What Carl Jung's archetypes tells us about celebrity culture

By: M.Bernardez

​Our current society revolves around and feeds itself entirely through celebrity culture, from tabloids to our increasing intimacy through new domains of interactivities, like Instagram. It's evident that figures like Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe or Amy Winehouse have almost set a substantial image that seems to suppress and overcome the life of the private person that inhibited these personas, removing their identity to be nothing but the figures that once shaped our culture. 
 
One of Jung's most famous and well-known archetype's, the "persona", is said to be "the outward face we present to the world. It conceals our real self and describes as the 'conformity' archetype." It is said to have a significant opposition and differentiation with "the self". The self "provides a sense of unity in experience, the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of selfhood". Now in order to understand how this has a remote correlation with celebrity culture, we first need to define what a celebrity is. Rojek, a definitive pioneer of contemporary celebrity studies, defines celebrity as "the attribution of glamorous or notorious status within the public sphere". The celebrity is a split between the public and private self, very similar to Jung's archetypes of "persona" and "the self". The contrast between the larger-than-life persona and the "true" persona, as well as the possibility and impossibility of knowing the truth about their life, is what makes celebrities so appealing to the public and such fitting ideological symbols.
 
What is also incredibly fascinating is the parasocial relationship, which significantly is driven by the "persona". A parasocial relationship is fundamentally typical within celebrity and the undoubtedly devoted "would name their newborn child after you" fans. They are defined as relationships in which one party expends emotional energy, interest, and time while the other party, the persona, is totally unaware of the other's presence. With these "parasocial relationships", celebrities and their management teams are able to generate amplifying fame and garnering unprecedented attention from the public. 
 
However, how particularly is this done? Well, through the calculated distinction of both Jung's archetype. Essentially, a celebrity's public popularity is based on the public's admiration for how well they portray themselves as a "true" individual, regardless of how fabricated that "realness" might be. When we get a glimpse of a celebrity's personal life, it's usually corresponding with their public persona. For example, we commonly see these public figures presenting hyper-sexual getup's while having a softened version of their real self, portraying them to be just ordinary Joe living their ordinary lives, yet still possessing a visual appearance and level of accomplishment that you could never achieve.