The Hero’s Journey Is No Longer Serving Us

    > Like no other time in human history, we each
    > now have a say in any and every story being
    > told;  any and every story ever told.

This is disingenuous and misleading. The centralisation of entertainment -- in books, TV, movies -- has had exactly the opposite effect. Prior to this, oral history and storytelling were some of our most important forms of entertainment. These were largely replaced by mass media which is much more fixed in form. We can certainly respond to and adapt mass media, but it's not the same as having a say in how stories are told.

This essay is very confusing. I'm not sure the author has a clear thesis there.

I had to read it twice and I think I found the source of my confusion:

The author first writes about "hero's journey" but that's a "topic" or "subject" of a story.

He then attempts to contrast "hero" with the opposite -- the "collective" -- as in "collective storytelling". Hmmm... Did the author realize he just switched gears to the process of creating a story rather than the "topic" of the story?!? They are orthogonal concepts.

E.g. A collective/collaborative writing group (process) using Slack message channels or reddit[1] can join forces to create a "hero's journey" story (topic).

E.g. Or, a "lone heroic writer" (process) can write about a "collective group working together to build a bridge" (topic).

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/

TL;DR: The Hero's Journey doesn't apply to things it was never supposed to apply to, and that aren't really related.

Save your time, skip this one.

>while the Hero’s Journey functions as an engine driving the survival of the fittest (both physically and ideologically)

I think this is a pretty questionable interpretation. The Buddhist myth of Prince Five-Weapons contradicts this, for example, as do many other myths which adhere to the "formula".

Who is upvoting this? This is terrible.

"None of this adheres to the rigid circular structure and ancient underpinnings of the Campbellian Hero’s Journey model. What is required is a new kind of storytelling, a narrative engine that lends itself to our nonlinear, networked, omni-perspective digital age. The kind of storytelling where any audience member can suddenly and at any point start contributing to the narrative. It’s a model of storytelling we call the Collective Journey."

- Nope sorry, you haven't changed the narrative in any way. People have always had opinions. It doesn't change what was written, just because its on the internet vs. newspaper vs. word of mouth.

The Hero's Journey is not about ego or self-righteousness at all. This feels like a major swing and a miss.

That's because heroes aren't that important in the real world. Read a history of a modern war and try to identify anybody who acted like a fictional hero and made a difference in the outcome.

"Wars are won by the average performance of the line units" - Field Marshall Slim, British army, WWII.

Wow they're not even trying to hide their collectivism and statism these days. All individuals must bow down before the great state!

And this statement:

>The villain, after all, must get his comeuppance.

Is completely orthogonal and erroneously attributed to the hero's journey. Has the author ever read any classic literature like the Greeks? You were supposed to feel _bad_ that the "evil guy" was evil and that he had to die. It was a tragedy. (In a Greek Tragedy? No!)

I question many of the author's projections and "read-between-the-lines" interpretations that he uses to make his argument.

There's nothing wrong with writing a story about people coming together. But his arguments for everyone else to do so, are flimsy at best.

I’m not sure I agree. The Hero’s Journey is about fiction, and the role of fiction isn’t to react to it; it’s to teach us something about ourselves.

God save us from modern literary criticism and their literary theories. They add nothing, accomplish nothing. They deconstruct, but never build.

Without the hero's journey, you don't get heroes.

And we desperately, desperately need heroes.