Research

Traditionally, images and other types of media like animation, movies are the very objective representation of a specific period. In terms of the development of technology, such as virtual reality, it brings us a new instrument of representation. If we made a movie in a traditional way, at the time it finished, it has its own autonomy in which the object and subject are separated. Here is the hypothesis of an interface (which produced by mixed reality devices) as a representational tool. An interface that can reflect on reality and brings up a new interpretation of it. Thus, the interpretation becomes a semi-objective, semi-subjective representation. Under this new situation, we may start to realize that some of our previous representational tactics are not as real as we were thinking. For instance, it is not possible to apply the rule of perspective on this new interface, there is no concept of vanish point.

What this interface do is providing extra information on top of the reality we see, and then evoking us to rethink the reality we experienced. It challenges the existing norm and concept of the reality we granted. Normally, the way our eyes observe the world is by receiving the data within the image of the surroundings. Our brain processes the information we received and transfers into the form we understand. By employing the interface, the data is preprogrammed and editable by others.

For example, in John Berger’s book ‘the way of seeing’. He addresses the importance that how the world can change the way we see Van Gogh’s painting ‘Wheatfield with Crows’.

Traditional animation is ‘I tell the story and audience listen’, but in this case, the story could be told interactively, which means the audience can experience the story meanwhile develop the story by themselves. Therefore, storytelling requires the ability of design to anticipate people’s behavior and guide them properly. Furthermore, the design may need to be executed through various technics such as data analysis, algorithm and AI.

Image, movie, and animation are the abstraction of reality. In the future, we’ll live in a different world that needs a new way to observe. The application of the interface can rebuild people’s behaviors and even cast an impact on the future by remaking the memory. On top of that, the escalate of storytelling can expand the bandwidth of receiving the information, affects information transmission efficiency and may revolute the traditional media to some extent.

Appendix:

The primitive painting in the caves is showing the technic and the skill that the primitive people have to abstract the world in their memory. It’s very inaccurate because the rule of perspective was not introduced yet. People from the future may see us as we see the primitive cave painting. There was a new way of seeing, we should embrace it.

The animation is a complicated film industry which combines story, character, style characteristics, and techniques that can reflect the social environment, even economics, and politics. There are fundamental dissimilarities and similarities lie in the animation of different countries during the same period, which can enlighten some ways to interpret, especially when it comes to Japanese animation and America animation.

As a 23-year-old Chinese girl who studies in the U.S. said, “I remembered when I was little, we listened to Western music, watching Tom and Jerry or Mickey Mouse, and we also watched Japanese cartoons, like Detective Conan and Sailor Moon. At that time, I can barely understand English, but I remembered them till now because they were so impressive.” Even though people may create and distribute their alternative cultural products, it is undeniable that influential global cultural producers hold the most significant power to shape a new balance of culture situation which may present the economic and political situation.

After the second world war, it has already formed the tendency of differentiation of the animation industry in America and Japan under people’s desire for recreation. As for the most prolific animation industry back then, Disney company artists created characters and animations to educate citizens and encourage them from the trauma of the war as well as putting to patriotic use. For instance, the first of Disney’s war-themed animation shorts “Donald Gets Drafted” which premiered in 1942. The studio was using characters to speak on behalf of the U.S. government, which connected with patriotism. Later, more cartoon stars joined the war effort: Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Goofy, Pluto, and the superstar who punched out the bad guys, Popeye. (Larry).

Simultaneously, Japanese animation started to flourish in terms of the origin of the intimate relationship with visual images, as well as the desire to reconcile the concepts of power and mercy, organic and mechanical which derives from the trauma of the second world war. Some of the up-and-coming generations of animation artists went popular at this time – Osamu Tezuka, for example. Under the influence of Disney Cartoons and Fleischer Studios, Tezuka created “Astro Boy” series which are characterized by a new style encounters which are realistic, detailed and emotional. Comparably, as Peter F. Drucker put in his critique of theories of business behavior invested in the profit movie, he argues that the purpose of a business must lie in society since business is an organ of society. (Christensen, Jerome, 591–617) The change of features towards animation also lies in society and culture, while it inevitably associates with the investment from giant productions.

As a matter of fact, this connection continues to be fostered today as seen in both Disney animation production and Hollywood comics, as well as in animation studios of Japan. The representation of animation has been inherited into later production though classic animation styles still work on the market. While with the constantly changing situation of the world after World War II, America government transformed its policy towards Japan from pressing to supporting and fostering, which cast a huge transformation in animation features and the creation of characters both in Japan and America.

