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The heroine’s journey is an essentially Gnostic reading of women and culture. I don’t think it’s possible to understand the moral intent behind the majority of Western film or literature without knowing the Gnostic worldview.
The Gnostic reading of the Eden Myth is that Eve was right. She was right to be seduced into eating the fruit and she was right to entice Adam into doing the same. Whether it’s because she’s more innately wise than him or whether it’s because even her apparent mistakes are charmed is immaterial: she is complete in and of herself.
The Patriarchal Demiurge punishes her in the story because he’s unable to rule her the way he wants, this is why he punishes her but doesn’t credit her with the sin, (that’s reserved for Adam). The Gnostic reading is that Eve liberated herself and humankind by just letting her curiosity/feeling/intuition (depending on your reading) be her guide.
This is the struggle Cpt. Marvel, Moana, Mirabel in ‘Encanto’, the girl in ‘The VVitch’ et al. have to overcome: a world with inferior men who try to mask how perfect a woman already is with their blind expectations.
It strikes me as borderline repulsive but then again, I’m a man.
I'm curious where you got the term "heroines journey" from; this meaning doesn't match either of the ones listed on Wikipedia.
Edit: I think it's pretty easy to reframe almost any path/arc as being either "self-discovery" or "self-improvement". So I don't think this is a meaningful pattern.
One could easily say that Christianity is about discovering that you were created to love God all along and rejecting the sinful influences of society and the World, that Gnostics believe that people are born blind and need secret knowledge from outside the world to redeem their Demiurge-tainted birth, or that Captain Marvel is about a militaristic people-pleaser learning basic compassion and redeeming herself.
I'm pretty sure that this is a continuation of an earlier discussion in this thread on Friday. The "heroine's journey" is used here as a neologism.
/u/orthoxerox conflates the Campbell monomyth with the originally Aristotle-inspired idea of a flawed character arc (particularly for tragedies, cf. hamartia).
There is something of a "Heroine's Journey" per Murdock (one of Campbell's students) which mainly differs in the emphasis of returning balance and harmony rather than manichean domination. Leaving that aside, the myths Campbell cites in Hero with a Thousand Faces are, well, the myths: Osiris, the Gautama Buddha, Jesus, etc. The Aztec's Tezcatlipoca, Prince Kamar al-Zaman, Jason, Herakles, and so on. The hero is heroic, if they even have flaws they are not particularly relevant to the plot. Similarly, Campbell-inspired fiction hardly has the character flaw as a central pivot. Luke Skywalker doesn't have any plot-relevant character flaws -- he's a bit whiny and grows up, but he doesn't suffer because of his immaturity. It's only until later in the series that an added dimension about overcoming cyclic revenge is thrown in.
The idea that compelling protagonists absolutely must overcome a personal flaw to succeed in their larger struggle (i.e. have a 'character arc') is a more modern thing. It is particularly ironic to criticise contemporary media for having insufficiently flawed protagonists compared to monomythic heroes, accordingly. Overpowered, morally simple protagonists are hardly a new invention. Stuff like the "hero must have a tragic backstory" is not monomythic or Campbellian.
With that out of the way, it's not clear to me that many of the new female-led disney/pixar princess fare (e.g. Frozen, Inside Out) lacks this typical character arc:
Frozen has a strong character arc for Anna, whose childish infatuations sets up the nation for betrayal. Elsa's 'let it go' moment isn't emancipatory an exhibition of selfishness, and her abdication damns her nation to endless winter. The resolution of the plot is tied to overcoming these flaws.
In Inside Out, Riley isn't the protagonist. Joy is, and she's an insecure control freak whose insistence that everything reflects her preferences precipitates the slide into depression.
But even if they lack plot-relevant flaws, then that doesn't necessarily mean they are narratively not worthwhile. Moana is much more of a Campbell hero because she isn't really that flawed. Would the Lord of the Rings be better if Frodo's struggle with the influence of the ring was intertwined with being bullied or something, and his narrative success was dependent on reconciling himself with that?
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Possibly in response to this thread?
I'm going to reiterate my normal complaints about Campbellian (or Jungian) analysis; this can be kinda funny, but it's so broad and vague it makes astrology look well-founded.
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