Of primary note in the very first part is that McIntosh and Sarkeesian do not cite any sources for any of the material presented in the video. Under common knowledge exceptions to citation, one should assume that their reader does not have knowledge of something. The color of the sky may be common knowledge (it appears blue in the day) the reason the sky appears blue (scattering of blue light in daytime) is not. The first would not need sourcing. The second would.

The following statements lack sourcing that is necessary: history of damsel in distress, definitions of etymological terms, Damsels in the Middle Age, Damsels in the Classical Age, Damsels in the 20th century, information on subject/object dichotomy, the assertion of women being a goal, misconceptions of the trope, the assertion that damsels are an object at all, how the trope causes injury, the hero myth, video games as influential to the cultural and social ecosystem, sexist attitudes are rampant assertion, a large percentage of people still think women need to be sheltered/protected/naturally weak, the belief that women are naturally weaker and viewed negatively, that damsel tropes are a result of popular culture, that tropes normalize attitudes, that damsel in distress is a widely used trope.

In the description of this first video, McIntosh and Sarkeesian write they will look at female game characters from a “systemic, big picture perspective.” While systems are large and problems are persistent throughout the system, systems are also cybernetic in nature. This means the systems are quite complex, reflexive, growing, evolving, changing, and mutual.

One drawback of this perspective, however, is that it’s often difficult to find an origin point of problem due to feedback. For example, consider a computer. Let’s say a small part short-circuits. This causes a surge of electricity that damages your memory and hard drive. This causes a smoking that then damages cables which causes your power supply to fail and damage which then causes another small part to fail and break causing your computer to fail. You now have to examine each part and its relationship to other parts, how the parts failed, in what order, and discern the nature of that failure to track down the problem.

However, if you eliminate or remove a part of the system, the system fails as a whole. The computer no longer functions because it lacks that small part.

So while systemic views are valuable, we must also keep in mind that removal of a systemic flaw requires a replacement of a systemic patch or fix. Removal of the perceived problem of sexism cannot be replaced simply by lack of sexism. It must be replaced by a behavior. You cannot remove a behavior without a substitute behavior or else a system collapses.

Injury, Harm, and Destruction

McIntosh and Sarkessian state that, “remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.”

Let us now return to one of our terms of engagement:

Pernicious means something that has a physically harmful effect in a gradual or insidious way, is highly injurious, deadly or fatal, or causing great harm and destruction.

There is no evidence that I can discern of causality between sexist games and people being highly injured, killed, or being caused great harm and destruction. The most lobbied claim, that video games cause body dysmorphia or image problems, is not entirely proven. In fact, the research on the effects of Barbie on young girls is mixed and often ridiculous. There’s no research that states, without hesitation, that media or representations cause body dysmorphia or long-term body dissatisfaction. Parents, however, are known to be one of the strongest influences in dissatisfaction and esteem.

Body dysmorphia disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis, also is known to affect men and women for many reasons, one of the highest associated risk factors being a biological predisposition and personality characteristics. There are other forms of dysmorphia that are not recognized likely due to the population they effect most. Notice how media is not one of those highest associated factors? While personality can be derived from media, it can also be derived from family and social interactions that take up an amount of the day.

It may be that the pair do not fully understand the word “pernicious” and believe it is just a synonym for “problematic,” but this does not seem the case. Better words include dubious, questionable, uncertain, or disputable. None of which mean causing of harm. There’s no indication that media representations that are not appreciated are pernicious or cause serious injury or bodily harm. There’s no indication that tropes, no matter how selective, cause serious injury or bodily harm.

Final evidence that these representations are not the problem: treatment. Treatment of body dysmorphia tends to involve cognitive behavioral therapy which examines associated thoughts with behaviors and attempts to sever the thoughts. In my experience, most people who see me with dysmorphia do not state they have the disorder because of a TV show. They typically tell me their parents were critical or they were naturally high strung.

Those who assert that the media is the culprit here are simply ignorant of research in the very field that diagnoses the disorder.

