitive substrate of our construction of self-identity;
it is the story of our struggle to become the person we want to be (see
Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
Julio sees Rocky’s struggles as his own; indeed, the parallels between
Rocky’s life and his are striking. Both are men well past their adolescence,
at a point in their lives where it is crucial to self-identity that they make
something of themselves. Further, both are members of economic and
ethnic minorities; Rocky and Julio both are products of ‘disadvantaged’
backgrounds — marked by alien accents and dark skin, having few or no
capital resources (Bourdieu 1984). They are not connected by race or class
to the surrounding, successful milieu of WASP culture (Holt 1997). Both
also must turn to foster-father figures to reach manhood: Rocky to his
coach who teaches him patience and commitment; Julio to his uncle who
imparts to him the same lesson.
My uncle was the one who taught me how to play basketball. The first words he
said to me, it’s like, ‘This is the hoop, this is the basketball. You’ve got to put the

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340 E. C. Hirschman
basketball through the hoop’. Every day, I would go to a little seven-foot

basketball goal at my neighbor’s house. And I became the greatest dribbler out
there. Next day I’d come back, I was the best shooter. So he taught me. He taught
me how to fight. In seventh grade, I made the basketball team as a freshman, but I
didn’t start. Guys were bigger, better. Finally, a basketball tournament came and
my uncle sat in the stands; he had to take off work _ And I’m sitting on the
bench _ First quarter goes by, I’m not playing. Ah, he says, it will be alright.
Second quarter, still not playing. Come on, we’re beating these guys by 10, they’ll
put me in. Halftime comes, he’s just sleeping through the halftime. Third quarter,
nothing. I look at my uncle. He’s like waving at me. Fourth quarter. I say to the
coach, ‘Shouldn’t you put me in by now?’ Half the fourth quarter, nothing. Ten
minutes left. I say, okay, if he puts me in, I’ll be mad because he didn’t play me
before, but I’ll still play. Well, he didn’t put me in the whole game. My uncle came
to watch me. It was supposed to be my proudest moment. But it was my worst
moment I ever felt in my life. He was my teacher, my hero. And I didn’t play.
I came home with him. I took my shirt off, I threw it against the wall, and I said
I’m never playing again. Never again. He goes, ‘Don’t let that get to you. I went
through the same thing. Just practice. You’ll make it next year’. And I was
honestly ready to not ever play again, never look at a basketball again; but I did
what he said. I practiced, I practiced, I practiced until late at night. I played every
day in the summer. The next year, basketball season came again, and I made All
Conference and All Division. All Star. [I played in] the All Star game. And that’s
when I felt that it paid off. And I guess most people need that. Most people need to
go from bad times, so they can better themselves.
Julio’s personal narrative is grounded in the self-perception of what

Campbell (1959) terms the low-born hero. Originating from a position of
disadvantage, Julio must cast his aspirations upward and overcome both
physical (obesity) and socioeconomic deficiencies (see also Lakoff and
Johnson [1999] and Gibbs [1994], for discussion of low/high as a
metaphoric construct). Julio is cognizant, however, that not all quests
embarked upon by low-born heroes end well. He tells of the characters
portrayed by Al Pacino in two films who struggled, but ultimately failed,
to achieve their desired goals.
J: Carlito’s Way. It’s about this guy, named Carlito, he was in prison for
a while. And when he came out, he said to himself, ‘I’m not going
back. I’m going to stay on the road of becoming a good citizen’. But
things happened, and he gets drawn into it again, against his will. I
mean, there’s nothing really much he could do. But once he’s into it,
he decides he might as well do it. That’s the only life that he can lead.
I: Why do you think that?
J: I think some people, they grow up with no kind of education or
anything. They think that their only road of making it is by doing

