callithump.com ... home to the writings of Sophia Kell Hagin

what makes fan.fic tick?

Even for the richest, strongest, smartest, and luckiest of us, life’s a bitch. It’s hard, it hurts, and we spend way too much time wondering which way is up. That’s why we’re always looking around for hints about what the hell to do next.

Some people are picky about the hints they’ll pay attention to. It’s got to be popular or pricey. Or scientific. Or literary. Or biblical. Most of us, however, will take help from wherever we can get it. And the damnedest thing is that most of us have a weird, unerring instinct about what’s really helpful to us and what isn’t.

Like songs on the radio: Some of them move you and some of them don’t. End of story.

Unless you don’t find anything that moves you. The music’s boring. Your job sucks. The world seems gray and dimensionless. Every now and then you notice yourself asking ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ But no one answers and it’s clear — painfully clear — that something’s missing . . .

Perspective in the pixels

I have a friend who spent years like this. Dazed and confused. Ask her what she cares about, what she wants — really wants — and you’d get a shrug. She didn’t have a clue. Until one night, surfing across the TVscape, she came upon Xena: Warrior Princess. It’s cartoonish, it fractures history, it’s television at its most primitive. Nevertheless, my friend, who holds a masters degree from one of the world’s best universities, was riveted. She remains riveted to this day, by each unlikely, ass-kicking episode and by the vast Xenaverse that has emerged on the Internet, offering thousands of stories of two women trying to save the world.

As an innocent bystander, I am fascinated. As of this writing, Xena: Warrior Princess has become the most popular syndicated television show in the world, translated into many, many languages, beamed from chaotic Russia into fundamentalist Iran, watched weekly by millions upon millions of dedicated fans. What’s more, it’s clear that, thanks to the Xenaverse, a significant number of Xena devotees are themselves, in a spectacular explosion of creative inspiration, helping to shape the evolution of the two protagonists and their relationship with each other. The TV show has transformed its audience and they, in turn, are transforming it.

As I watch this phenomenon unfold, it occurs to me that something downright supra-cultural is happening here. Something that needs explaining in larger terms, from a much wider perspective.

If the archetype fits

So I’ve started thinking about archetypes. This Greek word embraced by shrinks and ivory tower academics to identify patterns of behavior among living things, most especially us, doesn’t leave much out: It includes people, animals, plants, planets, stars in the sky, and the dynamics and relationships of all of us together. And it’s very useful for understanding the impact and implications of Xena: Warrior Princess.

An archetype is like a model or a prototype or, as some philosophers might say, an idea.

It goes like this: Before you can make a chair, you need to have the idea of a chair. So it is with our lives: Before you can make a life, you need to have the idea of a life. And while each life, like each chair, is unique, every one also has certain things in common with all others.

Every chair, for instance, embodies a style and a context. Is it a Queen Anne chair? A Danish Modern chair? A dining room chair? A living room chair? When it comes to chairs, the answers to these questions are critical to establishing whether we like the chair, whether we want to sit in it or toss it in the garbage. We use these same kinds of considerations when we deal with our own lives and with others’, too. Only instead of talking about style and context, we talk about archetypes and myths.

Enter ‘archetype’ into any decent web search engine and you’ll find at least a few sites that actually describe particular archetypes, like styles of chairs, and the contexts, or myths, in which they play out their dramas. You’ll recognize them right away because they’re very old, very — well — typical. Standouts include the Hero (flawed but seeking redemption by battling monsters, demons, or whatever Shadow images personify the anointed evil of the times), the Sage (old and wise and offering the knowledge the Hero needs to defeat the Shadow), and the Trickster (clever, mischievous, challenging cultural taboos and the gods they serve). There are many versions of them, each tailored to a culture and a zeitgeist, but they’re universal because we are much more alike than we are different, regardless of when and where we live.

So as you read about the contexts in which these archetypes appear — their myths, legends, and stories — you may start to recognize yourself as well as other people you know and circumstances you’ve found yourself in. Which, of course, is the whole point. For as you see yourself and your experiences reflected in certain archetypes and myths, you get those all-important hints about what the hell to do next. Your life gains meaning and purpose and direction.

Missing in action

Now imagine what happens to someone whose archetype is missing in action. Such a person struggles to figure out what to do next. Time gets wasted, energy gets dissipated. Life lacks the meaning, purpose, and direction we all seek.

