Why the Hero’s Journey Isn’t for Everyone
I work with purpose-driven creative humans, entrepreneurs and organizations.
By definition, these are out-of-the-box thinkers.
These are people bringing something new to the world, identifying shifts that need to happen, articulating new possibilities.
When sharing their story they need to bring people to their vision, they need to break myths and inspire new ways of seeing.
They want to motivate people to join them, to invest in themselves, to bring art into their lives, to participate in programs that will help them transform, to move out of their comfort zone, to join movements, or take collective action.
Inspiration is an intrinsic value. It involves optimism. It is based on looking forward and seeing new possibilities.
OUR STORIES HAVE BEEN BUILT ON RIGHT AND WRONG
To change hearts and minds we need to inspire people.
But many of the stories we use, the stories that marketers teach us to use to make change, are based on looking back, pointing fingers, finding separation and conflict and struggling forward.
They are often based on one individual, one hero, taking on a challenge and powering through obstacles to reach a happy ending.
From that story, our audience, that human we are trying to inspire forward, is asked to imagine, “If this person could do this, I can do this, too.”
DIVISION IS A DECISION FOR THE STATUS QUO
Instead what is happening is that we create sides. Our hero’s story identifies one set of people and one set of ideas as bad and as the enemy. One person alone has the will and the way to find a better way forward.
The thing is, our stories are representations of real humans and real ideas in the world.
When we depict others as evil this leaves people who think differently than our hero or those that have a different way of seeing in the position of defending themselves.
So we land up with those on the other side of our cause digging in, telling stories of why we are wrong.
And we land up at a standstill. Neither side wants to give in because both sides are painting the others as the enemy.
We end up making little or no way forward.
How did we end up here? Why is this the way we tell stories? And is there a better way forward?
THE HISTORY OF THE HERO’S JOURNEY
The Hero’s Journey is a way of storytelling identified by professor Joseph Campbell who taught literature and worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. He studied Greek Mythology and stories passed down for millennia. He asserted that these stories had a pattern. These myths had a hero who goes through a 12-stage journey, from the call to adventure, the refusal, to return with a moral of the story.
Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949 and had many fans including Steven Spielberg who used this structure for Jaws and George Lucas who used this structure as the foundation for his Star Wars series.
The Hero’s Journey has received an otherworldly kind of status in the world of storytelling. It is touted as “the universal structure of story.”
Yet, as Adam Skelter states in his beautifully edited short video, Beyond the Hero’s Journey, “The Monomyth isn’t the universal structure of all stories, it is the structure of indoctrination. These are the stories tribes, cultures and empires tell their people to impose conformity, respect for authority and moral systems, that view the world in oversimplified dualities.”
The Hero’s Journey is oversimplified and in its simplification, it ignores nuances and puts people and ideas into boxes.
FROM HOLLYWOOD TO ADVERTISING
Prior to the creation of Star Wars, Lucas wasn’t accepted into Hollywood. However, with the wild success of the original Star Wars trilogy, both he and the Hero’s Journey were accepted by Hollywood with open arms. This has influenced the norms of what type of films gets funded in Hollywood ever since.
The Hero’s Journey also captured the attention of clever marketers who decided to apply this popular structure in their marketing efforts and claim it as the foundation of their winning advertising strategies.
Storytelling gurus today write books, give workshops and talk about this as a proven story technique. Yet if you take a quick look, most are applying the Hero’s Journey in name and idea but changing the original 12-stages into something more manageable, like six stages or otherwise modifying the structure.
The main ingredients they keep are the battle for right over wrong and basing the story on a lone hero struggling against his or her enemy.
If you have a nuanced story without actual enemies, well, you need to find a representation of an enemy and strip out complications to make the story linear. This simplification also fits with the new theories that we humans have lost our attention span and need things to be concise and easy or we’ll get distracted and move on. So of course, in this paradigm, we also have to make the ending singular and simple.
All sorts of people write books stating this as the winning formula.
Looking closely at some of the stories these very authors claim are based on the Hero’s Journey, I’ve been surprised to discover that most were, in fact, not using the formula.
One case in point is the short film on YouTube called the Story of Stuff. That video deserves its own article (stay tuned).
THE IMPLICATIONS FOR OUR LOVE OF CONFLICT
One implication of thinking in terms of conflict is that our stories end up making people enemies and then we can’t find common ground or a common way forward.
Additionally, boxing our stories into this formula we lose the subtlety of the reality of a situation.
In the real world, someone’s motivations can be a mix of positive and negative. Yes, that person is taking painkillers but they were proscribed. Yes, that person left their country but had they stayed they would have been recruited into the conflict and forced to kill their neighbors.
THE REALITY WE LIVE IN
Our lives are intertwined. There is no straight line from here to where we want to go. There is no singular path to a promised land.
Multiple solutions exist for the challenges we face in our world today and to find the way we need to collaborate and bring others on the journey.
We need to increase opportunities for conversation, not shut them down with black and white thinking.
TELLING STORIES THAT INSPIRE USING THE EMPOWERED JOURNEY APPROACH
Given that I was seeing very few alternatives to the Hero’s Journey, and realizing this didn’t sit well with my way of seeing the world, I decided to research an alternative way of telling stories.
I created an approach which I call the WeStory Framework which is both a practice and a structure.
The practice is based on building empathy and broadening our way of seeing a situation and those interacting with and impacted by the situation. It includes looking into the influences of both our own and other’s points of view.
The structure, The Empowered Journey, is based on acknowledging that we have a common goal, finding common ground on which to start a conversation, and sharing a pathway forward based on showing the myths, recognizing both parties way of understanding, looking at our assumptions and sharing our way of perceiving the situation.
The WeStory Framework is based on giving context to our ideas. The story itself aims to act as an invitation to look at new possible futures based on the understanding we present.
The resulting story isn’t based on fighting a foe. Rather, it helps us wade through narratives, discredited science, and cultural norms that are no longer valid or that no longer serve us.
The structure doesn’t lead to an overinflated sense of ‘this is the one and only way forward.’ Rather it acknowledges the stated path as one option of many.
These stories already exist and are powerful means of influencing change.
One of the approaches using this framework is Narrative Non-Fiction.
MOVING FORWARD WITH A SENSE OF POSSIBILITY
For those of us looking to bring forth innovative ways to care for the world, we do not have to demonstrate our ideas by picking out enemies and stirring the pot of division.
We need everyone on board now.
Starting our stories with an impulse toward inclusion will serve us well.
It is more inspiring for our audience but also for ourselves when we move forward with a sense of possibility.
Laura J. Lukitsch is a filmmaker, artist and story consultant helping artists and purpose-driven entrepreneurs show up with authenticity in order to create an impact for themselves, others and the planet. Her programs help creatives find their voice and share their work. When she’s not writing, creating, or coaching she is on her bike or out in nature.
