July 2011: The Move to Home Sweet Home

HELLO, MINNEAPOLIS--it's great to be permanently back in my hometown!

The Pelli-designed Wells Fargo Center, taken from the top floor of the IDS Center in 2010 while presenting a speech on SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Minneapolis Rotary Club.

Just Published: A Jungian Perspective on Sofia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION

"Lost in Individuation: Elements of Archetypes and Individuation in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation," my archetypal analysis of the film, has been published in the International Journal of the Image, Vol. 1, Number 2 (Summer 2011). Click here for an abstract and ordering info (print and electronic).

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) embody each other's soul figures of anima and animus when their paths cross in Tokyo.

From the abstract:

Processing images like those generated by dreams and myth, film can express symbolic language that speaks to universal human issues. Writer/director Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation is rich in symbols that arise on the journey toward maturity and wholeness that psychiatrist Carl Jung called individuation. Several elements of the setting reflect the “de-souled” world that propels us into individuation, such as phony lounge music, karaoke, rock-star video games and a superficial young actress staying at Bob and Charlotte’s hotel. Tokyo skyscrapers and elevators correspond to the mythological idea of the cosmic tree, a symbol of modern humanity’s yearning for connection to its roots in the unconscious. Billboards and Bob’s movies on TV symbolize his midlife crisis—an actor who has sold out to making lucrative commercials and now feels the pull toward more artistic work.

From image to multilayered image, this movie is a dreamlike trip into our deepest foreign territory and all-too-real confrontation with issues we bury at our own risk.

By viewing this film with an eye on the universal symbols that accompany individuation, Lost in Translation becomes even more compelling and primes us to look for similar imagery in other films.