Abstract

This article re-frames the current media fascination with the supernatural as a way of understanding the deep structure of culture on which political sensibilities are built. Bringing together literature from media theory, cultural studies, semiotics, Drama for Conflict Transformation (DCT), and the anthropology of art, it explores the notion that insights regarding contemporary fears, anxieties, and social chaos are encoded within the specifics of “preferred” archetypal imaginaries outside of the regular human social order. Three of popular culture’s most high-profile villains - pirates, wizards, and vampires - are counterposed in terms of what each embodies regarding outsider ideology and political worldview. Explores archetypal imaginaries as the iconic interface between cultural reality and media representation.