Even if you aren’t aware of its particular elements, you are familiar with the hero’s journey. It underpins many of our favourite stories, used in PR and marketing, and informs the narratives around sports and celebrities.

In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I explore the personal and cultural impact of the hero’s journey. We’ll explore how it shapes self-worth, personal value, and the pursuits we deem meaningful. By contrasting it with elements of Kishōtenketsu narrative structure, which Kendra Patterson helped us explore in our recent Courtyard workshop, we will begin to consider different ways to perceive and respond to life’s unexpected events.

Joseph Campbell suggested that all mythic narratives throughout history and across cultures are variations of the same story—a hero’s journey archetype.

This concept picked up mainstream momentum in the 70s and 80s, after it influenced George Lucas in creating Star Wars. This was a tipping point for the monomyth, as it started to PRODUCE culture rather than deriving FROM culture. In other words, it went from being a description of the patterns Campbell concluded (cultures tell stories with similar archetypes) to a prescriptive model (here are the universal elements for telling a story). The textbooks started flowing and the hero’s journey became ubiquitous. We see it in fields of psychology, marketing, and personal braining as well as books, TV, and film (including documentary-making).

In this episode, I explore some of the implications of using the hero’s journey to frame, perceive, and judge ourselves. We will spot some examples in culture. Including England’s recent Euro 2024 disappointment, the story of Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida, and the tropes we see in some of our favourite TV shows.

My intention isn’t simply to poop on the party. But rather to become more sensitive to the hero’s journey. When we recognise it, we can choose whether it’s useful to us or not. We can then spot it being used to manipulate us into spending money, energy, and trust on bad actors.

We will consider Kishōtenketsu as an alternative way of relating to the story we embody and tell with our lives. Rather than using conflict as a necessity for change, what happens when we relegate it to tangential and contingent parts of life that we choose our response to instead?

• 
  
• Ways the hero’s journey creates a conflict with reality as its source of meaning
  
• How the hero’s journey structure has become embedded in marketing and PR
  
• Why I get frustrated at the types of pitches I am often sent by people wanting to appear as guests on the podcast
  
• The unrealistic expectations the hero’s journey sets and its impact on self-judgment and societal pressures
  
• The role of conflict in Kishōtenketsu compared with a hero’s journey
  
• How highly sensitive people might get subsumed into other peoples’ hero’s journeys (using the movie, Nyad as an example of this)
  
• Kishōtenketsu, through a “guy walks into a bar” joke by TB Mckenzie, demonstrates how this narrative structure uses conflict as a tangential element rather than a central premise
  

Listen to Kendra’s episode about calming effects of Kishōtenketsu on Stepping Off Now

Learn more about the Haven Courtyard workshop

For further reading on Kishōtenketsu, check out Adeline Bindra’s article.