14
N the Red
Nov. 12, 2019
New tale, same hero
Hollywood accused of repetitive stories; archetype may be reason Ben Hamilton
M
hamilben000@hsestudents.org
ovies are among the most popular and lucrative forms of entertainment, generating over $43 billion in 2017. With the attention paid to movies now, there is a lot of pressure to bring content that will draw crowds, and in turn, revenue. However, pandering to an audience can lead to repetitive stories and characters. “A lot of popular movies right now are mostly the same,” senior Andrew Newquist said. “But they tend to also be the same genre and obviously make a lot of money, so why would you break the mold with something new?” In fact, in the last 20 years, the highest-grossing movies have been adventure movies followed by action and drama, genres that tend to showcase the hero’s journey, a deconstruction of storytelling that could be applied to all heroes from every culture. The idea was that the hero of a story goes through the same trials that change them to be more in line with the culture’s idea of goodness. “When you break a character down to just basic life they will look like every other character,” senior Bruno Kitazuka said. “There is a lot of nuance that goes unrecognized if you just look at movies through the hero’s journey lens.” Critics of the hero’s journey tend to agree. Many argue that if the journey’s order has to be changed to fit the story’s hero, then the hero’s journey is not present in the story. The argument is that, the hero’s journey applies to heroes that have the call to action and reject it. So, characters like Captain Kirk who actively seek out action and never grow are static character and, therefore, not heroes. Movies like “The Big Lebowski” or “Mother!” do not follow the hero’s journey because the point of the journey is to change and no one actually
does. However, a lack of change in only one character does not devalue the theory. Proponents of the hero’s journey say the archetype of a hero does not always follow the protagonist and more often than not actually follows the antagonist or supporting character. While Captain Kirk doesn’t follow the journey Spock actually does, initially not wanting to accept his humanity but then realizing it’s not entirely without purpose. “Part of the hero’s journey is that it is easily recognizable in ourselves and helps us understand a story specifically, because it is si ilar or informed by another story or movie,” English teacher Jordan Nel said. This idea of intertextuality, the connection of one work to another, is present in every story not because most stories share the same basic plot structure or character, but because the author and the reader know other stories and see themselves and other characters in the people in the story being told. “The idea that every story might be connected in that is comforting to me,” Nel said. “It makes the story feel more human because it is more relatable.” It’s easy to identify with a character like Harry Potter because he has the same troubles every other teenager has, but he also faces tribulations no one could ever hope to match up with making him seem larger than life. Luke Skywalker just wants to hang out with his friends, but his uncle akes hi do his chores first. e’s got proble s viewers also have, but he’s also got magic beans in his blood that give him telekinesis. ”So a lot of stories may seem the same and many characters may seem to repeat” Nel said. “But that’s because the only story being told is humanity’s story.”
Information courtesy of IMDB. Graphics by Ben Hamilton.
