Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Where's the Difference?
As we look through the movies and see that they have this very similar pattern, I started to wonder if this theme is too common. Most movies I can think of have this theme of the monomyth, so should we even use this to filter out movies and stories? And if it's so common that everyone is doing it, isn't human nature to try and go against the grain and find something new? Movies all have a similar feel and structure, why hasn't a movie gone against the norm and made a completely new style of film?
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I think that well almost all movies do follow this structure, it is a good one to follow. It has worked time and time again, and been told and spun in so many different ways. I don't even think a lot of film writers intend to follow this norm. It's just the best way to tell an interesting story and keep the viewer hooked. If nothing bad ever happened to the main character or if there was nothing they had to overcome, the story would be boring. Even in movies like Blades of Glory, where the intent is to make people laugh, it still has story structure. Both Jimmy and Chaz are banned from figure skating and taken out of their comfortable world. They overcome this when it is realized that they can still legally skate together. The mentor is their coach. Without this structure the movie would be funny to view once, but after that it would be dumb. I have watched this movie 1000 times, so clearly there is something bringing to watch it other than the humor.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tim. I'm sure most writers don't sit down with the intention of retelling the same story, they want to create something original. But the monomyth seems to be an across-the-board type of thing. I have yet to come up with an adventurous story that doesn't have most elements of the monomyth. I believe that this outline of sorts has given light to so many stories with which the world has fallen in love and when writers intend to create a story others will enjoy, they identify the elements the public seems to enjoy. All of these elements, when put together, become the monomyth.
DeleteI agree with both of your views on the monomyth. I see the monomyth as an important template that has been used over the years to make many memorable films. Even if a lot of movies share common elements, it doesn't mean they can't be considered unique. I believe the monomyth theme should be used in future movies and will be used for a long time.
DeleteYour comment made me remember a similar thought I had when first hearing about the monomyth. I thought that, yeah, its only natural that there are all of these different elements to a movie because it is a story. Something has to happen. There has to be a call to adventure, there has to be various elements of a villain and/or a love inters and/ or a mentor because those are just natural parts of any progression in a story relating to human life. If stories are just interpretations of the human experience, obviously the same things are going to keep coming up, like violence, love, defeat, redemption, etc...This isn't nonfiction, where it's just a description of a person, thing, place or event. It's a story, and things have to happen in a story, and there seems to me to be just a natural progression to any story. And the elements of Campbell's monomyth encompass all of those progressions and events.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that the theme is too common because some plot lines are more complex then others. Though every movie may be applied to Campbell's monomyth chart, some are a lot harder to find exactly which part can be applied to what element or many have multiple options for each element. I feel as though there have been some movie producers that have tried to go against the norm however they may not have been necessarily successful with it which is why we don't hear about these movies. Also, Campbell's monomyth has the structure of how you tell a story. Each hero story needs to have these basic elements in order for it to become an understandable movie. The theme isn't necessarily too common due to the endless interpretations that can be made from these movies.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is a very common pattern, especially in popular movies and stories, but I think that the concept is useful, despite being very common. It is a good way to compare and contrast different types of stories, like we did in our class spreadsheet.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do think that there are plenty of stories that do not fit this pattern, for example, in class we talked about indie movies that don't really fit the pattern, and even in movies like Spirited Away, there was some disagreement about the myth chart.