The Hero's Journey Destroys Mythology | Part 1 of 2

I absolutely fucking hate Joseph Campbell. He fashions himself as an intellectual with the clear eyes to see what has always been there, but which no one before him perceived, because they were too bogged down by the concerns of the world or culture or whatever, but in fact, he’s a cult leader. he is selling outlooks that do not bear Much resemblance reality, and as you pointed out, reframing the work of others, in order to shove it into his half assed lazy worldview. Stories that do not fit the monomyth: Beyowulf, Gilgamesh, Jesus, and if you’re one of those naybobs that insist Jesus does fit (trust me: He doesn’t) then CERTAINLY the Apostle Paul doesn’t. He is a cult leader in that he sells people a nonsensical worldview that makes them feel better and smarter than everyone around them as a substitute for actually learning and striving to understand. it is a simple answer and simple answers are always going to sell better than hard truths. Ayn Rand is also a cult leader. She sells the notion that you’re absolute worst. Instincts are the only valid ones and anyone who says otherwise is just a moocher or looter who is trying to drag you down. It’s all absolute bullshit. and peoples fanaticism about this. Does it actually reach the level of religious fanaticism. I have had many arguments with Objectivists in which they are unable to form a coherent argument to support their goddamn love of Atlas shrugged, and who absolutely positively refused to acknowledge that tends of millions of people must have died as a consequence of the actions of the heroes of that book. Starved to death. But because it doesn’t happen on the page, they insisted didn’t happen. And when you pointed out that these people waged a coup against the United States, overthrowing the government, because it did not conform to their venerated views of selfishness, and intend quite clearly to set up a new government of the robber barrons, for the robber barrons, and by the robber barrons, and all the little people can just fuck her right off, they say that I’m wrong, and that I don’t understand and blah blah blah blah blah. Hell, Batman doesn’t fit!

But getting back to Joseph Campbell: the man is a vandal. Culture and narrative and the global treasures of literature by diminishing it into his stupid fucking equation that bears no resemblance to reality. His entire career is the literary equivalent of taking a carpet knife to a Rembrandt and saying, “see? It’s painted on canvas, which means it’s exactly like every other painting that ever existed!” (ignoring all of those people who just painted on wood because it was cheaper and sturdier)

And on top of it, he was an absolute star fucker. There is actually some debate as to whether or not George Lucas was even aware of Joseph Campbell when he was making Star Wars. It is taken as a received wisdom that Lucas knew of this, and said this, and eventually he did say that, but George Lucas is possessed of either a terrible memory, or is continually deliberately lying about his past, and anyone who is listened to any interviews of him 10 years apart, becomes immediately aware of this. I can’t prove it, but I’ve heard from multiple sources that Lucas just slapped his story together from pre-digested bits of other stories, without any more thought to it than that. Later on, somebody suggested it bore a resemblance to Kimball, and Lucas was more than happy to glam on that because it gave the appearance of intellectual validity to his silly little Flash Gordon movie. And Campbell was perfectly willing to jump on that because it seemed to give marketability to his up until then relatively obscure goddamn useless tommyrot books.

Hate Joseph Campbell

So, basically, you're a commie. How boring. And , for the record the "white heteronormative male Christian" worldview of the early 20th century Is so much better than anything we have going on now, its not even close.

Sigh. Boring take.

me a trans woman whose deadname is brian 😶

I genuinely know a Brian who is the worst. Not in an ironic funny way, but absolutely one of the least likeable, manipulative, abusive people I know in my life. Just saying, she's not entirely off-base in my very narrow view.

Asking something that you designed and programmed a question like “is there a god” lololol
Like what do you think it’s gonna say? You wrote the script 😂

WAIT THATS BIG JOEL

What did I do!?

Sounds like you’re trying too hard to be triggered.

I never liked his theories, but I didn't realize that he was just a very stupid and horrible person. He was wrong about everything, not just storytelling.

