Film Courage: What are the eight common archetypes or psychological functions found in most stories?
Christopher Vogler, Hollywood development executive, screenwriter, author and educator: When
I was composing my model of storytelling I looked to the work of Carl Jung who had made
this hypothesis that there is some kind of collective unconsciousness and that out of
that which is like the dreaming state or the unconscious mind of an individual person the
whole culture has got a swirling cloud of ideas and energies and out of that there were some
common things that he noticed and he called those common forms or characters sometimes
he called those archetypes and the word means a version that's very very old the original version
of something so the archetypes are kind of core beliefs or almost models of from which all kinds
of other variations can be described but the ones that I found most useful were first of all
the hero who stands for an idealized version of ourselves. It's somebody who is maybe more
athletic or successful or bold or brave or funny or some in some way is a little bit exaggerated
but has qualities that we would like to have and so we project ourselves into that hero. The next
one that I studied was the mentor because I noticed that a lot of stories like Star Wars
have strong relationships between a young hero and an older Master like the Jedi Masters the
various ones that you find in in the Star Wars saga and that was a very interesting study how
those teachers and student relationships developed and and you could get a lot of
comedy and a lot of drama out of those the next thing would be the shape shifters because
it seemed as I studied many movie examples and fairy tales and so forth that there was often
a character who might be a love interest or a friend or an ally for the hero but their nature
was always a little bit shifty and they sometimes appeared to be friendly or to be useful allies
and at times maybe there was danger of betrayal or disappointment so their nature is kind of shifting
and I think that reflects how people relate to other people that you form first impressions
of people and then maybe you learn more about them and you see they were there was more there or less
there than I thought so that term shapeshifter refers to the way that people's appearance or
their mask or their behavior might change quite a lot in the course of a story or in life and are
puzzling sometimes to the hero the hero has to figure out that's one of the tasks of the hero
is to figure out who am I really dealing with in other people around him or her so shapeshifter is
kind of a catch-all for those and this is where I put all of the romantic relationships but also the
buddy comedy relationships that they fall into that same pattern because typically one member
of this two-person team that's thrown together usually one person is pretty fixed and for term
in their appearance and their attitudes and so forth and the other one is kind of shifty and
untrustworthy or mysterious and this is a human thing that we all encounter we kind of know who
we are to a limited extent but we kind of have a sense of ourselves and then we meet other people
and maybe have to work with them and find there's more than meets the eye so the shape shifter is
kind of a place where I park all these romantic and friendship and alliance and business kind of
relationships because they do have this aspect of of trying to figure out who am I really dealing
with and then the next archetype I guess that comes into play is the shadow which is the dark
reflection of the hero and I made an assumption when I started working with these ideas that oh
well this is where we put all the villains they're they're the shadows they're the dark version of
the hero and when the hero is up the villain is down and disappointed and when the hero is in
big trouble the the villain is on top of things and feels great so it does cover that and and
I think that's a useful way to look at villains that they're kind of the dark shadow version of
the hero but it also it's a much bigger term in Jungian archetypal theory that includes all the
stuff within yourself that you are suspicious of or you don't trust or you don't like or
you're ashamed of or you're afraid of traumatic events in the past that you don't want to think
about all of that lives in an area inside of our psychology that's called “The Shadow,” so it's
both the name for individual characters who might be wearing that mask of a threat to the hero or
the dark version of the hero but it also can be a space within the hero or even within a society
where all that dark stuff or repressed stuff is hidden and it has certain rules that I think are
very interesting for composing stories that the shadow tends to get stronger the more you deny
it so admitting to things and revealing things to yourself and and exploring and dredging up
unconscious material is usually a healthy thing it's difficult but getting the shadow out into
the light is a good idea and I think vampires as a literary creation are a really good expression of
that shadow idea because technically they're supposed to disappear into a puff of Ash or
something when they come out into the sunlight and it's the same with these shadow things they have a
lot of power when they're held down and repressed they become quite dangerous but when you let them
out it's not so bad and they lose their power when we shine some light on them so next thing
up is very useful one archetype that called the threshold guardian and this is something that my
mentor Joseph Campbell wrote about extensively and I found it really useful in life the idea
is that every time you come to a Crossroads in life every time you come to a boundary between
one way of living and another or one world and another there seems to be somebody or something
there at the border guarding that transition and possibly blocking you like a policeman stopping
you demanding payment or telling you to go away and it's one of the tasks of a hero is learning
how to deal with that and it's inevitable these things are going to come up sometimes it's a
character in a story sometimes it's a force like a huge rock slide or a waterfall or something that's
