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The Barbie Movie: Can it Dismantle an American Myth? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: So did you guys hear that Mattel is coming out
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: with a new Barbie?
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: No. Really?
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be Jungian Analyst Barbie.
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: Oh my God.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: She's going to be a slightly out of shape middle-aged woman.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: You know, with lots of like flowing clothes.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: The big library behind her.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And like jewel tones.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Jewel tones, absolutely.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: And the setup comes with like a bookcase, yeah.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: And stacks of legal pads to write on.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like very much fun.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: It doesn't sound exciting, but it is realistic.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: There will be a lot of scarves she can change into.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I'd like that. Maybe a little mini sand tray, you know,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: in the back of the office. And a painting couch,
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: you know, so. A bit of Freudian work there.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Somebody should definitely make that. Anyway, today, because
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: we received so many requests for this, we're going to
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: talk about the movie Barbie. And I will say that
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: we often get requests to talk about movies on the podcast.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: And I usually don't put them forward because, well, first
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: of all, you know, podcasts about films it's kind of
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: like you know are people going to want to listen
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: to it if they haven't seen the film but also
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: because i pretty much never leave my house and uh
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: talking about the film would require me to see it
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: which i did this week i dutifully i was the
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: person there with the notepad at barbie at the 640
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: showing taking notes taking notes.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: As if she were a client exactly.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly there i was right um so so yes we
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: all did our homework and saw the movie and uh
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: we are going to talk about it because i can't
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: tell you how many people asked us to so we
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: you asked and we listened so here goes.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: I i want to note for the record that i
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: did not take notes i ate i ate popcorn because
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: that's what you do at the movies That was in
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: the spirit.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Of the thing.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: And what I'd like to say for those who might
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: be sensitive is there are probably some spoiler alerts. So
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: we're going to be talking freely about the plot of
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: the movie. And if you plan to see it beforehand,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: you might want to pause this and come back after
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: you've seen the movie. So the movie opens. And just
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: as I saw my sisters back there in the 70s
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: and 60s, Barbie World in all its pink plastic splendor
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: has been reproduced. And one thing that everyone has agreed
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: on is that the sets were phenomenal and none of
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: them were CGI. Really? None of them were built. That
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: this is the art history in making all of that
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: is probably going to win an award.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: Well, the very opening scene before we get to Barbie Land...
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: is that, to my mind, hilarious spoof on 2001. And
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: that is actually, not that scene, but it is historical
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: fact that prior to Barbie, the advent of Barbie, little
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: girls got to play with baby dolls, little girl dolls,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: or you could get dress-up, costume dolls that you didn't
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: really play with they kind of sat on the shelf
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: that there would be a special doll that had a
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: certain kind of costume on that if you played with
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: them you would have ruined their clothes so they were
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: they were decorative i'm obviously dating myself i didn't get
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: to play with barbie but i did think the opening
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: scene was hilarious and And so did everybody else in
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: the theater that I was in. It's a real revolution.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: In the first year, Tell sold 300,000 Barbie dolls in 1959.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: And then all the stuff you were talking about, Joseph,
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: of Plastic Land, obviously there's been a cascade of product
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: ever since.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I just want to say about that, Deb, I
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: agreed with you. I thought that scene was funny. And
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I also thought, oh, my God, that's really true, isn't it?
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: More or less, before Barbie, it was just baby dolls.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: So this was this new kind of paradigm for femaleness
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: or something. However, the film makes it out to be
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: the case that Barbie brought all of these different options
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: for little girls. But that's not actually accurate. the first
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Barbies for however many years, I didn't do my research
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: on this. They were really just bimbos. You know, they,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: they really did just dress up in pretty clothes and
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: you had lots of different outfits. And this was the
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: stage that I was playing with Barbie. I mean, there
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: were no, there was no like astronaut Barbie, you know,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: it was just, there was Barbie. There was her little
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: teal colored car. There were lots of clothes and you know,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: maybe that there was a Ken in the picture and,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: but Barbie didn't do anything, you know, interesting with herself.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: She just was sort of like Margot Robbie. She just was,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: you know, went around looking pretty. Um, by the way,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: if I recall correctly, and this may be a, this,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I may have misremembered it, but I think my sister
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: was the one that had all the babies and I
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: was deemed too little to have them. They were sort
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: of special and it's like not really clear that I
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: was going to take care of them. So I wouldn't,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: coveted my sister's Barbies. And I don't think my memory
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: is that I never got any of my own, but
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: that's probably a sort of a, a, a childhood, uh, trauma.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so, so just, just the, the important thing
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: though is like the alternative to being a mother was actually, Oh,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: you can be this, you know, bimbo.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Oh, Well, let's think about that. And I have been
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: thinking about it, of what is the myth of Barbie.
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: And I'm pinging off you saying you were deemed too
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: young to play with Barbie, which makes me remember this
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: birthday party that our granddaughter had. And I can't remember
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: if it was her third or fourth birthday party, but
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: let's say she was four. And everybody brought these wonderful
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: sort of educative, really great gifts of art-type stuff and
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: whatever else. And it was all really great. Lots of adults, kids.
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: And then Ivy opened up a Barbie. And all those
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: little girls honed in on her. and vied to play
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: with that Barbie. That was the hot item at that
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: birthday party, and they were little. We've talked about this
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: for years, of all the stuff at that birthday party,
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: that it was Barbie that captured the imagination of every
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: little girl there. So that tells me there's something much
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: more than Barbie being a bimbo. And I mean, these
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: are just little kids, so they don't know now that
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: Barbie can be an Olympic skier and an Air Force
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: pilot and a surgeon and a baseball player. An alien analyst.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: All they see is this skinny little doll, and it
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: captured their imagination. And I think it's fascinating that this
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: skinny little doll and what you can do with her Basically,
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: all you can do with her is change her clothes.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: But it appeals to something in a child's psyche to
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: be able to do that.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Talking about that first scene again. So there's this prehistoric
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: landscape that's somewhat dystopian. There are these little girls that
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: are drably clothed and they're playing with baby dolls and
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: they are reproducing kind of 1940s, 1950s household tasks with ironing,
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: plastic irons and other things. And they all look sad
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: and kind of under, under vitalized, overworked, um, four year
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: old girls. And, uh, and then there's this, uh, this
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: epic music comes on and then a, uh, 100-foot Barbie,
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: who is in that moment a goddess. We're talking about
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: an archetypal Yes, that's right. Yes. And she's there in
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: her bathing suit and she's spectacularly pristine and beautiful in
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: that kind of 40s, 50s, 60s starlet kind of role,
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: that Marilyn Monroe-ish role. And one of the archetypal conflicts
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: that I see, I would say, has to do with
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: the Trojan War and the myth of the Trojan War.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: So, Eris creates the golden apple of discord and Zeus
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: takes it and goes among the goddesses and brings them
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: all together. and then calls Paris, this handsome young man,
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: and says, I want you to award this apple to
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: the most appealing, most beautiful of all the goddesses. And
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: in the myth, he goes between the different goddesses who
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: each promise him favors and value. Hera says that she
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: can make his life remarkably successful and grant him all
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: manner of social status, each of the goddesses come forward,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: and then Aphrodite says, I will promise you love in
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: a way that you could never imagine. And so the
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: apple goes to Aphrodite. And so what we see in
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: that opening scene is that Aphrodite receives the golden apple
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: and then the Trojan War begins in a manner of
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: saying because the little girls now inspired by some kind
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: of archetypal force take those baby dolls and crash their skulls,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: actually murder the baby dolls. So it's actually a really disturbing,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: it's like infanticide, it's like symbolically enacted.
