BEYOND THE HERO'S JOURNEY

where the hell are we stories have very simple shapes ones that computers can understand storytelling has guidelines not hard fast rules we do an eight step story process here they say there are only seven stories these six stages are the simplest story your job is to tell a story i think there might only be one story there is one general human story that keeps me told over and over be told again and again and again the basic structure of all of those stories is the same but none of them were actually new there is nothing new the story has appeared at the birth of the hero this young hero [Music] and he or she wants one thing what a character wants and how they go about getting it how they go about overcoming why are there so many remakes that's what a story or a myth really is the metaphor i've had some kind of mean nobody ever gets tired of this story [Music] how do you tell a good story what makes it good a few weeks ago you had this idea it made you chuckle made you sad inspired you lit a fire in you made you wonder made you think what if it actually happened and you thought holy [ __ ] i'm onto something so you planted the seed you ran it through the old dream machine and lo and behold a thousand other ideas sprouted up all around it you dug up some weeds watered it a little bit maybe watch some movies read a few books that related to the subject did some research and boom you really are onto something no one has ever thought of this idea from this perspective this could be something really amazing nay something worth writing the more you feed it the larger it gets until it becomes an obsession you have to write this story the world needs it with a storm raging inside your brain you launch at the keyboard you open a new document and bam deny so where do you start you have some really clever moments maybe even a solid concept and an ending that's going to really kick the reader's ass but you don't have a story yet or you do but it's a hodgepodge of brilliant ideas mixed with a lot of connector pieces that are boring or have nothing to do with the reason you want to tell the story in the first place you need some coherent structure something that ties it all together structure structure structure you feel smarter just saying the word oh and you need a character arc right the character has to evolve change grow discover an inner truth that reveals something about the human condition every story needs a character arc so you strip it down and start to look for the themes to justify what you're about to write you are saying something the world needs to understand that the climate change is a crisis that life is little more than a series of meaningless struggles anti-vaxxers are people too condoms won't protect you from all stds why should anyone read your story why should they care what will it mean to them well what you may be too sheepish to admit who will want to buy it how will you make it marketable how else will you buy that beachfront property in malibu what are they looking for how do you tell a good story perhaps the most common advice you hear is every story begins with a hero your job is to tell a story a story has a hero but what exactly is a hero once you ask this question sooner or later you're going to run into this guy grandpa is coming to egypt joseph campbell or as the friends called him jc and then later in the night the wife will have the privilege of going to bed with an executive joseph campbell was an american professor of literature at sarah lawrence college who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion daddy has been mother's hairy helper he wrote a little book you might have heard of called the hero of a thousand faces the woman who has thrown herself on her husband's funeral pyre and been burned up with him has performed her duty as a wife so how did this affable academic become the most referenced voice on story star wars it is more than just a successful movie it is a box office phenomenon in order to understand what made star wars different from other movies you have to understand the term blockbuster [Music] in 1975 an obscure young filmmaker named stevie spielberg he said i can't do it in time released a little india house flick about an internally conflicted fish in its love affair with an aquaphobic sheriff needless to say it made a splash jaws became the first movie ever to make 100 million bucks at the box office it was a cultural phenomena lines around the corner fast-paced action everybody was talking about it it ruined summer vacations ignited a campaign of bigotry and hatred against elasma branch fish and fueled the shark taco industrial complex this one's for the kit now bye after jaws studios went on a feeding frenzy they started greenlighting big budget summer tentpole movies designed to create hype and mad mad mad merchandising two years later stevie's buddy georgie released star wars and gave rise to the first ever generation that would experience a prolonged adolescence well into their midlife crisis audiences were fire hosing liquid cash at the screens and anything else that had the logo printed on it action figures up to 15 inches tall star wars more than doubled what jaws made only two years earlier the film is breaking attendance records all over the country not since jaws have so many people stood in line to see a movie it was a new era the blockbuster era it shows you how fast things can change the overwhelming success of the picture surprised everybody including fox the producer gary kurtz and the director george lucas hadn't been able to predict it we should already be inundated with commercial spin-offs such as toy models of r2d2 and c3po they won't be here in time for christmas but ray guns spaceships t-shirts posters and star wars wallpaper bubble baths and breakfast foods should be on the market pretty soon as one fox executive put it it's not so much a film it's more an industry i got a bad feeling about this jaws and star wars became the prototype for the summer blockbuster major studios and distributors planned their annual marketing strategies around july 4th releases and movies would be forever changed this shows you how fast things can change producers and execs started asking themselves how did georgie and stevie do it my last mentor probably was joe who joseph campbell joe campbell who asked a lot of the interesting questions and exposed me to a lot of things that made me very interested in a lot more of the cosmic questions and the mystery i think that george lucas was using standard mythological figures george costanza is your mentor he's my protege well when i did star wars i consciously set about to recreate myths and the and the classic mythological uh motifs campbell believed the reason star wars resonated with so many audiences was because it tapped into archetypes that our unconscious recognizes i think that george lucas was using standard mythological figures the old man as the advisor you're about to embark into the outlying spaces the descent into the dark the whale represents the personification you might say of all that is in the unconscious campbell studied and collected myths from different cultures and tried to extrapolate a pattern he abstracted it to its simplest most recognizable forms that applied to all myths lucas studied the pattern along with kurosawa and buck rogers and applied them to a space opera with this massive cultural response it changed the way studios viewed the development process and every writer who reads campbell and follows his pattern of archetypes becomes rich and famous and everyone lives happily ever after so there you go everything you ever needed to know about story you can stop watching the video now and go pick up a copy a hero of a thousand faces and enjoy a life of successful writing from your compound and malibu better yet campbell can get a little dry and academic you can judge by the number of footnotes a scholar applies as to whether he's got authority or is always simply hoping that somebody will feel that he has the right authorities the uh it's an important a sensitive point in the academic world maybe try the watered-down version christopher voglers the writer's journey i'd just like to share with you a little bit about the origins of this book the writer's journey the movies caused me to vibrate but i didn't know what those unwritten rules were about storytelling i knew there had to be something i encountered a book called the hero with the thousand faces by a man