Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast: In the beginning was me

Ralso rises again from Montecito, California, where three years after their declaration of independence from the British Royals, Meghan and Harry are working on building and capitalizing on their own brand: as media professionals, one of whose core qualifications is firing verbal grenades across the Atlantic. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are impressively showing that this is – still – a worthwhile business model in today’s attention economy.

The dust raised by the Oprah interview in March 2021, because it portrayed the royal family as latently racist and deaf to the Duchess, who was said to be mentally disturbed to the point of suicide, has now settled. Now, a new horror story from Meghan is spreading around the world like wildfire: It’s about a heater in a lodging on the couple’s 2019 Crown service tour of South Africa that was found in the room where their baby son Archie was supposed to sleep. should have caught fire. According to Meghan, the child was not in the room, the device was quickly switched off, but the shock was still great. However, nothing was changed in the program of the tour. The Duchess recently broke the story in the opening episode of her podcast Archetypes, which is part of a rumored $25 million deal with Spotify, plus a reported $100 million Netflix deal. The story is marked by her as further evidence of how coldly calibrated to impeccable outward appearance instead of empathetically to healthy internal condition the apparatus of the royal family. Criticism from the British tabloids and on social media followed promptly, including from South Africa. Under the hashtag “VoetsekMeghan”, which can be translated friendly as “Get lost, Meghan”, Internet users from the Cape are outraged that the Duchess is doing their country badly.

She was too ambitious, it was said before her marriage

The almost hour-long podcast chat under the heading “The Misconception off Ambition” with Serena Williams, who is introduced by Meghan as “tennis superstar, cultural icon and my friend”, was supposed to be about a wrong understanding of ambition , which women are given less benevolently than men – but which is essential for a hard-won top-class sports career like Williams’s, which is just ending. Or Meghan’s career as a self-empowerment influencer after an aristocratic wedding? The Duchess sees parallels and emphasizes how much she and Williams have in common: both from Los Angeles, both confident as girls, both world famous, both mothers. In fact, one learns about the tennis player – unfortunately – almost nothing in the conversation, which is accompanied by soft music, but from Meghan that she was chalked up to her for her marriage to Harry because of ambition – and with negative connotations. Right at the beginning, she tells the story she has already circulated several times, how when she was eleven, she sent letters of protest to Procter & Gamble to address not only women but also men in a television advertisement for washing-up liquid. It was an “awakening experience” for her.

What is the concept behind “Archetypes”? The title of the podcast sounds smart and a bit educational, but it may have a simple background. The Sussexes’ son is Archie, their charitable foundation company is Archewell, their podcast production company is Archewell Audio, the video production unit responsible for the announced Invictus Games documentary is Archewell Productions. “Archetypes” rhymes with that, unlike “Stereotypes,” although that would have been an appropriate title, too.

Because clichés, prejudices, outdated patterns of thought and expectations of women shaped by latent misogyny are to be addressed here. However, archetypes are a few sizes larger: human archetypes that, according to CG Jung’s concept, shape myths or religious ideas as components of the collective unconscious. There are archetypes like the child, the hero, the mother, the sage, the king. “Archetypes” as the title suggests that Meghan wants to dive deep instead of swimming in shallow waters. That’s what she says in the first episode. However, trademarking the title – an application is pending with the United States Patent and Trademark Office – could be difficult. Not because the word has been in circulation for half a millennium, as the British tabloids put it, but because others in the USA have already had the idea of ​​using it as a brand name: “Archetypes at Work”, for example, sells audio and video -Content with business advice based on astrology. From marketing to kitchen psychology, archetypes are extremely popular.