Category: C.G.Jung

The psychoanalytic Jung

Wong Kar Wai’s 2o46 – Hongkong’s Age of Aquarius?
Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 while still a beautiful movie, at first sight it is a bit disappointing after all the others spellbinding subtle storylines. 2046 doesn’t come near to it for me – some part of the story is even repetitive. Visually still top-notch as ever like Wong’s earlier works with his signatures throughout: quick cutting, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, black and white, tilt shots, color filters, neon-sign lighting, aided ably by three able cinematographers. Music by Shigeru Umebayashi is haunting and sets the right mood. While doing the stills, I tought every second scene – if not every one – was a pure and strangely beautiful picture. A photographers movie indeed.

Wong Kar Wai apparently intended initially to do three separate stories, all exploring the idea of sexual relations between humans and androids.

There are three different intermingled trails and flashbacks playing in reality that Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Chow Mo-wan meets after losing his love:
- Maggie Cheung as Su Li-Zhen, the lost love of “in the Mood for Love”
- Gong Li as Another Su Li-Zhen. the “professional gambler”. Note the death card, coming up twice in this movie. I am very impressed about the gambler. A shadow of his old love Su maybe?
- Faye Wong Wang Jing Wen “hotel owners daughter with the Japanese lover”. After finding out that she still misses her ex in Japan, he takes her to his office so that she can call him.
- Zhang Ziyi as Bai Ling. beautiful call girl heart-broken by him. Big star in Hongkong and in Chungking Express.
The fourth is the world of 2046 and concerns futuristic train passenger falling in love with an android in the train to (or from) 2046.

The story is complex – I recommend the wiki article for hints about the plot. But what is it all about? I have three hypothesis.

(1) A sequel of in the Mood For Love.

In the eighties there was a documentary cult book in the liberal, leftist circles in Germany – „Tod des Märchenprinzen“ .- death of the fairy prince, an authentic story written from the point of view of a women. It was answered with a little brochure from the Märchenprinz in the book: „Ich war der Märchenprinz – I was the prince, to set things right. Similar, in a follow-up to the film, 2046 covers the aftermath of the doomed affair between Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li-zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung) from the „Mood For Love“, told from Chow’s perspective. In the first movie he was a the “Quiet Asian” and in 2046 he has become a lost womanizer, a typical addicted (weak) lover like in Ashes of Time .

(2) Symbolic interpretation – C,G. Jung’s Archetypes.

That is one way to tell this story. From a Jungian point of view the change is from the „impotent lover“ to the „Addicted Lover“. But there is a complete different angle. Like ashes of time the few key final scenes have put all the random pieces together so perfectly to deliver a simply truth about transaction based love and the connected loss and Chow only once, with the hotel owners daughter becomes caring and human again. In all other cases he makes women unhappy and women make him unhappy. The Addicted Lover is a collector–of experiences, possessions, or women. But without any structure, unable to connect the women he collects, his life feels fragmentary and the Lover’s energy shatters into a million directions. A man possessed by the Addicted Lover is, as Moore puts it in his book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine , “eternally restless.”

(3) The number 2046 and 2047.

With a fellow blogger in Hongkong I discussed the year 2047, that’s when Hongkong might lose its status as a window to the outside, its currency and will be fully integrated in the People Republic of China(PRC). Hong Kong is supposed to remain status quote up to 2047. Deng allowed HK another 50 years to “enjoy” the systems described in 2046. Wong Kar Wai picked 2046 as a title, thats when currency and fiscal sovereignty is handed over – which translates in political freedom. HK is on “borrowed time, borrowed place” . In Hongkong the change will be gradual so by 2047 HK will naturally and smoothly will become just another leading city of China.

The movie 2046 takes place in the late 1960’s, where Chow moves in the Orient Hotel, Hong Kong where he writes a science fiction novel. After a quick encounter with Mimi/Lulu, she gets killed in rom 2046 by her boyfriend. The number triggers the idea to the title. Since the bloodstained room needs to be cleaned he moves in room 2047 and stays there. So the big change is due 2047.

That maybe one reason, that Wong 2046 turns out it to be occupied by one of his old flames Lulu (Carina Lau), who was a former tenant in room 2046 before mysteriously vanishing. Some stills with Lulu are Art Nouveau. Fascinating red, and asynchrone camera angles.

The number triggers reflections on where he and Su Li-zhen used to go for afternoon romps, and serves as artistic inspiration. He creates a story about a place called 2046, where people go to find love and recall old memories. It’s a futuristic world with fast-paced trains, surreal colors, androids, and raw perspective not found regularly in real life. It resembles an acid-trip dream as enticing as it is frightening. As said before, the slow motion acting of the Androids don’t work.

The movie jumps back and forth from the present (1960’s) to the future (2046) where his fictional story is centered.