There was a noticeable escalation of Japanese animation expansion in America during the 1990s, as high technology and cars, the animation could be seen as another profitable commodity exporting to America. Animation occupied the most percentage of recreation culture in Japan. However, it became “alternative culture” in America due to the possibility that American anxieties about the influence of their culture all over the world. Thus, there were a certain amount of Americans became a fan of Japan animation, and they interpreted it by their party for giving them the illusion that America took away Japanese culture. (Newitz, Annalee, 3)

American feel that their own culture is bound with their country’s relationship with Japan. So did Japan take it in the same way? There was a delicate association between the perception of society and animation genres. It went popular for Japanese animation in America in terms of a genre called “magic girls,” representative works appear as Oh My Goddess!, Sailor Moon and Video Girl Ai, etc. Almost without exception, the protagonists in the film are woman posses superpowers, however, there was a hidden rule that the magic girl hides her powers to keep demure, only showed the strength and power out when encountered mishaps. This coincides with the economic globalization back then when the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble lead to a vulnerable state. The gender identity existed in the Japanese animation presents the dilemma that Japanese’s unwillingness to abandon intrinsic ego and culture identity while to change themselves so that they can catch on the times. Another prevalent animation, “Detective Conan,” indicate this complexity adequately. High school student Conan was poisoned by a mysterious western guy so he can only be trapped in a child body which was no longer growing up. Meanwhile, he owned a great ability and marvelous power as a detective. The feature illustrated that Japan had to forbear from the super economy of America, but eventually to show its strength to the rivals.

Apart from that, when it changes the view to the west, as for the arising anxiety and horror after the endless war with the Soviet Union, Americans owned an intense desire for anti-war ideology and a peaceful period which cast significant influence on different types of cultural products. When it came to film and animation industries, the counter-terrorism embraced with the features and characteristics which exist on the characters and the stories. City violence and crime became the central theme, and the superheroes who combat with these led by Batman and Iron Man came into being. These heroes existed in live life and played the part of the guards of the city. The hero and the villain require each other to make a complete, and the cycle of escalating acts of good and evil is a perpetual motion machine set to continue for all eternity. (Tyree, J. M., 28) Iron man, for instance, he suited himself with his high-tech trademark suit and hovered around to detect city crimes and fight against the military-industrial complex. It delivered a sense that someone being as a mastermind behind the political and economic turmoil while America still wants to grasp the hegemony of discourse and spread its imperialism all over the world.

Bibliography

Larry Margasak, “Hollywood Went to War in 1941—and It Wasn’t Easy.” National Museum of American History, 3 May 2016

Christensen, Jerome. “The Time Warner Conspiracy: JFK, Batman, and the Manager Theory of Hollywood Film.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 3, 2002, pp. 591–617. JSTOR, JSTOR, doi:10.1086/343232.

Newitz, Annalee. “Magical Girls and Atomic Bomb Sperm: Japanese Animation in America.” Film Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 1, 1995, pp. 2–15. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/1213488.

Tyree, J. M. “American Heroes.” Film Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 3, 2009, pp. 28–34. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/fq.2009.62.3.28.

Links of the Orginal Articles by Yuxin Tao:

https://sharontao.blogspot.com/2020/04/comparatism-of-archetype-reflected-on.html

They are many categories of monsters of our culture varies in size or quantity from zombie and vampire to psychopath and cannibal, etc. Meanwhile, it’s been the subject of so much storytelling over the course of the human race, with people of all walks of life interpreting in their own way to these stories and characteristics, but with which all speak out, it can be fitted in Jungian’s archetype to analysis the deep reason behind the monster side. I’ve chosen two different monsters who present different stages of change while share some similar points.

Jekyll & Hyde is a story about Dr. Henry Jekyll faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a scientific experiment that transforms him into the animalistic Mr.Hyde. Dr.Jekyll starts his idea with applying his new medicine to save his father, and to prove his righteousness to authorities. From another point of view, it can be related to Freud’s Oedipus Complex which is common for boys to experience the period of hatred to his father. Rather than saving his father, to prove himself and instill his own value is more important. Simultaneously, there is another character in Batman: Dark Knight, Joker, whose trauma may suit back to his childhood of the relationship with his father. Being harmed by his father plants the seed of hatred which transform him into sociopath later.

Whatever Mr.Hyde or Joker, they are rooted in a certain culture and environment, a culture’s monsters signify and literally embody its most acute anxieties, so that the bodies and actions of monsters become a site of a culture’s most deep-seeded fears and taboos. For instance, why has Dr.Jekyll and Mr Hyde touched so many readers so powerfully and deeply? One answer lies in the spirit of the time in which it was written. At the end of the 1800s, Britain was undergoing a period of intense social, economic and spiritual change when after many decades of national self-fulfillment. It seems a taboo to bring dying back to life in Dr. Jekyll’s society at that time which perfectly captured some readers’ fears that their carefully built society was hypocritical. The appearance of Mr.Hyde invokes the deepest fear and scare among citizens, so he became the monster, who is then a projection of these unconscious fears and anxieties: it can be seen as the incarnation of fear, desire, anxiety and fantasy not only from Dr. Jekyll himself, but also reflect the sickness of the whole society.