named joseph campbell and there it was the answer to what i was looking for the unwritten rules the sort of super outline that all stories appear to be connected by and my self-assigned job was to translate campbell's academic language his mythological examples into modern examples from classic movies and current films and turn that into a kind of a report on what i had discovered and that eventually grew into the writer's journey this broke down in camel's work which i borrowed from heavily into 12 stages the movies caused me to vibrate if cambler and vogler don't twist your joy buzzer you could try dan harmon's heretical treatise anyway now that you know everything you need to know to write a good story i wish you well please make out your royalty checks and gratuity payments to adam skelter you still there you really want to peel off this band-aid all right have it your way what if campbell was wrong what if studios are actually investing huge truckloads of cabbage into films based on a myth no you see that's just a myth yeah like he's my myth no no myth myth yeah or worse what if modeling our stories after a formula that is really just attempting to deconstruct narratives already born of the unconscious is actually sabotaging our ability to tell unique stories if it is innate to our unconscious wouldn't that imply that writers don't actually need to study story structure in the first place does every story that uses the monomyth result in a blockbuster if so why do movies flop film journalist peter biskin wrote that all studios wanted was another jaws he's in it for the money not the science and as a production cost rose they were less willing to take risks and therefore base blockbusters on the lowest common denominator of the market yes oh my god they cut my beard and forced me to eat it it ain't no good in his book the long tail chris anderson talks about the blockbuster film stating that it's society that is hit driven that makes room for only the films that are expected to be a hit is in fact a limited society great here come the film critics to get in between you and your malibu compound what does anderson mean by a limited society they cut my beard and forced me to eat it it's a way of life just because you're all too willing to look a gift horse in the mouth let's dive head first down its throat and see if we can't come out on the other side oh so good [Music] campbell came up with a structure he called the monomyth or the hero's journey he identified a series of trials the hero goes through to save the world campbell drew much of his work from jungian archetypes which i borrowed from heavily carl gustav young was a swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology young's work was influential in the fields of psychiatry anthropology archaeology literature philosophy religious studies and apparently hollywood blockbuster movies central to young's theory is the concept of an archetype he delved into the question why so many religions have so many similar characters in their histories this gave birth to his theory of archetypes jungian archetypes are universal archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious under the psychic counterpart of instinct they're also described as the innate universal psychic arrangement that serve as the base where the symbols of representations of the unconscious experience emerge what the [ __ ] does that mean to put it more simply or to cater to the lowest common denominator eat it it ain't no good think of it like this there are stereotypes and archetypes a stereotype is a prejudice we hold about a kind of person in our culture the stereotypes are misconceptions all cowboys spit drink gamble and get hinky around sheep this is a stereotype while there are similar types in other countries the cowboy is largely a stereotype that emerged from american culture stereotypes are culturally relative we learn them by interacting with the people around us all chilongos only eat handmade tortillas if you're not from mexico this stereotype might not mean anything to you because gelango is not a universal feature of our relationship it's a stereotype an archetype however is a model that is universally recognized according to young these are the relationships and figures that we are born with already encoded in our psyches a mother father devil god trickster sage and you bet your sweet [ __ ] bippy young claim that we're born with these concepts pre-loaded in our software so when we engage people they fulfill these roles child knows exactly what to do goes to the mother's breast and is now being nourished didn't have to be told this what to do the body is made to live in its environment you refer to this universal structure as the collective unconscious all humans are born with the same basic psychological machinery and therefore we collectively share internal drives we're not in control of in other words we enter this world looking for people in situations that will play out these roles in our lives so we're born with these placeholder vials in our unconscious so when someone fulfills the roles we associate with that vial they become the embodiment of that concept say for example you never knew your mother young believed you will seek out people to become that mother figure to you so campbell took the archetype that young and identified and tried applying them to different mythologies around the world if we're all born with the same software that would mean the stories we tell will have similar characters playing out these roles chief among them is that of the hero so what exactly is a hero a hero properly is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself or other than himself all right i'm going to say it this is where campbell is only scratching the surface to really unpack what a hero is we need to look at the concept of rites of passage campbell often talked about rights of passage or rites of initiation as a way to mature and become an adult member of a given tribe or culture the rituals of initiation of young men in some of the very simple societies extremely interesting the boys are brought up to be in fear of the masks that the men wear in their rituals these are the gods these are the personifications the powers that structure the society these rituals are where the youth of the tribe interact directly with the mythology through kinds of traumas the boy when he gets to be more than his mother can handle the men come in with their masks or whatever their costume is and they grab the kid and he thinks he's been taken by the gods this poor kid has to stand up and fight a man with a mask i'd say he's finding the god the man lets the kid win takes the mask off puts it on the kid now the mask is not there defeated and simply said oh this is just myth he said the mask represents the power that is shaping the society and has shaped you and now you are a representative of that power through these traumas they experience a metaphorical death of their youth and emerges a wiser member of their tribe equipped with the wisdom and tools they'll need to survive and contribute to their community this can be seen also in the simple initiation ritual where a child has to give up his childhood and become an adult has to die you might say to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a self-responsible adult this is how the monomyth plays out in culture to really dive into where the monomyth comes from though we need to look at arnold von ginep arnold van gaan up was an ethnographer or someone who studied social systems identified a pattern he explained through a metaphor he looked at culture like a large house as we mature we graduate from room to room each phase of life is represented by a specific set of trials we face when we mature and enter into the next phase we cross through a doorway to the next room this is the crossing the thresholds that screenwriters won't shut up about threshold and it's at the threshold that the monster of the risk comes to meet him this is how people grow from one status in life to another when you go through puberty you start to learn a trade when you get married you prepare to take care of a family when your children are grown you prepare for retirement and on and on and on so von ginnop went about gathering folklore myths attempting to identify patterns in their storytelling both he and young recognize that this process of rites of passage is how we teach morals and rules of behavior to each generation how we train them to identify