Reality: While staying at the hotel, Chow meets a gorgeous high-class call girl named Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). They become lovers and go out together, but he manages to provoke her to fall hopelessly in love with him. He treats her poorly, soliciting 10 USD per interaction for their afternoon encounters, even though she fell deeply for him. She ultimately breaks down from the emotional abuse, and let him go. To add insult to injury, he tells her to come over anytime she wants a quickie.

A new Su Li-zhen comes up, an enigmatic gambler and finally his old love Su in a flashback (below).

The daughter of the hotel owner, Jing (Faye Wong) is madly in love with her Japanese man, whose nationality leads her father Mr. Wang (Wang Sum), to sternly disapprove of them seeing each other. Chow befriends her and helps the two of them stay in contact by gathering love letters and arranging phone calls. In the process, he starts to have some feelings for her, acting even like a fatherly caring protector –almost like the cynical Rick in Casablanca discovering his good heart and quick to cover it up.

Further encounters take place in Chow’s life, but none that match the love story he experienced during In The Mood For Love. The most tortured woman in the movie is certainly Bai Ling, acted with sheer perfection by Zhang Ziyi, who expresses bottomless agony with a single teardrop.

Fiction: The futuristic story of 2046 is Chow’s way of turning those women into fictional. It’s his method of reflecting similar to the way discussing it within psychoanalysis. The random flashes into the world of 2046 are a therapy session in which Chow confronts his shadow and express the feelings that he has locked away inside. But what the use of those slow-moving androids? In a bad mood I would call it close to a boring relationship movie your wife/girlfriend drags you in. The pictures are great, however, the metaphor may hint either the politics or addicted lover theme.

2046 is a sequels and it shows. I have viewed all movies of Wong Kar Wai. Usually I write reviews of books or movies which are important to me, to collect my understanding of them. So far I did not understand 2046 yet. Chungking Express, Fallen Angles – source of my Avatar – provide fascinating psychoanalytic symbols and pictures but best of the best is Ashes of Time. So I thought, at least until I saw the last scene of 2046 a few times.

Last scene; Chow is stunned when Bai hands him a stack of money, each $10 bill representing one night they had spent together. He sets himself free staring empty into space, as the camera slowly follows a moving taxi. The last minutes makes the story round again. Lost souls.

Still highly recommended. I take my initial critique back, the last 5 minutes fuse all the story trails together. 2046 is actually a great movie, but not what it seems to be or the sound bites “The ultimate Love Film” suggests . As a man I give a piece of advice. Don’t drag your date on the first night in this movie (except she is an art movie buff). I did this one time with Chungking Express, with little success. Didn’t break the relationship, but she always was on guard after that. Suppose 2046 would work either…
July 2, 2012
C.G. Jung and George Orwell’s doublespeak

George Orwell’s iconic 1984 stand as perfect examples of the societal structures Jung warns against. Granted, all dystopian literature set in a totalitarian future could fall into this category, but two of his books are probably the two best examples of the genre. Animal Farm, and Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-four show totalitarian systems and are highly relevant today.

Modeled after the Stalinism, the basic pattern was repeated by Mao’s Big Leap and the Cultural Revolution, by Pol-Pot, just to name a few. It’s about state totalitarianism, and if you look too much to right or to the left you become a road-kill by well-meaning national or transnational organization. The best example the European Union, the hunger of central power and the severe distortion of reality by language intended to disguise, distort, or obscure its real meaning was aptly foreseen in “Nineteen Eighty-four” Political language, George Orwell wrote nearly 60 years ago, is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. It is a pity that Orwell won’t be around to write a new book about the double-speak that passes for the European Union’s and the national finance ministers official discourse on the EU crises. A fundamental concept to control of the thought is to control of the past. Therefore, a gigantic effort is operated today to fit all existing publications of the current political correct line and to overpower by sheer mass production the unwanted. Especially worrisome can that be seen in dispute parts in some Wikipedia articles.

George Orwell lived out Jung’s theory of The Shadow. Dr. Carl Jung argues that the future depends on our ability to resist society’s mass movements. Only by understanding our unconscious inner nature-“the undiscovered self”-can we gain the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. In his book The Undiscovered Self, C.G. Jung points with logical assertions that “it is chiefly in times of physical, political, economic and spiritual distress that men’s eyes turn with anxious hope to the future”. The only way to combat these stresses and worries is for humanity to embrace its potential on both a conscious and unconscious level. Without a finely tuned awareness of self, we are doomed to pass control of the individual self onto an external collective entity such as the government. The Individual’s Understanding of Himself: “It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward ey and prevent it from looking at the individual life within.”