Unlike zombie or vampire, which represents classical monsters that own physically transmutation as well as mentally, Mr. Hyde or Joker yield out of their cesspool of vice by giving the monster life it then has independence, a life of its own. However, there are similarities among them. Monsters are representations of our own misdeeds, our faults, sins and dark secrets which are creatures of the liminal zone between consciousness and unconsciousness. It appears on Mr.Hyde to a certain extent. What’s more, they present the purist evilness by being intrigued by pure desire like blood, and the desire to eat human beings. As for the monster embedded in the human form, Mr. Hyde and Joker tend to exploit human weaknesses to achieve other goals on the base of fully understanding the dark side of humanity. Edward Hyde came into being when Jekyll’s invention would spilt his good and bad natures into two exists. Mr. Hyde is more primitive for he owns a younger and hairier body, but he share a single memory with Jekyll. Though as an individual life, Mr. Hyde owns the pure evilness, there’s the goodness individual hide in the body and those two sides are separated from each other obviously. Joker, whose the boundary between goodness and evilness is ambiguous, he showcase a highly mixed complexity of evilness and goodness who use people’s own weakness to attack back.

Literary theorist Noel Carroll has written several books and literary essays on the subject of 'art horror' which means fictional horror stories we consume for fun, not true horror stories. Carroll defines horror as a story involving a threat by a monster (stories with more human threats are "thrillers"). Carroll defines a monster as an unnatural creature, nonhuman or not entirely human, that constitutes a threat to the protagonist, which illustrated a lot in the movie Batman: Dark Knight.

According to Carroll’s Taxonomy, when we watch the horror fiction or the horror movies, we are not actually horrified, instead of that, art horror is meant to trigger a response in its audience like horror or terror or fear. People can feel some connections with the victims. As for most of human beings, they are easily being tagged as good or bad, white or black, nevertheless, the joker viewed himself as not good, bad, or neutral which is hardly accepted by ordinary people. He was nothing more or less than a personification of insanity, cynicism, mental instability and anarchism. What’s worth mention is that the central threat in Dark Knight stands out as the danger of physical danger, psychological danger and spiritual and moral danger.

Fission monsters occur when a person has two identities: one normal, one monstrous. The most classic example of this is a werewolf--a normal person turns to a hideous beast periodically and has no awareness or control over his or her actions. One of the most important aspect is due to the sequence, not the time and place be synchronized but it can be linear. Different from the fusion monsters which are human and monster at the same time, fission monsters bounce between human and monster forms. Edward Hyde is the evil side of Dr. Jekyll’s identity. At first, Jekyll has to use the drug he has created to transform himself back into Jekyll, but after a while Jekyll finds himself transforming into Hyde spontaneously, while he’s sleeping and he’s awake.

The fifth category of Carroll’s Taxonomy exist monsters that seem normal but for a sense that something is not right, called Horrific Metonymy. They are not outwardly monstrous but still set other characters ill at ease. A classic horror metonymic monster

is Dracula, who is a charming man just like Dr. Jekyll, though he has strange habits such as avoids mirrors, sunlight, and garlic, yet the strange habits conceal the fact that he is a bloodthirsty menace. Both two sides of goodness and evilness combined in a single human body which is different from the fusion monsters, as they do not have a normal outer appearance. The Horrific Metonymy category also contains psychotic killers like Hannibal, who can appear normal but are not.

“good and evil in everyone and I can bring them out through chemicals”

“When it comes to the Joker, I think there’s a lot more self-doubt than there is with other characters. He really is his arch-nemesis. He is the devil in his ear. He tells you all the things you’re most afraid of are true about you.” Say from Scott Snyder on the Joker as Batman’s nemesis.

Joker is a special character open to various interpretations and if we applied Jung’s archetype, we would find it’s extreme interesting and fascinating. Joker as a trickster archetype, he disobeys societies rules and conventional behavior. He performs a range of functions as not only a character in the story, but also an outer presence for our own inner psyche. Especially in Batman: Dark Knight, whatever people are afraid of, whatever the city and the government keep repressed, whatever what kind of the existed individualistic heroism in society, the joker is going to bring attention in its own unique way. Although sometimes played for laughs, most depictions of the Joker are monstrous, in-keeping with his psychopathic nature.

