Tools
Joseph Campbell ruined storytelling for a generation. It's not his fault—Campbell was just trying to compare myths in order to discover common archetypes—but the crimes that have been committed in his name are unforgivable. Because of Campbell's work, the filmmaking industry now treats story as a kind of algebra, a foolproof fill-in-the-blanks system. And thanks to Hollywood's heavy reliance on Campbellian thought, novelists everywhere decided that storytelling is less of an art and more of a science. Based on Campbell's narrow-minded discoveries, they determined that every story is a hero's journey—that assumption is their first mistake—and certain goals have to be met in order to make that journey a satisfying one.
You can find the stink of Campbell's formula everywhere; it's contributed to the biggest flood of generic, pointless stories the world has ever known. Just about every best-selling author you can name has probably been influenced by Campbell, and every mainstream blockbuster film to come out in the last 20 years definitely owes him a screenwriting credit. The problem is that when you accept Campbell's ideas as concrete truth, you are adopting a flawed premise as the platform for your story.
Stranger Personals
Not every story needs to be a hero's journey. Not every quest needs to mimic a learning process. Hell, not every story needs a beginning, middle, and end. The fact that those assumptions are made for the aspiring author before she even starts writing is a crime against us all. Stories should be experiments that challenge all assumptions—even assumptions of stories.
A long time ago, 2010 Stranger Genius of Literature Jim Woodring worked in a factory in the heart of Campbell's empire; he created art for Saturday morning cartoons like Rubik the Amazing Cube and Mr. T for animation studio Ruby-Spears. All the comics he's made in the time since then have refuted Campbellian formulaic storytelling. His life's work is the story of a hapless cat-faced man (or woman, or neither, or both, but for simplicity's sake, and because Woodring occasionally does, we'll call him a "he") named Frank who lives in a dreamlike world called the Unifactor. Every new Frank story brings a new character into the Unifactor—a new pet for Frank, perhaps, or a moon-headed devil—and the expanding cast of characters interacts in increasingly complex ways.
Out of all Woodring's work, his latest book, Congress of the Animals, most closely resembles a Joseph Campbell–style story. In the opening pages, a deep-in-debt Frank finds himself working in a factory, shoving barrels full of crow parts into a grinding machine. Soon enough, he embarks on a journey, for the first time, outside the Unifactor. He voyages across stormy seas, explores mysterious caverns, visits with clitoris-faced men, is tempted by a powerful swordlike totem, and goes off, besotted, in search of an enormous Frank-shaped building.
Relevant sources that Campbell would catalog here include references to Arthurian legend, folk tales about John Henry, The Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, and probably dozens more. It would be possible for a Jungian critic to pull this book apart into dozens of unexciting pieces. But Woodring operates from an unconscious level, and these references aren't the slavish callbacks you've read everywhere else. Those familiar shapes and story "beats," to use a wretched Hollywood term, may resemble elements we already know, but in Animals they feel different—in part because they're drawn in Woodring's fastidious woodcut style, a dense blanket of ink thrown over Frank's world informing us that everything we see comes from Woodring's singular mind.
Expectations are foiled at every turn precisely because Woodring is digging deep into the rich soil of his own imagination; he's pulling these stories up from the same place that myths and legends come from, and in that way, his books have the weird weight and unmistakable freshness of myth. These are stories that haven't been told before, but they come from the place where stories are born, so they're instantly recognizable to everyone. And because they live in the prelinguistic language of cartoons, almost anyone on the planet can look at a page and immediately understand what is happening. Woodring is too gentle and polite a human being to personally call for a revolution against the lazy stories we tell each other, but every panel of his comics is a refutation of the dumbed-down story mathematics assaulting us every day, and a celebration of the dark caverns of the brain where our stories come from in the first place. 
1
And really, calling 'beats' a "wretched Hollywood term" is like dismissing a songwriter who uses the term "chord progression." It's a basic technical term used in the industry, and existed long before Hollywood ever showed up. That sort of snarking is beneath you, Paul.
Not every story needs to be a hero's journey. Not every quest needs to mimic a learning process."