Much of the book warns against succumbing to the will of the collective without first consulting the needs of the individual. Humanity must open itself up to acknowledging its equal capacity for good and evil. But perhaps the strongest evidence attesting Jung’s accuracy is the near rabid, even quasi-religious nature of the political debate even in, or perhaps especially in, the European Union which has ‘officially’ removed religion from its pitifully so-called failed “constitution”. The religion has gone underground, and political assertions of the churches in Europe have the air of dissident meetings. The same ist true for families in one parent stays at home.

Perhaps Jung’s approach is helping us to find the inner self first, and then unite to counter the mass-mindness and its pursuit for maximized profits, whether in the form of a government or a global corporation and the lure of a motherly state taking care of life’s hardship of the never-grew-ups.

Where there are many, there is security. What the many believe, must of course be true. What the many want, must be worth striving for, necessary, and therefore good. In the clamour of the many, lies the power to snatch wish-fulfilment by force. Sweetest of all however, is that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care, into happy-go-luckiness and irresponsibility…to all questions there is an answer….
C.G. Jung in “The Undiscovered Self

“Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad”, which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.
George Orwell in “Animal Farm”

June 25, 2012
C.G. Jung, Kepler and Pauli – The Synchronicity Triangle

The psychoanalytic C.G.Jung and the famous astronomer Kepler were both intuitive thinkers and empiric scientists with strong mystic tendencies. Pauli was a famous particle physicist, who collaborated with C.G. Jung on the concept synchronicity. When I studied Kepler’s work, I found a similarity of C.G. Jung’s and Kepler’s view on astrology and to my surprise, that Kepler even used the term archetype just in the way C.G. Jung did. This is touched in Pauli’s essay on Kepler. Kepler, Pauli and Jung were trailblazers in their own disciplines as well as in the realm of collaboration across disciplines. Their similar approach as scientist or physician and the concept of synchronicity and archetype form a triangle.

C.G.Jung valued astrology as one of the intuitive methods he used like the I Ching. For him astrology is based upon the synchronicity principle, i.e. meaningful coincidence: “Astrology is a naively projected psychology in which the different attitudes and temperaments of man are represented as gods and identified with planets and zodiacal constellations”.

Kepler is recognized as one of the founders of modern science. He was a devout Christian with mystical tendencies (obvious in his book Harmonices Mundi) working as astrologer of General Albrecht von Wallenstein, a successful soldier of fortune for Rudolph II. Keplers (two) horoscopes of Wallenstein are studied and books written about them until today. Kepler lived during turbulent times, the 30 Year’s War, in “Germany”. This war, by no means only a religious war, decimated half of its population. Kepler was not only working as astrologer in order to make ends meet (he got never paid for his job as court astronomer and adviser of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II). Although Kepler was deeply dissatisfied with the way some astrology was practised, he strove to improve the predictive capability by strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of astrology with both mathematical and philosophical models and his superior ephemeris (his Rudolphine Tables). He used carefully selected methods (sun arc directions – and secondary directions – one ephemeris day equals one year of life – but not for planets but axis, which is actually a primary direction i.e.one degree on the Zodiac equals one year of life). For Kepler the sun/earth relation is paramount..He also compared astrological predictions correcting assumed birth time and was able to use “true time” that is actual pace of the Sun not the mean time.

Kepler strongly believed that ‘The world of nature, the world of man, the world of God—all three fit together.In particular, Kepler reasoned that because the universe was designed by an intelligent Creator, it should function according to some logical pattern.Kepler converted to the Copernican heliocentric universe early in his career but was also strongly influenced by neo-Platonic philosophy, which saw the divine in the regularity of geometry (“God always geometrizes”, Plato). It is no exaggeration to say that Kepler was one of the most outstanding and dramatic figures under all his contemporaries and a scientist who repeatedly attacked dogmas of astronomy or astrology. He not only ensured that the Copernican theory became widely recognized, but actually gave it the needed physical and mathematical underpinnings. Before Kepler’s Laws, the basic Copernican model was neither more reliable, nor physical more accurate or mathematical less complicated than the old Ptolemaic model: All astronomers assumed (wrongly) uniform circular motion. When Kepler worked in the Prague period on the “Astronomia nova“, he discovered the famous second law of planetary motion (“planets moved in elliptical orbits, in which a focal point the Sun is”) with the millennia-old paradigm. This needed intellectual courage of Kepler, because it was a break with the tradition of all great astronomers from Ptolemy and Copernicus and the concept of the perfect form – the circle. Nonetheless, after numerous calculations and double-checks Kepler regretfully accepted, basically apologizing to god in his foreword. Kepler also calculated without wavering the birth date of Jesus Christ new. In his work “About the date of birth of God’s true Jesus Christ” Kepler identified the star of Bethlehem with the great conjunction of Saturn and the Jupiter and calculated that this event on the third year CE.