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: Well, no, you found it disturbing. Lisa and I thought
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: it was funny.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: I suppose. But it started with the supremacy of Aphrodite.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: She came onto the scene and changed what was going
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: to dominate the vision of what it meant to be
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: a woman. And of course, we've had that author... Marlene Landau,
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: on to talk about this, but the costs of the
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: veneration of Aphrodite.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting way to look at it.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: So motherhood is swept aside. Mothers as a role are dismissed.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: And Aphrodite, in all her pristine, exquisite pinkness and hearts
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: and harp shapes and cupid and actually... Ken is basically Cupid,
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: this sexless child who flies around. And they even have
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: them shooting arrows at a certain point, toy arrows on
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: the beach. And this is the world.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: He's an accessory.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: This is Aphrodite's world.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, where men are accessories. That's really interesting, Joseph. And
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: just to further your point a little bit, there's the
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: pregnant Barbie, which I didn't know that she existed. They
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: make something out of that.
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: And she did not last long.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And in the film, they're kind of disgusted by her.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: Well, it is. I actually saw some images of pregnant
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: Barbie online. And it really is kind of disgusting, actually. Ooh.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: There's a little magnet-shaped belly with a little teeny weeny
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: baby inside, and it does not fit with the myth
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: of Aphrodite that you were pointing out, Joseph, which I
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: think is right on. Barbie does not grow up.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: Barbie is eternally beautiful. Barbie has an endless array of clothes,
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: an endless array of campers, houses, heaven only knows what else.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: And she now has an endless array of possibilities for
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: what she will do with her life. And being pregnant
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: is not one of them. It is not the Barbie
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: myth anymore.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: It's very hard to get pregnant if you don't have
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: a vagina.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: Yes, that was one of the declarations, actually. When Barbie
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: shows up in the real world, these men are heckling her.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: She's like, and by the way, neither of us have genitals,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: so we can all run off there. But that's an
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: interesting evolution archetypally, that she first shows up as Aphrodite
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: as this icon of feminine beauty in that archetype. And
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: then over time, what occurs is the other goddesses demand space.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: So all of a sudden, Artemis or Athena comes in
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: and says, hey, wait a minute. What about women who
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: are lawyers? Because Artemis was the goddess of law.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: There's a Barbie judge.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Exactly. What about women who are in authority, which is
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Hera starts to kind of move in the archetype of
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: women in authority. And then in the movie, there's even
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: the Barbie who had been drawn on her.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: The weird Barbie.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: Weird Barbie.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Who's sort of like Shadow.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: Yes. Oh, exactly.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: She's kind of Balboa. But these other feminine archetypes finally
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: slowly find their way forward, even though they were banished
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: in the beginning.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: I really like that a lot. And Diana shows up,
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: the goddess of hunting. And you can be a Barbie
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: scuba diver and a Barbie army officer and a Barbie...
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: jet plane pilot and an Olympic skier. I mean, you're
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: absolutely right that this panoply of goddesses and what they
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: represent is now available.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: And the goddess who is banished is Hestia.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: She is, who is.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: The goddess of the hearth. And that aspect of the
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: feminine that is invisible in service to her children. And
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: in that first scene, it's, uh, No way, Hestia. And interestingly,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: in mythology, Hestia abandons her seat in Mount Olympus in
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: favor of Dionysus, which I think is part of that
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: archetypal signal that the keeper of the hearth fire, the
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: mother who tends the hearth, is moving out of the collective.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: It's losing focus in the emerging psyche.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't you say, I mean, I think that's really interesting.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't you also say that Demeter was banished? I mean,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Demeter doesn't show up in that Pantheon 2.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: To me, Demeter is the mother of life. She's not
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: so much the mother that's in the house. Demeter is
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: not the mother who's cooking at the hearth and changing diapers.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: She's the principle of life that makes spring occur, that
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: makes the trees fruit. more primal, and I think more universal.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: The hearth is something that's uniquely human. Trees don't build hearths.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Bees don't build hearths.
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But we definitely do have Hera and Power and Athena,
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: who was goddess of strategy and had a lot of
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: military power and skill, but very intellectual Barbie. And there
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: is a There is a judge and a news anchor.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's still a de-cup, but yes, very intellectual.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: It's still all beautiful in the Barbie world, in the
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: initial Barbie world. But the other goddesses will not be denied,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: which actually is rather remarkable, I think.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: You know, I've been thinking of this as sort of
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: in the context of another myth, which is... the Adam
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: and Eve story. And in that story, where Adam is
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: created first, or at least one version of it, and
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: then Eve is created as his helpmate and out of
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: one of Adam's ribs. In this creation myth, Barbie comes first.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: Ken wasn't added. I think it was a year or
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: so later that Ken came along. So this is, and
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: in the movie, the same thing is true, that Ken
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: wants to hang out with Barbie and says, can I
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: come over tonight? And she basically says, yeah, sure, come
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: on over, everybody. I'm having a party. And you can
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: come to the party. It's very clear that this is
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: a female world where the Kens are adjuncts. afterthoughts.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: It's that 10, 11-year-old world of, I don't know if
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: that's grade school or middle school, where there's still a
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: lot of ambivalence that getting a kiss from a boy
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: is a yucky thing that has to be put aside
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: and Girls are in their own tribe having fun and
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: celebrating and just not concerned about sexuality and eroticism. It's
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: just not interesting until perhaps later on.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: It's their own world of fantasy, of endless possibility, and
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: that everything is fine. There are no limits.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Well, a joyous place. Yeah.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: And I think about it as a sort of pre-puberty world,
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: but right on that cusp. And innumerable authors have written
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: about the stage that girls have as kids, that I
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: can ride a scooter and I can race my bike
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: and I can do all kinds of things. And that
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: then when adolescence comes along and puberty really takes hold,
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: that there's a dampening of that sense of possibility and
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: freedom and personhood for something that is more sort of
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: traditionally female role-oriented. And so I could see Barbie as
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: that place of absolute, utter freedom.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very young place, isn't it?
