ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1993, in the middle of a Cornell University seminar on Jung, film, and the process of self-knowledge, one of the best students brought our discussion about Jung’s history of the symbol vis-à-vis film to an agitated silence by exclaiming that his normally intelligent professor was, in his words, ‘full of crap.’ It was not his usual diction or tonal register, but in casting doubt upon the symbolic qualities of Star Wars (1977), I had touched an emotionally charged nerve. Like the rest of the class, I tried to take at that moment a measure of the depth and tone of this outburst before responding. It was the genuine article and was subsequently engaged as such, but to this day it troubles me in the same way that the primary focus of Jungian film studies on popular narrative film and television troubles me. (Readers interested in my student’s own report of this discussion may wish to read Conn [1997]. We remain on warm speaking terms; perhaps some day we will screen Star Wars together and continue the debate.) Reflection upon this fact seems necessary, perhaps especially now, when the recent past has seen the unprecedented publication of a very significant number of books and anthologies of Jungian film studies, including those by Bassil-Morozow (2010), Apperson and Beebe (2008), Cater (2005), Fredericksen (2005), Fredericksen and Hendrykowski (2007), Hauke and Alister (2001), Hockley (2001, 2007), Izod (2001, 2006), Singh (2009) and Waddell (2006, 2009). Reflection is needed now, just as these books herald increased visibility for Jungian perspectives on film among readers and students who may well be encountering such perspectives for the first time. Those of us who engage in this work are at that point where we need to know better the nature and function of our criticism: we need a theory of Jungian film criticism, nested within a theory of film, its creation, and its exhibition.