Pauli, a “Wunderkind” may be called a pioneer of quantum physics and leading member of the group of theoretical physicists, including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger. The group transformed our understanding of the way matter behaves at the subatomic level encountering a new world where Einstein’s theories (and Newtons Laws) do not apply. Exploration of the Pauli-Jung collaboration is particularly interesting because of the holistic view of his major scientific work, which won him the Nobel prize.The Pauli exclusion principle explains how matters form and a variety of astrophysic effects.

On the psychic side, the Pauli effect was named after the anecdotal bizarre ability of his to break experiments simply by being in the vicinity and his sarcastic remarks toward colleagues. Pauli has always been a strong drinker, which did not seem to hamper his scientific genius. His marriage with a bar singer-dancer became a complete disaster within one year. His mother committed suicide. Despite his Jewish origins Pauli was baptised catholic. Pauli met with Jung, whom he consulted regularly till 1934 in a deep psychological crisis. Especially Pauli’s dreams, which were full of symbolism from alchemy, were extensively discussed.

Pauli himself had written an article called “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler” which appeared later in a volume with an essay of Jung’s on synchronicity. The Pauli-Jung collaboration aimed at explication of a unifying or connecting principle bridging the gap between mind and matter or (quantum) physics with psychoanalysis. Jung’s theory of synchronicity stipulated that certain events-often called coincidences-actually reveal the operation of an non-causal connection between mental and physical events through meaning. The history of Jung’s reception by the scientific and scholarly communities is cautious – they largely discredited theories of Freud are considered scientific, but although many Jung’s concepts are widely used his overall work is labeled often as unscientific.  Synchronicity has been the prime target for criticism of Jung, but is for me a natural extension of Jung’s view of the intuitive function.

Synchronicity

Jung coined the word to describe what he called “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events” or “meaningful coincidence” and “acausal parallelism in which archetypes and the collective unconscious are governing a dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Synchronicity does not admit causality in the analogy between terrestrial events and astrological constellations … What astrology can establish are the analogous events, but not that either series is the cause or the effect of the other. (For instance, the same constellation may at one time signify a catastrophe and at another time, in the same case, a cold in the head.) … In any case, astrology occupies a unique and special position among the intuitive methods… I have observed many cases where a well-defined psychological phase, or an analogous event, was accompanied by a transit (particularly when Saturn and Uranus were affected). – Carl G. Jung

Jung’s paradigmatic example of a synchronicity occurred during a therapy session, and the connecting meaning in a synchronistic event is subjective, related to the individual’s psychological maturation, or individuation. Jung and Pauli believed, events like this occur too often enough to be only meaningless coincidence. Jung noted taking as usual phenomenological stance, while it would be “absurd” to consider the conjunction of dream material and life events to be causal, “it is wise to consider the fact that [these coincidences] do happen…The East…considers coincidences as the reliable basis of the world rather than causality. Synchronism is the prejudice of the East; causality is the modern prejudice of the West.”

Jung mentioned the concept again in his commentary to Wilhelm’s translation of “The Secret of the Golden Flower”. He concluded that “the causality principle” cannot explain “psychic parallelisms” that must somehow be connected but are not causally related and equated synchronicity with the Chinese Tao. Jung would write about this concept again, and when he did, his focus would shift from the empirical and phenomenological aspects of synchronistic phenomena to the ontological and archetypal nature of such events. Pauli thought that the probabilistic nature of quantum theory and the Uncertainty Principle offered the possibility of discovering something beyond the mind-matter gap which transformed Jung’s understanding of synchronicity. As a result of his interaction with Pauli, Jung gradually came to see this non-causal connecting principle as an explanatory theory must be seen in combination with causality to lead to a better understanding reality, rather than having only a subjective meaning.

Astrology and Alchemy

C.G.Jung saw alchemy as continuation of Gnostic thoughts and wrote: “The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologies, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands”.

In his book “Psychology and Alchemy” of C.G. Jung contains Pauli’s early dreams which provided Jung with a rich resource for theoretical exploration, and his own interpretations played a role in Jung’s theories. Pauli clearly believed that this effort was scientific; he said that “even the most modern physics also lends itself to the symbolic representation of psychic processes, even down to the last detail.” In his final version of the synchronicity essay (The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche Part 2), Jung wrote that the “archetype represents psychic probability”. Pauli wrote in his Kepler essay (published there as part one), that “pure logic” is not capable of establishing a “bridge between the sense perceptions and the concepts.” Kepler himself thought that scientific ideas discerned by humanity exist eternally as archetypes in the mind of God, and Jung’s theories understand archetypes similar “as ordering operators and image-formers” in the symbolic. “It would be most satisfactory” said Pauli, “if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”

