THE ARCHETYPES
C.K.G Jung, the great psychoanalyst, posited the existence of the "collective unconscious". And the archetypes which populate it, all of which are manifest in the imagery of popular culture.
It's a long time since I studied Jung. But what we all know and think we are familiar with are the archetypes he identified. I will list those in a second. He said that people largely misunderstood what he meant by archetypes. He used the analogy of a crystal dissolved in a solvent. The structure is hidden in the liquid as a potentiality, out of which crystalline structure may form. The archetype is the potentiality, not the form it takes. There are only a small number of archetypes, but the forms they manifest are quite literally infinite.
And our super heroines, heroes, yes and villains, are iterations of these archetypes.
As are Archie and Lois Lane.
And even Daffy Duck.
Archetypes form the foundation on which each individual builds his own experience of life, colouring them with his unique culture, personality and life events.
They are recurring patterns of human behavior, symbolized by standard types of characters in movies and stories.
Here are some examples.