Jesus Christ and Billy the Kid as Archetypes of the Self in American Cinema

This paper combines cultural and anthropological perspectives, focusing on the affinity between the concepts of ʹcollective consciousnessʹ (Durkheim) and ʹcollective unconcsciousnessʹ (Jung). It argues that films are the dreams of charismatic auteur directors, who project their prophetic vision to a wider audience, in the Celluloid Church. These mechanically reproduced visions are based on eternal myths and archetypes, which symbolically reflect upon the contemporary industry/society that produces them. In this context, the paper focuses on film depictions of Billy the Kid as an archetype of the Self, with visual references to Jesusʹ Crucifixion and Lamentation, in order to illustrate the “spiritual” turn inwards Christianity as expressed in the collective consciousness of American culture, from the anti-communist 1950s, and through the spirituality of the 1960s and 1970s to the recent rise of Evangelical Christianity.