I Have Some Bad News

I’ve been struck by the banality of the “Hero’s Journey” as shoved down our throats by Hollywood for the last fifty years. Oh great, another Dune movie about a white savior who was chosen to rescue an indigenous civilization. I loved that movie the last time I saw it, when it was called Avatar.

Thanks a lot, Joseph Campbell, for making Hollywood the most predictable snoozefest since Rumpelstiltskin.

In case you didn’t know, a literature professor named Joe at Sarah Lawrence wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1950 which slowly caught the eye of some young creators. In the book, Campbell lays out the “monomyth,” the one story that seems to be telling itself over and over again across cultures and history.

In the mid-seventies, one of these young writers started writing a sci-fi epic heavily influenced by the Hero’s Journey, called Star Wars. The rest is history.

This year they are opening a billion-dollar George Lucas museum in Los Angeles celebrating the filmmaker and something called Narrative Art. This from the museum website:

“A Home for the Art That Connects Us

The Lucas Museum explores how narrative art shapes our world — expressing beliefs, communicating values, expanding imagination, and inviting conversation.”

But I would argue that the “narrative art” of Star Wars actually DISCONNECTS us from one another. Because it’s not about “each other,” is it? It’s not about “us.” It’s about ME! I am the one, and you are NOT the one. So screw you.

If you remember the story, Luke Skywalker is “chosen” by destiny. He follows the Joseph Campbell model of being at first a reluctant hero, but thanks to a mentor and so on, he eventually embraces his role as the savior of the world.

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey repeatedly involves a symbolic death and rebirth. One of his wonderfully dramatic names for this is the “Belly of the Whale” — the hero is swallowed into darkness and emerges changed.

Star Wars gives us an almost ridiculously literal version of it. Luke is swallowed into the bowels of the Death Star, dumped into a trash compactor, dragged underwater by a monster, and then nearly crushed to death when the walls start closing in.

He escapes.

But Luke’s real spiritual transformation comes later, during the Supreme Ordeal of the trench run. With the Death Star bearing down on the Rebel base and almost no hope left, Luke hears Obi-Wan’s voice telling him to “let go.” He switches off his targeting computer and, for the first time, completely surrenders himself to the Force.

The old Luke — the farm boy who didn’t even know the Force existed — is gone. The Jedi-in-training has been born.

Sound familiar?

Oh yeah. It’s the Jesus story.

What’s so bad about that? Can’t we all have a little fun watching the Jesus story rerun in outer space?

And then have that story inflicted and reinflicted upon us in sequel after sequel and prequel after prequel and animations and so on, leading finally to the ultimate infliction — a billion-dollar museum which more or less is proof that the Joseph Campbell model is the best one for storytelling, and the best one for us.

We too might be “inspired” to follow Luke’s path in our own life, and “use the force” to maybe one day have a museum of our own in Los Angeles or somewhere. And of course a few billion dollars.

There is nothing “wrong” with the Joseph Campbell monomyth. It certainly is ONE tradition of storytelling throughout history.

However, it’s not the only one.

I was amused to see not one but three female authors have written books presenting an alternate view, each of which shares the same title: The Heroine’s Journey.

Instead of glory and immortality, it turns out, female heroines quest for wholeness.

That is an alternative tradition, to be sure.

Think about what Barbie ultimately wants. She doesn’t defeat the enemy, seize the throne or discover that she’s the Chosen One. Her journey becomes a search for an integrated self.

She starts as an idealized identity: Stereotypical Barbie. Then that identity breaks down. She encounters mortality, imperfection, the real world, patriarchy, her creator, other women — and ultimately has to reconcile these contradictions into becoming a real, imperfect person.

That’s very close to the Heroine’s Journey idea:

Campbell: Who am I destined to become? What must I conquer?

Heroine’s Journey: Who am I really? How do I become whole?

Another superb example is Everything Everywhere All at Once. Evelyn is literally offered infinite alternative versions of herself. The resolution isn’t that she discovers which one is the “true” heroic Evelyn. She has to integrate her fractured identities and relationships and return to her ordinary life differently.

The interesting thing is that the heroine’s journey doesn’t actually require a female protagonist. Maureen Murdock developed it partly in response to Campbell, but the psychological structure — separation, fragmentation, descent, reconciliation, integration — isn’t inherently limited to women.

There are other stories, of course, that don’t follow the hackneyed formula of Joseph Campbell.