Last year I was in year 12 (Australia), and we were being taught about the Hero's Journey in Literature. It's so irritating that this is still being taught as fact in schools today :(

Have to subscribe, never cared for Joseph Campbell, he might have spent his time better going to topless bars, instead of reading Ulysses and coming to whatever conclusions that he reached. I do hate star wars

Lmao why'd this come up when i watched a video for my college class?? does my professor have some explaining to do?? cuz the vid he assigned us to watch was about joseph campbell's perspective............

A video I have been waiting for for a very long time, of so much wrong that Campbell spread (in the 80s, indeed!). His is a weird conjunction of rigid new critical poetic askesis with wish washy uncritical thematic myth worship. Jordan Peterson reveals the skull beneath the skin. But ugh the inclusion of Milton's Paradise Lost in the list of works that survive because it pleases the powers that be. Hardly. Sure Milton had the education and wealth of an elite but he put his life and art in service of the Parliamentary cause, the real origin of British constitutionalism. Paradise Lost was written after that cause was lost while Milton's eyesight dimmed. The poem itself rather intentionally or inadvertently foregrounds Lucifer and Eve as they are the only characters who have a conflict. And there is much that is not even C of E doctrine, leave aside Catholicism, in Milton's theology (Adam & Eve were sexual beings in the Garden!). It rather illustrates in a less dramatic way what the later success Blake's poetry. The power of the expression and the thought in PL and the rest of his work now overshadows most of the 17th century except for late Shakespeare, John Donne and Aphra Benn these days. (Losing Dryden never felt so good.)

When I was on Instagram, I followed a “surreal meme” page.
One day they started making lots of Joesph Campbell and Jung posts.

I said, “Crazy how Campbell and Jung both became staunch Nazi sympathizers. I’m glad we can joke about that, but these memes lately have seemed in support rather than making fun of how silly both were. Especially being a surrealist page, an ideology that would completely spit in the face of the monomyth.”

And boy. That meme page owner started harassing me, and so many people on that page started harassing and DM’ing me threats.

That’s how I learned about how there are people who think myths and stories are actually the structure for real life. And not just stories, but badly constructed tropes… or whatever Jung calls them… and monomyth.

I appreciate this perspective. Joseph Campbell was huge when I went to school for religious studies. Still hear him brought up all the time.

His recounting of a computer saying that it's god is a rehashing of a short story by Fredric Brown in 1954. So dude's not even original.

I love videos like this. This breakdown makes perfect sense, yet before this I accepted the heros journey at face value. Now that Im actually thinking ab it, who the hell let him get away with saying thats EVERY story😂

Amen dude. I had to sit through like 1/4 of a semester of AP english talking about this shit and I'm glad to finally see someone tear it apart.

Except for my mother I am a mysoginist. So far it's not a crime....anyway It doesn't prevent me liking your blah blah.

This person has no idea what is connotative language (ie: computer chips are angels) and obviously has not read a book by Joseph Campbell. And she lacks literal integrity.

Luke did stay "in the system" in Return of the Jedi. He remained aligned to the Light side of the Force, unlike during his flirtation with cosmic indifference in the Disney sequels.

Joseph Campbell is aware. You as well are a product of your time & place. As well as race and income.

Why am I being attacked 😭😭

How can you say that about Brian when he died on the cross for our sins?

The Maria Bamford energy is strong here… I’m staying

Knowing that Joseph Campbell was teaching at an all girls college when he said some of those misogynist things makes me realize he was probably a creep on top of having a bad view.

I cant believe I ate this shit up at one point. The hero's journey isn't the only thing Campbell went on about but I remember completely losing interest when I realised how nonsensical and glaringly subjective his interpretations were, and also how the hero's journey seemed to be the only thing he actually put any thought into. It's like he spouts off the top of his head most of the time, presenting very few factual references. Although I found his interpretations of other themes interesting I started to distrust him, there were instances where I looked up certain rituals he mentioned and could find nothing, or just a string of evidence that he seemed to have elaborated on. He seems to avoid anything that goes against his ideas, which I think if he was truly invested in finding a universal he would consider. Typical of some of these high ranking academics. But you are right, he like all of us can not escape our own time.

Honestly the biggest strike aginst hero with a thousand faces is the HOOOORRRID pretentious run-on-sentence prose. Its absolutely painful to read.