blocking your path but the heroes have to figure out ways to get around it over it under it through
it to embrace it to seduce it to bring it into your parade along with everything else and not be
stopped by it that's the basic key and I've just found this so useful in life and in my career that
often I will meet an obstacle and I will think this is fatal this is going to destroy me this is
going to ruin my ambition and then I realize no it's just a threshold guardian and so I knowing
that I can make friends with it I can bring it on to my side I can figure out how to wit it or trick
it it's it's just an extremely useful tool in life as well as in stories so next thing up is a kind
of delightful archetype called the trickster and this is one that has a long long history that goes
back into myths and fairy tales all the way back to the earliest Tales we know from the Egyptians
and from folk stories all over the world the idea of a funny Little Critter who doesn't have all the
cards he's not big and scary but he's clever or there's a lot of him like a lot of rabbits or a
lot of ants and as an individual they don't have much power at all but collectively they have a lot
of power and they can even be stronger or smarter than a big creature like a bear or something
scary like that and these stories have their long long history and we still enjoy stories like this
when I think about the Warner Brothers cartoons about Wiley Coyote and and the Roadrunner the Road
Runner is would be helpless in the jaws of the coyote but he never gets in the Jaws because he's
smarter than the coyote and has a million ways of outwitting him and using his own energy against
him he's he's a very clever example of this this archetype of the trickster and there are many in
different cultures Native Americans talk about various creatures like the Raven and sometimes
the coyote himself being the the clever one who can out with the the bigger scarier creatures and
it also is a place to put in your thinking all of the clowns all of the humor and sometimes this is
a kind of a mask that is worn by characters in the story they become funny in order to do some
job they become clever and are able to outwit the the stronger characters who who should have all
the advantages but this this kind of trickster mentality gives them some advantages and then
the the last one that I added in later additions to my book it was kind of an afterthought but it
was very important is the ally that a lot of characters in stories heroes and stories
are limited in some way they don't have much of a sense of humor they are infallible or
they have to be right all the time and they really need somebody to go alongside of them
kidding them joking with them deflating them when they get a big ego giving to the audience
something very important which is called comic relief that this is a belief of Shakespeare's
is that if I'm going to clobber the audience with really heavy emotions and make them cry
or make them horrified by the behavior of the characters I better leaven that just a little
bit with something funny and so he would often put into his most serious Place a little Joker
character who would maybe be a drunken guard at the gate or an old family retainer or somebody in
in the court who is there to make fun of the the king and the the fancy people and I just love this
this aspect of allies is that sometimes they have that comic role they overlap with the tricksters
a little bit but they bring balance to a character and we really really like this form of two people
going through a and adventure together who are quite different they contrast quite a lot like
Sherlock Holmes is this cold intellectual and he's balanced by the warmth and the heart and
sometimes the foolishness of Dr Watson so the two are not exactly mirror images they're maybe broken
mirror images of each other but you put the two of them together and you get a complete human being
and I think that's a great way to think about these archetypes is that they're all aspects
of human life and everybody has got some of these characteristics and some of these masks available
to them and so it's a great thing I think to study psychology and how it comes out in the movies
and see what archetypes am I expressing at this moment at this moment I'm expressing a kind of
a mentor teacher archetype but I may slide out of this chair and fall down so then we'd
have the the trickster appearing so we have access to all those things and that's what
makes a complete human being and sorry did we speak about the herald ah I knew I left
one out yes it's thank you for reminding me I've forgotten the poor character The Herald
the archetype of the herald maybe the reason that I left that one out is that it is less
essential than the others its job can be done by any of the others but the function sometimes
is broken out In a story and given to a specific individual character to be the one who brings the
message who usually brings the call to adventure and it could be in a simple thing like a western
some guy comes running out of the telegraph office and says Sheriff the bad guys just got
out of jail and they're going to be on the train at noon so you better gone up and be ready because
they're coming to get you to get the revenge and then perhaps that character is never in the story
again or they may come back later with other warnings but the job is that of the old Heralds
in the medieval courts who wore a certain costume and had usually a trumpet to blow announcements
and to say the king is dead long live the king or the new king or they would say there's a princess
available for marriage and we'd like all the local princes to come around and see which one is the
best or let's declare war or let's declare peace or some important announcement has to be made and
mythologically this goes along with a character who flies from the world of the Gods down to
earth to bring messages and that's Hermès and or Mercury as the Romans called him and that was his
job and he shows up probably more than any other character in mythology because he was so useful he
was always flying up to heaven reporting on things down on earth and then sending down the will of
the gods to the the heroes and people on earth and so he did that herald function very effectively.