Kepler expressed also original ideas in relation to astrology almost like something the physical resonance theory like: the celestial bodies themselves exert no influence on the human fate, but fixed the angle between the rays toward the heavenly bodies the soul at the moment of human birth and later responds specifically to them. He used actually the term archetypes in his astrological work and not only his Wallenstein horoscope legendary. Kepler ideas, as Wolfgang Pauli observed, identify important intermediate stage between archaic, logical symbolic, and new, quantitative and mathematical description of nature. Much of what was later separated in scientific and non-scientific knowledge was at that time merged inseparably. Similar to representatives of scholastic science, Kepler relied on accuracy, allegory, speculative ideas, and mysticism, but unlike the Scholastics he tested constantly each theory and carefully compared the results with the rich observations of Tyco Brahe and calculations. C.G. Jung derived lekewise many of his insights from observation he made treating his patients.

Ancient wisdom in a global world

Our modern science begins with astronomy. Instead of saying that man was led by psychological motives, they formerly said he was led by his stars. … The puzzling thing is that there is really a curious coincidence between astrological and psychological facts, so that one can isolate time from the characteristics of an individual, and also, one can deduce characteristics from a certain time. Therefore we have to conclude that what we call psychological motives are in a way identical with star positions. Since we cannot demonstrate this, we must form a peculiar hypothesis. This hypothesis says that the dynamics of our psyche is not just identical with the position of the stars, nor has it to do with vibrations – that is an illegitimate hypothesis. It is better to assume that it is a phenomenon of time. … The stars are simply used by man to serve as indicators of time… – Carl G. Jung in 1929

The arrogance of today’s scholarstoward medieval age and traditional knowledge is incomprehensible and the humiliating assessments of Kepler activity, which can be found in the “history of Western philosophy” by Bertrand Russell who described Kepler is “an example of what can achieve mediocrity through hard work”. But Kepler, not Galileo came up for the mathematical proof and physical correct model of the heliocentric model. Kepler is particularly suitable for tracking the various sides and peculiarities of the epistemological concepts, problems of scientific paradigm change and the relations between the empirical and theoretical knowledge. Kepler himself speaks of primary images as being “archetypal” [archetypalis], and Pauli develops a detailed correspondence with Jung’s archetypes. Pauli writes: “the view of the universe was not as yet split into a religious one and a scientific one.” Indeed subjects of physics, religion, mathematics and astrology are all found in one single book of Kepler. His astrological and religious themes have been neglected and Jung’s broader view of psychoanalysis has until very recently been marginalized. The tide is slowly turning, though, and at least Jung may yet have his day. Physicists with a psychological or spiritual inclination have taken note of synchronicity and written of its validity for exploring the connection between quantum and classical physics. Others scientists have begun to explore theories of human cognition that rely on constructs very much like Kepler’s and Jung’s archetypes and his evolutionary understanding of human experience so useful in a globalized world, where I cross many cultural boundaries on a given day.To me Kepler’s astrology is not only superstition but contains some psychological facts (like theosophy) which are of considerable importance. Kepler never predicted the future but in possible (character) dispositions. His astrology connects at least culturally and historically the religion and psychology of antiquity with physics and astronomy of today.

Jung, C. G., Pauli, W. (1952): Naturerklärung und Psyche. Zürich: Rascher (Download)

C.G. Jung (1955) Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Wolfgang Pauli. Verzeichnis der Manuskripte und Korrespondenzen im Archiv der ETH Zürich

Wolfgang Pauli und die moderne Physik. Virtuelle Ausstellung der ETH-Bibliothek

Pauli Archives, CERN, Nachlassverzeichnis

W. Pauli, The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler

Kepler, Harmonices mundi, Harmony of the Worlds, 1619

June 19, 2012
Alan Watts Tribute to C.G.Jung

This record of Alan Watts, done shortly after C.G. Jung’s death really blew me away. Alan Watts brings C.G. Jung’s concept of Good and Evil right to the point. Listen to Alan Watts. Watts believed that the key to the universe is fundamentally a higher consciousness or mind. The world is an emanation of the one Being or Consciousness. Unity is the nature of the universe while the distinctions between knowing subject and the objects of knowledge are actually expressions of unity. True Zen, he said, was liberation of the mind from traditional thought forms to raise human consciousness to identify with the Consciousness which is Reality. Mystical thinkers of all traditions have discovered this, he said, and modern psychotherapy is coming to agree now. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961) Watts referred to Carl Jung, bringing science closer to Eastern insight or as he said in this record – Western and Eastern minds arriving at the same point by different means.

Alan Watts clarified that C.G. Jung viewed good and evil not as absolute, warring opposites, but as interconnected polarities of an underlying unity. Watts explained that to truly understand and integrate evil, one must first confront their own dark side without judgment..

