Wait Till I Apply It To Zelda Games

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So my friend is an English teacher, and this year she decided to teach The Hobbit to her seventh graders. She asked me if I have any ideas about what to teach them. I think she was expecting a few thoughts. I NOW HAVE TWO SEMESTERS' WORTH OF LESSON PLANS.

Now to get a teaching certificate and go find some seventh graders.

At the moment we're discussing how Joseph Campbell's monomyth relates to The Hobbit.* I'm arguing the case that stopping at Rivendell counts as a Meeting With The Goddess. My case is that the Goddess is more a convenient archetype meant to suggest a well-known meeting of a sage guiding figure, and also that Elves are incredibly fabulous. I am glad she's more interested in my academic argument than my spurious bullshit, though, because otherwise I would have to pull out The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as Exhibit A arguing Elrond's goddesslike qualities, and my friend is Mormon, so it would go unviewed.

Maybe we'll just skip right on to the Atonement. There are fewer drag queens involved.

(I'm always surprised at how overtly gendered Campbell's theory is. I think he's pretty cool, but to start with "The meeting with the Father Figure" and then immediately have to explain that the father figure doesn't necessarily have to be your dad or even a MAN tells me you need to find better terminology. Also, it tells me that George Lucas has always been one damned literal bastard.)


*Answer: pretty much exactly.

Comments

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

I'm not super up on Campbell, but isn't the meeting of with the goddess a subtype of supernatural aid? (Granted, the elves are pretty feminine in any case) Bilbo doesn't get Sting in Rivendell, but he does learn of its past, and there's a lot of information dropped. It has a definite "our heroes are now girt for battle" feel.
Of course, Bilbo's biggest boon is the Ring, but that's his reward for escaping Gollum, which is obvious Belly of the Whale territory. In fact, the Ring isn't as useful to him as is the confidence it bestows.

As for the gender thing, there's a very significant difference between a paternal relationship and a maternal one. Even more broadly, characters can be male but have a feminine bond, at least as recognised by the rubric of Western society. That said, Campbell uses some really obscure terms sometimes.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I dunno, the ring seemed pretty useful when he was hiding out with the Wood-Elves ...

It just seems Campbell has a hard time articulating what he's getting at sometimes. Especially since the Goddess step gets weirder when the hero herself is female--he goes kind of Freudian when that happens. I can see where he got the terms, but the need to instantly qualify them suggests he needs to find better ones.

Of course, I just realized that I really DO think of these steps in terms of video games now (the Meeting The Goddess is totally meeting the sage or the Great Fairy, and Atonement With The Father Figure = Final Boss), so once again it just goes to show that apparently he's right that people filter the monomyth through their own cultural ideals.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

AIUI Campbell was Jung at heart hur hur a Jungian, so he's got that gendered animus/anima thing going on.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

HURRRR He was Jungian, all right. I find a whole lot of things about Jungianism interesting takes on culture, but the gendering gets a little overdone. (Actually, a lot of it gets overthought. Academia is like that.)

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I believe the world is a better place thanks to Pricilla: Queen of the Desert!

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

I agree, but the juxtaposition of Elves and that movie in the post now has me picturing an aging Elrond as Terence Stamp in drag. Hungover.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Although, have you seen Hugo Weaving lately? But then he always looks hungover :D

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. Some of my dreams have just been shattered.

[beccastareyes]

I was listening to a podcast on using the monomyth in writing, and one of the casters remarked that Lucas was a good example of What Not To Do, because he tended to throw in things seemingly because 'Campbell Said So': the example cited was Shmi's virgin birth to produce Anakin. Rather than use the structure as a basis for a story, he fixates on the details.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, using it as a checklist overdoes it a little. Plus, it's supposed to be figurative as HELL. I'm sort of surprised Lucas didn't actually stuff Luke into a whale at some point. (He DID put everyone else into that giant implausible space worm for a minute or two. Close enough.)

I don't think the "virgin birth" was even one of Campbell's steps. Not that it mattered to George! And I hated Anakin's virgin birth for another reason, too--god dammit LUKE is the hero of Star Wars, and Darth Vader is the VILLAIN. You can't go back and decide that VADER is the series protagonist and ARGH PREQUEL RANT ETC.

(One of the coolest figurative virgin births is actually in Emma Donoghue's crazy awesome book Room. The hero's mother stubbornly insists that "Jack is nobody's son but mine," and by god it's true even though you know exactly who Jack's father is. THAT'S how you do it.)

[shadesofmauve]

Shmi's virgin birth to produce Anakin

OMG, that was IN there? I must've blocked it out or something. Here I thought I couldn't take the prequels less seriously, but no!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Obi-wan asks about the father and she says something like, "There was no father. I carried him, I gave birth ... I don't know what happened." And then later Obi-wan declares that Anakin's blood is so stuffed full of bullshit midichlorions that "It's possible he was conceived by them!"

Which would mean that Shmi must have had one interesting background, herself ...

[shadesofmauve]

...yup. Definitely blocked it out. Preserving my sanity/emotional equilibrium. Otherwise the twin-yet-divergent rants -- "I'm tired of all the jesus myths already, give it a break" and "You've forgotten who your hero is, haven't you?" -- might have torn me apart. :P

[childthursday.livejournal.com]

You always make me want to go get a Ph.D. in the things you talk about, but then I remember that 'Generally Awesome Nerdery" is not actually a degree and I get sad.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem! If "random human wiki" were an occupation, I would have ALL the jobs.

I can just add "Follow the Path of the Hero through a Zelda Game" to the list of graduate theses I will definitely write someday.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Aren't these Arts and Communications options ;)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I should hope so! I just signed up for that for just this reason.

[shadesofmauve]

Heh. As a huge fan of a disastrously mangled video game trilogy (Mass Effect), applying classic literary crit to video games seems fairly normal to me. After the Ending Fiasco genuine phd English professors came out to explain why it was broken!

The average quality of grammar and spelling on the forums went up quite a bit for a month or two. Sentence construction probably jumped a few reading levels, too. :P

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I should look to see if the Wikipedia page on GLaDOS still has all those long-winded literary and social analyses using all those buzzwords like "identity struggle" and "male narrative" and "unreliable narrator." Campbell's right--we do filter it through our own realities.