“The original Star Wars was famously based on Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey,’ the ‘monomyth’ that was supposed to run through every important legend from the beginning of time. But it turned out that women had no place in that monomyth, which has formed the basis of lazy storytelling for two or three generations: Campbell reportedly told his students that ‘women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.’
Which is narratologist for ‘get back to the kitchen’ and arrant bullshit besides. It’s no enough to be a destination, a prop in someone else’s story. Now women and other cultural outsiders are kicking back and demanding a multiplicity of myths. Stories in which there are new heroes making new journeys. This isn’t just good news for steely eyed social justice warriors like me. It also means that the easily bored among us might not have to sit through the same dull story structure as imagined by some dude in the 1970s until we die.”
From Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults.
