Saturday, Aug. 14

Misinterpreting the Hero’s Journey, Again

So apparently Clarice doing battle with Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs represents the Master of Two Worlds stage from Campbell’s interpretation of the Hero’s Journey paradigm. From Campbell himself:

Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back – not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other – is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity.

Clarice does NOT transform. She is not acting out-of-character in those final scenes. To interpret her character this way is to completely misunderstand What Character Arc Really Means. In fact, Clarice’s actions show very clearly that she is still behaving the way she has from the very beginning, that she is still driven by the screaming of those lambs. That is the whole point of the entire story.

I would agree though that the complete 188 Hero’s Journey steps do give you more that four acts, plot points and mid-point. But not as many as the 510+ stages of the Hero’s Journey.