CC BY
60Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 2 (2013 6) 235-246
УДК 130:3
Sociocultural Models for Interpretation of C.G. Jung Archetypes in Advertising Industry
Stanislava A. Bazikyan*
Novgorod State University 41 Sankt-Petersburg Str., V. Novgorod, 173003 Russia
Received 08.02.2013, received in revised form 15.02.2013, accepted 22.02.2013
The present article analyses the forms and methods of the collective unconscious archetypes deformation, discovered by Swiss psychotherapist C. G.Jung. We claim that in the modern "comsumer society" people tend to compensate the lack of care, love, protection, and beauty by purchasing the commodities, the mythological images of which are the projections of such archetypes as "Mother" and "Shade". As a result, the relationships that people build between themselves, are artificial, superficial, formal; they repress the sprititual life, sensuality, creativity, spontaneity of an individual. At the same time, reality grows into a pseudoreality of advertising paradise, the iridescent pictures of which make the contradictions of the real world seem bearable, or even conceal them from being noticed..
Keywords: advertising, archetype, consumption, artificial models, manipulation, illusion, myth.
In the postindustrial "consumer society", the culture of which is based on the mystification of consumption as the only socially significant of behaviour, advertising ceases to be just a branch of industry or "the engine of commerce"; it becomes a way and a model of life. It is typical that the entire advertising universe is centered around the product and its excessed, exaggerated values, the quantitative sublimation of which prevents the qualitative changes in the life and outlook of an individual. In its turn, the most consistent and propaganding form of the advertising perversion of the original diverse nature and the world is a myth; the malignancy of its impact on the consciousness of people becomes magnified due to the fact that it is
being veiled to seem as the only true, natural guidance.
By contributing some stereotype meanings sanctioned by the state into a commodity, advertising loses its original, efficient function of the "private" information mediator between the buyer and the manufacturer; it gets transformed into the most effective form of political control over culture and society. Advertising control over the modern society is actualized due to the formation and the further sale and the individual's unconscious needs that seem the most profitable at the present moment, and the satisfaction scenario of which is inevitably reduced to the acts of purchase and sale. Such archetypal basics of consciousness as dignity, decency, responsibility,
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: Stanislava83@yandex.ru
kindness, love, are turned upside-down and transformed into commodities by means of advertising; in the end they lose their original sanctity, holiness and intimacy.
The famous Swiss psychoanalyst and philosopher, C.G. Jung outlined seven most significant archetypes in his theory ofthe collective unconscious: Shadow, Mother, Father, Wise Old Man, Anima, Animus and Self. According to the theory, each of them represents the successive stages in the development of the inner world of a person. The author of the present article is convinced that the advertising communication becomes the scene for the complete reversal of the entire ontological meaning of these basic archetypes: the ancestral ambiguity of the world is replaced by the stereotypical social characters codes, imposed by the consumer sociality. In order to understand how the archetype in advertising are manipulated and how they are actualized, let us study the archetypes of Mother and Shadow, as the distortion oftheir powerful emotional potential structures the entire commodity-consumer image of the modern culture.
The archetype of Mother. The relationship between mother and child are the most indigenous and most intimate of all interpersonal interactions. Faith in mother is the primary manifestation of religious feeling; it builds the hierarchy of meaning in the childhood and later makes the basis for the entire subsequent life.
According to Jung, the archetype of Mother takes the leading position among the archetypes as a symbol of birth; without it life is impossible in any manifestation. The original meaning of Mother archetype, which is chthonic, mysterious, is the embodiment of the dark unconscious elements that create an instinctive, physiological body. This archetype signifies the beginning of the birth and development of consciousness, which is, nevertheless, a prisoner of the unconscious, under the strict control of the loving mother. In
this sense, Mother is the opposite of Self, which is integrity that symbolizes the formation of an independent personality with the balanced interaction between the consciousness and the unconsciousness.
