Stereotypes and Archetypes

An article from the UK's Daily Telegraph this week raised my hackles. Under the heading "We're having a special relationship", the article purports to be about Anglo-American marriages. I have personal experience, and I propose that the way this article portrays the situation is nowhere near reality for the majority of people. It is filled with class-ridden, pretentious stereotypical nonsense. Of course, I do not live in New York, and have never lived in London. Some Americans and Britons need to be reminded that New York is not America, and London is not Britain. The writer of this article needs to be told that all, nay, hardly any Americans and Britons fit the patterns described in this misleading piece of writing. (Can you tell I didn't like it?)

The article which has irritated me so much relies heavily on stereotyping. This is common in newspapers and the media generally. Stereotyping on the basis of nationality, age, sex, class, ethnicity, and profession abounds. It's common in astrology, too, for those who haven't managed to escape from the Sun Sign mentality. A good example is the jokey list of "How many Librans, Leos, Virgos....etc. it takes to change a light bulb" - stereotyping par excellence! It's funny, as long as we keep in mind that it is a joke, not a fact.

Stereotyping provides a quick and easy thumbnail sketch of a type of person or situation - it's a kind of journalistic shorthand, which may contain a tiny grain of truth but almost always a lot of misconceptions and generalities. It saves the writer many extra words and much effort. In the process, stereotyping encourages readers and listeners to form opinions which can eventually develop into prejudice, and lead to discrimination. Stereotyping can therefore be dangerous, unless we remain aware of exactly what is going on.

In astrology proper, archetypes replace stereotypes. The existence of archetypes imprinted within the human psyche was proposed first by Carl Jung. There's a set of short pieces about Carl Jung's theories by the Zodiac Master . These are written in plain English in a style easy to understand.

The difference between archetypes and stereotypes is vast, but I believe that often they are confused. Archetypes represent the original, perfect example of any given aspect of human experience - the pattern, the template, inherently recognisable to all humans. The stereotype represents an opinion, often an over-simplification or caricature emphasising particular factors which support whatever prejudice the writer or speaker upholds.

In "Yahoo Answers" an enquirer was offered the opinion that, in a nutshell, it could be said that "An Archetype is Marilyn Monroe, a stereotype is the dumb blonde." I understand what was meant, yet it's not quite accurate, in my view. Marilyn Monroe is not the archetype, she is the icon of an archetype recognisable in the 20th century. Earlier icons could be Cleopatra or Helen of Troy, I guess. The true archetype of these women can be termed, I think, "The Temptress".

"The dumb blonde", as a stereotype was fuelled by an act Marilyn Monroe used to put on for the cameras. This stereotype has fuelled a plethora of "blonde jokes". It's fairly harmless, but if you happen to be a blonde beauty with a Ph.D in nuclear physics, you might well feel annoyed.

The image of a kind of family tree hovers in my mind now, the archetype at the top , icons through the ages on the next branches, spawning beneath them a variety of stereotypes, these in turn fuelling jokes, prejudices, bigotry etc.

It's a fascinating subject, more thoughts may follow !