In his tribute to Carl Jung, Watts highlighted several key concepts regarding Good and Evil:

The Polarity of Life

Jung believed that existence requires duality and that opposites define one another. Just as you cannot understand “to be” without “not to be,” you cannot comprehend good without the existence of evil. Rather than an absolute cosmic battle that can never be harmonized, good and evil are two halves of a whole.

Confronting the Shadow

Watts stressed the importance of acknowledging your own inherent flaws. As Jung observed, the more we repress our “dark side,” the denser and more destructive it becomes. When we obsessively condemn evil in others, it is often a defense mechanism masking an unconscious awareness of the potential for that same evil within ourselves

Alan Wilson Watts was born in England,1915 and had early interest in Eastern thought. He sought to apply its principles to modern psychology and argued for a common mystical core underlying all religions, reflecting the influence of Aldous Huxley, a major attempt to reconcile Christianity and Eastern thought. Watts taught comparative philosophy and psychology at the new American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco and still is much recognized in California. He wrote and lectured at colleges, universities, medical schools, and mental health institutions in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, including Harvard; Yale; Cambridge; the Universities of Chicago, Michigan, Indiana, and Hawaii; and the C. J. Jung Institute (Zurich).

June 10, 2012
Male and female archetypes in Wong Kar Wai Films – Draft

For the uninitiated, Wong Kar Wai’s films seem pointless and confusing, which is reinforced by the director’s trademark cinematic indulgences, laggard pacing and minimalist plotting. However, upon closer inspection, it is easy to become intrigued by the rampant symbolism, the metaphor-laden dialogue, and the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of his films. Maybe its a problem of “if you have hammer, everything looks like a nail”, but I cant help his movies remind me on C.G. Jung: Failed individuation, shadows, persona and archetypes manifest in the here and now. But are there common elements that tie his entire body of work together? Is there some underlying structure or theme by which one can gain a better comprehension of his sometimes cryptic images and symbols?

The classic archetypes in Wong Kar Wai Films

One way of approaching the cure for the modern malaise in his films may come from the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, by Jungian psychologist Robert Moore and mythologist Douglas Gillette. Moore argues that masculinity is made up of four archetypal male energies which serve different purposes: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Like much of the literature in the mythopoeic realm, KWML is grounded in the psychology of Carl Jung, particularly in his idea of psychological archetypes. While Jung suggested a number of universal archetypes (Mother, Hero), the four personal ones are: the Self, the Shadow, the Animus and Anima, and the Persona. They play a role too, as they are parts of the personal unconscious. I like to investigate, here some archetypes and their shadow representation ( and symbols which are archetypes in the here and now). Each of the four consists according to Moore of three parts: the full and highest expression of the archetype and two bi-polar dysfunctional shadows of the archetype. To better understand this, Moore portrays each archetype as a triangle full (to weak, to strong, and an bi-polar shadow split. These shadows are the result of the archetype not being integrated in a healthy and coherent way. The two shadows of the Lover archetype are the Addicted Lover and the Impotent Lover. A man possessed by the Addicted Lover is, as Moore puts it, “eternally restless.”Men dogged by the Impotent Lover archetype feel depressed, flat, and dead inside. Nothing brings them joy anymore. They’ve lost their passion for life and become cynical. Relationships, whether romantic or platonic, struggle and falter.

Ashes of Time is best candidate applying this framework, as it is almost a greek tragedy. You find the cynical magician, the weak king (note the absence of the positive king), the full warrior who becomes a hero and the addicted lover who cannot love. The women are brilliant too, there is the virgin, the animus, the unfaithful and loyal wife and there is Maggie Cheu.

Brigitte Lin in Ashes of Time (1994)

Wong’s films, at their most basic level, are an exploration of the double-edged sword known as memory, which may be seen as consciousness. This strong thematic undercurrent is expressed through subtext in the dialogue, characterizations, and the often-minimalist plotting. Pain of loss and the tenacity of remembrance are both destructive forces, yet essential for survival. All the characters in his films are products of this loss, and their actions in the present stem from their reactions to that loss. Unfortunately, the results are often tragic. In ashes of time the girl with the donkey begs the agent for assassins ( in my view a cynical materialistic magician type):

Please help me. I beg of you.

It’s no use. I’m just an agent. You must solve your own problem.

“Ashes of Time”

Ouyang Feng’s lost love ( Cheung’s character in Ashes of Time) ultimately married his brother because she tired of waiting for her real love return to her. Wai’s camera stares intently at her while she gazes beyond time and relieves the past full of regret to his “friend. She dies as there is no reason to live. Besides being one of the strongest impression of melodrama, it is also the most puzzling. I noted two times the look in the mirror, visually and verbal in the film. It almost seems tis relates to the pain to learn about ourselves.

Do you know what the most important thing is in my life?

Maggie Cheung ponders in Ashes of Time (1994)

Your son?