The Archetype Joker

As a trickster, Joker may appear bizarre and weird which is a reflection of a part of our psyche that we reject to look at or become familiar with. In the movie, Joker left prominent examples of chaos to chance, such as blowing up a hospital or the two ferries. He is a servant of the mind, and these crazy ideas may exist in everyone. However, unlike speculator Two-Face, the Joker never left things to what he could not control, like a coin. Instead, he let the people of Gotham choose the outcome. He also left no option in which everyone was safe. While Batman broke tons of laws and rules to save people’s lives, Joker said,” What’s the difference between us?” He’s willing to sacrifice everything to invoke the evilness inside the protagonist, to prove that his value is the only righteousness.

Joker reappears throughout Batman endlessly and follows Batman around like can never get rid of him. For if Batman kill Joker, he’ll become someone which he hates. From this perspective, Joker archetype can be a shapeshifter which occupies multiple origins and reboots continuity. Heath Ledger’s Joker, his personality and methods shift with his various incarnations, which presented as after different killing conspiracies. Joker becomes ultimately whatever it wants to be, furthermore, sometime reflects a twisted version of the values of the hero or protagonist, Batman. Joker can change persona’s and origin stories as easily as changing clothes depending on the conditions of its environment. To put it into another metaphor, Joker resembles a toxified mirror which can project the illness and sickness of people. Thus, two-face is easily transformed by Joker. However, Batman is Joker’s ultimate goal. Without Batman Joker’s life has no meaning, without playing the game with Batman, Joker becomes a catatonic nobody.

“You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with”

The more we are bothered by other’s behavior, the greater the chance that there is something of ourselves that we are repressing or rejecting to. Joker as trickster also acts in serving a purpose to help us to recognize our Shadow through his strong and intensive performance. Once our Shadow of our psyche are brought our attention, in order to achieve psychological growth and maturation into fully human beings, we would start to work on these qualities, as Carl Jung refers to as “individuation”, which reminds me of Batman in the movie Batman Begins. He spent seven years to accept and embrace his trauma under the unconsciousness which turns out that he becomes the Dark Knight, even though accompany with Shadow, he fulfilled himself and guard Gotham City, the absolute and purist justice. The Shapeshifter Joker sees himself as challenging Batman to be the best Batman he can be, owing to this benefactor, Batman realized that he is not the hero with the definite brightness, he became much more loyal to himself.

As Nietzsche said, our body is an only social structure composed of many souls. It seems much direct and simple when it comes to Dr. Jekyll. The soul of evilness has

been repressed too much till the soul of goodness can never take the control. Mr. Hyde is full of energy and is more evil than Jekyll’s dark side had been. Comparatively, Mr. Hyde was controlled by his own evilness and projected the evil to his society which allow people to reflect more upon individuals. Nonetheless, there is no fear or threat to Joker, he even didn’t realized himself as evil but the righteousness which he want to use to revolutionize Gotham City, as demonstrated by his trying to goad Batman into running him over as well as laughing when Batman threw him off the roof of a building. The total innocence of his evilness, depravity and insanity, perhaps make it more meaningful and thought-provoking.

Obviously, we can find the same clue in our life as a fair and good person could commit the most dangerous and evil crime when his belief was destroyed and controlled by Shadow. (Just like Two-face) In other words, Shadow can function like poison and drug to attract people to get addicted to it. Throughout these myths, movies and literatures talking about monsters and creatures year after year, the discussion of struggling with Shadow and trauma of psyche in humanity has always remained while the figure and form of monsters have changed a lot through the modernization of the monster myth. Even the series of zombie theme has transferred to human figure as priority. Probably, the human form-monsters relates to human beings to a greater extent than other forms. Hence, reflections and analysis returning to human – the biggest monster, has provoked a more varied and severe attention.

Works Cited:

Cohen, E. D. “Hiding the Subject?: The Antinomies of Masculinity in ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 37, no. 1/2, 2003, pp. 181–199. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30038535.

Doane, Janice, and Devon Hodges. “Demonic Disturbances of Sexual Identity: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr/s Hyde.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 23, no. 1, 1989, pp. 63– 74. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1345579.

“A Taxonomy of Monsters.” Adobe Slate, https://spark.adobe.com/page/PLDOg/?source=post_page---------------------------. Accessed 14 Aug. 2019.

Course Hero, Inc. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Study Guide. 2017, p.3.

Sorensen, John. “Batman’s ‘Joker’ as Mythic Archetype – The Clown Prince of Crime.” BATFAN on BATMAN, 4 Feb. 2016, https://numberonebatfan.wordpress.com/2016/02/04/batmans-joker- as-mythic-archetype-the-clown-prince-of-crime/.