Archetypal Stories: How Important Are They in the Contemporary Narratives?

Among the more watched TV broadcasts of all (as well as of recent) times are international sporting events (such as the Summer Olympic Games or FIFA World Cup); Other broadcasts frequently attracting huge audiences worldwide are televisual rituals and ceremonies (such as funerals and marriages of significant figures (stars/influencers or princes -often coinciding in one person -the stars being contemporary gods as was remarked by E. Morin).

Based on TV ceremonial shows we would like to answer the following questions: 1) for which reasons this kind of shows still attract the contemporary imaginary; 2) is this kind of media narratives important for the contemporary social representations?

• We take into consideration the importance of what C.G. Jung has defined as “archetypes”. The existence of the archetypes cannot be observed directly but can be inferred by looking at religion, dreams, art, and literature. Jung's four major archetypes concern the persona, the shadow, the anima/animus, and the self. They are based on ancestral roots, collective unconscious symbols and myths of many different cultures. These archetypes represent behavior patterns that make up different ways of being constituting cultural symbols and images that exist in the collective unconscious and in peoples’ wishes or dreams which although mostly not always compatible with modern reason, continue to be important for the human life (such as images with intense emotional meaning, expressing relational primacy of human life, imprints buried in the unconscious -but not “dead”).
• If we have in mind Hall’s theory on the ways of decoding messages, we better understand why images of “love” and “death” (symbolized in ceremonies concerning “mythic persons” but important for any human life) remain strong in the contemporary representations; viewing mythification of love but also honoring death go together with nature which technology cannot overpass; consequently contemporary narratives neither.