The solution seems rather obvious: Retrieve and restore the missing archetypes. For a number of reasons, however, this is easier said than done:

Reason One: These archetypes didn’t just wander off; they were kidnapped. Some were locked away in solitary confinement without sustenance in the hope that they would wither and die. Others were mercilessly beaten, enslaved, and forced into prostitution.

Reason Two: The crime occurred so long ago that it has been largely dismissed (if not forgotten), and the search for the missing archetypes has long since been called off. Only a tiny handful of the keenly dedicated have continued to look for these archetypes, and even these people can no longer quite remember what they actually look like.

Reason Three: Those who oppose repatriation of the missing archetypes still act as our culture’s most powerful gatekeepers, deciding what books get published, what movies get made, what news gets reported, what TV shows get aired. They are the cultural descendants and beneficiaries of the kidnappers’ crime and they do their best to denigrate and disparage the missing archetypes and anyone who grieves their absence.

Yet times are changing and the yearning for these missing archetypes is escalating, albeit largely unconsciously. People don’t know what’s missing, just that something isn’t there, something they know should be there. People feel lost. People feel suspicious; on some deep, unarticulated level, they know they’ve been duped and lied to and they are willing to entertain the idea that a conspiracy of the corrupt and greedy is at work. We are told we are happy, yet we yearn and we search without quite understanding what we search for. We’ll know it, we tell ourselves, when we see it.

Return of the Crone

For many, many more people than anyone might expect, something in Xena: Warrior Princess is what they've been looking for.

But what precisely is it that they see? The answer can be most profoundly appreciated when we look at which archetypes got kidnapped way back when — and at whose expense. We can get to this answer by, as a Sage once suggested, proceeding stepwise:

Step One: Consider a couple of hard-to-see archetypes — the Shadow and the Anima — and why we need them.

In addition to the already-mentioned Hero, Sage, and Trickster, there are a great many other archetypes. Some — like Santa Claus, Mother Earth, the Virgin Mary — we think of almost literally. It’s easy to envision them, to mentally make them material in the world, perhaps because we can imagine actual people, even people we know, being Santa Claus or Mother Earth or the Virgin Mary. Others archetypes can feel more abstract, more challenging to actualize.

Lots of us, for instance, have trouble comprehending the Shadow, that part of each of us which we desperately do not wish to be. When we envision a character whom we regard with utter negativity — Satan, Hitler, Darth Vader — we get closer to literalizing the Shadow, but we often find it much tougher to accept and understand the Shadow inevitably lurking beneath the surface of our own selves.

Similarly difficult is an archetype often referred to as the Anima, which also expresses the idea that each of us comprises a duality. This is generally described in terms of gender: Every man has a feminine side (the Anima); every woman has a masculine side (the Animus).

Why are the Shadow and the Anima so important? For the very same reason that they make us so uncomfortable: They represent our opposite, and it is through our opposite that we define and recognize ourselves.

Step Two: Realize that the Anima ain’t what it used to be.

A Latin word, ‘anima’ literally means ‘air’ or ‘breath,’ as in ‘breath of life.’ Today ‘anima’ refers to life itself; it means ‘soul’ or ‘consciousness.’ The Anima archetype is about the gift of life — being animate in the world — and the idea that what grants us life is necessarily holy and sacred. Inherent in the Anima archetype is also the understanding that what grants us life, what delivers us into this world, is female.

This is, of course, classically opposite to maleness, but it doesn’t mean that maleness is left out of the Anima archetype. On the contrary, ‘animus’ means ‘animating spirit;’ think of it as the Big Bang, the essence of the male principle.

Take note, however, that in a more general sense, ‘animus’ — the archetypal term for every woman’s masculine side — also means ‘hostile feeling or attitude’ and ‘antagonism’ (as in animosity). Here is a hint, part of the evidentiary remains of a heinous crime committed against the Anima archetype.

What was the crime? The Anima archetype — the female principle — has been kidnapped and confined to the world of the Shadow. No longer is giving birth — nor the sexual acts which precipitate birth, nor the natural world in which sex and birth occur — sacred and hallowed. These are now considered profane and the spiritual high ground has been commandeered by religious and cultural traditions that suppress and reject sensory, intuitional life in favor of asceticism and varieties of “rational” logic that even proponents have been forced to admit are comically circular.

