[UA] Stereotypes and archetypes

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

> I resist the idea of "fictional archetypes" in UA because I think it clashes with one of the central tenets of the game -- that the universe responds to HUMANITY.  Not to particular, chosen representatives of it, but to the whole mess.  Now, if we start going for fictional archetypes, suddenly the lives that 99+% of us live don't matter as much as what one writer's perceptions.  Most people don't write books and a lot don't read them or care about them.  There's much more to life than the idealized or bowdlerized or polemicized images that writers see fit to confine in print.
> 
> Do you really think writers have a deeper understanding of humanity than anyone else?

Well, I think that most of the literature on human archetypes (a la C.G.
Jung) is pretty unambiguous on this point: certain pieces of art
(literature and film among them) resonate more deeply with people
because they explore archetpyes that _are_ more real. Good writers (or
other artists) are distinguished by their insight into the _truth_ of
various archetpyes and their ability to represent said archetypes in
their art. When the same archetype shows up in one story after another,
it's no longer a question of "one writer's perceptions".

The examples of "stereotypes" you present seem to be projections onto
the Other. Insofar as that is true, they _do_ represent facets of actual
human experience (because projection is only possible in cases when the
projected trait is present in the subject.)

We may only be disagreeing here over semantics. Your
superhero/demigod/king example suggests that you simply support DEEPER
interpretations of stereotypes, digging down to what is at the heart of
a stereotype to find its archetypal foundations. If that's what you're
getting at, then I agree wholeheartedly: I'm staunchly of the "archetype
reductivist" school, scorning The Soccer Mom in favor of The Martyr and
rejecting The Friendly Bartender in favor of The Confessor.

Still, I've never quite understood where you stand on Jung's archetypes.
Clearly, Jungian psychology involves a fair amount of hand-waving and
arbitrary distinction, but a lot of people have put a lot of thought
into it over the decades and have pretty compelling data to back up
their categories. How do UA archetypes relate/overlap/replace the old
categories?

-Matt Norwood

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