right and wrong rituals are the means by which a culture changes the internal value system of an individual like for example when you're a child you learn to play with other kids and be creative as you enter adulthood you'll learn to take on responsibilities these are moral transformations this is where we get the idea that characters must change this is the psychological root of character arcs when someone goes through a rite of passage they are living out the narratives and mythologies of their tribe they are literally living through the story stories are essentially vectors then the agent that acts as a carrier or transporter for spreading morals which takes us back to campbell's theory and what makes a hero a hero properly is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself or other than himself what makes someone heroic or worth telling their story what about stories worshiping genghis khan who raped and murdered scores of innocent people or alexander the great who expanded his empire through merciless conquest or the european onslaught against the native americans even nazis believed that [ __ ] hitler was a hero for their cause a hero isn't just someone who sacrifices their own well-being for others a more precise way to look at it is this a hero is a model exhibiting whatever virtues a given culture holds sacred let me say that again a hero is a model exhibiting whatever virtues a given culture holds sacred they're a prototype after which we pattern our lives a hero is someone we want to emulate to aspire to be like them they model the ideal behavior and we copy it if a culture survives by sending their young men to war their heroes model self-sacrifice for the greater good if a culture suffers from an economic hardship their heroes lie cheat and steal if the tribe is being slaughtered by an occupying empire their heroes are brutal fierce and glorify merciless killing a hero is an empty vessel that can be filled with whatever moral virtue the culture believes it needs to survive that's [ __ ] interesting man that's [ __ ] interesting joseph campbell focused his research on the way myths transformed people through rites of passage he argued that film and art in our modern media is our myth machine that simulates rituals does a movie like star wars fill some of that need for the spiritual adventure for the hero oh it's perfect it does the the cycle perfectly his claim is when stories follow the pattern of the hero's journey they resonate with broader audiences caused me to vibrate see this thing communicates it is in a language that is talking to young people today so why do they call it the monomyth i'm glad you asked young believe these patterns are universal that everybody responds to stories with these figures activated in their unconscious campbell taught that the reasons myths permeate cultures is because it speaks to our collective unconscious some even go so far as to say jc himself identified the essential structure of every story ever told and there it was the answer to what i was looking for the unwritten rules the sort of super outline that all stories appear to be connected by if you stay home and watch this on television you'll see it'll be told again and again and again nobody every every nobody ever gets tired of this story that all myths around the world are in fact the retelling of the same story that humanity only tells one story over and over and over again just disguised as a new face hence the hero of a thousand faces there's just one glaring problem they don't all follow the pattern they don't all go into a metaphorical belly of the whale they don't all have the refusal of the return they don't all end with the hero as the master of two worlds sometimes the hero fails they don't all teach right from wrong some of the greatest stories ever told completely subvert this structure who is the hero in macbeth the shining hereditary pulp fiction boogie nights nightcrawler the lighthouse is tony soprano a hero walter white weeds westworld the wire who are the good guys who are the bad the monomyth teaches what is good and what is evil if you want to get really academic about this and i know you do the hero's journey is the method by which cultures impose moral biases on their audience it draws in mythical distinctions between good and evil it's not just right and wrong the right is justified and morally superior and the wrong condemned as evil even subhuman well isn't that special this is called manichaean thinking it's an overly simplistic way of viewing the world in stark rigid dualities black and white good and evil righteous and wicked the monomyth is the pattern for initiating the audience into accepting moral values the psychologist lawrence kohlberg observed that moral reasoning develops in six stages each more adept at responding to the moral dilemmas than the one before as we mature we gradually see the world as more complex than simple dualities when we're young we start out looking at right and wrong in terms of rewards and punishment then we start to ask what's in it for me gradually we start to see how our decisions affect others around us and negotiate a relationship to social conformity then eventually most people arrive at the basic sense of law and order we tend to view things in terms of the absolute right and wrong there's an emphasis in following rules doing one's duty and respecting authority all these stages metaphorize right and wrong in terms of good and evil most people stop maturing there few people mature to the more complex stages where they critically evaluate the ethical merits of the rules in stage five they work to challenge social norms and values when they conflict with other personal values and fewer still reach stage six which is based on abstract reasoning and the ability to see things from someone else's point of view at this stage people have a principled conscience and will follow universal ethical principles regardless of what the official laws and rules are you can see where i'm going can't you the monomyth isn't the universal structure of all stories it is the structure of indoctrination these are the stories tribes cultures and empires tell their people to impose conformity respect for authority and moral systems that view the world in oversimplified dualities the monomyth isn't just a spiritual journey into the unconscious it's propaganda am i wrong no am i wrong yeah but okay then it's a way of ritualizing story into the moral trappings of duty and submission to authority heroes are those who are transformed by adhering to the values the culture regards as a virtue just to be explicit a virtue is a moral to which we aspire oh and evil is portrayed as a bland one-dimensional straw man motivated by a caricature of human failings evil does evil because evil is evil these villains are designed to be effigies for condemnation they're exaggerated straw men rather than develop a multi-dimensional humanized figure that sheds light on the inner workings of someone we find profane we feel justified in judging and dismissing them as nothing more than obstacles this manikin thinking is an instrument that dehumanizes anyone who opposes us evil and righteousness are both caricatures of humanity there are classical paradigms of perfection and depravity designed to represent moral extremes they fail to represent the real complex motives we all carry within us while it is effective at transmitting virtues the hero's journey is a recipe for a one-sided conversation whereas anderson would put it a limited society they cut my beard and forced me to eat it well isn't that special the greatest stories the stories that haunt us the stories that expand our view that open our eyes the ones that ask big questions are ones that subvert these over-simplified views these are stories that engage us with complexity sincerity and difficult questions about ourselves and the way the world works truth of it is there's not only more than one story out there the universe is ripe with infinite possibilities of moral complexity ready to be plucked and fill the pages of millions of storytellers i'm not saying that the monomyth is an inadequate structure for story it's a perfectly valid way to approach it but if you're being sincere if you're minding your unconscious and really connected with the world of complexity you're likely to be unsatisfied with the well-trodden solutions of the monomyth i'd like to suggest an alternative paradigm which is less of a structure than it is a new way to look