Footnote #72 - The Hero's Journey

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

Building on their recent podcast episode on Kung Fu Panda (John Stevenson & Mark Osborne, 2008) with screenwriter John Yorke, Alex takes Chris through the mechanics and mysteries involved in the hero’s journey, Joseph Campbell’s famous structure and patterning of narrative, to discuss how such storytelling archetypes link to Jungian approaches towards the process of character individuation. Topics include the big-screen reworkings of the hero’s journey and its industry function as a screenwriting template; theorisations of form and formalist frameworks for understanding narrative organisation; Campbell’s interests in the traces of our unconscious mind as found in collective archetypes that surround culture; and the way that the formula for heroic action and its calls to adventure can and do work within the creative spaces of fantasy.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**

Suggested Readings

  • Attebery, Brian. 1992. Strategies of Fantasy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  • Propp, Vladimir. 2003. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  • Sergeant, Alexander. 2021. Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema. Albany: SUNY Press.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantCHARACTER, NARRATIVE, STORYTELLINGComment