We also need to take this moment to briefly touch on the use of gendered stereotypes. Gamers, as covered in the linked medium with its own resources and in the previous piece, are often subjected to stereotypes of being violent, angry, or filled with rage. There is no research to indicate that gamers are, on a whole, more violent than any other group. Research does indicate that playing certain games may change attitudes immediately after playing the game, but there’s no research this is long-term and the research that finds a result is under heavy scrutiny.

There is correlational research and a multitude of theoretical explanations for the effects of media:

• cultivation theory — media cultivates, shapes, or helps to spring forth beliefs and perspectives.
• social learning theory — media teaches us behaviors are acceptable and prime us for behaviors via modeling and repetition.
• social-developmental models — we develop patterns of behaviors through relationships with media.
• desensitization — media makes violence more acceptable and less shocking as we view it more frequently.
• Models of persuasion — attractiveness, appeal, and repetition join to change attitudes and behaviors.
• Impersonal impact and third-person effect — We act on the assumption we will not be affected by media.

None of which have solid causal research to conclude that media causes a behavioral outcome as covered above. The most that research can conclude is that media has a short-term effect on behavior. Factorial analysis shows that effect, as covered previously, is small in relation to exposure to all violent media—8%.

Bias in Research

In research, we often are concerned with the nature of the researcher. Postmodernist concerns of science put forth that scientific objectivity is difficult if not impossible as data do not self-interpret. They are filtered through the researcher’s lens, often are biased by the researcher’s own perceptions, and reaches truths that serve the assumptions of the researcher.

Psychology and cognitive science shares this concern through what is called confirmation bias. This bias dictates that a researcher confirms one’s hypothesis by actively seeking out data that will support one’s conclusions. As researchers are invested in their research, they are influenced by personal bias. Quite interestingly, one way to address bias-making is through playing video games regularly.

On the research-side, there is often a concern with a bias that is known as publication bias. This can have a few different prongs. One prong concerning analyzing a large amount of research that has already been done. When doing research on information that is readily available, the outcome may differ from the complete range of research that is available (a drug is found dangerous when it is not) and publication has consequences due to finding a negative impact. Another prong, now older, is that publications like to put forth research that finds a result even if that result is not entire in scope.

So when doing research, a researcher must be mindful of their bias in their theoretical approach, the data they select, how they interpret the data, and if they are willfully misrepresenting research to impact or selecting points of publication that will be published readily.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian readily ignore all of these concerns. They only select data points from media they feel fit the point (Star Fox, Race for Life, The Gorilla Mystery, Popeye, King Kong, Donkey Kong, Sheriff, the Mario series, the Zelda series, Vigilante, Sonic, Dragon’s Lair, and the Double Dragon series). The pair tailor the clips to their point and divorce the context based upon confirmation and publication bias.

While one must certainly tailor their research to some degree (you cannot look at every game in existence), representing only video games or media that establish the point is poor research. Video games which do not represent the Damsel trope are not represented. Some of those include the Addams Family, Arkista’s Ring, Battletoads, Bionic Commando, Captain Planet, Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong, Jr., Defenders of Dynatron City, Dragon Warrior 2 and 4, Faria, Fire n’ Ice, Friday the 13th, Gauntlet, Ghost Lion, Legacy of Wizard, Legendary Wings, Little Mermaid, Maniac Mansion, Metroid, Ms. Pacman, Ninja Gaiden, Paperboy 2, Rescue Rangers, X-Men, and any game that has a woman saving a man or another woman, or any game that has a woman or man doing anything BUT saving a woman or man.

Preliminary research that I am conducting, and has gone through the history of console gaming until the Sega Master System, shows that of 1,800 examined games, only 5% or roughly 96 have the Damsel in Distress trope.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian were able to find 24 games to justify the statement that the Damsel trope is pernicious and problematic as a sign of sexism in gaming.

McIntosh also state there are “literally hundreds of examples.” The Nintendo Entertainment System had 822 games released between 1985 and 1995. The Super Nintendo Entertainment system, active between 1991 and 1999, had 784 games available.