at story development and analysis i call it the moral mosaic at the core of the moral mosaic is the recognition that every character in a story has a unique set of values that determine the way they make their choices whether we personally agree with them or not there's an ongoing debate about the nature of morality it boils down to two sides either morality is objective or subjective objective morality claims there is an absolute right and wrong whether it's based on a belief in god or well-being or an ancient edict morality is universal and some things are simply good or evil no matter the context or circumstances it drives judgments from authority whether that authority is god moral reasoning or spiritual forces at work in our souls subjective morality on the other hand claims that morality is largely an adaptation to your social and physiological environment it acknowledges that each culture develops their values and metaphors based on their individual contexts in some cultures it's an honor to surgically remove a part of a child's genitalia in others it's reviled as abuse in some cultures drinking alcohol is a transgression in others it's a way to celebrate the moral mosaic isn't making a claim about the objective or subjective nature of morality it simply sincerely and believably engages opposing moral world views and allows them to contend usually exposing the hypocrisy or contradictions in any moral claim but it does take a position on the stages of moral development the moral mosaic tells stories that represent more advanced stages in colbert's theory as the world culture emerges carrying more complex moral systems general audiences are seeking out stories that represent more diverse world views though it may be the truth that morality is objective culture operates as if it's subjective each culture carries certain values and morals that are distinct to their region or their moral sphere usually having to do with their access to resources and their dependency on social circles what's appropriate moral behavior in a city may not be appropriate in a small rural community we all operate on varying moral spheres these moral spheres are modes of behavior that are required to survive in different environments the family is a moral sphere the workplace is a distinct moral sphere social circles all carry their own moral spheres the moral mosaic is largely an analysis of the way characters navigate these distinct moral spheres it begins with a protagonist rather than a hero the protagonist is simply the character whose worldview we're going to evaluate it sets the audience in the kind of position of an empathetic psychologist while we might root for them we are not regarding their behavior as an ideal or virtue or something to aspire to we can admire them want what they want even love them but we are not looking to them as role models the moral mosaic operates as a kind of meta structure beneath any other story structure you wish to give it a three-act movie a one-act play tv episode a novel with chapters or a story with no discernible divisions this diagram doesn't represent any timeline just a visual representation of the way the characters relate to each other so the protagonist wants something an object of desire as they go to pursue it they encounter obstacles often the obstacles are other characters this is when we introduce the antagonist the terms protagonist and antagonist are morally neutral terms it suggests that we are going to view the world primarily from the perspective of the protagonist but we still have the responsibility of believably conveying the grounded world view of the antagonist as well the obstacles serve to expose the biases of the characters whatever the nature of the obstacle it illustrates a moral imperative that the protagonist must contend with a moral imperative is simply that which must be done to survive in a given moral sphere this moral imperative is the rule of the universe that the protagonist engages through conflict the purpose of the conflict ultimately is to expose the inner working of our values and invite us to question them in ourselves this is how we take the rules of the story verse the moral imperative and internalize them as themes values that apply to our ongoing narratives about the real world let's look at one of the classics taxi driver in taxi driver the protagonist wants to be a hero figure travis bickle suffers from an acute inferiority complex that drives him to seek validation he makes certain unconscious decisions to put him in a place that frames the city as depraved so he can see himself as superior he's a manikin sociopath who wants to believe the world is a bleak place that needs his heroic acts to clean it up we're introduced to betsy at first betsy is the object of desire travis wants betsy to see him as a hero yeah but i know but do you like him well he's funny and he's very good at his job he's okay though he does have a few problems uh i would say he has quite a few problems his energy seems to go in the wrong places when i walked in and i saw you two sitting there i could just tell by the way you were both relating that there was no connection whatsoever and i felt when i walked in that there was something between us there was an impulse that we were both following so that gave me the right to come in and talk to you otherwise i never would have felt that i had the right to talk to you or say anything to you i never would have had the courage to talk to you and with him i felt there was nothing and i could sense it when i walked in i knew i was right did you feel that way but she quickly becomes an antagonist someone who he conflicts with to get what he wants you know what you remind me of what that song by chris christopherson who's that a songwriter he's a prophet he's a prophet and a pusher partly truth partly fiction walking contradiction you're saying that about me well who else would i be talking about i'm no pusher i never have pushed no no just the part about the contradictions you are there as he pursues her his inferiority complex is exposed by the moral imperative to survive in her world he can't see everything in these bleak dualistic terms he tries to prove he's an adult by taking her to a pornographic movie all of his awkward attempts to connect with her expose his inadequacies he can't compete with her more complex adult world politics at first he tries to assassinate the person she regards as a hero the presidential candidate senator palantine when that fails his inferiority complex drives him to seek out jodie foster as a damsel in distress he goes after redemption by delivering her from prostitution trying to portray himself as a hero when we see he's actually just as if not more depraved and violent than the people he condemns travis spickle isn't really a hero or an anti-hero he's a complex character struggling to adapt to a world much more morally complex than he's able to comprehend one of the things that makes this film great is the fact that it's a timeless deconstruction of the concept of heroism itself the moral mosaic recognizes that we all operate on moral systems and propose complex even deeply meaningful themes that describe much more richly textured world views the moral mosaic is where worlds collide and we don't know who to root for or if we do we also feel deeply conflicted about the outcome rather than casting heroes and villains we look at the characters and multi-dimensional protagonists with deeply held sacred values who are drawn into conflict with competing antagonists protagonists are not necessarily good nor are the antagonists necessarily evil instead they engage each other driven by different internal demons some of these stories have character arcs or moral transformations they may even have heroes but what they don't have is simple answers you're goddamn right in the moral mosaic you're not spoon-fed the moral themes with obvious biases advocating a virtuous outcome not all stories need character arcs let me say that again not all stories need a character arc rather than looking at characters as heroes and villains and the moral mosaic value systems are in conflict though we may empathize with whoever we spend most time with that does not mean they are morally superior in fact the main character may be the most toxic person in the story i hate most people where the monomyth builds and reinforces biases and dogma the mora mosaic deconstructs them and gets us to reevaluate our world view now there is a character type