Sociosomnia: Time Travel ⌚

In general I see time travel shows as showing us the power and risk of doing psychological self-work. They show us the gifts, challenges, and sacrifices of revisiting the wounds of our past and overcoming them. Avengers: Endgame is a great example of this, where the plot is essentially that all the major Marvel heroes have to go back to pivotal moments in their past to face and heal some of their deepest wounds. The new Netflix show, The Adam Project, is also a great example, in which Ryan Reynolds learns to love himself through coming to love and support the younger version of himself that he used to be ashamed of and repress, and to let in his dad’s love which he’d rejected to deal with his grief.

The Legends of Tomorrow is amazing because the show faces and integrates unclaimed parts of our collective psyche—revisiting some of the major events of Western cultural heritage and doing sociocultural we-self work (I made up this term clearly). The show also integrates and normalizes non-rational mythologies of this culture: Magical creatures, demons, hell, aliens, robots, and AI.

With love, Jordan