On two systems alone, there were over 1,600 games released. McIntosh and Sarkeesian do not source their claim for “hundreds.” In fact, McIntosh and Sarkeesian state that they purchased “well over 300 games” in one update, but they have “hundreds” of examples meaning that 200–300 of their games had these cliches. Even if one assumes that every game, of which only modern generation games were pictured, had this problem, this is only 12% to 18% of games released between 1985 and 1999.

My examination using any female characters every captured for any reason only returned 5% of games. If we are kind, 18% of the games have the trope. If we use the criteria put forth by McIntosh and Sarkeesian, up to the NES, only 5% do.

Are McIntosh and Sarkeesian really saying that there’s a problem in gaming with objectification of women based on 5–18% of games?

It should also be noted that McIntosh and Sarkeesian stated that, “it would be nearly impossible to mention them all.” No, it would not as the number of games released throughout the 80s and 90s is finite. You’d just have to look through all of the plots and see if there were common elements. In short, you’d have to do a lot of research. Research I am doing and has taken a long time.

Also note that on this page are Donkey Kong, Zelda, Mario, Star Fox Adventures, King’s Quest, Double Dragon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and others. It would almost appear that McIntosh and Sarkeesian got a lot of examples from the TV Tropes page. We’ll never know, however, as they did not provide sources for their materials and information.

I was able to find 25 just on the Nintendo Entertainment System alone that broke convention by having men rescuing men, women rescuing men, women rescuing women, men and women fighting together, women helping men, and women being selectable as main characters.

This must mean that there are many narrative elements that were used in NES story telling that reinforced a multitude of social norms and cultural values. Those that McIntosh and Sarkeesian label “damsel in distress” are labeled The Quest by Booker and “recovery of a loved one” by Polti (see previous piece)

Subject-Object Dichotomy

One of the key arguments presented by McIntosh and Sarkeesian is something called the subject-object dichotomy. However, the pair never quite conceptualize this issue. Instead, they leave the reader to assume that it is bad.

The nature of objects and subjects has roots in two schools of philosophy. Ontology deals with the questions concerning what can exist and what does exist, how existence can be grouped, and how it can be divided. It can also be thought of as the conceptualization of existence, objects, and their ties to reality. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Locke, and Sartre are all major figures in ontology.

So what are some arguments of ontology? You may have heard of some and not known it. The argument for the existence of God based upon irreducible parts. It is also called Intelligent Design. Sartre argued that the nature of being is perceived through a subject who observes objects in the world that the subject wants to inhabit as a desire to experience novel being. Descartes argued that cognitive thought processes including doubt substantiated the existence of man in relation to other things in the universe — cogito ergo sum or the original je pense donc je suis.

The other school of being is epistemology or the school of knowing. How does one know they exist? Whereas ontology argues for or against existence, epistemology argues for or against the nature of knowledge. Subject-object can fit here due to the knowledge of subjects and objects, experience, and knowledge of experience.

So as you can tell, the subject-object dichotomy straddles two concepts: existence and knowledge. So what exactly is the subject-object dichotomy? Buckle up, we’re going full philosophy.

Source for this can be found in the Sartre piece linked above.

People are subjects. They observe the world. They experience the world. They exist and as a result of existence in the world, they perceive the world. Our perception of the world is thus our existence in the world and our knowledge of the world. If something is perceived by us, it exists in some part due to our perception of it.

Everything that is NOT you is an object. Let’s start small. Your keyboard is an object because it is independent of you. It exists in space regardless of you. Your house is an object because it’s not part of you. It is outside of you. Now, stepping back to the actual argument philosophy makes…people are objects. Your mother is an object. Your father is an object. Any entity, consciousness, item, or thing outside of your existence is an object.

So if you walk outside and someone’s walking across the street, you are the subject for you and they are the object. However, they are the subject for THEM and you are the object for them. Perception of the world is thus divided upon two things: subjects and objects.

So take for example the car outside. Does it exist? How do you know? Are you sure? You have to check it to make sure it’s there. You are the subject of your world. Without your perception of the world in any manner, the world may not exist for you. You must perceive it for it to exist.