that is slightly more morally complex than the normal heroes this is the anti-hero many of you have already been thinking for most of the video isn't this [ __ ] just referring to an anti-hero there's nothing new about that an anti-hero is a main character in a story who lacks conventional heroic qualities and attributes such as idealism courage and morality although anti-heroes may sometimes perform actions that are morally correct it is not always for the right reasons often acting primarily out of self-interest or in ways that defy conventional ethical codes while these types of characters emerged as a kind of ironic figure designed to undermine heroic ideals they are not intrinsically the products of the moral mosaic an anti-hero is seen as a deeply flawed person who performs heroic acts despite lacking the prototypical values of a hero while this approaches a more grounded moral complexity it still remains in the realm of the mythological it regards their character traits as flaws this is at the core of the judgment that imposes a narrow moralistic view on the character these flaws are held as a contradiction to the otherwise virtuous behavior many regarded character arc is the mechanism that will either resolve their flaw or redeem them from it even if we are telling a story about a character's transformation the moral mosaic removes the baggage of deeming a trait as a flaw it attempts to look at behaviors for what they are moral adaptations that characters develop to navigate their environment an anti-hero still operates within the limited manikin paradigm of the monomyth an anti-hero is simply someone who still affirms whatever tribal value the story is attempting to persuade us to accept they are redeemed because their ultimate heroic choices conform to the virtues of the tribe they are converts or prodigal sons delivered from their wayward journeys han solo is an anti-hero because he came back to save luke's ass yay he's one of us he's in our tribe but characters like omar stringer bell brie vandecamp tony soprano and nancy botwin are not anti-heroes they are morally complex characters with inner conflicts that drive them to make choices that subvert or challenge tribal virtues redemption is at the core of the monomyth redemption is the validation of a character's choices in such a way that they are regarded as part of our in-group in many religions for example redemption is arbitrated by an omnipotent judge and achieved as a reward of righteous behavior the subtext of all redemption is the admission into the security of the tribe whether that tribe is an immortal celestial kingdom or a social circle in a high school this is how virtues are spread in a culture they set the parameters of acceptable moral behavior within a given sphere they get us to internalize the virtue by appealing to our conformist values this is how it builds biases we need biases to function as a culture but we also need to challenge those biases to avoid becoming laden with dogma this is the ultimate value of the moral mosaic because it's not concerned with redemption it frees us to look at our human condition for what it is rather than what we think it should be the real difference between an anti-hero and a protagonist acting in a moral mosaic comes down to a very simple question do you aspire to be like them or do they serve to help us understand ourselves breaking bad is a brilliant story that broke into two parts [Music] spoilers the first part was a moral mosaic seasons one through four explored a man who sought to build a drug empire season five explored his redemption it was a double arc many people have said walter white is an anti-hero for seasons one through four he wasn't he was a man who was learning to navigate at least three moral spheres that of the criminal underground his position in his community and his family life if the story ended with season four walter white would have traveled well beyond the moral boundaries of the monomyth while season 5 was beautifully executed it was a different story walter white's journey through his redemption arc returned him to a social and tribal approval he set everything right and sacrificed himself like a martyr this wrapped up the drama in a neat bow but failed to have the same resonance and truth that earlier seasons held it went from a story exploring the disenfranchised identity of fatherhood in a modern world and his relationship to the existential anxiety of an unrealized potential to a hero's journey into absolution while it's masterfully written this small point is what shifted the meaning of walter white's deep dive into the moral spheres of the drug world to a tribal morality tale compare this to perhaps the most devastating genius ending i've ever seen in television the sopranos the sopranos is perhaps the most nuanced and compelling discussions on morality in the modern world since taxi driver or goodfellas i think what it needs first of all is a desire first and foremost to entertain i've worked at network television for a long time it's believe it or not i don't think that's the first priority they're trying not to offend first of all there was a man who shall go nameless who came up with this concept called lop he believed that the successful show was what was called least offensive programming that if you had the least offensive show you would be successful so therefore you can't have a lot of controversy you can only have pablum i mean i just don't think that that's the i think our job basically is to surprise people and if they know what's coming or they've seen it before or it's what they expect in the end i think they're not happy with that and what's really irritating about it is to hear that they think that shows are successful on cable only because they have sex and violence and there's plenty of sex and violence on network television well if we could curse like that then we'd have an audience why is that why would people turn into harry people curse makes no sense at all an attempt to justify their own failings and we all have failings they blame their limitations on external events but there's also things they could do internally to escape some of the traps that they're in all of us have the freedom to do storylines that unfold slowly we all have the freedom to create characters that are complex and contradictory the fcc doesn't govern that where the monomyth is tribal and manikin the moral mosaic is pluralist in philosophy pluralism is a theory that recognizes more than one ultimate power in a sense pluralism is the boiling pot that allows microcultures to maintain their identity within a larger macro culture it's largely a battlefield for dialectics without ever resolving which one of these are correct superior or true pluralism is the attitude we take toward people of other religions political views and backgrounds and say yeah it's a free country believe what you want it's the immature position of the manichaean thinkers who only think in terms of good and evil that is intolerant and inflexible toward opposing world views that demands conformity and agreement the moral mosaic simply and honestly presents the opposition and engages it in a meaningful dialogue this isn't a new model either the greatest stories have been doing this for centuries but i've seen not only brilliant stories being dismissed because critics have these limiting paradigms like the monomyth but worse some brilliant concepts are explored and developed through stories that collapsed into rote heroes journeys because producers execs and even the writers think this is the only way to make a story meaningful and they're wrong in the past we saw stories that turned kings queens emperors and chieftains into mythological figures you will be a god king but the stories that resonated through the centuries that speak of genius and complex moral insight are those who question these mythologies those who subverted power chief among them shakespeare compare the romantic idealism of the legends of king arthur that portrayed kings and royalties afflicted hero whose every breath was wreath for god and kingdom versus the morally complex stories of macbeth or hamlet or even romeo and juliet romeo and juliet was not a romantic story idealizing young love it was a tragedy about the brutality and senseless violence of tribalism casting wrath on the youth on both your houses shakespeare wasn't alone in his writing he drank from the same subversive waters as christopher marlowe ben johnson and other playwrights