Archetypes and Stereotypes: Help Me?

[kwestuwyo]

Hello,

I need a little help with determining the difference between archetypes and stereotypes. I know that the archetype is the general mold for characters, motifs, etc., but how do you determine whether something is a character stereotype or archetype? For example: If you are examining teen movies, is the jock a stereotype or an archetype? It seems like a stereotype, but it also seems like an archetype being that there are several teen movies in which the jock role greatly varies. What is an easy way to determine whether a character is based off of archetype or stereotype? Thanks a ton for any help!

[Calidore]

An archetype is someone who forms a template; a stereotype is someone who is assumed to fit a perceived template, usually with a negative connotation. For example, Sam Spade could be considered the archetypal hard-boiled private eye, while a subsequent unoriginal copy could be said to be fitting the stereotype. Your typical jock would be a stereotype, unless he was the one who originated the type.

[kwestuwyo]

An archetype is someone who forms a template; a stereotype is someone who is assumed to fit a perceived template, usually with a negative connotation. For example, Sam Spade could be considered the archetypal hard-boiled private eye, while a subsequent unoriginal copy could be said to be fitting the stereotype. Your typical jock would be a stereotype, unless he was the one who originated the type.

Thank you for assisting me. I have a few follow-up questions I was wondering if you might be able to answer in order to clarify. So, if you used the archetype "hero," then Batman, Hercules, and Harry Potter might all fall under that archetype...but they are not stereotypes because they are built around that archetype correct? And the archetype "trickster" probably carries some negative connotation, so what distinguishes it from a stereotype "jock?" Thanks again for your help!

[JBI]

Archetypes were believed to be rooted in our subconscious and be character types apparent across civilizations. I think by now we have disproven most of this, and our idea of something "deeper" to Achiles other than his manifestation as a creation of Greek culture has more or less been disproved. Archetypes in that sense are anti-historical.

Now, that does not disqualify stock characterization. But we must appreciate that each culture may create their own stock characters. The dOomed lovers Of Romeo and Juliet are not the same in China, despite the connections certain translators draw.

[mona amon]

JBI, in what way are doomed lovers different in chinese works? I'd imagine they are more or less the same everywhere. The archetype (stereotype?) of love thwarted by death or seperation, which never has a chance to become the more homely affection of marriage and therefore retains all its unspoiled intensity, is a great theme for writers in any culture who want to write poetically about love. I can only think of Laila and Majnu at the moment, but there must be many others.

[Calidore]

Thank you for assisting me. I have a few follow-up questions I was wondering if you might be able to answer in order to clarify. So, if you used the archetype "hero," then Batman, Hercules, and Harry Potter might all fall under that archetype...but they are not stereotypes because they are built around that archetype correct? And the archetype "trickster" probably carries some negative connotation, so what distinguishes it from a stereotype "jock?" Thanks again for your help!

Harry Potter is definitely not an archetype. The "nobody becomes a great hero" archetype itself is a very old one, and Potter is just one recent example of many. I don't think Batman would be either, as there were wealthy men who trained themselves to fight evil before him. Doc Savage comes to mind, for starters. Superman might be, as I think he was the first super-powered comic book hero.

I think you'll need someone better educated than me to explain the finer details, though.

[Printer's Devil]

Technically, archetypes are a concept Plato came up with to explain why the world, despite being created by gods who can by definition do anything, was imperfect. Basically, he reckoned that the gods created one perfect example of everything, and then started up some kind of automated production line churning out copies. So up in Ancient Greek Heaven there are a perfect man and a perfect woman, and the rest of us are the equivalent of 10th generation pirate DVDs, therefore we're all a bit different, and none of us are perfect, some less so than others.

In literary terms, an archetype is the exemplar of a particular stereotype. This doesn't mean that he or she (or indeed it) has to be the first. The archetype of the incredibly intelligent and logical detective is Sherlock Holmes, even though he was obviously inspired by Poe's Chevalier Dupin. However, Dupin appeared in precisely three short stories, dealing with an extremely improbable murder committed by an escaped zoo animal, a mystery that wasn't a crime at all, just a small human error caused by absent-mindedness, and an attempt to solve a real-life unsolved murder by sitting in an armchair and thinking about it (by the way, subsequent discoveries proved him wrong). He is nowadays remembered only as the obscure character who, along with Dr. Joseph Bell (who was a real person), inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes, and I don't see him getting a movie franchise any time soon. So you really need three categories here: Prototype, Archetype (who may also be the Prototype but doesn't have to be), and Stereotype.

For example: the prototypical literary vampire was Polidori's Lord Ruthven, a thinly-veiled caricature of Lord Byron, with whom he'd had a complex and stormy relationship. Before that, vampires were foul Eastern European monsters much more similar to what we now think of as zombies (the cinematic variety, not traditional Haitian ones) than the suave, dangerously seductive bloodsuckers we're familiar with from countless films. Then there was a fellow called Varney, the second major literary vampire, and already a stereotype. But then along came a certain Count Dracula, and the rest is history. Entirely original? Certainly not - he wouldn't have existed without Lord Ruthven, and possibly Varney, coming first. But who's heard of either of them? So, Dracula is an archetype, despite not being a prototype.

