From the belly of the whale 🐳

  Despite Joseph Cambell’s hero’s journey template being designed for a male-centered narrative, I will argue that his template can be applied to films with female main characters. One example of such a film is DC’s Wonder Woman (2017). Although Maureen Murdock and Victoria Lynn Schmitt created heroine’s journey templates for female main characters, Wonder Woman matches closer with Campbell’s template. This may be due to Wonder Woman, or Diana, playing the traditionally male role of a leading superhero. Diana plays a similar role in the movie as many male superheroes but with added dramatic hair flips, high heels, and general girlbossness.  Pictured from left to right: woman as temptress, hero The movie begins by telling of Diana’s childhood. She was raised on Themyscria the island of the Amazons, Olympian women warriors, where she learns how to fight. Diana experiences a call to action when a British pilot, Steve Trevor, crashes on their island. He tells Diana about the ongo...

       Disney Pixar’s Brave tells the story of Merida, a Princess of the DunBroch clan in the Scottish Highlands. Being Pixar’s first-ever female protagonist, the movie shows Merida’s untraditional “princess behavior” and her clear dislike of the customs and rules that are intended to guide her life as a princess. Throughout the movie, it is easy to see how Maureen Murdock’s template of the heroine’s journey matches the plot of the movie. Maureen Murdock’s version of the heroine’s journey, begins with the breaking away from feminine ideals and the turning towards the patriarchal values. Then comes the experience of spiritual death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. The ending stages consist of union of both the masculine and feminine values (Heroine’s Journey).        Although I may not agree with the fundamental idea of not completing your journey until finding a balance of masculine and femini...

      In Joseph Campbell’s 17-step monomyth narrative, the first step is the Call to Adventure. The call to adventure is when “The hero starts off in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.” I think that this is one of the most important steps in the monomyth, as it sets up the context of the journey. We are able to learn what the hero hopes to accomplish, often by seeing what they lack in their “mundane situation of normality”. After watching Star Wars: Episode IV –A New Hope I thought it would be simple to identify the call to adventure in Siddhartha . In A New Hope the call to adventure is a literal call for help causing an adventure for the hero. However, in Siddhartha, the call to adventure was trickier to pinpoint.       In class we discussed what the call to adventure was in Siddhartha, there were two main opinions. The first being that the call to adventure ...