In dreams, fantasies, hallucinations Mother archetype manifests itself in the images of mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, nanny. The image of Great Mother pre-exists all the phenomena which contain something "earthly motherlike" and determines their nature. This archetype is often associated with the places or things that symbolize fertility and abundance: the horn of plenty, a plowed field, a garden. The ambivalent archetype base includes both the positive and the negative sides of Mother archetype: such images as the goddess of death, witches, Baba Yaga. Jung expressed the specific association of opposites in this character as "a loving and terrible mother".
In the projections, the archetype of Mother expresses everything that makes us feel adoration, affection and security, and that is transferred to such abstract state institutions as the church, state, or authority, giving them the power and numina. Such sociocultural projections are in the nature of phantasms, because these properties are apparently inherent only to artificial beings. The original image of Mother is the image of the life giver, "vast as nature itself" (Malenko, 2010). For example, according to S. Malenko, the Associate Professor of Theory, History and Philosophy of Culture of Yaroslav-the Wise Novgorod State University, "mother is the symbol of the pre-civilized and pre-public accumulation and transfer of the generations' experience" (Malenko, 2010. p.40).
As they get older, people get naturally separated from their mothers, but not from the archetype of Eternal Mother. For an individual to develop in the harmonious way it is necessary to get separated from the archetype, which does not happen in our unconscious society. In the
"consumer society" the break of the psychic bond with Universal Mother occurs due to the emergence of another symbolic connection, which is connection to the mythical Motherland. In Russia, the archetype of Mother was projected to the symbolism and the ideology of the State, and to that of the Motherland; in the West the imaginary unity of people was created by cultivating the transcendent image of the Republic as the defender of the disadvantaged and the oppressed.
With the help of the media promulgating the generosity of the state institutions, which provide protection in the form of laws, insurance, salaries, and care through medicine and public health, the social system takes up the archetypal function of grant guardianship and custody. But this image of the state's selfless concern for the citizens is a fiction, as the system, exhausting people physically and spiritually, smoothens this devastation with some sociocultural signs of official patronage. This way, the turnover of cutting and subsiding is turned into legitimized slavery. Declaring the society to be hopelessly ill is the main reason for its infinite healing.
Under the conditions of the social crisis of family and kinship, the image of mother as a "guardian" is transformed within the framework of the advertising space. The impression of complaisence, the enforcement of the concern for "your pure skin", "fresh breath", "your right to be yourself" creates the impression of a mystical supercaring being, which makes the choice for you, turning you into a passive, but naughty child. The bodies that put themselves as supercaring beings who ensure comfort, warmth, comfort, protection, prosperity, and security, are usually the banks, insurance companies, and medical institutions: "SberBank is always there for you"; "Rosgosstrakh. Under the wing of a strong insurance company". "With us insurance is more accessible, reliable and easy"; "Protection against
a wide variety of risks"; "Johnson&Johnson. Gentle care".
But unlike the natural spontaneous warmth and affection of mother, the philosophy of public concern is artificially fabricated, it is a product of advertising and promotional industry. The generous institutional blessings are always worth a kings ransom, many times superior of the meager handouts from the government bodies.
The original hypocrisy of the state's "care" is thoroughly exposed in the fundamental work by J. Baudrillard: "the service and care are distorted and seem frozen as a result of aggressiveness, sarcasm, involuntary (and often black) humour; and the services and courtesy provided everywhere are now closely connected with deception, with parody. And everywhere one can feel the fragility of this satisfaction system which is always on the edge of breaking down and demolishing, due to this contradiction" (Baudrillard, 2006. p. 55).
Such intrusive grooming and excessive care in the situations that absolutely do not require them, the control and adjustment of the system to the motivations, moods and needs of the consumers from the government discreetly obliges people to be grateful, to reply with support and solidarity to the mother government. Each child is guided by the authority of mother: she is the first and often the only the one who guides and directs the young creature. In the consumer society this sacred role is taken up by advertising. It is the only one to know what is fashionable, prestigious, delicious, or useful. The consumer has no right to choose; the choice is imposed on them by the "advertising that understands you".