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: Very young place. And that you change, you know, the
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: point is you change Barbie's clothes. That was my favorite
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: line in the movie at one point. Barbie says something like,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: you know, let's go home and change clothes. But, you know,
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: we talk about persona and we telegraph things. what our
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: persona is, as you pointed out, Lisa, with your Jungian
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: analyst doll, through our clothes and through our hairstyle and
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: all that kind of thing. And I can imagine little
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: girls trying on all kinds of personas, the surgeon persona
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: and the wildlife conservationist persona and the vet and the
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: rock star. And the list is absolutely endless of And
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: I can vicariously imagine my way into all these possibilities.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: And I think that's in the movie, the defense of
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: the Barbie paradigm. Because there was a stage when even play,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: and play has such an important role. And as psychoanalysts,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: we know so much about play as an essential ground
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: for establishing play. the breadth and depth of the imagination,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: and also the place where archetypes begin to emerge spontaneously.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: So for little girls and little boys to be able
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: to extend their imagination into all kinds of interesting areas
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: and to pretend and to play begins to create images,
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: and images give rise to options. So I suspect it
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: had a remarkably important role And interestingly, as my sisters
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: were playing with Barbie dolls, the only doll I had
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: was a GI Joe. It was the only kind of
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: sanctioned thing that little boys could play were military figures.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: I had boxes of little plastic soldiers with all kinds
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: of different military regalia and guns. And we would. We
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: would stage little wars back in the woods. Although it
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: was so interesting because in my generation, we fit between
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: all of the wars. I mean, I was never exposed
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: to the draft, the conflict in Iraq. I was too old.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: The conflicts in Vietnam.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Well, Vietnam was going on when you were a kid, though.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: But I was a baby. I mean, none of this
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: actually could take hold of me. That's what I mean.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: My generation was never pushed. into war, that it was
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: always kind of almost a mythology that had happened before
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: me and a mythology that happened after me. So it's
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: interesting to see how the image of the soldier was
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: the only thing that was available to us as boys
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: if we were going to play in that fashion.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've got Aphrodite for girls and Ares for boys.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: You've got it. That's exactly where I was going. And
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: they are the archetypal pair.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: That's amazing.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: No one, of course, is thinking about this consciously, but
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: it makes sense in that universal way. And it's been
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: going on for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: So it isn't actually unique that Aphrodite and Aries would
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: be surging in a culture at a particular time.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm so glad that you jumped in and framed
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: that for us right away because, you know, so like
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: There's different ways to talk about this, right? Like I
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: hear you say, I only had a GI Joe. And
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, poor Joseph. You know, little boy Joseph.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: I just want to go back in time and give
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: you a teddy bear or something.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: I did have a teddy bear.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: That's true. But there's the sense about what part of
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: the role models offered to children through play and through
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: toys winds up being kind of formative. and shaping a child.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: In other words, what part of constrictive gender roles wind
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: up being cultural? And then there's this very thorny question of,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: is any of that innate? But you're bringing in something
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: very different, which is, is it archetypal?
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: These patterns are a priori. And this may have also
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: signaled evolution, particularly in Western culture, that it may have
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: been that Hera or Hestia held a different place in
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: the collective psyche. And so little girls playing with hearth
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: fire images rose even spontaneously in the collective, and that
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: finished up. Even in architecture, in the 1950s and 60s,
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: kitchens started shrinking in homes. Like I have a home
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: that's built in 1961, and this is a home with
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: three bedrooms. kitchen is a tiny little galley because in
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: the world of the future, cooking and kitchen work was
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: supposed to disappear.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: That's before Martha Stewart brought Astia back.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: Which is exactly archetypal. But you could see how it
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: was disappearing from the culture, interestingly so and rightly so,
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: that other things were becoming more important.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm thinking about your question, Lisa. Is it inherent?
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: Is it cultural? I mean, that's a sticky wicket, and
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: there's no definitive answer. But Ares, the god of war,
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: is mated with Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. So, you know,
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: these kinds of mythologies and archetypes don't come from nowhere.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: And that's missing in the Barbie movie. What we see
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: is Aphrodite and Cupid. The men are little Cupid figures
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: that are silly and goofy and playful and not sexually developed.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Like children, the children of Aphrodite. And there is no
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: sense of that mature masculine.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: Or mature feminine.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Or mature feminine. It's also very young.
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: So that wins us into the so-called real world. and
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: all of the Kens stage their rebellion and become really misogynistic, oppressive,
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: patriarchal stinkers, that that is, in the movie, the antidote
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: to all the Kens just being accessories and little boys
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: and absolute lightweights. It's as if this is going to
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: the other polarity, which of course it is not. That
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: is not an image of the mature masculine either.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: But let's go back for a second, but there is
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: a more wonderful moment which starts the entire journey, which
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: is that Barbie is in the midst of this dancing, sparkling, joyous,
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: young place, and And then she suddenly blurts out, but
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I've been thinking about death lately. And this remarkable existential
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: alarm goes off and it resounds through the entire psyche.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, if we think of the movie like a dream,
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: even a child's dream, and you as mothers, what was
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: it like when your child first discovered something can die?
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: That it was a moment in all of our psychological
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: developments and in the development of our children that things
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: actually die. And there is something about, in a way,
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: a change. I wouldn't say it's the end of childhood,
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: but something changes. when you realize that things can die.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: You know, what comes up for me more is that moment,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: and I remember it in my own life of going
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: to junior high, of that what died was childhood. That's
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: what died.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: So maybe that's a foreshadowing of that, yeah.
