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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.
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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