Now average consumers need this illusionary surrogate care of them like they need air: by purchasing things they strive to get their portion of approval, support and praise. In the modern society there are no more actions, ideals and aspirations; the only goal of the modern
superficial consumer is to be like everyone else, to be in harmony with the group and with its set of rules; "the approval mysticism has replaced the mysticism of the test" (Baudrillard, 2006). Advertising connects personalized individuals into the social whole, becomes a commodity itself, conquers the consumer with its motherly thorough, non-violent care within the framework of the patriarchal principle of the reality order.
It should be noted that the archetype of Mother is frequently used in advertising, which was defined as "institutional" by the founder of the modern Russian school of advertising, public relations and the sociology of mass communications O. Feofanov: it means that in the advertising of the capitalist society institutions, the sponsors of any social, cultural, economic, environmental or any other kind of project are the corporations, businesses, political parties of movements. Such benevolent actions always lead to gratitude, and, respectively, and to the sympathy of the potential voters.
Consumers are "bribed" by PR charity activities oriented on the social needs of people, but not directly related to the production of goods or services, as the negative image of politics and business is smoothened. Accroaching the natural genres of human activity with the commercial means, the modern "patrons" cover up their corrupted and fraudulent activity with the display of their paternal care of environment preservation, free training and education provided to their employees, creation of jobs, providing employment to national minorities and disabled people.
The essence of this false "kindness" of the tycoons is very convincingly revealed by the Associate Professor of Theory, History and Philosophy of Culture of Yaroslav-the Wise Novgorod State University A. Nekita. "The mercantile surgery of the accounting philanthropy shares is sponsoring a perverse dimension
ratings to prioritize their ambitions in forming and reforming the realities of social being, which guarantees the exclusivity of their rights to the paranoid consumer ontology substitution" (Nekita, 2001, p. 23).
Shadow. Everyone from their birth till the end of their life is a mystery even to themselves. The collective forms of unconscious potentialities inherent in the individual, belong to the shadow side of the individual, which, according to C. G. Jung, finds its place between the individual ego and the inner world of the unconscious. Moreover, in most cases, Shadow is negative, it is contrary to the chosen conscious mindset, and therefore people seek to remove all the dark, down to earth, unacceptable things in their own personalities.
The contents of the archetype of Shadow includes suppressed and unrealized desires, unwanted memories and bad experiences, the ones rejected by the person as incompatible with the public "mask", as they contradict (or seem to contradict) social standards and ideals. Shadow summarizes everything people can never achieve, what they keep striving for. For this reason, it is always associated with emotional arousal. Shadow is an integral aspect of human being: a harmonious personality has to be able to dialectically combine both socially adapted and archaic, non-differentiated properties.
Therefore, the rejection of their own Shadow, and even a more open conflict with it, inevitably leads to the "loss" of the soul. Carl Jung shrouds this process with mystical aura, symbolically transforming the rejected Shadow into an autonomous identity with the conscious antagonistic aspirations, desires and thoughts. The duality of consciousness and the unconscious Shadow in the immediate experience gets personified in the form of a twin. Sometimes it is a servant, a "lower" man, a werewolf, a sorcerer. In the process of unconscious projection these
images are transferred on a particular subject or any external object.
It can even be a woman in relation to a man (a woman is only a weak shadow of a man; the fact that a woman's place is on the weaker side of a man is the most popular projection of the patriarchal world, like Merlin and Fairy, Princess and Hero). Thus, the "strong" man transfers all the weaknesses he does not admit for himself, all the weaknesses he tries to reject, to his female companion, unconsciously making her guilty of his own imperfections.
This way, their own Shadow, the "lower" part of the personality, as the unconscious or repressed part of it, inevitably begins to project itself on other people, social objects and events in the form of negative evaluations, or search for negative qualities; in the end, it causes rejection or even hatred to this or that subject or object. That is how the rejection of "integral being" which combines both sublime and ignoble characteristics, occurs in the outlook of an ordinary person. An optimistically one-sided, subjective self-image creates the illusion of permissiveness, and eliminates of both individual and social responsibility.