This is the essence of the subject-object dichotomy. How can one understand the external world in abject reality if reality is filtered through the subject? How can subjects know that objects exist outside of the experience of the subject? What is the nature of the brain as a physiological organ and the mind that keeps track of reality? How can one separate the subjective state of existence from the objective nature of reality?

The argument is the very basis of postmodernism and cognitive bias. In no way can such a complex argument be reduced to “subjects act, objects are acted upon” due to the relative nature of subjects and objects. This relative nature of subjects and objects are never accounted.

The subject-object dichotomy orienting to gender with one gender as uniformly substrate, not shockingly, come from a field of philosophy that is incredibly new called feminist philosophy. Feminist philosophy is both young and criticized in the world of philosophy as it is inherently sexist in stating women have unique views of knowledge because they are women.

In the argument, McIntosh and Sarkeesian present that the protagonist is the subject, the person the game is centered upon. The damsel trope, the pair argue, makes men the subject because men must be the protagonist (men rescuing women). However, this does not account for women being the protagonist, multiple protagonists, or choice of protagonist. The assumption is that men are the default character and women will always be saved.

Unfortunately for the pair, video games use many narrative and plot devices. They have many protagonists, and protagonists are not always the character that is controlled by the player. So McIntosh and Sarkeesian misrepresent the subject-object dilemma, call it a dichotomy (meaning two opposed concepts), and slide in gender.

In my original research, which will be published at a later date, 1,460 games up to the Nintendo era do not have a gendered main character. This includes sports game and games that used figures without gender. This is 70% of identified games. This means that of the games period examined by the pair, most games were not gendered in protagonist. They were actually quite androgynous. I fully expect this number to change once I get into more modern games. The current correlation seems to put more gendering as the technology became more advanced to represent more complex shapes and show gender.

The Male Subject, the Female Object

When discussing the concept of a male subject acting upon a female object, a few assumptions must be made. The first is a communication concept which McIntosh and Sarkeesian should know very well. It is a group of concepts called models of communication. It is the backbone of the field of communication, and it’s worth noting that Sarkeesian has a degree in communications.

There are multiple models of communication. The first of these models is known as the Shannon and Weaver model from 1948 which is essentially postulated that sources of information (people’s brains) send that information into a transmitter (the voice) and communicate the message which moves through the medium (air) via a signal (sound). The signal can then be interrupted or scrambled by noise.

Should the signal continue, it can then be received by the destination, decoded in the brain, and then sits in the destination. This process can then begin again with either the transmitter or the receiver initializing another communication process. This process is simple, and it is the process that McIntosh and Sarkeesian state is happening. Men are speaking to/at women who are receivers. Men are doing. Women are being.

In 1960, Berlo built upon Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication by postulating that communication occurred linearly and in context. The source sends an information laden with details such as attitudes, knowledge, culture, and social cues. When encoding the message, information such as content, structure, and the required code all figure into the message. The message is sent through a medium or channel which relies on the five senses — sight, sound, touch, smelling, and tasting. Upon receiving the message, the receiver decodes it based on their own skills, attitudes, knowledge, culture, and social norms.

This moved communication out of a simple transmission model into a much more complex model that took into account culture, society, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and a whole host of information including the verbal message as well as the nonverbal message that can be gathered from all senses.

Additional work of the time shifted communication from a linear model (source, receiver, source, receiver) to a more interactional model (source and receiver interacting independently) and even transactional model (message and feedback happening as sender/receiver occupy the same roles at the same time).

• Linear — sender sends, receiver receives and becomes sender and sends, etc. Feedback of message is not important here. Communication just rolls forward.
• Interactional model — sender sends, receiver receives. Receiver becomes sender and then sends a message. This allows for feedback that is orderly as speakers take turn.
• Transactional model — sender and receiver are constantly sending messages and receiving messages at the same time.
• Transmission model — Message is sent through a medium, received, decoded, and stored.
• SMCR model — Sender has multiple factors influencing the message which can come in multiple forms through a channel which can be across senses and the receiver gets the message and applies their own factors to decode the message.