I thought so too. But as he grows up, I know he’ll be leaving me one day. Nothing’s important to me now. I thought the words ‘I love you’ really mattered. I thought they meant a lifetime commitment. But looking back, nothing matters… because everything changes. I thought I was the winner, until one day I looked into the mirror and saw the face of a loser. I failed to have the person I loved most to be with me in my best years. How wonderful it would be if we could forget the past…

“Ashes of Time”

The post-modern archetypes in Wong Kar Wai Films

His other films are mostly a study of relationships in the post-modern world, in which the exchange of goods and services serves as the basis of all relationships, instead of emotional connection– a representation of cosmopolitan life in modern Hong Kong – and elsewhere. Very few of the relationships found in Wong’s films are based on emotional connection, and the struggle that his characters face is to cultivate deeper forms of association. Unfortunately, many of his characters do not form these emotional connections, out of fear of rejection, and find it much easier to have transaction-based encounters. After thinking this through, and stereotypes not being archetypes, it appears to me that his central archetypes of loneliness are (negative) lover and warrior.

When I am about to leave, I ask him to take me home. I haven’t ridden on a motorbike for a long time. Actually, I haven’t been so close with a man for a while. The road isn’t that long, and I know that I’ll be getting off soon, but I’m feeling such warmth this very moment.

“Fallen Angels”

The most important aspect of Wong’s thematic focus is the transience of relationships. Even if the characters manage to find an emotional connection with one another, they learn to accept the fact that all relationships must end, and those who survive at the end of the film have learned to embrace the moment. This theme was best represented by #223’s (Takeshi Kaneshiro) ‘expiry date’ speech in “Chungking Express”, and the final soliloquy given by the nameless agent (Michelle Reis) while riding into the Hong Kong night on the back of a motorcycle. Not surprisingly, this can also be seen in Wong’s fascination with images of smoke and drifting clouds– like these transient phenomena, relationships form like a puff of smoke, only to quickly lose their cohesion and dissipate into the night. To embody these themes within his films, Wong populates his films with a number of archetypal characters: the ‘impotent lover’, the ‘carefree lover’, and sometimes, ‘the indecisive warrior’.

The impotent lover

Tony Leung Chiu Wai as the Blind Swordsman in Ashes of Time

The impotent lover has been seen in many forms, but their origins and current condition are always the same: the small time gangster Wah Ha-tau (Andy Lau) from “As Tears Go By”, both Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) and the soda counter girl Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) in “Days of Being Wild”, the Blind Swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) in “Ashes of Time”, and Police Officer #663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) in “Chungking Express”.

This the time of year to change into a summer uniform. I don’t know if it is the weather, but I feel that things are changing.

“Chungking Express”

The impotent lover is in a constant state of emotional paralysis, arising from his or her inability to forget the pain of a broken relationship. Blinded by the haze of nostalgia and desperately attempting to hang on their halcyon days, they miss the opportunities of the present and are completely unaware of the incessant progression of time.

Go ahead. I just want you to hate me. That way, at least you won’t forget me.

“Days of Being Wild”

#663 of “Chungking Express” is another good example of the impotent lover. Always waiting for his stewardess ex-girlfriend (Zhou Jialing) to return, he is completely oblivious to the fact that Fay (Faye Wong), the counter girl at a local fast food place, has been breaking into his apartment and rearranging his belongings. He does not notice that his canned food tastes different, or that the number of goldfish in his aquarium is increasing.

To capture the impotent lover’s introspective point-of-view visually, Wong employs a number of cinematic techniques. His use of the Godard-ian jump cut seamlessly blends temporally-exclusive scenes together, making the passage of time unnoticeable. Other Godard-ian touches include the many shots of clocks, which remind the viewer that despite the blind mourner’s fixation on the past, time continues to move on and that moments in the present are fleeting.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Faye Wong share a moment in Chungking Express

Another interesting technique, seen in “Chungking Express”, clearly represents the lover’s detachment from reality– the film is sped up, but the actors move very slowly. The resulting visual effect then conveys that while the rest of the world blurs by like the flapping of a hummingbird’s wings, the impotent lover is in a stagnant state of existence, lost within their own nostalgic thoughts.

The addicted lover

I’ve heard that there’s a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. The bird only lands once in its life… that’s when it dies.

“Days of Being Wild”

In contrast to the impotents lover is the other staple characterization of Wong’s films, the ‘addicted lover’. Characters that fall into this classification include the hotheaded Fly (Jackie Cheung) from “As Tears Go By”, the lonely beat cop (Andy Lau) from “Days of Being Wild” an mostely the amnesic Huang Yoshi (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) from “Ashes of Time”, and the fickle Ho Wo Ping (Leslie Cheung) of “Happy Together”.

I never think about the next time when doing anything.

