A recent opinion piece from the NYTimes (“Welcome to Stucktopia” by Hillary Kelly) says, “Television has managed to uncannily capture the way life feels right now. We’re all stuck.” Citing popular shows like Severance, Andor, Silo, and Fallout, tell us that “escape is unimaginable, endless repetition is crushingly routine and people are trapped in a world marked by inertia and hopelessness.”
This echoes our experience, Kelly says, of being stuck in a meaningless existence: the same two presidential candidates, again. Mass culture at a standstill; protests that fail to elicit change; endless reboots, knockoffs and fast fashion, and an algorithmic loop that keeps us endlessly circling in the labyrinth.
I agree completely, and yet I think Kelly’s piece misses a crucial element—one that offers a way out of the “flat circle” we feel ourselves caught in.
Each of the “Stucktopia” television shows referenced above is much more than a simple reflection of where we find ourselves now. Stories like these operate in the same way that myths always have in our history: as a technology that shows us how to move forward, that offers us hope, redemption, and change.
Here’s the key: the characters on these shows aren’t simply stuck. They’re finding their way out of their silos, bunkers, and prisons.
Out of the labyrinth
Mark’s character in Severance, for example, works feverishly to integrate his walled-off work personality (“innie Mark”) with the “outie Mark” that faces the desperation and difficulty of an emotionally full, relational life. Fallout’s Lucy, no longer content to live in the hermetic safety of her bunker, heads into the wastelands of a post-apocalyptic landscape to brave almost certain death to reintegrate her family. And Silo’s Juliette steps “outside,” because to remain inside the endlessly cycling known world is worse than the terrifying risk of death.
These stories resonate with each of us because they are all versions of an endlessly told tale—the hero’s journey. Across all cultures, throughout recorded time, we recognize this myth. It inspires us because we understand that each of us has within us the power to endure the dark night of the soul, conquer our demons, slay the dragon, and return, transformed, free to live in the fullness of our lives.
Jung and Individuation
These stories also echo throughout time because they are a metaphor for our own inner journey toward psychic integration, wholeness: what Jung called individuation. What horrors have we siloed off within ourselves? What, in ourselves, is so intolerable that we have walled it off from our conscious existence, like “innie Mark?” Where have we locked ourselves underground, safe from the roaming mutants of a psychic nuclear holocaust?
To recognize what is unbearable in ourselves is to embrace the Other. Until we do, we are locked in a Stucktopia, both personally (sending the same dumpster-fire memes to the same friends over and over) and, on a larger scale, culturally; locked in an endlessly widening divide of us vs. them.
The modern myths of Stucktopia remind us that the work of integration is painful, potentially annihilating (will there be air to breathe?)—but also, that to deny the call to the hero’s path is akin to a slow, intolerable death. We cannot continue to breathe this same stale air. We cannot stay locked in this prison, wandering in our labyrinth. We can no longer live a split existence. We must grapple our demons if we want to find freedom.
Joseph Campbell, who wrote extensively about the hero’s journey, said, “People say what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.” That feeling of being alive is precisely what’s lacking in Stucktopia, a desert of ersatz culture and well-grooved pathways; cancel culture and pop psychology.
At some point, if we no longer want to be stuck, we must initiate change ourselves by stepping outside of the dubious comfort of our known world.
Yet myths remind us that this is not an easy path. It is painful, dangerous, and requires a dying-off of familiar and comfortable patterns. At some point, if we no longer want to be stuck, we must initiate this change ourselves by stepping outside of the dubious comfort of our known world.
How do we initiate this change? Inner work through meditation, creative process, dream work, or analysis are all ways that we might begin to get un-stuck. A good place to start is to ask yourself, what is it that makes me feel alive? These green shoots of vitality are often key to the wellspring of inspiration that’s needed to move us beyond our stuck cycles.
Of course, the myths of Stucktopia also tell us that if we do not integrate our own demons, we will be faced with them regardless. A failure to initiate change may simply mean that change is thrust unwillingly upon us. As things continue to split in our culture, we may find ourselves standing outside of our known world, facing the very beasts we’ve struggled to avoid.
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