The Monomyth A.K.A The Hero's Journey

[Psy]

What would happen with the Monomyth in story telling under communism?

The Hero's Journey is the oldest story formula still in use, yet the Hero's Journey at its heart is the formula of a individual hero becoming a great hero to vanquish the evil because they were fated to do so by supernatural forces.

[ZeroNowhere]

"Upon the palisades entwine
The verdant serpents, line by line,
Betwixt the shifting sands of time;
There lies, within the hero's sigh,
A voice, enchanted by the light
Of aegirs lapping down the thyme
In wind-swept stars; the sword shall die
When fair communion, silken robed,
Adorns the isles of earthen shores,
And threads the pantomime of life."

- Nostradamus, allegedly.

[graymouser]

Hopefully it will go into the dustbin of history, as it were. The Hero's Journey is something of a contemporary fad because an idiot named Christopher Vogel turned Campbell's analysis of ancient myths into a story formula for hacks, called The Writer's Journey. It has no more modern relevance than Scribe's piece bien faite, and with any luck will assume a similar status, as a curio of how they used to write things.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Interesting. A few years ago I went though a big Joseph Campbell stage.Today I think he was partially on to something but massively over romanticised pre-industrial societies. As I understand his politics were on the right, although apparently he went to Grateful Dead shows in the early 90s.

Anyway, is there a Marxist view of Campbell? I've thought of posting a thread like this myself.

[Psy]

Interesting. A few years ago I went though a big Joseph Campbell stage.Today I think he was partially on to something but massively over romanticised pre-industrial societies. As I understand his politics were on the right, although apparently he went to Grateful Dead shows in the early 90s.

Anyway, is there a Marxist view of Campbell? I've thought of posting a thread like this myself.

I don't know of Campbell but of the Hero's Journey..

It has the hero overcome obstacles through mastery of skills, for example the first time hero meets the antagonist the hero mostly gets their ass kicked effortless by the antagonist due to the hero being too unskilled at that part of the story. Yet the hero mostly becomes more powerful mostly through supernatural means i.e a Godd(ess) gifting the hero with some magical item. We can see this in even stories like Star Wars where it is the supernatural force that defeats the empire and Luke wins by refusing to slay the evil and the fates doing the rest.

To put this way to have a Marxist Hero's story would have huge contradictions. You'd have a individual hero (or group of individual) that doesn't have to become masters revolution as their own morality would mean the fates will make then eventually victorious regardless of material realities.

[graymouser]

I don't know of Campbell but of the Hero's Journey..

It has the hero overcome obstacles through mastery of skills, for example the first time hero meets the antagonist the hero mostly gets their ass kicked effortless by the antagonist due to the hero being too unskilled at that part of the story. Yet the hero mostly becomes more powerful mostly through supernatural means i.e a Godd(ess) gifting the hero with some magical item. We can see this in even stories like Star Wars where it is the supernatural force that defeats the empire and Luke wins by refusing to slay the evil and the fates doing the rest.

To put this way to have a Marxist Hero's story would have huge contradictions. You'd have a individual hero (or group of individual) that doesn't have to become masters revolution as their own morality would mean the fates will make then eventually victorious regardless of material realities.
Star Wars was consciously modelled on Campbell's analysis of myth. So was The Matrix - yet with quite a different twist at the end.

The Hero's Journey is used because it is a good way to make the kind of juvenile stories that fuel Hollywood blockbusters. Without a profit motive, you wouldn't have these kinds of movies marketed to absolutely everyone; the lowest-common-denominator in film would be removed. What would follow is anyone's guess, but hopefully it will be better than the narcissistic crap that passes for serious films these days.

[Psy]

Star Wars was consciously modelled on Campbell's analysis of myth. So was The Matrix - yet with quite a different twist at the end.

The Hero's Journey is used because it is a good way to make the kind of juvenile stories that fuel Hollywood blockbusters. Without a profit motive, you wouldn't have these kinds of movies marketed to absolutely everyone; the lowest-common-denominator in film would be removed. What would follow is anyone's guess, but hopefully it will be better than the narcissistic crap that passes for serious films these days.

Well we don't see the Hero's Journey in Tezuka's work. In Tezuka's work the hero mostly only succeeds through self-sacrificing and others carrying on the struggle or you have hero's like Black Jack that is a narcissist yet through material conditions becomes a hero for a period before sinking back into their narcissism.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I agree, much of what is coming out of Hollywood today is shear dreck. Joseph Campbell based his "monomyth" theory on the ideas of Carl Jung and his "individuation" theory. An individual, in maturing, goes though a symbolic initiation quest. This can occur many times though out one's live. It can be community based-one brings back something of use to their tribe or group. This can bee seen in stories and myths ranging from Beowolf, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of the Buddha, to Frank Herbert's Dune books.Jung also posited a system of "archetypes", themes or "memes" which recur repeatedly in stories from widely differing cultures and which Jung thought might correspond to areas of the human brain.

Interestingly hard core Jungians don't like Campbell, he's something of a Jungian heretic.

The Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch had an interesting take on Jung. He felt the Jungian arechetypes might have something to them, but Jung himself went in a reactionary direction, back to the primeval slime and muck, as he called it. Bloch instead posited a forward looking "principle of hope".

[harum scarum]

The Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch had an interesting take on Jung. He felt the Jungian arechetypes might have something to them, but Jung himself went in a reactionary direction, back to the primeval slime and muck, as he called it. Bloch instead posited a forward looking "principle of hope".

That's interesting. Do you know where Bloch said that? I'd like to read the complete piece.