This was accomplished by ripping apart that once most holy of archetypal trinities — the Virgin, the Mother, and the Crone. Why? For the sake of acquiring power over life itself. A woman in relationship with a man who has legal and economic control over her has forfeited her ability to decide who she gives birth to.

Thus a “virgin” who has sex outside of marriage is considered a criminal in many places and at best is regarded with ambivalence most everywhere else. Rare is the mother who can safely and successfully bear and raise children without relying on male support. Our culture has erected many barriers to keep her from trying. It’s no accident, for instance, that each minute of each day and night, 365 days a year, somewhere in the United States of America a woman is being raped or sexually assaulted, nor that more than 80% of those rapes and sexual assaults are committed by husbands, boyfriends, or acquaintances. American women are murdered by their spouses or ex-spouses almost nine times as often as men are; well over 100 are killed each month by current or former husbands and boyfriends.

And older women — the crones — have faded into virtual invisibility after hundreds of years of institutionalized hounding, torture, and murder (in Europe it was called the Inquisition and it claimed more lives than World War II's Holocaust). Indeed, the crime against the Crone aspect of the Anima has been the most horrific and devastating of all, because the Crone’s wisdom, experience, and purity of motivation, on which the Virgin and Mother so long depended, has been nearly entirely destroyed. It has been supplanted by male control of mating, birthing, and child-rearing — the best excuse on earth to hoard economic and social resources and divert the bulk of them to feed agendas of the male principle, leaving, as we are all acutely aware, mere scraps for the women and children. When, occasionally, the energy of the Crone archetype has risen up here or there attempting to restore the true dynamic of the female principle, it has been regarded as an invasion of the male prerogative and dubbed “animus possession” or something similarly derogatory. It has been considered inappropriately aggressive and resoundingly quashed.

The result: An Anima archetype that has become passive, helpless, and pathetically incomplete (no wonder so many men are appalled that such an archetype might constitute any part of them at all, even their opposite). Thus most current discussions of the Anima archetype describe a vague, ineffable “inspiration,” like hearing a half-hearted echo rather than the actual sound that makes the echo. And the real power of the female principle — to provide an animated community able to celebrate creating and sustaining healthy, well-adapted offspring over unending generations — is forfeited to extreme, short-term competitions between men for sexual access to “the best” females (and/or such surrogates as sporting trophies, corporate empires, political power, military victories, etcetera).

Step Three: Grasp that no lie can last forever.

Such a big-bang approach to life is simply not sustainable. Raising children into viable adulthood so that they, in turn, may do the same for their children requires a perspective that seems beyond the reach of big-bang: It includes real commitment to clean air, clean water, an end to wrecking the planet’s biodiversity, a chance for a fulfilling and meaningful life, low crime rates, and much more that has been very nearly obliterated along with the much-attenuated Anima archetype. The Animus is rocketing off the end of a cliff and dragging us all with it.

So what happens as growing numbers of people understand that the cultural ground on which they stand has become dangerously tenuous? Initially, many feel lost — that’s right, dazed and confused — but they’ll recognize what they’re looking for when they see it.

I believe they seek the fully-aspected Anima, comprised of the interwoven, interdependent elements of Virgin, Mother, and Crone. When they cannot find her because she has long since been kidnapped, they join the search and resurrect her with new stories — new myths. One of these is Xena: Warrior Princess.

Grrls just wanna be together

What makes Xena so important is that she signifies the reinvention of the Crone. Not the wizened, toothless old woman for whom we were all carefully taught to feel fear and contempt, but the real Crone: A strong, powerful, wise woman who was profoundly loved and looked up to by all in her community. A real Crone is many things the Animus has falsely tried to wrest for himself: A leader, a healer, a take-no-shit hero whom women and children can trust to protect them.

As we watch the two protagonists of Xena: Warrior Princess evolve because of their love for each other — Xena, who once embodied the worst of the Shadow that inhabits us all, and Gabrielle, the quintessential helpless, about-to-be-enslaved virgin — we are shown that we, too, can evolve.

The power and inevitability of Xena: Warrior Princess lies in its lack of intention. No one planned this, least of all the people who created the television program. Archetypes are like that, appearing when needed, shaped to the demands of the moment, impossible to stop.

Arguably, once upon a time it was important that the Anima retreat and the Crone allow herself to be kidnapped and hidden away. That time may be ending, for in Xena: Warrior Princess we see the Crone return to a community eager to greet her, embrace her, and tell her story over and over again in thousands of different ways.