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: And those were the days junior high was grades seven
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: through nine, and I discovered... not that I would have
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: been able to say it or even think it then,
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: that I had a choice between being sort of a renegade,
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: free spirit, do anything I wanted, and belonging and being
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: a girl. And my moment of revelation was saving up
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: for a loden coat. And they had wooden toggles with
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: special loops on. And everybody who was anybody had a
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: Loden coat, and I was saving up my babysitting money,
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: and I bought one, and it was on sale, and
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: it was red, and that was so wrong. Loden coats
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: came in several different colors, but not red. And so, however,
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: I kept trying, and girls bonded and banded together. And
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: there were very definite rules about this new pubertal female sisterhood.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: And so going back to what you were saying, Joseph,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: I think what dies is girlhood. And that's what happens
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: in the movie. Barbie grows up.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when she's in the real world and
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: she's sitting next to an old, an elderly woman... Yes.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Who may in fact wind up being Jungian analyst Barbie.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: But this old gray woman, you know, gray hair and
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: all these wrinkles and everything. And she's looking at her
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: and I'm laughing because it's just absurd to be thinking
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: this deeply about this little fluffy piece of cinema. But straining,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: straining to apply an archetypal lens to it. What came
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: up for me is the story of the Buddha when
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: he leaves the palace for the first time and encounters
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: illness and old age and death. And, you know, Barbie
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: kind of has those moments. It's like, oh, you can
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: grow old. Oh, things can die. Oh, you know, the
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: world is not as beautiful and pristine and is not
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: going to go on forever and ever and ever in
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: this beautiful way that it has been.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: And that's the Garden of Eden again. You know, that
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: in the Garden of Eden, you know, today we'll go
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: out and pick strawberries. Tomorrow, let's go get some blueberries.
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: The day after that, we'll... And that's the way it
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: is in Barbie land. Every day is wonderful.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Right, and there's no development.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: There's no development, exactly.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: Which is so present in the fact that she cannot
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: eat anything. That scene, which was surprisingly affecting... There was
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: something jarring because, of course, the actress looks like a
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: living person. She's pouring make-believe milk and she's pretending that
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: she might eat a muffin or something. And just that
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: feeling like she can't take anything in.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Which is part of this idea that that's one of
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: the ways that nothing will change. Everything is encapsulated in
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: a kind of perfection, but it's encapsulated. In this fantasy.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: I just want to say, Joseph, just because you brought
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: it up, I thought Margot Robbie was fantastic. Oh, she
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: put herself in it totally.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: I found myself actually.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Caring about what happened to her. And I was like,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: you know, just really, really wonderful performance.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Part of what I think is playing out was also Pinocchio.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: That it's a marvelous, marvelous story. Which we have resonated
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: with for hundreds of years about something inanimate. that becomes
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: ensouled and then goes through this journey of becoming human.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: And even the final scene where the creator of the
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: Barbie doll, Ruth, takes Barbie's hands in this ensouling process,
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: which is exactly what happens with the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: that this magical spirit brings the doll to life. And
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: then the doll finally, experiences, its vulnerabilities and depth of
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: feeling and the fact that Pinocchio really loves Geppetto and
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: also that he's vulnerable. It's that archetype which is so powerful,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: leans into this story.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Damn, Joseph, you are on fire on this movie.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Anytime something captures the collective, because this has really taken off,
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: there's always archetypal themes in it. It It can't just
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: be a cultural echo chamber. There's something else going on
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: that makes people have to look twice. Like, what's happening here?
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: But of course, it's all unconscious. But I think that
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: thinking about it as a Pinocchio story makes it really interesting.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. It does. That really works.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: How does one come to life?
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: So I just want to say, because we've sort of
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: danced around the really juicy thing here, which is this
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: kind of what does it say about women and men
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and their relationship and the kind of controversy that a
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: lot of people are talking about. But I want to
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: tie that to the point that you just made, that
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: because it touches into archetypal themes, we feel activated by it.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: We may not even know what exactly is activating us, right?
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: What's on the surface is... you know, misandry, misogyny, whatever.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: But we actually might be responding deeply just to the
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: fact that these are very ancient themes.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: I felt like, to be honest, that the archetypal themes
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: were very much alive in this story. And that when
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: the word patriarchy and all of this political rhetoric was
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: laid on top of it, that it felt like strange clothing.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: on something that was much more profound. It felt very tangential.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: Something much deeper was actually trying to happen. And also
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: there was a parallel process, which has to do with
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: boys and girls, of course, that Barbie was going through
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: her own incarnating process that looks like a certain thing,
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: and the boys were going through their own incarnating process
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: that looks like something else. So for Ken to go
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: to the real world, and discover that men actually like
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: each other, which wasn't true in Barbie World. They were
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: just bullying each other all the time in these one-dimensional personalities,
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: but that men actually could get together in a group,
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: cheer each other on, admire each other, that all of
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: that was missing, and that the boys' psyches had to
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: also learn, we can all get together and play. We
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: can all get together and actually go over to the
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: house together and play music, and even put our chests
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: out and pretend that we're more than we are because
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: we're boys, and put on costumes and march around, which
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: is also a legitimate part of, you both raised boys,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: that trying on different costumes, as Ken did, as all
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: the boys did. And I call them boys because clearly
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: they're boys. And then we have a bit of Peter
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: Pan there, There's different costumes and different games. And even
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: the war scene, playing at war and playing at competing
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: for female attention. And that's just as legitimate as Barbie
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: and the other Barbies going through a developmental process where
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: they wake up to themselves and their capacities and their individuality.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: And both are required. And that's where I think on
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: an archetypal level, Both of those things happen secondary to
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: whatever the commentary is by the narrator. Both the males
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: and females go through a developmental process. And then there's
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: another film laid over it, which is more of a scolding,
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: scornful voice that is more of the voice of the
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: times rather than the voice of the deep.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: That's great. That's really perfect. Yeah, I mean, I think
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: that's true, the stuff about the patriarchy. First of all,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: just a confession here, I hate that word. Because what
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: do we mean by it? You know, people throw it around,
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: and people throw it around in the culture and on
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Twitter and in Jungian analytic circles. I mean, it's in
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: a lot of books, and it didn't used to bother me,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: but now I think, well, what does it mean? Like,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: what are we talking about, actually, with that? I don't
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that word means. It invokes the
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: archetype of the father, you know, patriarchy comes from the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Latin word patria for, for, you know, father, you know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: father is an archetype and archetypes always have a positive
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: pole and a negative pole. And so using the term
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: to kind of equate with this sort of like oppression
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: always just seems like it just a huge leap over
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: the incredible complexity of that concept. You know, it's not
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: that there aren't aspects of being a woman that are
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: pretty oppressive. You know, I just finished writing a book
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: about it. So But it seems like such an oversimplification
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: to just sort of say, you know, it's them.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Which also puts all the power in men. That men
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: are pulling all the strings. Which then also gives a
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: secondary signal that all the women have no agency. And
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: that the only way women can be free is by
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: somehow diminishing, infantilizing, kicking men out. Because men are so
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: powerful that if we don't kick them out, then we
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: can't be ourselves. And that is an unfortunate bypass to
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: the real task, which is how do the opposites come
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: to peace with each other? The opposites of masculine and feminine,
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: of rich and poor, of have and have not, of
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: all of the polarities that we suffer greatly.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Because their polarity is because they're opposites.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: And the movie made a nice gesture, I thought. It
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: wasn't all that well-developed, but it was there. You know,
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: that at the end, there is a rapprochement. Ken says, hey,
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: you know, sorry about us all, you know, carrying on
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: the way we were carrying on. That really wasn't very nice.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: And Barbie says, yeah, you know what, sorry about... you know,
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: just sort of dissing you and never spending any time
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: with you and, you know, kind of treating you in
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: a superficial, casual way. So it does sort of hint at,
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: you know, a new possibility that is not the old,
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: to call out an old trope, war between the sexes.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: That it's men and patriarchy and oppression that you know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: or women, or any of these polarities, as you're pointing out,
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: that if we have an external world enemy, well, then
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: we just don't have to confront ourselves.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a great time.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: That's really great. We just project it onto somebody else,
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: some other group, an ethnic group, a political group, somebody
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: who's a different sex, a different socioeconomic strata, The list
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: is endless.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: If we get rid of them, then we'll be free.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: And you know, Deb, that's actually in the movie, right?