Which of these models sounds more like communication? Men send messages, women receive them, and are immediately impacted by them?

Or do men and women send a multitude of messages impacted by internal factors across multiple channels in a communication structure that is highly dynamic and constantly shifting in context, meaning, and structure?

To answer that question, let’s now turn to nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is an incredibly complex structure of communication. In fact, the models above are child’s play to nonverbal communication.

Nonverbal communication is a vast majority of the communication patterns. Verbal communication, or a message’s value and content, is 2/3rds nonverbal. Mythological estimates put 93% of communication as nonverbal. While it may not be that prolific, it is worth noting that psychiatry has an entire disorder which manifests as inability to read social cues — Asperger’s syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder in DSM-5. Therapy can even be impacted largely by nonverbal cues with an estimation of 60–65% of communication being nonverbal according to Foley and Gentile.

Verbal and nonverbal communication are key to human processes, and nonverbal communication is complex.

Nonverbal communication can originate from the personal channels of the face, body, gestures, and voice. These can all convey cultural and social norms and values as well as psychological state. However, the body is not the only place nonverbal communication happens. Other types of nonverbal communication can include space (proxemics), time (chronemics), haptics (touch), eye movements (occulescence), and vocal tone (paralanguage).

All of these types, forms, modes, and contexts must lead to one conclusion — communication is complex. Media communications must be equally complex no matter what the medium. Even this very long piece is complex. You can judge a lot from it.

So to boil communication down to male do’ers and female exist’ers, male subjects and female objects is completely reductionist of the complete and astounding complexities of communication and communications theories. Both men and women communicate in multiple media and multiple contexts.

Women are the Ball of Patriarchy

Quite famously, McIntosh and Sarkeesian wrote, “In the game of patriarchy women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.”

Let’s flesh this out here and process it. First you have a game which requires a ball. Let’s assume this can either be baseball, football, or basketball.

In all three sports, two teams compete against each other for a positive goal at the end. Typically, the goal is to win, achieve, or otherwise conquer the opposing faction or team through prowess, ability, training, and sport. In Western society, the society that feminism is particularly concerned with as patriarchal, gender systems are binary: male and female. Some attempt to move past this, but Western society by and large still has two binary gender classifications.

So, men are on one team. Who is on the other team? This question is never answered by McIntosh and Sarkeesian. So, we’re left with only two options: other men or nobody. If nobody, this quote falls apart as there’s little point to play this game. Men will always win.

Let us assume that men are playing other men and women are the means by which the game is played, measured, or otherwise executed. Logically, you cannot play the game without women or men in this example. You need teams (men) and you need the means by which to play (the ball). Both are necessary to the game. How is women-as-ball negative if they are necessary to the game? Is it because they’re not players who can’t win because the men are “using women”?

So let’s assume that men are playing men and women are not necessary. They are simply used to play this game. McIntosh use the example of Bowser and Mario saving the object-Peach. Though we’ve covered that their basis for declaring Peach an object is strained and possibly dismissable, let’s carry on.

Princess Peach, for those who do not know, is the princess and only known ruling regent of Mushroom Kingdom. We never meet her parents. Her role to the Mushroom Kingdom is singularly important. Without her, the Kingdom is in disrest. So if Mario and Bowser are warring over Peach-object, how is she so important to the kingdom? Objects are not important by the nature of being objects (ignoring the fact you need the ball to play the game). They are not subjects/people. This is never answered. Let’s pretend that being the ruling regent is completely unimportant.

Now we’re assuming that men are playing men, women are the ball, the ball is unimportant, women are viewed as an object, women’s roles in the games are not important. This requires a lot of assumptions to even get to be true. We just have to keep piling on the assumptions to make this statement true.

One often misquoted concept is that of Occam’s razor. It’s often stated to mean “the simplest answer is the most true.” This is not correct. The principle states, “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” Entities are often known as postulates which are also often called assumptions.

In short, when given competing hypotheses to explain an event, make the least amount of assumptions as possible to reach the conclusion.