and poets who were all telling controversial satires and tragedies that undermined the romantic idealism of their predecessors these are not stories about the glorious conflicts of heroes but the moral conflicts people face in the tumultuous age of religious battles this is why they still ring true today the tribal indoctrination serves to subjugate people of their time but few are convinced by the great immortality of the tyrants after they've been put to rest but stories that approach the moral mosaic engage larger questions about the human condition [Music] so the reality is there aren't a lot of execs and producers who are going around lining up the monomyth diagram to the scripts and saying look here we really need a meeting of the goddess on page 37 or a refusal of the call on page 25 and so on the truth of it is for as much as peoples like campbell most of them have barely even finished watching his interviews on youtube much less cracked open his books translate campbell's academic language his mythological examples into modern examples from classic movies and current films most people in the industry watch other people commenting on the boil down essentials and use the diagram as a kind of retreat when they can't figure out what's not working in their scripts don't you talk about something other than hollywood for a change if yes more educated people in my experience most writers don't actually read campbell even fewer understand them much less young or vongenap or aristotle for that matter remember in this industry you are writing for people who don't want to read but we do see the artifacts of campbell's monomyth throughout entertainment and storytelling in general they look to him to validate assumptions about the market or just taste many readers development execs producers and writers will criticize or even undermine great storytelling because the main character doesn't experience a character arc or she's unlikable or unheroic hello where the villain is too sympathetic and distracts from the investments of the main character [ __ ] they say [ __ ] like we need to see the character's new normal how are we gonna know if they learned anything [ __ ] or you need to decide which one of your ensemble is the lead derivative or your story is too offensive for the general market [ __ ] your character is inconsistent in one scene he's reprimanding his employees for being chauvinist and in the next he's cheating on his wife or perhaps the worst it's too smart for the audience you can't expect them to follow a story without knowing who the good guy is this is where you're going to lose your audience oh nobody knows what the [ __ ] i'm talking about they cut my beard and forced me to eat it you can hear the black and white mannequin thinking driving these criticisms all of these notes completely collapse when you look at genuinely compelling writing you're telling me pulp fiction didn't have a commercial and critical success you're telling me the audience wasn't smart enough to follow breaking bad that no one will like tony soprano because he's too disturbing and full of contradictions that don draper isn't a believable character because he has radical inconsistencies a lot of development execs producers critics and writers already get this they understand that audiences want to see moral complexity and shocking behavior that challenge our sense of right and wrong great ideas are often rejected until they've become identified by seeing this through the lens of the moral mosaic we'll look for stories and events that lean into muddy complex messy conflicts that aren't easily resolved or put away in a box y'all can't be playing no checkers or no chess boy yo but i keep seeing brilliant beginnings or concepts face plant because the writers didn't have the paradigm to justify their moral complexity or to push them into surprising territory that lies beyond simple good and evil i had this incredibly strange idea that maybe you could do some of those things on tv that maybe the protagonist of a piece of work might not be likable going all the way back to the greeks but television networks didn't know it or cared to know about that he's in it for the money not the science and i don't want to hear about the [ __ ] economy either i don't want to hear it the core of the moral mosaic takes on a broad paradigm that genuinely honors each character's world views and refuses to present straw men why if i had a brain i could if cultures are like houses the way vanguard proposed the monomyth always remains inside the house but the moral mosaic looks at a broad landscape of houses and evaluates the way they conflict compete or collaborate with each other perhaps one of the most iconic films to engage the moral mosaic is the godfather in most gangster movies before this the gangster always got served justice by the end they were condemned as the bad guy the godfather was a brilliant earnest attempt to look at the moral complexity of law corruption and the hypocrisy of power in the context of underground organized crime but let's be frank you never wanted my friendship and you were afraid to be my dad i didn't want to get into trouble i understand he found paradise in america he had a good trade made a good living police protected you and there were courts of law and you didn't need a friend like me but uh now you come to me and you say i'm currently on and give me justice with respect when i talk to other writers about the godfather they often talk about michael corleone's transformation as a negative arc or his descent into evil writers who view him through this filter are not equipped to honestly empathize with his inner conflict they see a story as a fall from grace or a corruption of the hero if we view it from the perspective of the moral mosaic we see a brilliant nuanced argument about the integrity of loyalty and protecting family over the inept measures of law at the beginning we see michael who shows strong moral convictions about not being pulled into his family business he takes a black and white view about his father and his criminal empire we connect with him as a strong sympathetic figure maybe even recognize our own moral stances represented in his that's my family then as his family is threatened all of his cunning all of his loyalty all of his determination drives him to fully embrace the thing he condemned at the beginning by the end he no longer sees his role as godfather as a condemnable thing in fact he seems the rebel in it though some might seem as a villain if we truly empathize with him we can see why he made the choices he did to protect his family and perhaps even admire it godfather part two is an even better illustration about the moral ambiguity of competing moral houses two of my favorite filmmakers who approach story from a moral mosaic are the coen brothers they draw a lot of their inspiration from the moral ambiguity of pulp fiction writers like daschle hammett and raymond chandler and the tropes and imagery of film noir and yet managed to elevate these stereotypes into classical even archetypal figures if you want to understand what makes the coen brothers great what will make their work long outlive their own era you have to look at their fascination with moral pluralism most of their stories are about people with dramatically distinct world views and values colliding against each other often set within a framework of film noir thrillers say your line exactly as i'm about to just as i'm about to do sure okay with the tutorial so simple oh what did it was disable would that it were so simple would that it was the same my dear point why do you say that why'd you say well you should say like i said yes would that it in with the tutorial system would that it was a sample would that it would that it was a sample would you watch my mouth would the tutorial would the twice the same keep your head still would it twist or something would that it wasn't saying i'm trying to say that mr lawrence lawrence i thought a minute ago it was lorraine yeah we can use christian names my good dear boy laurence is fine just as i called you hobby okay so with the tutorials when we look at fargo and no country for old men we're tempted to think of marge gunderson and ed tom bell as heroes perhaps even luella moss as a hero but beneath all of their moral virtues is a haunting intimation that the world is infinitely more complex more brutal than they're prepared to face every story the coen brothers make are challenging the audience to