Shadow can not be regarded only as a negative area of all personal and collective psychic elements. It can include all the non-standard, all the explosive traits, like prophetic intuition, premonition of the fate, something demonic, mysterious, incomprehensible, and something that lies beyond the borders of reason. The socially unacceptable is not always something useless; very often the "shadow" side of personality turns out to be its informal and original character. "Until now we believed that the human shadow was the source of all evil, but now, with a more thorough study we can claim that an unconscious person, that is, their shadow, does not consist of only morally reprehensible tendencies, but also expresses a number of good qualities, such as
normal instincts, appropriate reactions, reality-based insights, creative impulses, etc." (Jung).
This creative content of the individual's inner life acquires its negative status in the socially standardized behaviour which does not allow any individual unpredictability and uncontrollable creative insights, taken as a direct threat to the stagnant social order. Cultivating instinctive interest to each single "soul" is not profitable for the authorities, so it diverts the energy unused due to the lack of "common cause" from the internal to the external, declaring war on Shadow: "public enemies", oppositional social and economic formations (capitalism - socialism, planned - the market economy), products competitive on the consumer needs' market, economic migrants, diseases, germs, bad mood, etc.
It can be argued that it is the socialized Shadow that became the true model of the power dynamics. Everything that opposes it in this or that way, is now regarded by the civilzed man as a mass of noxious creatures. Otherness is the most inappropriate term for "common sense"; the "other" must be put in place so that it does not stand out from the ground with its unlikeness. The mass of "others" is contrasted with the mass of the "right", "foreign" is opposed to "us".
Technology for creating an "enemy image" allows you to rally around the crowd like a "guru-advocate", then to impose the socially and economically profitable beliefs and stereotypes. Therefore, a citizen can never be satisfied with the existing system selecting a candidate with the formula: "if there are more of "them", the government will not tolerate an "alien". A situation that is most frequent, is when another candidate is objectively worse, but he is the one who "belongs" to the present government.
It is worth mentioning that the militant political appeals, aggressive advertising slogans, which are ideally suited to deceive and blackmail, in fact do nothing but exploit the "shadow" side of
the word, totally ignoring and ommitting its real, initial significance, which is forming the way of thinking, forming the conscience, making people unite into public associations, providing the historical continuity of human experience. In our time of active democratic social communication, the slongan words become sources of suspicion and distrust of people to each other.
The advertising and political propaganda rituals of unconscious conveyance help us to relay the burden of our own sins and responsibility on a real or an imaginary object. Concerning this issue, the civilized society is easily comparable to the prehistoric one, with its rituals of collective transferrence of accumulated fury to the symbolically purifying figure of the "Old Testament scapegoat", which is supposed to take the evil away in the wilderness. But primitive symbolic rituals with the "scapegoat" and the later Christian actions for removing the burden of responsibility, and shifting it to the powerful, yet impersonal devil seem to be much more humane than the civilized political projections and branding people in order to turn them into the devil, the Satan, the Antichrist.
It is remarkable that with the abolition of this symbolic figure, the greatness of the "Holy" God was repeatedly reinforced, and the "shadow" essence of the Devil was localized in the man himself. However, mechanically projecting their own "shadow" on any social object without mastering it, without starting a symbolic, dialectical dialogue between the "dark" and "light" sides of his nature, a modern "civilized" man does not only remain unconscious, but also always loses the opportunity of personal self-fulfillment.
Even with the modern extraordinary multimedia technologies, the idyllic pictures of advertising bliss cannot hide the "shadow" nature of the social structure. The failure to release and to disclose such pernicious practices
of social rejection leads to the increase in the official apologetics, the enthronement of escapist, eschatological attitude: the alien world to an average man looks as the embodiment of violence, cruelty, paradox, where the man has forgotten his high destiny, became similar to animals, monsters, vile insects.
This is what the bright sociocultural images speak about: from Gregor Samsa, the character of "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka, to the "Alien", the cinema landmark tetralogy made in Hollywood, in the '70-90s of the past century. From these examples let us move to the mundane, domestic "abominations" from "Domestos" commercial. It is typical that the active dissemination of such extremely pessimistic and destructive "shadow" attitudes is especially true for the turning points of the civilization, such as in the time of collapse of the great utopias or historical chaos, as exemplified by the collapse of communism in Soviet Russia and post-modern "contemporary timelessness".