But here’s the thing — the hackneyed formula works precisely because it flatters our deluded view of our own self-importance. All of us, of course, feel special as if we’re the center of some great saga or story or adventure.

Evolution made us this way. Even an animal might feel the same way. Squirrels and spiders seem very “invested” in the story of their own survival. Whether it means storing up a bunch of nuts or making a fabulous web to catch flies. While they might not have human language to express their struggle to themselves, the individual spider and the individual squirrel feel very much “centered” in the narrative. Chosen, one might say.

A squirrel or spider who lacks that perspective would probably not survive to pass on their genes and thus evolution has eliminated the “non-egoic” perspective from nature, as much as it can be eliminated.

There is another thing that evolution found beneficial, though, in the project of passing on genes to future generations. That’s called social cooperation. Species that have this seem to really thrive.

Social cooperation is not something that we seem particularly good at right now, in this very politically divided era. But it does seem to be something we sorely need if we are to overcome the challenges of climate change and self-destruction and AI and et cetera.

Movies that follow the “social cooperation” formula do exist. They’re just not very popular.

The Dardenne Brothers from Belgium, for instance, make social realist films about struggling working-class people. They have gotten much critical acclaim; alas, they do not have a billion-dollar museum.

The social realist formula could not be more different from the Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey. Yet the protagonists of these films somehow seem quite heroic.

The major differences in the formula are as follows:

In Joseph Campbell, the protagonist is a “chosen” or exceptional person destined for future glory. In the Dardenne brothers, the protagonist is an ordinary person, a marginalized individual or an invisible worker.

In Joseph Campbell, the catalyst for the story is the “call to adventure”, which invites the hero into a new, exciting world. In Dardenne, the catalyst is that the bills are due and there is no money to pay them. In other words, an immediate economic crisis, a job loss, or an illness, for example.

In the Joseph Campbell model, there are mentors and helpers and supernatural guides.

In Dardenne, there is nobody and nothing. The hero is utterly alone.

In Joseph Campbell, the CLIMAX is a thrilling battle to defeat evil. In Dardenne, there is a difficult ethical choice. For example, in Rosetta, the main character makes a decision that costs her only friend his job at the roadside food stand. This former friend relentlessly circles the waffle stand where Rosetta works, just staring at her and making her question her choice, until she finally walks away from the waffle stand. She goes against the capitalist instinct to survive but her soul is saved. Similarly, the film Two Days One Night asks the question: Would you vote to give up your own thousand-euro bonus to save a co-worker's job?

In Joseph Campbell there is a “return with the elixir”. The rebirth and resurrection. Society is saved and renewed. In Dardenne, there is a teeny tiny step toward human connection or compassion. The system, however, is not saved. It is still broken. Very broken.

So which model of storytelling seems more fun?

Star Wars, when you are young, of course. I remember when I got my son the Lego model of the Millennium Falcon. How happy he was.

But the Joseph Campbell model of storytelling is childish and ultimately empty and boring.

Oh here we go again, the gladiator is called to action when his family are killed by the Romans. He doesn’t want to answer the call, but he must. He has to find a mentor and almost die in the arena until he…

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

This young woman Rosetta in the waffle stand is so much more interesting and compelling than the gladiator, honestly. I recommend this movie, and the movies of another social realist Mike Leigh. And of course, the OG of social realism, the Italian neorealist Vittorio De Sica. Check out the Bicycle Thief and especially Umberto D (if you love dogs!)

The Dardenne model is more interesting when you’re a grown-up.

But do we ever grow up, living as we do in a universe of superheroes and influencers and celebrities and social media?

Or do we remain marooned in our childish world of being “chosen”?

A reader commented in my last article that she thinks we need to balance our selflessness with a healthy dose of confidence to help us survive in this world.

It’s true.

It’s also true that social realism can be depressing and make you feel hopeless.

That’s why I would like to introduce you to a fourth model.

The Anti-Hero.

The anti-hero appears to follow the Joseph Campbell model, but the journey is inverted for comic, satirical, or tragic effect.

In the Hero’s Journey the hero slays the dragon. In the anti-hero journey, the anti-hero BECOMES the dragon.

The best example is The Godfather.

Prestige streaming TV shows seem to thrive on this model. Some of the shows you probably loved, like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, True Detective.

I recently saw Beef Season Two on one of the streaming services. What an excellent play on the anti-hero or heroine trope.

The heroine Ashley is actually responsible for the death of a beloved dog.

That’s the opposite of Umberto D where the social realist hero strives to save his dog from a train in an unforgettable final scene.