This is the flawed premise of your post. A generalization that explains the tendency of successful storytelling doesn't necessitate that all storytelling has to be such. Conversely, just because people tend to follow the generalization that Campbell lays out doesn't mean they are slavish followers of his thought, or even that they read him at all.
5
Has anyone seen the huge pen? Is it beautiful?
7
9
I think Star Wars was the cause of the hero story success in Hollywood. It was a poorly acted movie with no star talent (at the time) that was a legendary success. Hollywood rarely tries to do anything new and so they have been trying to remake Star Wars ever since. Campbell was often mentioned in the same sentence as Star Wars by the critics.
If she laments the 'Harry Potter', then why doesn't she just stop owning any part of the property altogether and divorce herself from the billions it rakes in?
It's comforting to know there are others who recognize the folly of the hero's journey. I walk out of too many movies because of what Vogler has done to them.
12
13
14
The film industry can't be expected to fill that gap. Capitalism is the myth they're into. You feed the industry with your dollars, the industry will keep feeding you with scheiss.
The industry has made it really, really easy to just keep doing their thing. But lOTs of people nowadays have been enabled to do different things. They are seeking your funding. You can keep choosing to do the easy thing, or seek them out. Your call.
You say, "Just about every best-selling author you can name has probably been influenced by Campbell".
Let me re-format that statement for you:
Just about every best-fucking-selling author you can name has probably been influenced by Campbell...
Jesus fucking christ, Paul, Joe wasn't scribbling about the edgy, alternative storytelling that was wiped out under two millenia of populist consumption. He wrote about the stuff that's still in print. The stuff everyone likes. The blockbusters. The bestsellers.
It's not Campbell's fault that the things people like in their fictions aren't the off-center weirdo crap that you like. No, that's your fault, as a critic, for failing to make the unconventional popular.
I mean, that is what you're bitching about here, isn't it? That the stuff only a few people like isn't what most people like?
Do you honestly fail to see how that makes you an asshole?
Woodring is bloody amazing, but he's the kind of comics artist you hang on your wall, not the kind you read with your kids.
19
@15 survival (and success) of literary work is more capricious than all that.
@Paul, you wrote, "Stories should be experiments that challenge all assumptions—even assumptions of stories," but I missed the justification for this bold and interesting claim. You must have an argument for it. If you don't want to share it now, perhaps in another slog entry somewhere down the line.
I am instead suggesting that he described elements common to the majority of narrative work that didn't perish.
I'd weigh in with my opinion of those described elements, but that would just grant a diversion to those who would prefer not to focus on why Paul is being an asshole.
also, what i gather from paul constant piece campbells work is more or less an expansion on aristotles dramatica?
22
Too many people take a method of analysis, like Campbell's hero stuff or even Marxism, and use it as a prescription for creation. True art isn't derived from analysis but from inspiration.
Campbell: literature's Sublime.
24
Campbell didn't "reduce it to a science". He merely pointed out that story popularity IS a science, just as others have pointed out that picking up chicks is a science, and designing clothes that sell is a science.
If you dislike these conclusions, fine, I dislike them too--but they are facts of the universe and they will not be changed. Humans are humans. Our brains do not automatically reinvent themselves. And if everyone loved your hipster comic book, then it would be so hipster anymore would it?
Bah, I'm off to www.gunnerkrigg.com
Campbell was a great scholar and a brilliant thinker, and it's very annoying to see him criticized as simplistic by people who don't know his ideas in the least. Most Campbell fans seem to base their opinions on his work on Follow Your Bliss bumper stickers.
26
Because the opening sentence blames Campbell, not the people who used his work.
It's like saying that Shakespeare ruined storytelling because so much of his work has been stolen and dumbed down to make other works. Or that Shakespeare is to blame for boy-meets-girl happy ending love stories - it reduces Shakespeare and ignores a significant amount of his work (the parts that don't conveniently fit the rant.)
If Campbell had set out to create a formula for writing best-selling fiction that had been adopted and changed the whole field, maybe you could blame him. But it's bizarre to blame him for noticing trends and commenting on them.
28
I see a lot of sense in Constant's first paragraph, but he loses me in the second. There is no "Campbell's Formula," there is only the formula that has been superficially derived from his writing.
RSS
Twitter
Comments (28) RSS