To alleviate the destructive mood and to "reorganize" the consumer-philistine space, the production process in the today's society of "plenty" is leveled, cleaned by means of branding procedure. According to the classical definition, branding is "the process of forming a brand image within a long period of time through creating the added value, emotional or rational "promise" of the brand or a brandless commodity which makes it more attractive for consumers" (Neumeier, 2006, p.59). Nevertheless, the general function of branding is using it as a production and advertising alibi for the shadow characteristics of the political systems in order to do the ostentatious, conspicuous "purification" of the sociality of Shadows, spiritual monotony and dullness.
For this purpose, the control system widely uses the technique of exception based on concealing. In particular, the expansion corporate
and industrial division of social and cultural space, decrease of cultural choice, exploitation of cheap labour by transnational corporations which produce "haute couture" brands are carefully concealed, "cleared" by the global commercial advertising. The "Shadow" components of a product (commonness, primitiveness, harmfulness, controversial origin and often dubious value of its consumer characteristics) are replaced by the transcendent, sweet image of a miraculous substance.
This is the base the commercials of such detergents as soaps, gels, deodorants, means of combating stains and germs are based on. Washing tools and detergents perform the mystical mission of cleaning things of everything random or imperfect; moreover, they are usually said not to "wash off" or "kill" the dirt and germs, but to carefully "banish", "drive them away". Although there are exceptions, such as the popular slogan of "Domestos", which reads as follows: "Millions of germs will die". Personal hygiene products stop the decay (of teeth, skin, blood, breath), which is their fundamental difference from another lifesaviour of the humanity, medicines, that kill the pain outright, playing the role of a brave and desperate Barbarian hero, rather than remain cautious and delicately clean things of the evil domestic routine. Germs, which are represented as green, ugly, wild, and therefore extremely unpleasant homuncules, are driven away with this or that saviour substance.
The process of advertising repression and adjustment of Shadow was systematically described in "Mythology" by Barthes on the example of cosmetics advertising, where two absolutely incompatible substances, water and oil, the main components of creams and moisturizers, are miraculously transformed into the mutually complementary ideal fluids: "Carefully retaining all the positive values of this or that substance, the advertising inspires us with a joyful confidence
that grease serves as a vehicle of water, that there are some water-creams which make the skin soft, but not glossy" [Barthes, p.22]. As an ingredient of the latest creams, grease is not something outdated, unpleasant, glossy, slippery; it is an efficient lubricant, by means of which water is directed into the depth of the skin as something ephemeral and fluid, to "nourish and moisturize" it.
Another example of the advertising concealing "Shadows" is the obsession of the advertising messages with preserving youth and the "prohibition" of ageing. Getting old is described as an unnatural, absolutely abnormal result of human development, and eternal youth is presented as a natural and necessary component of life, its constant companion, which has to be miraculously reinforced and updated from time to time: "The nature of anti-aging" (advertising slogan of "Garnier" cosmetics).
This is the way the advertising campaigns escalate the fear of wrinkles and ageing: by propaganding the naturalness of using "anti-aging products" Here is how the world-wide known cosmetics production company positions its anti-wrinkle cream: "Avon Anew. The cream stops the wrinkles before they occur. Do not let your damaged cells turn into wrinkles. The new formula of the cream contains a unique Cell Renovating Complex, which works like a radar, picking the signs of ageing and eliminating them before they appear on the skin. Let's talk about how to turn back time" (Cosmopolitan, 2009).
Preoccupation of the modern beauty industry on shining, fresh and healthy body and the hatred to the real human imperfection, the desire to eliminate it, lie at the heart of cosmetics advertising, which is a factory of similar "bleached" dummies; the slightest disparity with an ordinary person's own appearance with theirs threatens with neurosis and stress, growing sense of inferiority and inadequacy.