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Because Ken is kind of pining after Barbie and then
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: she says to him, you know, you've got to go
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: figure out who you are. And so I think that
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: that's to your point that when we can focus on
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: a person out there who's not giving us what we
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: want or that we feel oppressed by or whatever, it
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: is an avoidance of our interiority at some degree.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: And it's not to dismiss that there is oppression and
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: injustice and unfairness and so on and so forth. Of
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: course there is, but what we do with it is
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: up to us.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Deb, I want to swing back to something that you
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: had started to say early on, which really does also
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: happen in the movie, which is, the way dynamics change
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: at the onset of puberty, because part of what happens
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: with Ken is that Ken goes into the real world
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: and his suspended puberty actually activates and he goes through
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: puberty and then he comes back and what he does
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: is he brings puberty into the infantile world. And just
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: as you were saying, And all of a sudden, these roles,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: all of this sexualization starts happening in Barbie world. And
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: these women are dressed in these more provocative sexual ways.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: And the boys are all dressing like gangsters. And there's
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: all of this early stage sexual coupling behavior of who's
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: going to play what role and how does the erotic
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: dynamic kind of come in and out. I think what's
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: unfortunate is, again, the disingenuous layer is that Ken has
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: hypnotized all of the women and brainwashed them. But what's
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: really going on, which happens to everybody, is that the
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: awakening of sexuality brainwashes everybody. When all of that sexual
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: tension wakes up, you know, at 16 to maybe 28
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: years old, And the mating and pairing, all that primordial
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: drive comes into the psyche. It takes years for people
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: to be able to figure out who they are outside
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: of just the mating drive. And there is a way
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: in which both sexes get hypnotized.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: I think that's really good, Joseph. And I think that,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: you know, because I did just, this book is coming
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: out in February. It's called The Vital Spark. I haven't
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: really started promoting it yet. But I was thinking about
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: some of the themes in the book when I was
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: watching the movie because, you know, like you're saying, there
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: is a way that girls, I think, that females get
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: pulled off a certain developmental trajectory when they get hit
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: with puberty. Because they do, and perhaps boys do too.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: So I'm just saying for girls. You know, girls are pre-puberty,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: they're fierce, they're ferocious, they're fun, they're wild. And then
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: purity comes and, you know, they just, Deb, you were
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: alluding to this earlier, something with your load and coat story,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: you know, something kind of goes underground. And of course,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: we know that this is very much related to the
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: development of shadow. You learn, oh, it's not good to
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: be wild and fierce and ferocious. That doesn't fit anymore.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: And some of this, again, is culture, I'm sure. But
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: some of it is, you know, you get estrogen, this
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: surge of, you know, of hormones in your system. And yeah,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: there's a certain kind of like, look, we're wired to reproduce, okay?
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: And I would argue that girls are wired, and this
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: is going to make me tremendously unpopular, but I think
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: it's probably true. We're biologically programmed to reproduce. We all are.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: We wouldn't be here if the human race were not
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: so programmed. But females in particular also have a drive,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: let's say, or an instinct to nurture, to care for.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: That thing, whatever that thing is and however it gets expressed,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: is part of what shuts down the natural effusiveness and
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: vivaciousness and aggression and assertiveness, that's part of the light
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: that goes out, is because that's tamped down, I'm sure, yes,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: because of culture. I don't disagree with that. But I
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: think there may also be an innate process. Because as Joseph,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: to put it in your language, we find that we
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: need to inhabit, of course, unconsciously, we find that we
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: need to inhabit Aphrodite. And eventually, Demeter, and Hestia.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. What Ken brings, or Ryan Gosling brings, is pan.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: That this sexless, infantile world of Barbie land lacks any
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: kind of sexuality. And what Ryan discovers in the real world, again,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: is purity. And so I guess my question with Lisa is,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: With the introduction of Pan, with the introduction of sexuality,
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: is it that little girls or girls are somehow interrupted?