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whatever it takes. They just think, well, this is my life and that’s it.
That’s all I’m going to do.
On occasion the gap between the ideal self and the real self is too great,
and the psychological effort of casting oneself as the hero becomes too
burdensome. The motion picture Scarface echoes this same theme for
Julio, but also leads to a second metaphorical narrative — the failed or
corrupt hero.
It’s the story of this Cuban immigrant who comes in and he wants to make a life
for himself. He wants the money, he wants the girls, he wants everything. You see
him coming from a boat, getting here, and becoming the top leader of the Cuban
mafia in Miami. Bit by bit, everything he does, it’s towards that goal of being what
they call being the Man. Being powerful, having respect _ But he ends up killing
the people he loves and getting killed himself, because what he was most interested
in was power. He wanted power and to be feared more than anything.
In both Carlito’s Way and Scarface, Julio describes heroes who failed
either because they were overcome by their surroundings or by an internal
flaw. In both these films, the hero dies violently and without achieving his
goal. However, Julio’s stronger attraction was to another heroic quest
motif — that of the fallen hero who overcomes his flaw; these are termed
myths of redemption (Campbell 1959). Following again Julio’s metaphoric
incorporation of athletic trials into his personal narrative, he discusses the
basketball film Hoosiers.
It’s a story with Gene Hackman. He’s a basketball coach that got kicked out
of this big-time school, because he hit a player, and he ends up in this little high
school in Indiana. He’s a great coach, but he had no choice but to go to that
high school, because of what he did. And he started with this team, which was a
little, little school. He took them all the way to the conference finals. I guess it
repeats the same theme of the underdog. They went against all these big-time,
recruited schools with all these players and stuff. And they won it all. I think
it’s a very touching movie for the fact there’s different elements in it. Not only
just being the underdog. One of the assistant coaches, he was a drunk. And he
gave him another chance too. It talks about second chances for people who had
failed.
In Hoosiers, Gene Hackman’s character had been ‘on top’ of a highly

successful career/quest. Yet a personal flaw led him to break an important
rule — he struck a player, thus negating his earlier triumphs. Heroes
must be of pure moral character; corrupting oneself merely to hold
onto a treasure inevitably results in the loss of the treasure (Campbell
1959; Eliade 1958a, 1958b). Fallen heroes must redeem themselves by

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342 E. C. Hirschman
embarking on another quest; this time resisting the temptation that caused
their earlier downfall. Julio describes poignantly the film Cool Runnings
which of all the motion pictures he described seemed to cut closest to his
soul.
The movie stars John Candy. We find out that he was an Olympic bobsledder and
he cheated. He did the worst thing you could ever do in the Olympics. He cheated.
And he got kicked out of the United States bobsledding team, and he moved to
Jamaica. Once he’s in Jamaica, there’s this black kid. He lives in Jamaica and he’s
running a race. And somebody trips him and he falls down. He trained all his life
to be in the Olympics, and all he needed was this one race to win. He got tripped,
he fell, and there went his Olympic chances. So he’s going nuts. He’s going through
the books trying to find out what he can do to be in the Olympics. And he finds
that they can make a bobsledding team, which is the most far-fetched thing you
can think of, because of Jamaica’s hot climate. And he finds out that John Candy,
who is a coach, is living in Jamaica. So he finds three more guys that are top
sprinters. They’re strong, they’re fast; and he takes them with him to get a
bobsledding team. We’re talking about the same underdog thing again.
They come in to the Olympics. You’ve got Germany, you’ve got Switzerland.
You’ve got all these great bobsledders in the world. And you’ve got these
Jamaican guys who had to buy an old, rickety bobsled to compete. Everybody is
making fun of them, and they just want to try to do their best. And somehow they
qualify to be in the final meets. And in the beginning, it was all like a big joke.
Oh, look, Jamaica, da, da, da, da, whatever. But once they started doing good,
everybody starts taking notice of them. And at the very end of the movie
something very important happens. He asks the coach, John Candy, ‘Why did you
do it? Why did you cheat in the Olympics?’ And John Candy looks at him very
seriously. I think this is a very important part of the movie. And he goes, ‘You
want to know why I cheated?’, he goes, ‘Because I had to win’.
I: And what do you think he meant by that?