The wealth, abundance, satisfaction of desires and ambitions, sense of security praised by advertising is intended to "whitewash", excuse the "shadow", destructive (violence, extortion), depressive (fatigue, nervous disorders, suicide) nature of the order in an indirect way. Therefore, it is necessary to agree with Jean Baudrillard that the abundance of advertising "is, therefore, that ambiguity which is at the same time experienced as euphoric myth and undergoes the process of more or less forced adaptation to the new types of behaviour, to the forms of collective coercion, and to norms" (Baudrillard, p. 222).
It is noteworthy that cleaning and sanitation of the social space, non-negative, primitive, of the "dirt" impossible in the idyllic world of corporations created by special PR-science, is a conflict dealing with important social issues only on a superficial level; the conflict is eliminated artificially, not through the analysis of the adverse effects, but through the fabrication of new portions of new simulacra of prosperity and security.
With the help of spin-doctors the priori imperfect ones reinsure themselves against unexpected adverse inconsistencies, as the situation must be always under control; the "spin-doctor" "cures" these painful deficiencies of the system, creates events that are profitable for the political and economic elite at the present moment. One of the experiences of a similar "heal" for a painful "ulcer" is the U.S. government, which deceived and intimidated the press to finally get their views published in the most profitable social perspective.
Spin-doctor creates a symbolic, fake, "one-dimensional" iridescent area (in the terminology of Herbert Marcuse), a one-sided optimistic world, which has nothing to do with the bipolar real world, where "shadow" and "light" dialectically interact. Symbolic power always hides "shadow" and finds only "light". Typical examples of
such manipulation of mass consciousness in the modern era are in the coverage or in no coverage of some events in the television broadcasts: the numerous communication rituals are broadcast as they are expected to position the candidate for political office in the right perspective for the electorate: cons are overshadowed while the pros are exaggerated in order to acquire the desired feeling of stability and sustainability.
In this perspective, the role of anecdote, which is also a version of the communicative work, but setting a different interpretation of a tricky situation, disadvantageous to the authorities. The topical jokes told in the underground community during the Soviet era, for example, were the best at opening the "shadow" side of the authorities, ridiculing the Communist leaders.
The most common symbol of the Shadow archetype is the figure of Trickster. Trickster is a stuntman and a cheat, a cunning and mischievous guy, violating the old traditions for the sake of finding new ways. Trickster embodies a controversial figure in the guise of Fool, suiting insidious evil jokes and pranks, and Cully, who, due to his stupidity, can achieve what the most "regular" wisemen cannot. A characteristic feature of Trickster is dual contradiction: he is half divine and half animal. "In his most typical way, he appears as a true reflection of the absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to the soul, which is not far from the level of an animal» (Jung).
It is remarkable that Trickster is a natural, demonic creature, who was born back in the primitive times. He symbolizes all the aborted, silly, stupid, unconscious, grotesquely obscene; but at the same time Trickster is close to the saviour, the healer, he is the one who with the help of his wicked jokes and insults reveals the truth, which makes this image especially sacred and dynamic. The hostile, aggressive character of Trickster is explained with his ontological and genetic
relationship with the collective unconscious, which constantly opposes consciousness, but not for the sake of its destruction, but for its assimilation, for reaching the state of enlightenment or epiphany. Trickster is a primitive "space creation", superior to people with his superhuman properties, but on the other hand he is inferior due to his stupidity and unconsciousness. He is created to continually remind people of their gradual evolution from an animal to a conscious being.
The consumer consciousness of a modern, rationalized ordinary person cannot understand the symbolic richness of Trickster or the scenarios of his transformation into a sociocultural metaphor. Remaining seemingly satisfied with the "society of prosperity", he is constantly and unconsciously seeking for a way to Shadows, to the model the behaviour which is opposite to the conventional wisdom, which sooner or later leads to obsession with Trickster: a person begins to live only with the contents of their own "shadow", "below their level", producing hideous attitude to themselves. In the society such behaviour is usually characterized as a personal "mistake", "miss", "wrong step". The person turns into a fool, overtaken by the character of the archetypal Trickster. In critical or questionable situations Trickster, as a part of Shadow archetype (the restricted but integral part of personality) gets projected on the surrounding actions, situations and people. Then people tend to excuse their own fails for the destiny, the fate, who play their cruel jokes on them.
