Was the famous photo of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima really a spontaneous original?
I think many classically successful images, words and phrases are rehashing of well established but forgotten earlier images, words and phrases.
I use Iwo Jima as an example.
Here are two classic American images. One below left is raising the tree of liberty in Boston and the other, lower right, is raising the pole of liberty in Manhattan.
Both images are from the greatest American historian's (David Hackett Fischer) book Liberty and Freedom.
I don't go for Carl Jung's or any one elses
archetypes of the mind but I do know that we are attracted to tent pole
structures of our own social heritage.