J: What he meant by that was all he could think of was he had to win.
Second best was no good. And he did whatever he had to do to win
and he cheated. He won it all, but because he cheated they took the
gold medals away.
I: How did you react to that?
J: I think it was a very touching, very personal kind of thing. I think that
I could honestly feel the pain, his pain and the teammates’ pain _ He
goes through a lot. It’s embarrassing to say this, but the last part of
the movie, I went twice to see the movie. You could say I’m like a guy-
guy. But there were tears in my eyes at the end of the movie. In the
last scene they go on the bobsled, and they’re making great time. All
of a sudden a screw came off the bobsled and one of the sides
broke _ And you could see the finish line, I would say like 50 meters
away _ So they get up, they pick up the bobsled, and he goes, ‘I must

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finish’. They take the bobsled, all four of them, they put it on their
shoulders, and they walk to the finish line. And as they’re walking to
the finish line _ everybody started applauding. And just that scene,
when he goes, ‘I must finish,’ I started bawling at that scene.
Julio’s retelling of Cool Runnings effectively conveys the essence of

heroic quest; further, through his narrative we also are able to glimpse his
attempt to construct metaphoric moral equations (see Lakoff and
Johnson 1999). How does one redeem oneself from a past error in
judgment? What penalty must be paid for a sin? How are we to respond
when confronted with evidence that life is not fair? That the best man (or
woman) doesn’t always finish first? These are the ‘voids’ or ‘chasms’ that
the metaphor of moral balance works to overcome. Through a system of
archetypal checks and balances, oppositions and complements, the
cognitive unconscious attempts to help us strike a balance among
incommensurable elements — utopian perfection versus flawed reality,
random chance versus rational choice, and fulfilling our own goals versus
supporting the quest of others (see Campbell 1959, 1970, 1988; Lakoff
and Johnson 1999).
The collective unconscious and bi-polar mediation
Lévi-Strauss (1963, 1969, 1979, 1981) and Campbell (1959, 1970, 1974,
1990) — as well as Frye (1963, 1970, 1983) and Eliade (1954, 1959, 1963,
1965) — constructed their interpretive frameworks by drawing upon
Jung’s notion of the shadow archetype. Jung (1959) proposed that within
the cognitive unconscious all signs/categories carried their own opposites,
which he termed the shadow. Jung’s thinking was analogous to that
proposed by current cognitive theorists who suggest that through
evolution, the human mind has come to function using digital reckoning;
that is, that humans think and make judgments by building upon patterns
of perceived differences and similarities (see e.g., Barthes 1957; Edwards
and Potter 1992). These 0-1 judgments are the building blocks of
cognition (Donald 1991; Pinker 1997).
To Jung, every sign or code of meaning coexisted with its shadow/
opposite, and through the deployment of these opposites in narratives,
people were able to define patterns of meaning-in-the-world. One task of a
narrative, whether a widely shared myth such as the biblical story of
creation, or a small-scale personal exposition, such as Julio’s story of
winning the all-star basketball game, is to enable us to work through
these oppositions — to bring them into balance. For example, consumers

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344 E. C. Hirschman
may use television or motion picture narratives to bring evil into balance
with good or to bring personal achievement into balance with helping
others (Gibbs 1994). Jung proposes that archetypes help us achieve and
maintain a psychological system of checks and balances; in a particular
situation, the consumer will construct or seek out a narrative which
frames a set of characters in such a way as to achieve a satisfying
explanatory outcome.
It is these archetypal categories of thought, translated into widely
recognized cultural codes (Hall 1997), that permit construction of the
consumer narratives which come forth during phenomenological inter-
views (Edwards and Potter 1992; Franzosi 1998; Harre and Gillette 1994).
And it is these same metaphoric patterns translated into specific
theoretical or political perspectives, which permit academic interpreters
to construct feminist (Radway 1984), psychoanalytic (Freud 1952),
Marxist (Jameson 1991), structural (Randazzo 1995), and deconstruc-
tionist (Kroker and Cook 1991) readings of particular cultural texts.
To Jung (and current cognitive theorists, e.g., Lakoff and Johnson 1999)
any and all human interpretive strategies will be based upon the
same biologically-based elemental forms embedded in the cognitive
unconscious (see also Barthes 1957).
Closing thoughts on biology and semiotic destiny
As Gibbs (1994) and Lakoff and Johnson (1999) discuss at length,