You could've decided to work in a decent factory. And live with male roommates who do something along those lines. You really do just exist to be hideously acerbic and basically useless if you're not simply taken into property by men of vision.

As much as we need to criticize and scrutinize what must be with Campbell and his ideas, we must also acknowledge that many of his core concepts that tie into Jungian archetypes still hold water, as evidenced by today's popular narrative media.

I also think a more streamlined, universal, and politically correct alternative to Campbell's monomyth would be Dan Harmon's 8 step story circle, which works just as well, if not even better.

I've come here by parachute and I've already seen a grotesque error in the video description. What dominated Hollywood wasn't Campbell, it was Christopher Vogler's writer's journey. But it's Campbell's name that has become popular.

Maggie, you have a pretty face!

Oh whow, that is NOT an annecdote about President Eisenhower, it's a Scifi Short Story, called "Answer" by Fredric Brown.

And decidedly NOT set on Earth, the named actors involved are called Dwar Reyn and Dwar Ev. and the Computer fills up all inhabitable planets in the universe. 96 billion planets.

Weird, another thing Campbell talks shit about?

I m listening. I know mark burnett used joseph campbell as a source

OK, I'm gonna set myself up as a target for thrown rotten vegetables but here goes: I was helped and inspired by Campbell, even with his flaws. Some folks (including Maggie and Joseph) I just have enjoy buffet style-- taking what I need and saying no thank you to the rest. Let the insults and trashing begin!

I got here because i wanted to re-purchase the books but wanted to know if they were being updated according to new ethnological research. I used to be a fan but somehow didn't miss the fact that he was a despicable human being, apart from probably making up stuff as he went along, which is the cardinal sin. I have to say i did read The Masks of God Part. I, II, III and was pretty into it but then I got to Part. IV which is supposed to be about "modern mythology" and the whole book is an obsessive rumination on James Joyce's Ulysses and that's when I realized there was something wrong in this guy's judgement somewhere.. But part. II of the video makes it clear he wasn't a jerk, he was a freaking a§§h0le.

The MonoMyth is defined and illustrated in James Joyce's 1938 book Finnegans Wake, with his prior books inclusive. Have you fully comprehended Finnegans Wake to dismiss the "Myth of the MonoMyth"? Have you memorized Finnegans Wake as a thinking system in your brain? It took Campbell and Marshall McLuhan over 5 years personally for them, when did you do it?

i think the mistake here is thinking the hero’s journey is a absolute structure to be followed 1:1 when it’s not and no one makes that claim really, it’s like you going to college and then the professor explains how a study is usually structured with a title, authors name, a summary so on and so forth, and then you bravely shout, “so you’re saying all papers are the same?!”, it’s quite silly tbh.

So yeah, Joseph Campbell was a man of his era, definitely. This video is useless though. The monomyth is an observation, not a pattern to follow 1:1

I remember learning about the hero's journey in seventh grade and I was really annoyed by how it was presented as a truth inherent to all stories of heroes because it seemed much more reductive than explanatory. It's not a useful or interesting interpretive framework if it only tells you the same thing each time regardless of what it purports to analyze.

Are you that blind to have missed the message of the path?

Okay, so there is a lot wrong with Campbell, but not all of this is fairly characterized. The quotes in the first few minutes imply Campbell populated categories like "generally valid" or "normally human forms." He didn't: the hero was defined by their context, by their struggle against what the reader is taught to believe is/was "generally valid" at the time and place of the story's birth.

This video is generally super-well done, but I think there is a distinction to be drawn between the man and his theory. Newton believed passionately in alchemy; gravity was still a good idea. Campbell held personal opinions many find repugnant, but that does not and should not color our criticism of his theory, nor should it allow us to read specifics into deliberately generalized statements.

A lot of Campbell deserves to be pilloried, but it's important to be judicious and exact when doing so, lest we fall into the same trap he did.

Cant believe I've never looked into Joseph Campbell before, he sounds eerily like a mixture between Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson. They really have just been saying the same shit decade after decade.