The Archetype Project

The Archetype Project

Marko Schiefelbein / Germany

The Archetype Project reframes a situation from a “Marlboro Maybe” billboard that was part of a campaign that specifically targets young people from the so-called Generation Y and Z.
It portrays a protagonist who is unable to enter the stage due to stage fright. The second character, whose role is loosely based on the Marlboro Cowboy, uses the spotlight to take into account the shortcomings of the “Maybe Generation” and their civility. In his continuous, analytical monologue, he manages to express himself by partially using phrases from Marlboro advertisements, as well as phrases from psychoanalytic portraits of the Marlboro Cowboy that were transferred into spoken text.
The paper examines how the advertising industry generates consumer desires through the continuous reproduction of inferiority complexes.
It shows how these complexes that are programmed in advertisements from the 60s/70s are imprinted on the (self) perception of the following generations (here Generation Y).