metaphoric thought arises from basic human sensori-motor experience
and interpersonal contact. And as Mithen (1999) has shown, evolution-
arily, metaphor precedes the origins of literature by thousands of years.
Both sensori-motor and interpersonal sources of metaphoric cognition
underlie archetypic constructions (Gibbs 1994; Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
Jung, as early as 1924, was writing that an archetype ‘has one aspect
oriented ‘‘upward’’ toward the world of images and ideas, and another
oriented ‘‘downward’’ toward the natural, biological processes’ (quoted in
Jacobi 1959: 39). These biological experiences then become abstracted to
form archetypic categories of thought:
Just as the living body _ is a system of functions for adapting to environmental

conditions, so the psyche must exhibit functional systems that correspond to
regular physical events _ From time immemorial, the daily course of the sun and
the alternation of day and night have been expressed in a series of images such as
the myth of the dying and resurrected hero, and these images have been imprinted
on the human psyche. Here we may speak of an image analogy to the physical
process and assume that the psyche has a structurally determined capacity for

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translating physical processes into archetypal forms or images. (Jung, quoted in

Jacobi, 1959: 46, 47).
Archetypal narratives grow from metaphor; simple biologically and/or

socially based human experiences become abstracted and can then be
combined into complex cognitive constructions, such as heroic quest
and the dying god. We may trace the semiotic analyses developed by
Danesi (1999) back to these same basic, unconscious metaphoric
patterns. Through this same pathway, we may also link semiotic
research with cognitive psychology-based research. As Lakoff and
Johnson (1999) detail, cognitive psychology notions such as prototypes,
ideal types, schemas, and exemplars should also be understood as
emanating from these same unconscious metaphoric neural structures.
They note, for example, that most categorical knowledge is organized
at the basic level because ‘the basic level is that at which people
interact optimally with their environments, given the kinds of bodies and
brains they have and the kinds of environments they inhabit _ The
properties that make for basic-level categories are responses to the part-
whole structure of physical beings and objects’ (1999: 28). They note
further that whereas early cognitive science, based on the mind-as-
machine computer metaphor, assumed a strict separation between
cognition and bodily sensations/experiences, more recent research has
revealed the inseparable nature of body and mind (see for example,
Pinker 1997).
This recent work also calls into question semioticians’ preoccupation
with spoken and written language, the so-called ‘linguistic turn’.
Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that we have been overly influenced
by the pursuit of analyses based upon linguistic universality and
absolutism. As Danesi (1999) rightly observes, much (perhaps most)
semiotic meaning is embedded not in language, per se, but rather in the
gestures, objects, events, and actions of human life. Lakoff and Johnson
(1999) also critique post-structuralism, noting that the assumptions
underlying its linguistic grounding are empirically unfounded.2
Further, research grounded in phenomenology — such as that evidenced
in the present paper — must also be cognizant of the inability of
humans to be fully aware of the unconscious metaphoric origins of their
thoughts and self-narratives. Researchers and people, alike, are not able
to make mentally visible the vast reservoir of unconscious thought that
precedes their verbal utterances. As Jung proposed, only the specific
iconic shapes and patterns drawn from this reservoir are accessible to
our conscious minds; the templates from which these images are struck
remain beyond our grasp.

