Archetypes

February 6, 2008

Went to the Language & Literacy Conference at Arizona State University today where I am sitting in a session called “Storytelling & Writing with the Archetypes & Hero’s Journey”. Even though the presenter was a quack, the discussion of archetype really struck me. As English people, we know there’s no original story. The presented gave us out cards which represented different characters in a story, like villian, hero, messenger, etc… The things on the cards each had attributes that we could use to shape our tale, and my friend Kerri mentioned the movie Lady in the Water. It was as if the writer just grabbed a bunch of these archetype cards, tossed them into a pile, pulled them out randomly and drafted a script. Don’t get me wrong the movie was cool. but can any writer truly have an original idea anymore? Elsewhere, I reviewed the movie Juno, and, even though the script was fresh, I don’t think it was any more original than the Shamalayn film. What do you think?

Posted in conferences, literature