An example of the social activation of Trickster is the medieval church carnival with its inversion of the hierarchical order, with the temporary interchange of the "top" and the "bottom". It was the feast of fools of the early Middle Ages, with dancing, an orgy of the clergy, during which the archbishop, bishop or pope, named "the Pope of Fools", was elected; the carnival was a symbol of tearing off the
masks and social roles. That is why the medieval carnivals and masquerades had a therapeutic effect: everyone could be a trickster there.
In the modern culture the Trickster myth is not embodied in symbolic celebrations anymore; so, it starts projecting itself on some external objects. Ordinary people play with their own unconsciousness, remaining at the lowest level of a joker, Trickster, for indefinite time; however, as a result they do not reach the highest step, which is Saviour. The irony, apathy, cynicism are the main models imposed by the innovation demanding authorities to the spiritual advance-guard of the society and the intellectual elite.
The emancipating function of laughter described by the Russian thinker M. Bakhtin, able to withstand the terror of the authorities by ridiculing its authoritarian symbolism, is lost; now humour only continues and embellishes the imperious terror. For a long time humour and satire have been bearing essential political significance, they perform the "critical function", which means that laughter covers the catastrophic and tragic modern social order. The epidemic irony turns its mistakes into jokes, doubts into past; instead of providing creative and active reflection the system, humour only occasionally makes fun of its mistakes. The more severe the reality is, the faster the society turns into the collective Fool. Advertising industry and its playful comics is the most efficient instrument of fooling, ridiculing the consumer with the empty brands with nonexistent characteristics,.
If in the Middle Ages with the symbolism of the carnival Trickster people could pour out the accumulated energy of the unconscious in a playful form, reversing the officially designated "top" and "bottom", in the "new world", the world of logic and all production everything became horizontal: there is no top or bottom, all the life now is the irony of life. Thus, there is no temporary output for the energy of the unconscious; it builds
up and follows an endless circle, projecting the image of Trickster to people or ideas from time to time. The carnival inversion between reality and its image in the modern times is embodied in both commercial and political advertising. Modern carnival is politics, but the "bottom" and the "top" of it do not exchange their places: the omnipotent tops always "laugh" at the bottom mass of passive spectators.
This is where the popularity of the "Fool" of Russian politics, V. Zhirinovsky ("Volfvych") and the image of the consumer as Ivan the Fool, or Emelya comes from, and this is why advertising campaigns make fun of the ordinary people's stupidity and naivety. "Mortgage is fifty years long, but you're still happy, bright and strong!" by VTB-24 Bank; "Name makes money" by "ADC NAME" Company; "The desire is only one car loan away from reality!" by Uralsib Bank.
In the traditional society the two spheres of public life, routine and formal, were strictly divided from each other. Everyday life was free of ideological coercion, dominated by joke and fun, ironic attitude to any kind of sacred, formal, serious and significant things. It is typical that in everyday life M. Bakhtin saw a powerful counterbalance to terrorism and government propaganda, which warped people's minds back in the Middle Ages. However, the forming capitalist relations were gradually "stepping on the throat" to those "free people". Since the time of Peter the Great the medieval carnival has degenerated from tearing off symbolic masks and mockery at the official ideology, to a tool of political manipulation, instead of a tool of splashing out the excessive energy of the unconscious. For example, masquerade processions under Peter the Great and Catherine II became a part of political advertising campaigns, as they were aimed at increasing the popularity of the authorities, at demonstrating the support for the "simple people". There were some archetypal symbols
that turned into a political allegory, "fit" into the consciousness of the audience and strengthened their faith in the supreme power: for example, Eagle was the symbol of Russian power, and Lion was that of Swedish. The same function was performed by the fancy fireworks show in the memory day of Poltava victory. But even here yet remains a distance between game and reality; an average person could only once in a while immerse into the atmosphere of common conviviality, remembering that it is just a game, in which they were assigned only the role of a passive spectator, not that of an active participant.