“As Tears Go By”

The carefree addicted lover is a character oblivious to history with no appreciation for the lessons of the past. As a result, their actions usually end up destroying the lives of those they come across. In “As Tears Go By”, it is clear that Fly is the carefree wanderer, since it is his reckless actions that end up destroying three lives, despite the escalating consequences of his previous misdeeds and the volatile situations he manages to entangle himself in.

Tony Ka Fai Leung drinks the magic wine in Ashes of Time (1994)

The more wine you drink, the warmer you’ll get. Water will only make you feel cold.

“Ashes of Time”

The most literal interpretation of the carefree addicted lover was seen in “Ashes of Time“. Huang Yoshi has his memory of the past erased after drinking a magical wine called ‘A Happy Go Lucky Life’ which erases memory. While the wine has eased the pain of the past for Huang Yoshi , it has also made him forget his emotional connections with others. As a result, his ‘carefree’ existence ends up destroying the lives of the other characters, including the split-personality Murong Yin/Yang (Bridget Lin) and the Blind Swordsman wife but mostly Ouyang Feng’s love and his “friend” Ouyang Feng .

Similarly, Ho Wo Ping in “Happy Together” has a shiftless existence living for only the moment. His inability to recognize his history with Lai Yiu Fai (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) ends up relegating him to a lonely permanence of his own doing.

I used to think there was a kind of bird that, once born, would keep flying until death. The fact is that the bird hasn’t gone anywhere. It was dead from the beginning.

“Days of Being Wild”

Through this stock character, Wong illustrates the other extreme to the impotent lover. While the addicted lover is not subject to the anguish of remembrance, they too are caught in a stagnant existence. Instead of missing the opportunities of the present due to an obsessive fixation on some past trauma, they never learn from their mistakes, nor do they ever form stable relationships with those around them. However, the result is the same– a lonely existence in isolation.

Do you remember at 3pm on April the sixteenth last year, what you were doing?

Why this question?

Well, I have a friend who challenges my memory. She asked me what I did on that day. I wouldn’t remember. Do you?

She told you?

I thought you would have forgotten.

What’s to be remembered, I would always remember. So you knew each other?

For a period of time. I left for the sea, and we lost contact. How about you?

Me? It’s off. What else did she tell you?

Not much. We’ve actually only known each other for a short period of time.

Did you love her?

Not exactly… just friends.

If you see her again in the future, tell her I’ve forgotten her. That’ll be better for everyone.

I’m not sure I’ll see her again. Maybe, she would have forgotten about me too.

“Days of Being Wild”

The indecisive warrior

michelle reis as the killer’s agent in Fallen Angels

The best thing about my profession is that there’s no need to make any decision. Who’s to die… when… where… it’s all been planned by others. I’m a lazy person. I like people to arrange things for me. That’s why I need a partner.

“Fallen Angels”

This last archetype is a more recent innovation in Wong’s films, first seen in “Fallen Angels”. To me it seams, it is a parody of a warrior. The male leads, hit man Wong Zhiming (Leon Lai) and mute 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro), are both in search of a sense of belonging, but end up in pathological situations where they lose their identity. Zhiming muses that the best thing about his ‘job’ is that he never has to make any decisions of his own, since everything he does has been arranged for him by his partner, the unnamed agent. When he finally does realize that he must take a more active role in the job, he is too late– ironically he is gunned down in an ambush set up by his lovelorn agent.

They say that love can change a man. I start to find myself looking better and more charming, and suddenly I discover that I’m turning blonde.

“Fallen Angels”

223 has a similar problem. Creating a state of moral contradiction, 223 breaks into other people’s businesses at night such that he can ‘be his own boss’. However, in actuality, he has merely taken decisions that have been made by others and uses them, instead of making his own. He also hooks up with brokenhearted woman (Charlie Yeung) who is obsessed with getting revenge on a woman named Blondie. Together, they traverse the Hong Kong nightscape in search of Blondie, and in the process, blonde hairs begin to sprout from 223’s head, a metaphor for his adoption of his newfound partner’s system of values.

Like the impotent lover and the carefree lover, the life of the indecisive warrior is a lonely one. However, unlike the tragic note that Zhiming’s story ends one, 223’s outcome is certainly more upbeat. He ends up being rejected by the jilted woman and learns to make decisions for himself in the process (visually conveyed by his blonde hairs disappearing), the first of which is to give Zhiming’s former agent a ride home on his motorcycle.

Conclusion

So instead of being confusing jumbles of abstract dialogue and quirky characterizations, the films of Wong Kar Wai have a consistency in structure and theme. The archetypal characters of Wong Kar Wai’s angst-ridden narratives are classical different perspectives on man and women. While some of these characters do meet tragic ends resulting from their inability to change, the director does provide a glimmer of hope in the characters that do survive the melancholic plot.

June 9, 2012