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346 E. C. Hirschman
Finally, I would argue for greater recognition of the depth of influence

which contemporary mass-media products, especially motion pictures
and television shows, as well as advertising, have on the construction of
archetypal cognitions and self-identity. As has been noted by many
academic commentators (Hall 1997; Jowett and Linton 1989; Stevenson
1995) as well as popular culture writers (Time 1999), motion pictures and
television shows are the primary means through which archetypes are
conveyed and consumed in contemporary culture. What is commented
upon less explicitly, however, is the significant continuity of the archetypal
forms these mass-media products convey. As the foregoing analysis of
consumer interviews has shown, contemporary popular culture narratives
are the descendants of discourses first formed many millenia in the past.
The images we view now in theaters and on television are semiotic echoes
resonating from the dawn of human consciousness.
Notes
1. Which they define as ‘all unconscious mental operations concerned with conceptual
systems, meaning, inference, and language’ _ (1999: 12)
2. These assumptions are:
1. The complete arbitrariness of the sign; that is, the utter arbitrariness of the pairing
between signifiers (signs) and signifieds (concepts).
2. The locus of meaning in systems of binary oppositions among free-floating
signifiers.
3. The purely historical contingency of meaning.
4. The strong relativity of concepts.
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Elizabeth Hirschman is Professor II of Marketing at Rutgers University 5hirschma@

business.rutgers.edu4. Her research interests include popular culture and consumer
behavior. Her major publications include Heroes, Monsters and Messiahs: Motion
Pictures and Television Shows as American Mythology (2000).

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Review article

Metaphors, archetypes, and the biological

The collective unconscious

Semiotica 142–1/4 (2002), 315–349 0037–1998/02/0142 – 0315

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archetypes: ‘So far as the collective unconscious contents are concerned,

The archaeological record and the collective cognitive unconscious

Although Jung’s biologically based theories of meaning have been amply

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shaping of biologically hardwired cognitive capabilities, resulting in

Additional support from recent cognitive psychology

Zaltman (1997) reviewed a broad set of contemporary cognitive

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thought is both metaphoric and unconscious. Even more recently, the

‘The mind is inherently embodied’.

On the following page they state that, ‘Reason is evolutionary _ It is

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Lakoﬀ and Johnson (1999) also describe the metaphoric projection of

Cultural narratives and self narratives

Narratives, whether myths, folktales, fables, allegories, or everyday

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Like verbal metaphors, cinematic metaphors present one idea in terms of

Additionally, both Dyer (1982, 1986) and McCracken (1989) have

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ﬁlm and television narratives are metaphorical vehicles (see Bordwell

Four consumers’ stories

I want to illustrate these proposals regarding the biological and cultural

Pamela begins her narrative by telling me about the motion picture

I: Can you tell me what it was about?

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a light on it was this picture of a beautiful young girl which in the

With just this brief description, we have already encountered several

P: And he tried again so hard to go back to her, because he loved her so

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Pamela’s account of the movie’s archetypic structure is consistent with

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This passage introduces a second central theme in Pamela’s inter-

In this utopian vision, the iconography focuses upon an abundance of

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Pamela connects the beauty and natural rebirth of Easter/spring with

Here Pamela constructs an explicit contrast between the utopian

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P: I like White Christmas because my favorite person Vera Ellen [was

I: What is it that attracts you to them?

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Pamela’s comment that Jane Seymour is ‘beautiful, kind, and very

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Sam is a 47-year-old, Jewish store proprietor; he is married with two

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to seek a moral solution to a problem, because it is the civilized thing to

The role of Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird was performed by actor

This passage illustrates well the metaphoric impact which motion

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In this passage Sam views archetypal evil as represented by the

Schindler’s List also features a heroic ﬁgure, Oskar Schindler, who

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Sam ﬁnds a similar theme in Fried Green Tomatoes:

Analogously, in Driving Miss Daisy, Sam focuses on the aﬀection

To Sam, the most admirable, inspiring relationships are those that

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