In the modern culture there is no routine, because it is under control of the authorities, and the authorities themselves are now reconstructing the common person's daily life according to their needs and requirements, intentionally fabricating some ridiculous blunders and perversions. A common person who is unable to build their own "informal" reality, is now living the institutionalized advertising recreation illusion, following all sorts of tips, recommendations and advice on how to "live" and "work", "enjoy" and "have fun" issued for the socially inert mass of consumers.
It is interesting that the medieval carnival, a variety of agricultural festivals and masquerades with their inversion of the sacred and profane knowledge contributed to building these binary oppositions of life, helped to fully appreciate all the "sanctity" of the sacred and the "ordinariness" of the opposite profane. That is why the sense of the sacred has atrophied in the modern person, and transcendence has disappeared. Consumer routine has replaced all the possible spheres of everyday life and all possible areas of human activity; advertising leads to the final blur of the boundaries between the sacred and the ignoble, to the transformation of the former sanctity into a quibble, replacement of the everyday life into the search of consumer convenience, quality and
prestige. A sense of the sacred is not possible to destroy, it will always look for satisfaction on the unconscious level,.
For this reason, in the desacralized society of consumption the transcendence has moved from the "heavenly" heights to the sinful earth and got embodied in commodities. A common thing, which in traditional society had only the profane, utilitarian value, becomes a fetish, an amulet commodity in the society of commercial plenty. In the mass consumer society, the sacred ideal is the ability of a common person to live carelessly, easily, and the main features of this "advertising" lifestyle is possession, playing with some popular goods. This is the "playing" method that transforms a common consumer commodity, a conveyor-produced thing, into the "product of my dreams", the first spiritual and existential value.
Thus, the presented analysis of socio-cultural models for the interpretation of the collective unconscious archetypes in
advertising suggests that the primordial ontological destiny of unconscious archetypal images is deformed by advertising industry into the subservient propaganda of consumer preferences. Existence of individual is reduced to a purely mercantile, existence "for the sake of purchasing goods", which does not consider or even excludes any social reflection, without which it is impossible to build a harmonious society. This far, development of the world is only done within the framework of the advertising-fabricated artificial samples of love, care, wisdom and heroism. The specificity of this consumer attitude to all spheres of life promoted by advertising is clearly reflected in the advertising of a supermarket network called "Family": "Welcome to the Family!" The author is convinced that this institutional voiding of the family to the primitive consumer "families" of stranger buyers eliminates even the slightest possibility for the conscious development of the archetypal foundations of being.
References
1. Barthes, R. Mythology. Moscow, 2000, in Russian.
2. Baudrillard, J. Consumer Society. Its Myths and Structures. Moscow, 2006, in Russian.
3. Malenko, S. Archetypal scenario of social interaction (diss. For Dr. of Philosophy: 09.00.11.) Veliky Novgorod, 2010, in Russian.
4. Nekita, A. Mechanisms of unconscious distortion of the archetype of the phenomenology (diss. Candidate of Science: 09.00.03) Kiev, 2001, in Russian.
5. Neumeier, M. Gap brand. How to build a bridge between business strategy and creativity. Moscow: Williams, 2006, in Russian.
6. Jung, C. Analytical psychology. Available at: http://www.psyinstra/library.php?part=artides&p
Социокультурные модели интерпретации архетипов К.Г. Юнга в рекламной индустрии
С.А. Базикян
Новгородский государственный университет Россия 173003, В. Новгород, ул. Санкт-Петербургская, 41
В статье проанализированы формы и методы деформации архетипов коллективного бессознательного, открытых швейцарским психоаналитиком К. Г. Юнгом. Устанавливается, что в современном «обществе потребления» нехватка заботы, любви, защиты, красоты компенсируется посредством приобретения предметов потребления, мифологические изображения которых являются проекциями архетипов «Матери» и «Тени». В результате между людьми возникают искусственные, поверхностные, формальные отношения, которые подавляют природную чувственность, спонтанность, неординарность. В то же самое время действительность превращается в псевдодействительность рекламного рая, после радужных картин которого противоречия фактического мира кажутся терпимыми, оказываются незамеченными.
Ключевые слова: реклама, архетип, потребление, искусственные модели, манипуляция, иллюзия, миф.
