The ‘Hero Archetype’ in the Neo-Mythological Context of Contemporary Screen Culture

Abstract

The essay examines the image of the hero in the contemporary
neo-mythological field of mass screen culture. The author identifies the main
features of the ‘hero archetype’ and the core cultural meanings forming this
concept and analyzes images of the neo-mythological heroes of our time,
taking examples of mass cinema and authorial cinema and revealing differences
between these two categories. According to the author, mass culture creates
the hero model according to the principle of ‘bricolage’, remaining within the
framework of the Christian eschatological paradigm and synthesizing it with
scientific and technical progress or other elements but not reproducing the
structure of the archaic myth. When the stereotype of “happy ending” replaces
tragedy, it completely changes the true archetype of the hero more characteristic
of art-house or authorial cinema. Examining the films of Jim Jarmusch and
Alejandro González Iñárritu, the author analyzes the method of deconstruction
in authorial cinema, a cinema which seeks to reveal the meanings of the archaic
hero archetype. If mass cinema acts within the simulacrum system without
transcending its limits — endlessly repeating the same models and often using
only superficial formal properties — authorial cinema tries to explode the
structure in such a way as to widen the boundaries of the senses or to discover
them under the layers of simulacra. Thus, screen culture has the characteristics
of a neo-mythology, forming the neo-myth and developing its elements and
structures, producing a stream of neo-mythological images in the media
landscape. The conglomerate of various structural elements borrowed from
different traditions fully reflects the postmodern situation that turns symbols
and archetypes into a set of simulacra. The era of postmodernism is a stage in
the development of culture characterized by the problem of the impossibility
of creating anything new. Postmodernism is a creative crisis which leads to
excessive visuality and, paradoxically, to visuality’s death.