Snow White

It's a while since I wrote about my excitement that Tim Burton had given us a true female heroine in his Alice in Wonderland film in 2010 (see my old post). Finally a popular story presented to a mainstream audience with the central female heroine displaying all sorts of the traits and struggling through the questions that the path of the feminine heroine takes.

Myths and fairytales are often used to demonstrate the archetypes of individuation and the struggles we face on our path of growth to wholeness. Facing our shadows, our demons, separating from our parent and family paradigms, finding our "true" selves.

The confusing thing for a woman seeking to find symbolic clues in many of these stories is that the majority of them focus on the hero's journey. The masculine path. And the heroine's journey is a different one. Women must face demons and shadows, but our trials and tribulations are different, when focusing on the feminine, than those for men, focusing on the masculine.

I can draw much inspiration and meaning from a story about the hero's journey because I too must seek to know my masculine self, my animus. But I must also seek to know my anima, my feminine self, and my path of individuation will therefore be different from my male friends'. While we all seek to find balance, the focus will be different.

I therefore celebrate bringing more symbolic stories of the feminine journey to the mainstream. And the producer of "Alice in Wonderland" have thrown it up a notch to bring us "Snow White and the Huntsman".

A quick look at the synopsis shows that the huntsman who is sent by the vain Queen (who declares beauty to be her power) to kill Snow White, ends up training her to be a warrior to kill the Queen. Take note: it is her own acceptance of the masculine warrior archetype that allows her to be trained and find it within herself. This is not the man who comes to save the damsel, it is the masculine who helps transform the naive young feminine on her heroine's path to wholeness, to individuation, to her full self. It is balance between masculine and feminine and there are all sorts of other archetypes in the story to follow the Jungian analysis.

I look forward to seeing this film with the same kind of goose-bump anticipation that I have when there is a reason to scream out loud either in joy or anger. Either way there is some exciting release about to come!