Campbell Goes to Hollywood
by Reg Harris
Evolution of the Writer’s Journey
Screenwriting consultant Christopher Vogler discovered Joseph Campbell’s work while studying cinema at the University of Southern California. As a student, he wrote a paper exploring the mythological patterns that made the original Star Wars film (Star Wars IV: A New Hope) such a great success. After graduation, Vogler shared his ideas on myth and the hero’s journey while working for various film studios.
In 1985, as a story analyst for Disney, he organized his research into a seven-page memo called “A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” In the memo’s introduction, Vogler calls Campbell’s ideas “an excellent set of analytical tools” with which writers and editors can “almost always determine what’s wrong with a story that’s floundering.” For his analytical model, Vogler modified Campbell’s graphic summary of the hero’s journey in Chapter IV of Hero (image right). He writes,
I’ve taken the liberty of amending the outline slightly, trying to reflect some of the common themes in movies…I’m re-telling the hero myth in my own way, and you should feel free to do the same. Every storyteller bends the myth to his or her own purpose. That’s why the hero has a thousand faces (Vogler, 1985).
In his memo, Vogler condensed Campbell’s complex model into 12-stages to create a practical guide for using the hero’s journey to evaluate and edit scripts submitted to Disney. He distributed his memo to Disney executives. Interest grew and the memo became, as Vogler describes it, “the ‘I have to have it’ document of the season.” Eventually, he moved to Disney’s Feature Animation division, where he helped develop The Lion King and other animation projects.
Later, while using the memo for the classes he taught at UCLA, Vogler developed his approach to storytelling and editing. He added material on archetypes and eventually expanded the seven-page memo into The Writer’s Journey: A Mythic Structure for Writers, a 315-page guide to using the hero’s journey for screenplays and other fiction.
The Writer’s Journey
The graphic below (adapted from The Writer’s Journey, p. 194) illustrates Vogler’s revision of Campbell’s monomyth (Hero, p. 245). Like Campbell’s model, Vogler divides the journey into three “acts”: Act I: Separation, Act II-A: Descent, Act II-B: Initiation, Act III: Return. (He splits Act II into two parts, Act II-A and Act II-B.) This differs from Campbell primarily in that Vogler breaks Campbell’s “Initiation or Transformation” category into two sections, with Campbell’s “Road of Trials” stage as a separate act (Act II-A).
Criticisms and Perspective
Vogler’s work and the hero’s journey have been criticized as being “formulaic” and “predictable.” It is true that in far too many cases “the map has become the territory.” The Writer’s Journey, instead of being a map to evaluate and correct stories, became the formula for writing the stories. Many writers and producers, looking for a quick, salable story, have abused the hero’s journey by using it as a standardized story formula. (This might explain why so many Disney animated films follow the same basic plot.) However, it is equally true that writers can use the journey’s basic pattern as a guide rather than a template. The journey’s natural dynamics can help them develop their characters and stories into rich explorations of the human experience.
Because of its association with popular films such as The Lion King and Finding Nemo, Vogler’s model has become the “classic” model of the hero’s journey. It is even represented as Campbell’s monomyth, rather than an adaptation of the monomyth. For its intended purpose (i.e., writing, editing and evaluating stories), Vogler’s model works well, but it is not a replacement for the rich, nuanced dynamics of Campbell’s monomyth. Readers interested in the hero’s journey should explore both models: Campbell’s for its profound exploration of the journey’s psychology and philosophy, and Vogler’s as an example of how the hero’s journey can be adapted to fit specific needs.
The Narrative Function
The Writer’s Journey is, as Vogler himself says, a “re-telling” of the monomyth, not the monomyth itself. He designed it as an aid for structuring and writing screenplays and other fiction. However, like Campbell, he discovered that the stories often transcend their narrative confines to give us insights into the challenges and journeys we all face in life. The hero’s journey, Vogler writes, becomes “a guide to the life lessons that have been carefully built into the stories of all times” (1998, p. x).
NOTE: For more information on Christopher Vogler and the Writer’s Journey, read The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers and visit his website: http://www.thewritersjourney.com/.
References
Campbell, J. (1949/1968). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Vogler, C. (1998). The Writer’s Journey. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.