Jungian Shadow in movies and games
You know the feeling when you are watching a movie and it just catches your attention — a bad guy against the good guy, a “chaos vs order” fight is going on, a yin-yang fight for the harmony. There is a reason why that happens —manifestation of Jungian Archetypes, that stimulate primordial parts of your psyché. We are gonna take a quick look at one of them.
Shadow
It is the repressed part of your personality, the part society tells you you should suppress to conform to societal norms. A mother suppresses her hate towards a new born baby that does not let her sleep. Then it erupts in a crazy abrupt manner after half a year of lying to herself and the mother kills the baby. Happens all the time. Shadow is everything you see in others that you hate — in reality you hate that in yourself. Almost everything you resent in others you only resent in your self — else you would not even notice it. In short, a psychological projection. Anything you project unto others you cannot bear in yourself. But you can never become a fully integrated being by fighting your Shadow.
You can see the concept most easily in the movie Fight Club (1999). Materialistic capitalistic man is not capable to attain his higher ideals (if he even has any), so he develops an alter ego — except the “person” was in him all along. He just suppressed that part of himself for so long that it had to get out in some way. Tyler Durden is created. Only after a long struggle the main hero “comes to terms” (well, kind of) with his Shadow side and integrates it. Only then he becomes his true individual Self (with a hole in his cheek — that symbolism shows you that you cannot “just integrate” your Shadow without sacrificing a piece of yourself).
The Dark Knight (2008) — an absolute classic. The manifestation of chaos, the “Joker” (who is also a very clearly the “Joker” archetype…) faces his polar opposite, Batman. Batman is so called “superego”, Bruce Wayne is “ego” and Joker is the “Shadow”. Bruce Wayne aims to be his ideal Self, the Batman; at the same time, Joker has very interesting ideas that Bruce has to accept in himself in order to become his fully authentic Self. The conversation between them is a honorable compliment to Heat (1995), where a very similar conversation takes place (chaos vs order — in the middle is Tao, the Way to be; the silver lining; state of harmony and individual Being).
Another classic “Shadow integration”, (SPOILER ahead!) or perhaps multiple-personality movie, is Who Am I — No System is Safe (2014). It is about a computer hacker with a similar aim as Tyler Durden.
“If we want our witch back we write about her; if we want our spiritual guide back we write about the spiritual guide rather than passively experience the guide in another person” — Robert Bly, Little book on human shadow
Writing about your Shadow will help you see it more clearly and befriend it. Notice your resentments, analyze your dreams and create art — all of those things will put you on a way to individuation.
Let your deficiencies burn off like dead wood. Shed the unnecessary parts of yourself like a snake sheds its skin. Burn your old self like a phoenix and rise from the ashes.
If you found my article interesting, you may also be interested in my book on Jungian archetypes and dream analysis. You can get it here:
