Political fanaticism, alienation and the Trickster archetype in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Terry Gilliam’s Tideland

This thesis uses Jungian and post-Jungian methods of textual analysis as a methodological approach to analyze two fairytale films produced at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Terry Gilliam’s Tideland (2005). Based on del Toro’s artistic rendering of the Spanish Civil War and Gilliam’s depiction of the Canadian prairies as an isolated and hostile landscape, it will be argued that political fanaticism and alienation are, from a Jungian psychological perspective, symptomatic of a modern mode of being that divests individuals of the numinous dimensions of existence. And since Jungian psychology formulates the numinous as a category of subjective experiences vis-à-vis the Self (Edinger, 1972), it follows, the thesis argues, that political fanaticism and alienation result from an attitude of neglect towards internal psychological processes and the unconscious. In this line of reasoning, the thesis further argues that the Trickster manifests in these films as a figure of remediation, which brings forth the importance of individuation as a means to rediscover the numinous through a dialogical relationship with the unconscious.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Media Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Filho, Wagner

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stojanova, Christina

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Ramsay, Christine

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.82465/4205

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uregina.scholaris.ca:10294/15544