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The heroine’s journey is an essentially Gnostic reading of women and culture. I don’t think it’s possible to understand the moral intent behind the majority of Western film or literature without knowing the Gnostic worldview.
The Gnostic reading of the Eden Myth is that Eve was right. She was right to be seduced into eating the fruit and she was right to entice Adam into doing the same. Whether it’s because she’s more innately wise than him or whether it’s because even her apparent mistakes are charmed is immaterial: she is complete in and of herself.
The Patriarchal Demiurge punishes her in the story because he’s unable to rule her the way he wants, this is why he punishes her but doesn’t credit her with the sin, (that’s reserved for Adam). The Gnostic reading is that Eve liberated herself and humankind by just letting her curiosity/feeling/intuition (depending on your reading) be her guide.
This is the struggle Cpt. Marvel, Moana, Mirabel in ‘Encanto’, the girl in ‘The VVitch’ et al. have to overcome: a world with inferior men who try to mask how perfect a woman already is with their blind expectations.
It strikes me as borderline repulsive but then again, I’m a man.
I've always found these kind of myth inversions (with respect to the traditional Christian Eden myth) compelling, particularly when they tie a liberatory progressiveness to the gain of knowledge. Stealing forbidden knowledge from the gods and paying an inordinate price for doing so -- that is real sacrifice. The self-sacrifice at the core of the Christian tradition has always felt a little insincere by comparison -- as if one is not really sacrificing, just placing downpayment on their eternal reward. What kind of real sacrifice is positive sum for the sacrificed?
Eve's choice to steal knowledge from the gods can easily be recast as a Promethean act along these lines -- to make away with the fire and to bear whatever punishment comes. To take pride in what could be built with one's own hands, instead of resigning oneself to an easy half-life of providence. The Romanticists felt this keenly (though they often cast Satan as the Promethean rebel instead). Goethe:
It's fairly natural for feminists to pick up the thread of this kind of myth revisionism, which I find similarly compelling, e.g. Vashti or Jezebel, or the Atwood or Emily Wilson take on the Odyssey.
Despite its overwhelming pessimism in other respects, I thought the lone triumphant spark flickering in the heart of Three-Body Problem trilogy was similar -- humanity is comically outmatched by the Gods, but we're stupid or naive or brave enough to spit in their face anyway and to hell with the consequences. I have a lot more respect for an Abraham, who, knowing that God is real and all-powerful, and against whom resistance is truly utterly futile, refuses to kill his son.
Yes, it’s post-modernism at work. Re-framing Jezebel, Salome, or Delilah lives on in the flicks about Malificent, Cruella DeVille, or Ursula the sea-witch. Same principle, same aim.
Interesting read of the Abraham story. In Kabbalistic thought, it’s Abraham’s willingness to kill his son, to give up what’s dearest to him that moves God to stop him just before the act and bestow his blessing. The lesson being that providence shines only when you’re willing to give up the thing you’re most afraid to lose.
Your reading reminds me of the reading many have of Jacob, who is so stubborn he manages to wrestle God-himself to a stalemate. God congratulates him, then — just to show him who’s God — dislocates his hip, giving him a limp for life. He then changes his name to Israel. The Kabbalist’s reading of this story is that the Jewish people are prized by God specifically because of their “unreasonable” stubbornness.
What really gets me is how the methodologies of the Torah are used all of the time now. They’re really myths of the highest order.
For instance, Edward Bernays got women to smoke cigarettes in the early-20th century by convincing them the only reason they hadn’t already been doing so was because men didn’t want women to be like them. With this new frame he re-named them Freedom Torches and they sold like hotcakes.
Notice this is the exact appeal the serpent makes to Eve. “God knows you’ll be like him if you eat” becomes “Man knows you’ll be like him if you smoke.”
The same framing was used to get women to go to work.
It’s the reason why most goods are marketed to women. Give her a false promise and an appeal to her vanity and she’ll chomp every time.
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I'm curious where you got the term "heroines journey" from; this meaning doesn't match either of the ones listed on Wikipedia.
Edit: I think it's pretty easy to reframe almost any path/arc as being either "self-discovery" or "self-improvement". So I don't think this is a meaningful pattern.
One could easily say that Christianity is about discovering that you were created to love God all along and rejecting the sinful influences of society and the World, that Gnostics believe that people are born blind and need secret knowledge from outside the world to redeem their Demiurge-tainted birth, or that Captain Marvel is about a militaristic people-pleaser learning basic compassion and redeeming herself.
