Can You Dig It? Audiences, Archetypes, and John Shaft

Abstract

This article explores the role of cinematic violence as a rhetorical frame in mediated communication. Its central argument is that violence is used to frame a film's hero. The purpose and intention of this violent frame is to attract a particular audience to that film. It uses Jung's and Campbell's discussions of archetypes in fantasy formations to explain how violence is framed in media as a tool of a warrior, rather than as an act of destruction. In an attempt to understand the framing of violence, a comparative analysis of Shaft and Shaft Returns is performed. These films were chosen because they appealed to substantially different audiences. The construction of violence in each film allows the warrior, John Shaft, to serve different functions for each audience. The violence in Shaft challenges structural racism through a paladin-warrior archetype (a hero committed to the protection of a people or culture), while the violence in Shaft Returns employs a state-supportive frame through its use of a knight-warrior motif (a hero committed to protecting the state). This article offers implications and directions for further study of the rhetorical role of violence and archetypes in mediated communication.