Ib Film Analysis Of The Outsider Archetype y6l15

The Shadow of the Outsider Movies Examined:

Cultures Examined:

Fistful of Dollars Yojimbo

American/Italian/Western Japanese

The Shadow of the Outsider is an examination of the outsider archetype within film, and would be relevant to IB Film students because the deeper analysis deeply rooted in human psychology provides a connection between cross cultural use of Jungian archetypes.

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The character of the outsider in film

Mirrored opening credit shots of Yojimbo and Fistful

comes from a deep history and culture traditions within every culture. And the psychological want to belong is shown across film and cultural tradition. Music start: very soft Yojimbo theme An ingroup is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. For example, people may find it psychologically meaningful to view themselves according to their race, culture, gender, age or religion. It has been found that the psychological hip of social groups and

categories is associated with a wide variety of phenomena.

This is contrasted with the idea of the hero within cultural mythos, a hero is usually characterized by their destruction of the Jungian serpent of chaos, and embodiment of change and danger within or to a society.

Heroes express a psychological aspect of human existence. They can be seen as a metaphor for the human search of selfknowledge. In other words, the hero shows us the path to our own consciousness through his actions.

In film, the hero could often be considered the representation of the conscious mind or ego, or rather a persona thereof. In film the viewer is obviously supposed to identify with the hero, regardless of differences in characters.

In contrast, the villain could be seen as the unconscious realm, and the archetypical representation of the shadow or adversary. The shadow may be also seen as the projected undesirable parts of one’s personality.

In the films Yojimbo and a Fistfull of Dollars which are incredibly similar, the viewer identifies with the main character, who is an outsider to the societies each find themselves in. Each stranger finds themselves as a spectator to the feud between two factions. We’re going to use Yojimbo as our primary example, though most instances are so similar to Fistfull of Dollars that all you need to do is change the name and aesthetic.

A lone man wanders through a desolate landscape, and heads to a town

embroiled in conflict, it is strangely desolate though. In Yojimbo we easily identify with the character as he is the first person we see, and we follow his actions, though he is an atypical hero, lacking many of the moral scruples that make for a traditional hero. We see the main character as synthesis of the shadow and the hero archetypes, being both the most likable, and yet the agent of change and disorder within the story.

Throughout the story the main character changes very little, he has gone through the individuation of the merger of the shadow and the self already, and acts only as an agent of change within the story. He plays both sides, remarking that the town would be better of without either gang.

Sanjuro or Blondie both represent outsider challenges to societal structures,

and from a standpoint one might instinctively expect the viewer to root against them. However we find many positive qualities in the main character aside from our focus on him, the wit required to play both sides, a sense of morality alien to the culture surrounding them, and skill in their respective mercenary crafts, swords and guns. The outsider mystique surrounding both of them is some what subverted by way that we spectate them, and that they embody mythos rather than pathos as characters. Typically a character is what we most identify with within the movie, which we do with Blonde and Sanjuro, but each are also the main driving force of the plot, both causing and reacting events