Saved by Stuart Evans and
The Hero’s Journey is No Longer Serving Us
The Hero’s Journey is perfectly legitimate myth with a valid place among many others in the pantheon. However, it is not appropriate today as a primary guide for civilization. The main problem is not that it is male-gendered and needs to be neutered or balanced by a female equivalent. It is that the Hero is a boy archetype, not a man archetyp... See more
Charles Eisenstein • Neither Hero nor Journey
Stuart Evans added
Stuart Evans added
"If we are to build a future of belonging beyond the constraint of today, we need to move past the individualistic narrative of the hero’s journey, and dig into the complexity of collective imagination and world building. Whether we risk deification of a singular human or lay the culpability of systemic failures at the feet of an individual, the he... See more
Vanessa Mason • Issue #29: Heroism and Belonging
Sydney Thomas added
‘Hero’s Journey’ isn’t just a construct. What Campbell first articulated and Vogler popularized is nothing more than a product of physics,29 a chain of cause and effect with beginning, middle and end, seeking symmetry.
John Yorke • Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them
“the hero’s journey.” (Christopher Vogler, in his landmark interpretation of Joseph Campbell’s work, The Writer’s Journey, refined the stages to twelve. Chris’s book has become a Hollywood standard and a classic screenwriting textbook throughout the world.)
Mark Manson • Will
The hero’s journey is more than male dickishness writ large. To read or write within that pattern is to experience real growth. Equally, carrier-bag storytelling are more than an antithetical feminine aesthetic of novel writing. To read and write within that form is to uncover truths about the human condition. As far as I am concerned though, both ... See more
Venkatesh Rao • Boat Stories
Sixian added
Anyway, the point is: the hero’s journey and carrier bag are both about narrative models rather than gendered modes of storytelling, and the rise of the novel was a fall of the hero (whether male or female) from epic demigod figure to boy-with-toy. Or girl-with-toy as the case may be.
Venkatesh Rao • Boat Stories
Sixian added
Most significant to those of us interested in the Heroine’s Journey is that for a hero in a Hero’s Journey, a prevailing concept and perpetuated message is that asking for (or needing) help is BAD. Because a hero who asks for help is perceived as weak by the story