I'm pretty sure that this is a continuation of an earlier discussion in this thread on Friday. The "heroine's journey" is used here as a neologism.
/u/orthoxerox conflates the Campbell monomyth with the originally Aristotle-inspired idea of a flawed character arc (particularly for tragedies, cf. hamartia).
There is something of a "Heroine's Journey" per Murdock (one of Campbell's students) which mainly differs in the emphasis of returning balance and harmony rather than manichean domination. Leaving that aside, the myths Campbell cites in Hero with a Thousand Faces are, well, the myths: Osiris, the Gautama Buddha, Jesus, etc. The Aztec's Tezcatlipoca, Prince Kamar al-Zaman, Jason, Herakles, and so on. The hero is heroic, if they even have flaws they are not particularly relevant to the plot. Similarly, Campbell-inspired fiction hardly has the character flaw as a central pivot. Luke Skywalker doesn't have any plot-relevant character flaws -- he's a bit whiny and grows up, but he doesn't suffer because of his immaturity. It's only until later in the series that an added dimension about overcoming cyclic revenge is thrown in.
The idea that compelling protagonists absolutely must overcome a personal flaw to succeed in their larger struggle (i.e. have a 'character arc') is a more modern thing. It is particularly ironic to criticise contemporary media for having insufficiently flawed protagonists compared to monomythic heroes, accordingly. Overpowered, morally simple protagonists are hardly a new invention. Stuff like the "hero must have a tragic backstory" is not monomythic or Campbellian.
With that out of the way, it's not clear to me that many of the new female-led disney/pixar princess fare (e.g. Frozen, Inside Out) lacks this typical character arc:
Frozen has a strong character arc for Anna, whose childish infatuations sets up the nation for betrayal. Elsa's 'let it go' moment isn't emancipatory an exhibition of selfishness, and her abdication damns her nation to endless winter. The resolution of the plot is tied to overcoming these flaws.
In Inside Out, Riley isn't the protagonist. Joy is, and she's an insecure control freak whose insistence that everything reflects her preferences precipitates the slide into depression.
But even if they lack plot-relevant flaws, then that doesn't necessarily mean they are narratively not worthwhile. Moana is much more of a Campbell hero because she isn't really that flawed. Would the Lord of the Rings be better if Frodo's struggle with the influence of the ring was intertwined with being bullied or something, and his narrative success was dependent on reconciling himself with that?
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Possibly in response to this thread?
I'm going to reiterate my normal complaints about Campbellian (or Jungian) analysis; this can be kinda funny, but it's so broad and vague it makes astrology look well-founded.
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I have nothing to add other than I think Gnosticism came up in an old discussion about RWBY once (I think around the time of Volume 6? I think it was after the big reveal about Ozpin's backstory and the two gods of creation and destruction), back in the old Tumblr ratsphere.
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It’s always struck me that masculinity is more socially constructed than femininity.
To be a woman is more of a biological designation, as the transition from girl to woman is marked by the onset of menstruation. However to be a “man” is more of a socially developed role as one can be an adult male yet not a “man” (sort of like the scene where Anakin Skywalker is denied the rank of Jedi master despite being on the Jedi council).
The “Three P’s” theory of masculinity says that men must protect and/or provide in order to procreate. The value of your protection or provision depends heavily on the social conditions you find yourself in. For example, being a good provider in previous eras may have meant having a small, productive farm, but today it could mean having a good job in tech/finance/law/etc. Protection is largely a function of physical size and capacity for violence, but this value is less today than it would have been even decades ago due to global declines in violence.
This may be why women are viewed as “complete”. Her reproductive capability is innate, whereas men must venture out into the world and compete for the right to use their reproductive capabilities. Do you think the difference between the two journeys could be related?
I've heard this claim before, and it doesn't make sense. While that may well be the case in some cultures, it is very much not the case in Heroine's Journey producing civilizations. When do you start calling someone a woman rather than a "teenage girl?" 18? 21? When they have a child? People were calling me a girl at 24, because I was wandering around the world volunteering instead of establishing a family.
If we're going to go the biological route, the marker is pregnancy, or marriage with the assumption of family obligations, not menstruation.
It's easier, I suppose, for a girl to become a single mother and therefore fully a woman if she chooses to, though it's pretty rough going and strongly discouraged. She's considered a foolish woman who suffers justly, not a heroine. She's wise if she finds a man with potential who others have overlooked, and so can get a higher quality partner than might be assumed based on her humble origins (c.f. Beauty and the Beast).