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Or does some other primal initiative simply move them into
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: another developmental process, deprioritizing some things, prioritizing others? And then
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: around midlife, which is what Jung was saying, all of
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: a sudden, like the mating stuff, transitions like you've got
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: a home, you've maybe done your stuff with the kids
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: or like that other level of instinct begins to recede.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: And then all of this other archetype of life begins
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: to pound on the door. And then again, in menopause,
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: like another, like make room like that, you know, the
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: reproducing stuff is not the priority.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the answer to that question is you can read
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: my book, but to have you go on about it.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: The vital spark. Don't worry, we'll talk more about it
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: on the podcast.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: But I'm thinking that this, I'm looping this back to Barbie.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: A cultural fact in a lot of countries, Western countries, Japan,
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: a number of countries, the birth rate is declining.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: And I think part of this revolution that is symbolized
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: by Barbie, we can't really lay it all on this
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: one little doll, but the promise is you can have
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: it all. You can be beautiful. You can have a camper.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: You can have your own airplane. You can have your
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: own jet ski. You can be a surgeon. You can
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: be a rock star. and be beautiful and change clothes
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: all the time. And so I think this may be
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: starting to change, that there's a new mythology loose in
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: a number of cultures where girls who then become teenagers,
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: who then become young adults, are doing what those girls
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: did at the very beginning of the movie and smashing
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: their dolls and saying, thanks, but no thanks.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: Well, is it a coincidence? Oh, this is going into
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: really dicey territory. So Barbie came out in 1959. When
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: was the pill invented?
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: Oh, thanks. The pill was.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Is it like the late 60s or something?
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: It was certainly by the mid-60s.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's part of it too, right?
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Is that women can choose... Mid to late 60s, yes.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Women can now choose to smash the baby doll and say,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't choose this now.
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: 1960. Yes.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, now I'm going to duck. Wow, that's really interesting.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: So Barbie came out in 59... And the pill was
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: introduced in 60?
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: I don't know exactly when, but I know that it
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: was available when people were in college and got it
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: from Planned Parenthood. So you're right that Barbie slightly preceded
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: this gynecological revolution.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: But it might be the same thing arising in culture.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Which allowed... sex to be decoupled from motherhood. So that
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: sex could have its own space and its own area
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: of choosing. Whereas we said archetypally that the activation of
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: sexuality explicitly carried motherhood and fatherhood right in its wake
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: sooner or later. Which of course, that archetype is trying
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: to punch its way back into the culture. to actually
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: take sexuality and force it back into this paradigm of
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: motherhood and fatherhood.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Well, it didn't work. I mean, that was Freud's great discovery,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: is you can repress all this stuff, and then within
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: a generation or so, it starts making people feel crazy.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: And they become symptomatic. And then there's this enantiodromia and
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: a kind of revolution. The thing that troubles me in
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: the movie is that sexuality is introduced into Barbie land.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: The hypnosis of the sexual demand is blamed on men
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: as if women have no sexual interests and actually should
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: get rid of it because it enslaves them either to
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: motherhood or to men. which in a sense is the
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: rise of Artemis. I mean, there is another archetype that
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: is about not wanting to connect erotically to any male figure,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: but to stay within the community of women. And that's,
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: of course, valid. The rising of the feminine in that
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: movie restores the world of the mother where everyone is sexless.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: So the president returns, who is the great mother. All
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: the men are reduced to children again. And in that
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: final scene, Ryan Gosling is going down a pink slide, going, wee!
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: And then he sheepishly apologizes for what he thought would
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: be fun, and he didn't like being in charge of
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: anything anyway, and it's best if other people are in charge.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: And then he's kind of dismissed. So what's been banished
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: from Barbie land is sexuality and the possibility of coupling
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: the world of only the mother with her children who
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: have now been restored to this kind of prepubescent child
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: place is better. Everybody plays nice and they do. And
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: the mother is going to keep things very nice and fair.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: And she will. But if we think of this as
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: just a dream, not a political statement, within a psyche,
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: we would call that a regression. That the tension, the
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: war that happened in the movie didn't lead to an
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: integrative experience and a new paradigm. That it simply went
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: back into a regressive restoration of the childhood. And Barbie's
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: advice to Ken is not just that you need to
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: discover who you are, because that's not what she says,
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: is you need to discover who you are that has
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: nothing to do with me. That the new paradigm is
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: do not have a relationship with me. Do not have
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: a relationship with women. Stay only in your singular psyche,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: and that that's the path to what's going to make
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: things better. And that ostensibly Barbie will, although her last
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: scene is when she announces she's at the gynecologist's office.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: So I'm not sure what that says, but the reestablishment
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: of bypassing the sexual conflict and confusion and craziness all
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: of that stuff and that the better world is the
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: one where sexuality really does not exist. And that's mirroring
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: what's happening in the current culture.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's true.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: There is an attack on sexuality on all sides, whether
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: it's the Supreme Court taking back the right to an
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: abortion and other states trying to claw back even the
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: right for birth control. I mean, this happening from various sides,
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: this is an attack on sexuality.
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: I think it's equally possible to see Barbie's statement again
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: of figure out who you are apart from me as
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: kind of a call to individuation. That poor old Ken
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: has just been fixated on Barbie and can he get
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: close to Barbie again? He can't even kiss Barbie. She
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: rebuffs him in that scene.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: And so I think it's possible to see it as
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: a call to go ahead and be your own person.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: And that at the end, when she walks into the
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: gynecologist's office, that it is her own sexuality. Obviously, she
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: has the internal parts for a gynecologist. To check out
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: and examine. So I think the movie hints at development.
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: I almost am kind of hoping for a sequel. I'd
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: like to see what happens next.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you and the filmmaker both are hoping for
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: a sequel to happen. And I have a feeling that
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: we may just get our wish on that. It's interesting, Joseph.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: I'm just sort of noodling here. I don't know that
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: I'm really adding much. But, you know, there's all this
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: research that young people are not in relationships. The number
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: of people in relationships of certain ages have declined. The
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: number of people married declined. But not just married. People
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: are single more. Kids are not having sex.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Right. I mean, the teenage pregnancy has plummeted, which is
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: a good thing.
