Author(s): Jiahe Yang

Abstract: Ted Chiangss works have attracted widespread critical attention for their exploration of humanity and philosophical questions from the perspective of science fiction, with Story of Your Life being one of his most representative works. Among his writings, Liking What You See: A Documentary explores the complex relationship among appearance-based discrimination, social prejudice, and identity through the fictional technology of “calliagnosia.” Adopting a pseudo-documentary narrative form, the work presents the changes that occur in both social aesthetic judgment and individual psychology following technological intervention. Accordingly, this thesis situates the work within the contexts of aesthetic archetypes and the development of fictional technology, examining how the “ideal image,” as a deep-seated psychological structure, influences individual cognition and the operation of social structures. Drawing primarily on Carl Gustav Jung’s archetypal theory, this thesis analyzes the archetype of the “ideal image” in the text. The discussion focuses on three major aspects. First, it examines the formation mechanism of the “ideal image” archetype within the narrative and the process through which it is socially reinforced. Second, it investigates how calliagnosia intervenes in and deconstructs the operation of the archetype by altering cognitive pathways.

Keywords: archetypal theory, ideal image, Liking What You See: A Documentary, science fiction

Article Info: Received: 05 Aug 2026; Received in revised form: 02 Sep 2026; Accepted: 05 Sep 2026; Available online: 11 Sep 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.115.10