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sunshinemiss -> RE: Hero and Villain: archetypes and BDSM (6/3/2010 2:03:44 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: hejira92
I thought about this in an email to Sir the other night and thought to bring this up for all you literature-minded people.
From my experience, in fiction and film (and TV), the heroine often has to choose between the good man (steady, reliable, asexual) and the tall dark, handsome stranger (mysterious, drifter, not a good provider, sexy). I saw a clip from the old Kate Hepburn movie "The Rainmaker" recently. And I think "The Bridges of Madison County" covered this dichotomy.
This made me think about the archetypes of the villain and hero. The villain, in literature, often represents the dark forces, including sexuality, that tempt young girls from the righteous path. And then the hero has to come rescue her- back to her safe, boring existence. Happy ending.
Many thoughts on this. Are these stories another way to repress women's sexuality? Are they hidden morality tales?
Anyway, how it relates to BDSM. I thought about the caring Master (as in mine), and how He is actually both hero and villain to me. WIITWD incorporates the darkest fantasies of the Damsel in Distress, yet, in daily life, He's the hero- He takes care of me emotionally, is completely steady and steadfast and would defend me to the death.
So, in BDSM, do we (and I know I speak from the sub female viewpoint here) get to live both fantasies? And I'm not talking about role-playing, I'm talking about exploring the deep recesses of taboo sexual fantasy with the person who will come change your flat tire. It's the best of both archetypes.
So, what is your take on these stereotypes? DOes BDSM turn them on their head? Or feed into them?
Dear Hejira,
I've resisted posting anything serious on here because I've wanted to give it the attention it deserved, and it's taken me a few days to get clear what I want to say. Hope you don't mind, and certainly hope it's worth the wait. [:)]
The thing about archetypes is that they exist for a purpose - to explain a reality, to make clear something broader than just one moment in life. They bring together similarities of people, lessons to be learned by all people, expressions of reality that are *human nature*. In so doing, we see archetypes of different stripes in everyone in varying degrees, at different times.
Does BDSM turn archetypes on their head? No, I think not. Feed them? No to that one also. At least not any more so than any other group of like minded people. There is a reason people are drawn together, a reason people of a certain personality choose to be with one another - comraderie and compatibility. BDSM type archetypes, as you described above, do nothing more than recognize a particular set of characteristics in people, just as in *any* group.
Fairy tales, one of the best mediums for expression of archetypes, burn through the complexities of people and personality to get to the essence of the lesson. The boy who cried wolf, for example. That young whipper snapper may have been just a silly, class clown type, not meaning to be harmful, just funny. He may have been an actual psychopath bent on seeing the harm that could be wrought. The two personalities are vastly different. The lesson, the essence of the lesson remains the same.
In life, of course, people are complex - generally speaking. And yet we are also very simple. We all want to be loved, we want to be accepted, we want to feel safe, we want to have pride in our accomplishments. How those very simple realities are made manifest are where complexity comes in. So, too, with archetypes and the melding of them into personality. There are only a certain number of archetypes. We each are endowed with a smattering of some and big chunks of others. But the lessons of the archetypes generally can be applied to us all *in certain moments of time and in certain situations.*
Most stories, like today's movies and television, have a certain complexity to the characters and their situations as in most stories beyond fairy tales. There is nothing simple about the decisions that are made in real life, those things sacrificed for something else. The very best stories go beyond archetype and become multi-layered expressions of the battling forces of people - within and between. (I'm resisting a discussion here comparing and contrasting Othello and Iago for I think it may be a wee bit more than you are asking. [;)] ) The reason these stories are the *best* stories is because they are more real, the characters, with all their flaws, seem more human, and we can see ourselves with them - because we are them or were at some point or will be due to situation, circumstance, and time.
At the end of the day, archetypes are mere vehicles created to teach and explain reality in its simplest form.
In the end you asked do we get to live both fantasies? No, but we ... that is all human beings... get to live within all manner of archetypes at different times in our lives, eventually embracing one or another through personality and experience (ahhh the nature / nurture debate). Perhaps there are opportunities in a community such as this one to sharpen the lines that so often blur, but no, I don't think that our experience of archetypes are that much different than the world at large. Perhaps there is more focus on *certain* archetypes because they are more prevalent and more ingrained but not more than that I think.
Best to you, my brilliant friend, and to all,
sunshine
*edited for grammar.
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