Doppelgänger
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How They Met Themselves1864.
The Fitzwilliam Museum.
Doppelgänger (
[^d]pignanlの]ン]] (?·i)) is the German word to define the double phantomical or evil sosias of a living person. The word comes from doppelwhich means 'double' and gänger: 'andante'. His oldest form, coined by the novelist Jean Paul in 1796, is Doppeltgänger"He who walks next door." The term is used to designate any double of a person, usually in reference to the "evil twin" or the phenomenon of bilocation.
The Doppelgänger appear in various literary works of science fiction and fantasy literature, in which they are a type of shapeshifter that imitates a particular person or species.
Description
In mythology and folklore
In Norse and Germanic legends, seeing one's Doppelgänger is an omen of death. A Doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives can sometimes bring bad luck, be a bad omen or an indication of an impending illness or health problem. Regis Boyer, in the prologue to Lecouteux's work, affirms that the Swedish playwright Strindberg wrote: “He who sees his double is that he is going to die.” But he does not make any quotation, possibly an apocryphal quotation.
Mario Praz connects other popular figures in folklore with the figure of the double, such as the werewolf or the beautiful girl who hides a snake or demon (lamia) inside her. Claude Lecouteux explores these and other connections (fairies, witches, werewolves) in his book on the figure of the double in the Middle Ages.
In literature
In literature prior to Romanticism, the theme of the double appears prefigured in the theme of the lookalikes or twins, used for comic effect in works such as the comedies about the Host by Plautus or Molière, or The Comedy of Shakespeare's mistakes. It also appears in mythology: Zeus takes the guise of Host to join Alcmene, and Uther Pendragon does the same, becoming a double of Igraine's husband to lie with her.
Romanticism is interested in the phenomenon of the double as a materialization of the dark and mysterious side of the human being (what Jung will call «the shadow»). Mario Praz suggests that when the public calls Dr. Frankenstein's creature Frankenstein, it is not as wrong as it seems, since the monster is somehow a duplicate of its creator. In The Devil's Elixirs, by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Medardo, the protagonist, suffers the pursuit of a Double that is sometimes corporeal, but other times seems like a splintered part of Medardo's own psyche. It is likely that in his study of the psychiatric literature of the time (or in his visits to asylums) Hoffmann came across cases that today would be classified as schizophrenia. His own mental state became very confused during the writing of the first part of the work, which had a therapeutic effect for him.
Robert Louis Stevenson takes from Hoffmann the theme of a drink or potion (the devil's elixirs in the German's work) that turns the person who takes it into an evil version of himself in Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, for his part, addresses in his work The Double the splitting of personality from a point of view that we can already define as psychological, delving into the darkness of human thought.
Hans Christian Andersen proposes an allegorical version of the Double in his story The Shadow: a wise man delegates to his shadow certain increasingly greater responsibilities; finally, the tables are turned and the shadow usurps the personality of his former master.
Poe's story "William Wilson" is unique in that in it the Double does not embody the evil tendencies of the protagonist, but rather the voice of his conscience.
In Rayuela, a novel by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, the protagonist ironically calls a character his Doppelgänger due to a curious symmetry that is established between them in various aspects of their lives.
The first chapter of the novel Cicatrices, by Argentine writer Juan José Saer, closes when one of the protagonists runs into (while walking down the street) a stranger who is practically identical to him and starts chasing him.
In the novel The Duplicate Man by José Saramago, the protagonist Tertuliano Máximo Afonso discovers at the age of 38 that an individual lives in his city exactly like him who has no blood ties to him.
In the story The viscount demediated, by Italo Calvino, the protagonist is divided in two by a cannonball; both parts survive independently and only at the end, after a fight between the two, are they able to unite and sew them together to form the complete man.
In the story Doblaje by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, the main character is obsessed with the idea of meeting his double, the being that is equal to one and that is at the antipodes.
The theme of the double is also observed in contemporary children's and youth literature. An example of this is the story The fairy who wanted to be a girl (Three fairy tales, Siruela, 2003) by the Spanish writer Gustavo Martín Garzo.
Outside Western literature, we can highlight the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, with his story The Two Letters, in which the protagonist sends a letter to the police telling of his strange encounter with his Doppelgänger and his wife's.
In marketing
In marketing, a Doppelgänger brand image is the variety of derogatory images and meanings about the brand that circulate in popular culture. The Doppelgänger brand image can undermine the perceived authenticity of the emotional story of the brand and, therefore, the identity value that the brand offers to consumers. Too often, the formation and propagation of a Doppelgänger brand image is fostered by emotional branding principles. Doppelgänger branding can even benefit a brand by providing early warning signs that the brand's emotional story is beginning to lose its cultural resonance. These Doppelgänger brand images typically focus on well-known brands that are considered inauthentic and attempt to create false or misleading appeal through their advertising activities.
In video games
In the Castelvania saga, a Doppelgänger is a creature that takes the form of another being, usually its victims. It is said that if anyone ever meets her Doppelgänger, her intention will be to kill him or her so that she can take away her role in life.
In Tomb Raider: Underworld Lara's Doppelgänger is identical to her though her hair is red and her eyes seem to glow a spectral yellow, though she seems to follow the orders of her creator, Jacqueline Natla. She has a more defined identity by copying the abilities of Lara herself, which are already extraordinary. Also mention that in the original Tomb Raider there is one with the physical similarity of Lara, with the difference that this version has no skin and you can see the muscular composition of "Doppel-Lara".
Cinema and series
Netflix in its series of "Curon", deals with the subject of Doppelgängers. In a town called Curon, a church sunken under a lake, in which only the bell tower stands out, Doppelgänger appear to kill certain people. In times of internal conflict, where people are unable to manage their own lives and are overwhelmed by the situations they experience, the lake generates a Doppelgänger, willing to end their lives and replace them with the aim of being a stronger version. themselves.
In the film Us (Us, in its original version) Adelaide Wilson is a woman who returns to her childhood home on the coast with her husband, Gabe, and their two children, for an idyllic summer getaway. After a tense day at the beach with her friends, Adelaide and her family return to their vacation home. As night falls, the Wilsons discover the silhouette of four figures holding hands and standing in front of the house. "We" pits a beloved American family against an enemy as unusual as it is terrifying, their Doppelgänger .
Real Life Example
Although there is no "perfect" double, since the parameters of people's faces differ down to the smallest detail, there are many sites on the Internet with the help of which people can find their "twin". Typically, these platforms use artificial intelligence and machine learning that highlight similar faces in user-uploaded photos. With this technology, two or more people can turn out to be doubles.