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: But along with that, there's, you know, young people are
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: not having sex, they're not dating, or they're postponing it,
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: they're doing it later. And it is really interesting. And,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a kind of, boy, I'm really asking
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: for it today, but I think there's a kind of
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: new Puritanism that goes, and some of it's coming from
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: the right, like the Supreme Court, but some of it's
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: kind of coming from the left.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: With, you know, this, if that, you know, someone can
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: I rape you or, you know, he didn't. you know.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: I've never heard of that.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It's really disturbing.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: That's a thing.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: Even a glance is enough to do harm.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: So there's a sense that sort of any, any overture
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: that's not explicitly a wanted requested you know negotiated beforehand
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: that it's okay is seen as a kind of attack
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: oh my goodness so you know i'm sure that must
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: be part of why young you know college students are
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: not having sex as much because you know the the
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: i think that the women have been taught to be
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: afraid of it maybe for good reason i mean you
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: know terrible things happen But I think the young men
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: have been taught, like, be careful, because you could get
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: accused of doing something. And there's a lot of room
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: for misunderstanding there. So it does feel, I think, that
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: there is a bit of an attack on sex, we'll
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: just say.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: From both sides, I absolutely agree with you. And that
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: is part of the misunderstanding of the matriarchy. to be honest,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: because the matriarchy by its definition is the return of
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: the mother as the patriarchy is return of the father.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: And so if the mother rises in the collective, if
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: that does happen, then we are all children again. There's
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: still a different paradigm where both sexes get to be
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: adults and autonomous. and interact with each other without having
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: a parental figure monitoring them for their behavior and making
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: sure that you're not doing anything in that bedroom over
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: there or whatever the call is. And I think that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: that's a misunderstanding. I mean, that is happening in the collective,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: which is that sex is bad. And what I would say, Lisa,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: is it's not that young people aren't having sex. They're
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: just not having sex with each other. And what's happening
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: is putting people back into a certain Barbie state, it's
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: driving things back into the inner world. It's driving it
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: into this fantasy realm where young men are finding sexual
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: fantasies and pornography. And if it wasn't there, It would
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: be in their own imaginations that they would be retreating
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: and in a fantastical place. So sex is going to
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: find its way. It's going to break the door down
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: and create ways to survive, but they're not necessarily good ways.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: And I just want to kind of come in with
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: what Deb said a minute ago. That I think in
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: terms of that, the ending of the movie, if we
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: think about the telos, I mean, it's good to become real.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: And, you know, she does have the parts. And, you know,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: I sort of, I think I appreciate your take on it, Joseph,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: but I think I was a little bit more with Deb, like, Yeah,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Barbie needs to figure out who she is, and Ken
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: needs to go figure out who he is, and then
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: maybe they could have a mature relationship. So I'm with Deb.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: I'll wait for this.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: And they could even have sex.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: They could. There is the paradigm of the friend, which
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: actually there is a hint here, which I don't know
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: whether it was thoughtfully done, but I think it is
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: the emergence of the possibility, which has not come into
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: the culture adequately. which is the archetype of the sibling.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: And first of all, there are no siblings in that movie.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: There's no children. There's no parents in that movie.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: Although Barbie does have three sisters.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: Really? Who are the sisters in the movie?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: Um, there's a little illusion to skipper who is one
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: of her sisters, but it's really not made clear in
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: the movie, but in Mattel land in, uh, out there
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: with kids everywhere. Barbie does have siblings, but you're right,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: in the movie, it's really not there.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're all magically created. When Barbie apologizes for taking
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: Ken for granted, and Ken says, without your gaze, I'm nothing.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: So we're in a realm that Jung wrote a lot about,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: which is the anima projection, that there is a call
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: for men to realize that they are projecting massive amounts
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: of their own soul onto women. Now, in this scenario,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: women projecting parts of their soul on men is not acceptable,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: so men are removed. And the fact that men pine
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: for women or project their soul on women is now
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: considered a problem, perhaps even pathologic, which is an interesting thing, again,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: taking the politics out of it. But this natural process
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: of projecting the contra-sexual onto the beloved other, and to
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: interfere with that projection prematurely, because Jung was really clear
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: that as we, Become older, we integrate shadow, then we
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: integrate what we've projected onto men and women, and we
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: earn our place into a kind of friendship, into a balance,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: which I think, again, has something to do with the
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: sibling archetype, that men and women see each other as
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: brothers and sisters who are working to a common support of, quote-unquote,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: the family of society, but to not allow children to
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: go through the stages of projection and recollection, that's going
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: to have unintended consequences. And I think, going back to
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: what you were saying, Lisa, is there seems to be
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: a thwarted developmental process in younger people that whatever would
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: draw them into relationships has been interrupted. According to Jung,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: what draws people into relationships is a projection of the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: anima anonymous. And if there is now a story that
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: that projection is dangerous, poisonous, repugnant, foolish.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: Or just unnecessary.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: Or unnecessary, if it was that logical. It'll be interesting
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: to see how human beings or the human psyche, will
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: it adapt? Is there really a new way of doing this?
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: Or will we wind up back in that kind of
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Victorian world that Freud entered into where people become remarkably
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: unwell Because the natural developmental process has been thwarted. And
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: I don't know. We'll find out, you know, in our generation.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: I would like to go back to the movie before
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: we switch to a dream. And also, what we haven't
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: said is that it's such a spoof. There is a
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: lightness and there is fun. It was fun for me, too,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: to be in a movie theater and be surrounded by
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: other people laughing or making comments. It's certainly gotten the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: three of us thinking, and I'm sure lots of other people.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: I'd like to end today's discussion with just a salute
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: and a bow to the fun of it, that this
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: does not have to be heavy-duty kinds of stuff, that
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: we can carry it all with a kind of lightness.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: And wouldn't that do an awful lot of the world
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: some good?