In Beef, Ashley is in the middle of blackmailing her boss when she inadvertently leaves the door open, allowing their dog to escape. Spoiler alert, he gets eaten by a coyote.

Yeah, she’s no Luke Skywalker.

The series is refreshing though, exactly because it is opposite what we have become so sick of — the Joseph Campbell model.

And rather than depressing, like the Dardenne brothers can be sometimes, it’s entertaining and exciting and surprising and fun.

So this is where we are at culturally. We still have the Hero’s Journey up the wazoo. (Marvel movies anyone? Dune? Ew.)

I’ve been especially enjoying this Australian series called Mr. Inbetween about a guy with a serious anger problem who doesn’t seem to learn the lesson that violence isn’t the answer.

“Give me an example of when violence was the answer,” his group therapist asks him.

Mr. Inbetween thinks about it, and then says in his charming Aussie accent, “World War Two. I mean, we weren’t going to get them to stop just by talking to them, were we? We had to fight.”

In a way, I found that interchange just as socially relevant as a Dardenne movie, because it challenges our liberal post-hippie delusions, doesn’t it?

So clearly, the Hero’s Journey is not the ONLY model for Hollywood. It’s just the most profitable. These last two Hero’s Journey movies, The Odyssey and Spider-Man, have racked up billions of dollars in sales and how exciting — Hollywood is coming back! Yay

Or not yay, depending on your perspective.

My own view is that the Hero’s Journey gives us a lot of bad ideas. Like that we are “chosen by destiny.”

Isn’t that the most dangerous idea ever? Just last month there was a man who ran around with a knife and started hacking away at women in France. When the police tackled him he protested, “God commanded me to do it.”

In other words, God was his “call to action.”

I’m much more of a Taoist when it comes to this stuff. The Taoist ideal is NO ACTION.

What a great religion. Everyone else is telling people to pray and meditate and DO SOMETHING or else you’ll go to hell.

The Taoists said, nah, you don’t need to do much. Just chill.

I know, it sounds like apathy. But a Taoist can be extremely active. The question is whether the action arises naturally from the situation or from the ego’s insistence that reality ought to be different.

The classic Taoist metaphor is water. Water doesn’t struggle with the landscape. Put a rock in its path and it doesn’t declare war on the rock. It goes around it. Yet given enough time, water can carve a canyon.

That’s wu wei.

But can you make movies from a Taoist perspective?

In fact you can!

And here we might have stumbled upon a fifth model of storytelling, the Taoist one.

A great example is Perfect Days (2023), directed by Wim Wenders.

Perfect Days is almost the opposite of the Hero’s Journey.

Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo. He gets up. Waters his plants. Works. Eats. Reads. Photographs trees. Listens to old cassette tapes. Sleeps. Gets up again.

There is no dragon to slay. No kingdom to win. No great quest. And crucially, the film doesn’t regard this as failure.

Nobody arrives to tell Hirayama that he has a special destiny.

He doesn’t discover that his father was secretly a Jedi.

He doesn’t find out that cleaning toilets was merely preparation for the great adventure he was born to undertake.

He cleans the toilets.

He looks at the trees.

He listens to music.

He lives.

And somehow, that’s enough.

So perhaps there isn’t one Hero’s Journey at all. There are all sorts of ways to make a journey.

Hero’s Journey: Triumph — Star Wars
Heroine’s Journey: Wholeness — Barbie
Social Realism: Dignity — Rosetta
Anti-Hero: Descent — The Godfather
Taoist: Acceptance — Perfect Days

The Taoist protagonist doesn’t necessarily conquer the obstacle or get conquered by it. He changes his relationship to the obstacle.

Which may be the most radical story of all.

Because almost every other story tells us to want something. Find your purpose. Follow your dream. Answer the call. Slay the dragon. Save the world. Become somebody.

Maybe you don’t have to.

Maybe Hollywood doesn’t keep giving us the Hero’s Journey because it’s the one great universal truth about human existence.

Maybe Hollywood keeps giving it to us because it’s the story we most enjoy believing about ourselves.

That somewhere out there is our Obi-Wan, waiting to appear.

That our ordinary life is merely Act One.

That sooner or later someone will hand us the lightsaber and explain why we were put on this Earth.

Maybe nobody is coming.

Maybe you weren’t put here for anything.

Maybe you are not the Chosen One.

What a relief.

Water the plants.

Do your work.

Look at the trees.

Maybe you don’t need to go anywhere.

Maybe this is it.