The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [326]
In other words, the story has harped on about all the most profound archetypal symbolism of redemption and transformation; yet, because it has been divorced from its inner meaning, nothing really happens at all, apart from a lot of playing with the cinematic tricks of illusion. If there is one lesson above all we learn from stories it is the central symbolic significance of the hero and the heroine being brought together in complete union at the story's end. If for any reason a hero and heroine do not end up together, this always tells us that something has gone seriously amiss. And the film's title is tellingly ironic in that none of its main characters, least of all the hero and heroine, in fact have a'close encounter' with anyone. Apart from mother and son, everyone remains split off from everyone else.
The second supreme lesson of stories, when they are rooted in the archetypes, is that they are about personal transformation. This is what all the basic plots are about: the inner change in the hero or heroine as they are led from one state to another. When the Roman poet Ovid wrote his book the Metamorphoses about myths which showed their central figure being in some fundamental way transformed, or `metamorphosed, he had to include almost every important story in the Graeco-Roman mythology, because every one of them shows its hero or heroine being changed from one thing to another. Yet in Close Encounters no one is changed at all; and the fundamental reason for this is unwittingly reflected in that curious episode when the hero feels compelled to throw all the rubbish which is outside his house in through the windows. It is as if the power which possesses him is trying to tell him that everything which is `outside' should be `inside'. This is precisely what has gone astray, not just with this film but with so many other stories of our time. They project outwardly, on a fantasy level, all sorts of things which can only beome real and life-giving when taken symbolically, on an inward level. But this is precisely what happens when the imagining of stories becomes centred on the ego, rather than rooted in that level of the unconscious where the archetypal patterns of storytelling are trying to lead us up to wholeness and connect us with our inmost Self.
Not so Superman
The defining characteristic of the comic strip hero Superman, of course, which made him one of the great icons of twentieth-century popular culture, is that he is two people in one. In his outward persona, as Clark Kent, he could not be more ordinary, the epitome of Everyman. But he can then be transformed into his other Self, when we see him as the complete archetypal hero: supernaturally strong, but with his strength made lifegiving, because it is dedicated to saving the helpless, battling for the community and righting the world's wrongs. The secret of his appeal is precisely that he seemingly embodies the most fundamental archetype of all: that in each human being the outward, limited, egopersona is hiding the potential for the true, inner Self within. But when Hollywood translated Superman onto the cinema screen in 1978, we see how sadly the archetype disintegrated.
The opening of the story is mythic in its symbolism.2 On the planet Krypton, the old order is dying. An imposing, almost god-like Wise Old Man in flowing robes (played by Marlon Brando) warns his elderly and unheeding fellowmembers of the ruling council that the end is nigh, and that their world will soon explode. It is that familiar situation we see so often at the start of a story, where the ruling order is decaying and doomed, and the only hope of redemption lies in the emergence of a new young hero. The Wise Old Man and his wife send their infant son to the distant planet Earth, where he is adopted by human parents living on a Middle American farmstead. There is the unmistakable archetypal echo of `God' sending his son down to earth, to an ordinary humble family, to grow up and save mankind.
Outwardly the young lad seems just like any ordinary