expand their world view and ask if there isn't another way if there isn't something more beyond the horizon if we truly know ourselves if we aren't wrong about our moral assumptions honestly it's one of the reasons i count myself lucky to live in an era when such genius is currently producing work son you got a panty on your head fast another fascinating storyteller who embraced the moral mosaic is of course kubrick from paths of glory to eyes white's shot kubrick portrays a world of deep moral conflict he's one of the few filmmakers who would dare to tell a story with a pedophile and a serial rapist as the main characters in every story he looks at the narrative of power as it relates to the human progress and emphasizes what it costs us in 2001 we see the early progenitors of humanity learn to use tools to gain advantage over the wilderness and with that they learn to murder and prosper by violence war becomes the narrative of human flourishing it asks the big questions of whether we are any better if we are morally superior to the brutality of the wilderness that gave birth to us every one of his stories explores our contradictions and our moral virtues and the savage heart beating beneath the surface of the facade of culture kubrick became iconic as an artist who pushed some of the most inflexible boundaries when it came to the moral mosaic when a clockwork orange was released in 1971 the press claimed several rapes were copycats inspired by the film though kubrick refuted the claims that a film could trigger violent behavior he eventually banded himself in london and edited the movie to get an art rating but his film highlighted the importance of educating audiences on the moral mosaic manikin thinkers or people who only see from the perspective of black and white with no moral gray zones believe all people watch films or read books looking at the main character as a role model or in other words as a kind of hero whereas a more morally sophisticated audience watches still emotionally engaged but with an added insight that these are independent agents acting by their own moral values they're fascinated by the human complexity and are able to watch without regarding the main character as an ideal or something to aspire to all right this one's gonna hurt a little bit let's take a look at a modern example of a great story going wrong [Music] spoilers game of thrones was a brilliant series of fantasy novels written by george rr martin they were a thinly veiled retelling of the war of the roses set in the fantasy world with the magic and mythical creatures show runners david benioff and dan weiss earned the right to adapt it to a television series for hbo it was a runaway world phenomena at one point it was the most pirated show in the world at the core of martin's story was a complex morally ambiguous theme the central theme of the story was a subversive even irreverent proposition to undermine the classical hero's journeys your noble virtue without cunning will not save you how do we know this is the theme every scene every character arc every sequence is an illustration of this proposition look at ned stark's idealism martin baits us into believing he's a moral virtuous hero he is noble honest and brave he confronts his enemies face to face with no ambiguity and yet lacks any political savvy or cynical awareness of the way power works we root for ned we admire him we may even love him for his integrity and compassion and yet he pays for it with his life the shocking end of the first book leaves us stunned the hero failed and the world remained unchanged and cynically driven by power and brutality every story after that pulls no punches every time we invest in the idealism of any noble character we see they're undermined by their own virtues benif and weiss adapted this work to one of the most impressive dramas we've seen in the modern era we engaged these characters and felt worried for them increasingly fascinated by their cruelty and contradictions as well as their brilliant transformations look at jaime lannister in the first book he looked like a nearly one-dimensional villain and little by little he evolved into a multi-dimensional complex character whom he loved and rooted for perhaps my favorite moment in game of thrones was the battle between the hound gregor clegane and brienne of tarth we'd spent time with each of them learning their sacred values learning to love them for their idealism and cynicism when they met face to face we knew this was an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force we understood their motives we actually wanted what they wanted for themselves and we knew that neither of them would back down this would be a battle to the death or it should have been my favorite characters were tyrion lannister and arya stark they were the most engaging charismatic characters who learned to live by their wits and outsmart or outmaneuver everyone around them and every time they failed they paid the consequences and learned from their mistakes girl me lord no born girls say my lord not my lord if you're going to pose as a commoner you should do it properly my mother served lady dustin for many years my lord she taught me how to speak proper properly you're too smart for your own good now game of thrones is notorious for being the television show that most disappointed its audience so what went wrong why would such a brilliant team with such a deep treasure trove a story fail to deliver in the end game of thrones was a story that began as a pluralist moral mosaic grounded in complexity and duplicitous motives and shifted dramatically into an underdog hero's journey this was one of the few dramas on television that reflected the brutality and unfairness of the real world in game of thrones honesty and integrity was punished love was tortured cruelty betrayal and perversity was rewarded power it was a brilliant surprising conversation about morality metaphorized by fantasy characters no less sophisticated than fantasies of macbeth or hamlet it made us imagine what it must be like to live in a culture with dramatically different sacred values when benioff and white signed on to make the series they came on to adapt martin's masterwork benif and weiss are brilliant producers any lesser team would have make game of thrones look like all the other cheap fantasy milady melodramas already out there actually do you think you are the king no i'm his son arthur you cannot do this alone you are but one side of a coin never forget what you are the rest of the world will not like armor can never be used but it was their vision combined with martin's brutal irony and scathing cynicism that made this a masterwork when they began shooting the series martin believed he would have finished the books and benif and weiss could continue their role of adapting his work but martin wouldn't rush the books as a writer i respect it as a reader it drives me up the [ __ ] wall benioff and weiss were forced to figure out how to finish the series with only a few rough outlines and plot points martin had planned so they shifted from being producers adapting a masterwork to having to be the writers inventing the work benioff is notorious for stating that he never considered theme when he was writing the series but you can see how this limited paradigm shifted from themes exploring virtue corruption and power to a popularity contest trying to subvert expectations this ended up cheating the themes that had been so intricately woven into the narrative what resulted was an overly moralized battle between good and evil that left us feeling empty all of the rich layered nuances of the early seasons devolved into the good guys teaming up to fight the wicked by season six the monomyth had commandeered the narrative and what was a deeply challenging story brutality and irony became the virtuous fight against evil battle of the bastards is to this day one of the most fantastic epic battle scenes ever portrayed on film but let me ask you was there any question who the good guys were and who were the evil as much of a great story as it is was there really any question that jon snow would win because of ned's execution five seasons earlier in the shocking brutality of the red wedding we had some lingering doubt but once the line between good and evil was clearly drawn we knew how things would end the virtuous would overcome the wicked this became a hero's journey a monomyth from this point on characters became agents to facilitate a plot rather