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. This movie is part of a really fun genre
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: called Kinder Camp, which is this, where these nostalgic images
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: from our childhood are then brought up in Hollywood into
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: this really campy, exaggerated place. But interestingly, there are these
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: various adult jokes that are inserted into it. They did
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: this with Adam's family. They did it with Scooby-Doo. They
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: did it with Josie and the Pussycats there. All of
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: this nostalgic stuff from our childhood has been brought upward
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: into these movies and creates this amalgam of our nostalgia
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: with our current cultural sense of humor, if nothing else.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: And there's something in that that we delight in.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: It's a movie. It's a summer movie. It's fun.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: I'm a little salty about it being an advertisement, you know,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: two hours of product placement for Mattel. But I can
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: set that aside and just say it's fun and it's
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: okay to have fun. And I hope that all of
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: you would have had fun with us listening to this.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: I was thinking to myself, this is going to be
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: a highly unusual Barbie podcast. I don't think we've repeated
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: other efforts to examine the film here. So I hope
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed it.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: Yep. And keep your eye out for that Jungian analyst doll.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: It's good.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: Coming to a store near you soon.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: It is, totally.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: Okay, let's switch to a dream.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: Today's dream, it comes from a 62-year-old woman who works
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: as a park ranger and musician. And she's titling her dream,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Making Snow. And here's the dream. I'm in the hallway
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: of my new rental place. I see my new flatmate.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: He is vacuuming the hallway carpet. I see a small
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: amount of white dust he sprinkles on the carpet. As
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: he vacuums, the dust keeps growing and growing. I realize
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: it's actually snow. It keeps billowing out of the vacuum
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: cleaner and soon it becomes clouds of snow. The more
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: he vacuums, the more snow he makes. We both grab
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: some snow and we both make snowballs. Then we start
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: throwing snowballs and have a snowball fight. Then I wake up.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: And here's the context. I moved in recently to this house.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: It looks over the city and the southern Alps. I
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: had a car accident last year. A young woman was
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: speeding around the corner and lost control of the car
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: and she plowed into my work vehicle. Because of this incident,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: I now need a hip replacement, but I have dysplasia
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: and because I'm older, this will not be paid for
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: and it's considered a non-work injury. So I sold my
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: little place so that I could get the new hip.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: My flatmate is South African. The day before I had
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: the dream, he asked me if I knew what the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: dust on top of the toilet system was. He said,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: come have a look. I followed him and he pointed
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: to a little clump of white dusty stuff. I said,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: I have no idea what that is. I couldn't understand
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: why he didn't just wipe it off. He explained about
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: how it looked like grouting, but nothing he could see
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: had been fixed. It didn't bother me. I got the
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: cloth and wiped it away. And the feelings in the dream,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: she notes, it made me happy. I was having fun
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: and there was an incredible feeling of joy. And then
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: just in terms of associations, she notes, after the dream,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: I told my flatmate about the dream. I wrote it
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: in my dream book. Good for you. He just laughed.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: He flew back to South Africa to get married and
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: came back a week before his wife. She arrived late
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: on a Friday evening. On the Saturday morning, we opened
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: the curtains and it was snowing. They went outside and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: had a snowball fight. They had never seen snow before.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: So speaking of fun movies. This is a fun dream.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about, you know, what is snow? You know,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: what is snow in the psyche? But first, what, you know,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: what does it bring up in me? And I think
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: in a lot of people, I know kids in school
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: that as teachers, if it started snowing, The whole classroom
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: was excited. Oh, it's snowing, it's snowing. Look, it's snowing.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: It's magic.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: It's magic. It's exciting. And that every snowflake is different.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: And I know we all went outside when we found
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: this out with pieces of black cloth or black paper
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: to quick see the snowflake's design before it melted.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: There is something delightful, which is well-imaged in the dream,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: about snow. And I wonder if it's the antidote or
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: the compensatory process for, first of all, vacuuming, which is
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: the most mundane pedestrian chore. And there is some kind
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: of carpet cleaner that you can sprinkle on. Yeah. A
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: carpet to, I guess it helps clean, obviously. I don't
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: use this product. But from something really banal of vacuuming
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: comes the magic. And in her waking life, she's having
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: a hard time. There was a car accident that was
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: not her fault. Mm-hmm. And she has a hip problem
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: as a result of it that her insurance won't pay.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: And she had to sell her house.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: Psyche has gifted her with something delightful.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a little fantasy about this dream. I'm
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: obviously just making it up, but.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: You know, she's obviously at a kind of place of transition.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: She's had to move into this flat. She's living with
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: these flatmates. And there can be a way that when
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: you become an older person, that it feels like you're
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: supposed to feel like life is kind of, you know,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: over or not over, but on a steady path. Like,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: you know what you're going to be doing, you know?
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: And the truth is that when there is some disruption
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: later in life, it can be very heavy and difficult.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: But it also, there's a little thrill to it because
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: suddenly things are not the way you thought they were
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: going to be. I mean, when you're 20, you know,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: unless you're in a very kind of rigid, stratified career process,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, what will I be doing in two years?
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: I don't even know. But by the time you're in
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: your 50s or 60s, it's like you've got your nose
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: to the grindstone and you pretty much know what you're
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: going to be doing in one or two years. But
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: this woman's life has been somewhat turned upside down by
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: this accident, it sounds like. And she's in a very
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: new situation with new people. And that kind of, in
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: a way, can be somewhat thrilling. I mean, it's so
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: interesting that the flatmate, they've never seen snow before and
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: how magical that is. You know, if you've come to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: adulthood and you've never seen snow.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: It's like, what, what is that?
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: You know? Um, but, but she's having a little bit
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: of like, wow, this, I didn't, maybe I didn't, maybe
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't really expect to be here. Uh, and maybe
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: there's a, maybe there's, there is a sense of adventure
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: and discovery amidst this new situation, even though it's very difficult.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: I'd like to add an additional lens. I'm, I'm just
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: thinking about a more realistic, um, interpretation that what does
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: it mean to vacuum a carpet and when do people
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: sprinkle things on carpets?
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: Because there are products that people sprinkle on their carpet
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: to freshen it, allegedly to clean it, to get fleas
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: out of it. And the vacuum is really sucking up
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: the dirt. So there's also something very positive about being
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: playful with the dirt. Hmm.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: That's nice.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: And that could have something to do with being at
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: that age where realizing your shadow can be fun. And
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: that being able to be playful with the stuff that's
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: ground into the carpet of the psyche can actually create
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: an incredible place of joy where early in life we're
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: just terrified of our shadow. But all of a sudden,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: putting on that red coat, we're having the snowball fight. Actually,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: what's in the carpet is play. And I kind of
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: wonder whether that had been ground down into the carpet
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: by life, by working all the time, by just having
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: to deal with money and surgery and car accidents. That
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: play goes into the shadow. And there's something about this
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: animus figure was able to suck that out of the ground,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: accumulated in the spirit of place, is still alive, even
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: in the midst of these great difficulties.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I really like that a lot, Joseph. That's really great.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: And I think right on. From something so pedestrian comes
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: something delightful. It's an antiodromia that out of the one
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: thing emerges something else.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: And something that's delightful and full of possibility because you
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: can mold snow into all kinds of different shapes and
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: there's all these different ways that you can engage with it.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: And Deb, just to go back to something you said
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: a minute ago, you touched on this important word compensatory,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: which I think is absolutely there, right? I mean, the dream...
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of offers a different experience in some
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: sense than you're having in waking life. So perhaps she's
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: really suffering. The dream gives her this image of joy
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: and dreams will do that for us. You know, sometimes
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: when we're going through something really difficult, we'll get this absurd, silly, wonderful,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: fun dream. And it's almost like the dream maker is
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: gifting us Just a little reprieve from our suffering. But
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: dreams can be fun and they can be joyful and
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: they can be funny. And I just thought this was
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: a lovely example of that. So it's kind of like
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: the summer blockbuster movie of dreams.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.