Film Courage: I know you’re a fan of Joseph Campbell (The Hero’s Journey).
Adam Skelter, Author/Story Artist/Screenwriter: Yes.
Film Courage: And most people are.
There’s not really any criticism of him…is there?
Adam: Well, I’ve learned so much from Joseph Campbell.
I discovered him pretty young.
I was 16 or 17 when I started reading him and I was amazed by it and of course the thing
that was nice about it was that he was the foray into [Carl] Jung and the theory of archetypes
and things like that.
While Campbell is dense, it’s a totally different thing to delve into, Jung and [Sigmund]
Freud and all those things.
And part of the issue is…and I know the hero and the hero’s journey and people regard
the hero one of the central archetypes of the character.
But I think Joseph Campbell illuminated certain insights into story that were incredibly helpful
but I don’t think it’s enough of a complete theory and I plan on doing a video [On Adam’s
Youtube channel] later just to get more specific.
But just to give a teaser ultimately when we look at a hero, hero is a very specific
kind of character.
That’s why I tend to refer to things as a protagonist versus a hero.
A hero is someone that exhibits certain virtues and values that are considered ideal and usually
the story is about them testing their medal.
But the story can be so much more than just kind of a vulgar propaganda on exhibiting
ideal virtues.
And that’s why I think the hero’s journey is brilliant and fantastic.
One thing that I liked about Joseph Campbell is that he was exploring the universality
of story structure but I don’t think it’s enough of a complete paradigm because when
we look at why we tell stories, it doesn’t quite account for the initiation of the tribe
or into the tribe and that’s what I think is very fascinating to me is my next video
is about tribalism actually.
I’m in the process of talking about tribalism.
I set up the relationship between religion and story in one video and I’m going to
tie into tribalism.
And I’m defining tribalism in a very specific way.
I’m going to go into the biological imperatives that form tribalism (in this little teaser).
There are different groups of people who define themselves according to what their objectives
are.
So for example a community is a group of people with a common interest.
A movement is a group of people with a common cause.
A tribe is a group of people with a common enemy.
They have very, very different ways of functioning.
If you have an enemy that usually creates a…loyalty becomes very important, it’s
a virtue within the tribe.
Within a community of broad, open interests you don’t necessarily need loyalty in order
to function.
You can just have voluntary interactions.
With tribalism because it defines itself by its enemy and it presents it as a threat and
therefore hierarchy becomes very important.
A lot of stories throughout most of the history of humanity were designed to help create those
hierarchies.
So because most tribes were surviving in the context of a lot of constant threat (perpetual
threat) which means they had to live in very rigid communities or rigid groups of people.
So the narratives in the stories they would tell were always about hero structure.
They were designed to help people incorporate these values and these virtues as vital to
survival.
So because of that, this hero’s journey was ultimately a kind of propaganda because
it was designed to drive people’s behavior and value system to be subject and loyal to
the tribe.
That’s why I think stories that are more engaged and more engaged in moral ambiguity
have much more interesting things to tell because they are not just interested in exposing
and propagating specific narrow values that emphasize loyalty but instead will actually
explore the nature of the human condition.
And that’s what I think is a much more interesting thing.
If we can understand the way that story is a kind of exploration of values rather than
just a propagation of values, then I think we actually have more meaningful discourse
in understanding story and humanity.