than multi-dimensional characters who had conflicting views with duplicitous motives at the core this was a failure to really grapple with the themes that drew in so many broad audiences you know i i don't know if that i as a writer that i really believe in the the conventional cliched happy ending where everything is uh everything is resolved and a good guy wins and a bad guy loses we very seldom see that in real life or in history and i don't find it as emotionally satisfying myself as what i like to call the bittersweet ending what it boils down to is martin painted a richly textured and subtly nuanced world populated with characters who span the full spectrum of the moral mosaic what made martin's character so enthralling and engaging was their contradictions their perversity became their depth and redeemable qualities and their idealism and nobility became their downfall martin was not writing a hero's journey in fact he was deliberately subverting it this subversion was often accentuated by deeply compelling ironies i've always been attracted to great characters i think they're more interesting than than heroes you know who are just going around being heroic all the time though critics have been brutal with weiss and benioff's writing i won't be among those voices they signed up to adapt martin's series it's a work of genius weiss and benioff are fantastic producers and filmmakers their adaptation of martin's work is viscerally compelling and beautifully executed with some of the most talented cast and crew you could ever hope for there's no question they pulled off some of the most stunning storytelling in television history where it began to unravel was the shift where weiss and benioff were forced to invent storylines without understanding the sophisticated themes martin had woven into the narrative though many writers balk at the pretension of themes let this be a lesson even though benif and weiss are brilliant filmmakers and storytellers their lack of engaging theme turned their work into a mild shadow of what it could have been and honestly any writer out there should feel lucky to have achieved even that [Music] a good comparison is to look at fargo the series which is not an adaptation of a novel nor a direct adaptation from the film instead it extracted themes and tropes from the film and used them to conjure completely new storylines that's why the series successfully manages to feel like it's in the same world and yet has completely new characters and stories in the film fargo we see an original character we hadn't seen in a crime thriller before a pregnant midwestern sheriff go on an odyssey into the criminal underworld of south dakota fargo juxtaposed the kind gentle smiles and warm etiquette against the brutality that lies beneath the surface of the thin veneer of civility they took a character we recognized as familiar even safe and put her in her crime noir thriller this is a recurring theme for the coen brothers once the tv writers understood that the themes are about the brutality beneath the gentle facade of civility the simmering beneath the veil of politeness is a vast ocean of primal fury they were able to develop whole new characters and plot lines that spoke to the themes that resonated from the feature film by engaging the story from a moral mosaic they were able to delve into the humanity of villains and expose the hypocrisy of heroes the coen brothers continually provoke us to ask if our assumptions about the world really hold up under scrutiny we are living in an increasingly connected world which means we are facing increasingly more complex moral systems to survive we're gradually adapting a pluralist view that regards the collision of culture with deeper curiosity history is largely an ongoing narrative of expanding empires brutally subjugating and absorbing smaller cultures until they disappear however in the modern era we are increasingly searching for tools to make sense of these contrasting worldviews instead rather than conquering disparate moral systems we're working to integrate them into our expanding cultures we crave moral complexity and sincere explorations into the contradictions of the human condition one thing is true a great change of our psychological attitude is imminent that is certain but because we need more we need more psychology we need more understanding of human nature because the only real danger that exists is man himself he is the great danger and we are pitifully unaware of it we know nothing of man far too little his society should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil while the monomyth is a legitimate useful tool for telling compelling stories a more mature richly nuanced audience is emerging that rejects those oversimplified manikin figures this doesn't mean we abandon archetypes or rites of passage it means we allow them to conflict with each other in an ongoing conversation of colliding cultures it means we go beyond the hero's journey [Music] a pretty good ending huh so where do you go from here you set out to write a good story you watch this whole video and all you got was a diatribe basically saying joseph campbell wasn't the messiah of screenwriting big [ __ ] deal that doesn't help you tell a good story what i'm really saying is we need to expand our idea of good we need hero stories as much as we need to deconstruct those heroes this is the grand cultural conversation cultures intuitively conjure heroic mythical figures whether they have a structure for it or not it's an ongoing negotiation of what values we hold individually and as emerging societies i strongly recommend you read the hero of a thousand faces and seriously study joseph campbell's work it's loaded with a ton of brilliant insights and ideas for stories i don't believe campbell set out to offer the pattern of indoctrination nor do i believe star wars is propaganda it's a fantastic voyage into mythical themes and continues to capture the imagination of newer generations campbell's work was simply the effort to identify the psychological roots of mythological patterns his work opened a treasure trove of human insight the mistake came from prescribing it as a universal prototype for all stories well you don't know anything about joseph campbell really really i happen to teach a class on youtube called the art of story i think that my insight and joseph campbell well i have a great deal of validity oh do you yeah well that's funny because i happen to have joseph campbell right here so so yeah just let me let me let me come over here second oh i heard what you're saying you you know nothing of my work you mean my whole fallacy is wrong how you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing boy if life were only like this by the way the monomyth and the moral mosaic only represent two paradigms with which to approach story well they each have their own value your job is to craft your own paradigm what i'm hoping is that this adds to the conversation that this moral mosaic will help people to see the value and work that doesn't fit into these well-trodden molds as our world evolves we're going to be needing more stories that dive into pluralism the truth is any paradigm or book that gets you writing that gets you thinking to get you practicing that gets you delving into story is probably worthwhile as long as it's regarded as a collection of ideas or resourceful of tools rather than the end-all theory on story especially this book now only ten dollars on amazon what all screenwriting books are [ __ ] all watch movies read screenplays let them be your guide the truth of it is no book or formula will ever make us care we all smell phonies who just want to make a dime off our attention you have to dig deep within yourself to mine for the metaphors that speak to you when you trust your fascination when you've taken the time to develop your voice and battle the dragons that won't let you rest we'll be there ready to dream your dream with you now go do it jesus video has more endings than the lord of the rings thanks for watching the art of story by the way pick up some of my swag or buy some of my books this [ __ ] don't pay for itself you know wait a minute why can't i give my opinion he can give you do you have to give it so loud i mean aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that

Channel: The Art Of Story

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Id: IGL3Oy8GGlk

Length: 69min 13sec (4153 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020