So women's novels tend to revolve around finding the right man to form her family with -- who's trustworthy and attractive and able to defend and provide, and who will be a good companion and father. Someone mentioned historically important female novelists, and they were all about exercising proper judgement, and the story tends to revolve around misperception, fear of loss, then finally sorting things out and marrying. Jane Austen is very much this, all the time. They don't so much change, as the perception of their suitors changes -- or maybe he goes on a hero's journey and changes -- and they realize that he is in fact the right one for them before it's too late and he gives up. So, in Persuasion, Anne turns Wentworth down because she isn't sure he can provide a stable home for her and potential children, he goes off and proves himself by becoming a rich captain, and the rest of the novel is about the very constrained way they have to feel out whether both parties are still interested or not.
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So basically: "men search to self-improve, women search to recognize that they are already perfect".
I think your comment illuminated for me a weird fact that I've noticed about the meditation community and the distribution of male/female meditators among the different techniques. One set of meditation techniques heavily emphasize linearly developed skills: there are specific tasks that you must accomplish, and those who can't do those tasks are "worse at meditation" in a very straightforward way than those who can do those tasks well. Put in the time, do the work, and you get better at meditation. This would be the male approach to meditation, and it's the one that I see most guys who pick up meditation gravitate towards. Yet, there is another set of techniques that reject the very premise that there is anything to be done: you are already perfect, exactly as you are right now, you just need to recognize it, any skills you try to pick up and improve are distractions. But in a weird way any attempt at trying to recognize this goes against the point, you must be totally effortless in recognizing you are already perfect, here and now. Trying to do anything at all is useless and against the point. Going on this path requires a weird sort of mental flexibility and intuition, you need to recognize something without trying to do anything at all. Women seem to like these techniques much more than men do, and now it makes sense why they would. In the meditation world both paths ultimately lead to the same place, and it's very hard to get to the end without practicing both to some extent. I think there is something archetypally profound here.
Yes, I think you’ve hit something there.
I would formulate it thusly:
What we call the masculine develops from two things: austerity and challenge.
Its ultimate goal is freedom.
What we call the feminine develops from from emotional, spiritual, and spatial fullness.
Its ultimate goal is love.
The profound silence of deep meditation is a monstrosity to her. For she requires fullness, not emptiness.
Singing, dancing, drinking, laughing, and the like is where the feminine finds it home and flowering.
A man indulging thus because a lump of uselessness. Just as a woman indulging in a life of challenge becomes a bearded lady.
I believe this to be archetypal.
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I think it's an interesting question to ask: have y'all seen any media where a male protagonist follows the Gnostic journey?
The movie Wanted? Everything Superman related since he became a Mary Sue?
Think of it that way - Batman is the manliest of heroes - the theorem is he can beat everything if he has time to prepare. But Superman is almost the opposite - beating the shit out of everything is the easy part, it's usually the internal struggles that provide conflict. Think of Superman 2 - there the superman is the ultimate pussy - he gets beaten up by some blue collar dudes while he has lost his powers, then he returns invulnerable with superpowers to takes his revenge. That is what man characterized as pussies do.
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Good question. There are many actually. It requires a slightly different set of rules though. The Gnostic man has to answer a call. His quest is to overcome himself by piercing through the illusory veil built by the demiurge, then sacrifice himself for the good of the world. He is able to do this via the authentic love of a woman (heiros gamos).
The Gnostic reading of the Jesus story is its prototype. There are hundreds of movies that make use of its cosmology.
All the Marvels, ‘Star Wars,’ and other Disney property (everything from ‘Pinocchio’ to ‘Jungle Book’). ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘The Matrix,’ ‘The Truman Show,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ and hundreds of less familiar titles are explicitly Gnostic.
How is LOTR gnostic? Offhand, it doesn't seem to match your description at all.
The description I offered is not complete. I’d point you to ‘Jung and Frodo’ by Robin Robertson.
Here’s a brief primer as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/83n53k/gnostic_elements_in_tolkiens_mythology/
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Scott Pilgrim? The movie version.
The Power of Self Respect is more powerful than the Power of Love, and fighting Gideon for his own satisfaction is the correct answer, where fighting over the girl was wrong.
It isn't perfect (the "correct" version of the finale involves Scott admitting he cheated and reconciling with Kim by apologising, which is growth over the "wrong" version), but I think you could make the case that other than those two things, Scott basically doesn't grow or change through the film. Indeed the entire film is basically him kicking more and more ass.
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The Doctor Strange movies?
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Every Stoner comedy?
The Dude
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