Likewise, the archetypal hard-boiled private eye is Philip Marlowe, not Sam Spade as stated earlier (they're often confused because Humphrey Bogart played them both on screen as essentially the same person). Tough guy with a well-hidden heart of gold who provides cynical first-person narration laced with snappy wisecracks? That's Marlowe, not Spade, and there are sufficient differences between them to make Marlowe much more than a Spade clone.

Superman, on the other hand, is both a prototype and an archetype. The idea of the hero of your story being physically superior to normal people goes right back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, but the concept of a seemingly normal man who secretly has incredible powers which he uses to help people while disguised in an extraordinary costume started with Superman in 1938, and makes him the unquestioned exemplar of the superhero genre.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, is not an archetype, however popular he is. In the UK, the concept of a boy and his best friends solving crimes and other complicated problems while staying at a British boarding-school had been very well established since the 1930s. So Harry Potter would be a stereotype, except that he's also a wizard. Almost all detectives have to be intelligent and logical if they're going to solve crimes, so there's plenty of room in literature for crime-solvers with above-average intelligence who are very different from Sherlock Holmes. Harry Potter's so specific that he defines a genre consisting entirely of himself and blatant rip-offs. See also Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

By the way, since we're talking about fictional characters, not unique entities created by Greek gods, there's room for more than one archetype in a given slot. For example, like almost everybody else in the part of the world where I live, my instant response to "doomed lovers" would be "Romeo and Juliet". But apparently if you live in China it's two other people I've never heard of, and I'm pretty sure that not very Chinese person William Shakespeare hadn't either. So it's all a bit regional and cultural. But anyway, I hope this is helpful.

[Calidore]

That's exactly what I meant by "better educated than me." Thanks for the informative post! For my own info, could you elaborate in the Spade/Marlowe example? Marlowe came nearly ten years after Spade and was heavily influenced by him, so wouldn't that still make Spade the archetype if he's the tip of the "traditional" P.I. pyramid?

[Printer's Devil]

My apologies for not posting this sooner, but as a new member my posts are very strictly monitored for naughty words, and apparently I've been using too many of them. It took me a while to figure out which words I used could possibly be unacceptable, but I think the problem may have been my repeated references to a fictional character whose surname is either a gardening implement or a racial insult. So I'll just call him Sam and see if that gets past the censor. Also, this site seems to be having problems right now, so maybe the server has gone nuts and decided that "the" is a rude word.

Anyway, Sam is not a nice guy. In the only novel in which he appears (he later appeared in a couple of very minor short stories due to reader demand), he despises his extremely sleazy partner and has had an affair with his wife behind his back, but never really liked her and finds the fact that she's now in love with him irritating. He constantly manipulates people, but doesn't come across as all that bad because almost everybody in the book is far worse than he is. And although he eventually does the right thing, he admits that if the Maltese Falcon had turned out to be the genuine article, he'd probably have taken the money and not given a hoot about justice. Also, the book is written in the third person.

The wisecracking first-person narration we automatically associate with private eyes is Philip Marlowe. Actually, Dashiell Hammett did invent a character who directly influenced Raymond Chandler's Marlowe to a much greater extent than Sam ever did. I refer to the Continental Op, a first-person narrator who, though mercilessly hard-boiled when it comes to dealing with bad guys, genuinely cares about justice, helping the innocent, and all those good guy things. Unfortunately, he has so little personality or background that he doesn't even have a name. In fact, since one of his novels, Red Harvest, was the inspiration for A Fistful Of Dollars, he is literally The Man With No Name!

Also, Philip Marlowe, who famously said "down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean", didn't care about money, once giving up a huge sum because it mattered far more to find out the truth about the fate of his friend, and only got seriously involved with women if he genuinely liked them. If Raymond Chandler had lived long enough to write another book, Marlowe would have gotten married (he left behind a brief plot synopsis that was eventually turned into a not very good novel by somebody else). He's the tough guy you can trust because ultimately he'll always do the right thing, no matter what. Sam isn't, and was never meant to be.

[Printer's Devil]

PS - Yes, it appears to have been Sam Politically Incorrect Agricultural Utensil who caused that censorship problem...

[cacian]

"
down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean''
to this I would rather say this:
''down these mean streets is a man must go who is not himself seen''
in other words pretend to be mean and it should be plenty.
one does not have to be one to be that there is always the look to rely on and it is the safest option.
may I ask what this is?

Sam Politically Incorrect Agricultural Utensil
thanks!

[Eiseabhal]

Samuel Spade

[Eiseabhal]

Archetype - little red riding hood
Stereotype - little miss helpless

[MANICHAEAN]

You will also have trouble with:
1. The word for a female canine.
2. A form of donkey.
It can be quite funny sometimes when b---h and a-- are used in an innocent context.