Which statement has the least assumptions to reach the conclusion:

“In the game of patriarchy women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.” or “Video game characters and their corresponding plots are diverse.”

I would argue that the diverse nature of plots, narratives, and characters is much less assumptive. We must assume quite a lot to make the women-as-ball quote true.

Concurrently, we have covered before, patriarchy is not a game. It is a system. It is a social phenomenon. It is a construct named and identified by feminists and critical theorists to describe events they described as oppressive to women. Descriptions that patriarchy is a game and women are a ball are, in fact, objectifying women as it demands that listeners and consumers consider women as items merely to be used by others.

I’ve heard it said that in the game of patriarchy, women are the ball. Well, that is if you are willing to see women as, and think of women as, objects in the first place.

Grouping and Bashing of Tropes

McIntosh and Sarkeesian state, “As a plot device the damsel in distress is often grouped with other separate tropes: including the designated victim, the heroic rescue and the smooch of victory.”

I researched the location of this grouping. It’s from TV Tropes. The very same website clearly states on its homepage:

“ We are also not a wiki for bashing things. Once again, we’re about celebrating fiction, not showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.”

It would seem that McIntosh and Sarkeesian missed this disclaimer as they are stating the Damsel is damaging, injurious, or harmful (see: pernicious). All of these statements serve to, in a sense, bash the usage of this in narrative. Doing so violates the stated intentions and spirit of the source they are utilizing.

Women as Weak and the Hero Myth

McIntosh and Sarkeesian state in the first video:

The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective or entirely incapable also has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves and the specific games they inhabit. We have to remember that these games do not exist in a vacuum, they are an increasingly important and influential part of our larger social and cultural ecosystem.

It appears that McIntosh and Sarkeesian are not aware of the social perceptions of women.

There is an effect in psychological research known as the “women are wonderful” effect. It essentially says that in psychological research, women are typically associated with more positive traits. Eagly, Mladinic, and Otto found evidence that women are associated with better attitudes and emotions. Women are often seen as more progressive, gentle, empathetic, and sensitive. Even the Mythbusters joined in to test and confirm that women can experience pain better. So does some of the press. In fact, Huffington Post declared that women are better managers.

This is not to say that women have it well and men have a rough go of it. As Planned Parenthood says well, men and women are subject to stereotypes and expectations both positive and negative.

In fact, you might not have known this, but women are often seen as strong for seeking mental health services while men often think they’ll be seen as weak. Women are taking back the power when they report domestic violence; men are being wimps or taking attention away from women’s plights. They should, after all, listen and believe.

If one listens to select points of view from select media, one may derive the belief that women are weak and in need of protection or rescue. However, this is not always the case. We just need look at some of the most pervasive media to show this.

The idea that culture views women as weak due to media is especially specious in the modern television arena. Television regular characters are slowly approaching parity when you completely ignore non-regular characters. Shows like Bones, How to Get Away With Murder, Scandal, American Horror Story, Glee, Game of Thrones, and Mad Men present strong female representations.

Using a list from 2013 of strong female characters, I found the following shows and their corresponding season watch rate in millions:

• Game of Thrones — 18.4
• Scandal — 11.9
• Veep — 1
• Suits — 2
• The Newsroom — 1.7–2.
• American Horror Story — 4
• The Good Wife — 11.4
• Mad Men — 2.5
• Bones — 8.4
• Parks and Recreation — 4
• Mindy Project — 3.4
• Agents of SHIELD (added) — 8.3

That’s 77 million viewers of these shows. Yes, this number doesn’t take into account repeat viewers and such. There are many characters in these shows and some overlap (Tyrion Lannister, Ron Swanson as examples) with male characters who are popular as well. We cannot simply state that shows have strong male or female characters and walk away—they have both. Strong female representations do exist in media and video games. They may not as common as male representations, but there’s been little research on if the amount of representations increases the impact.

Then there’s the entire problem of what constitutes a strong character. This is entirely relative to the person deciding the character is strong.

Super Mario Brothers, across every single platform in existence and every single release since 1985, has sold 40 million games. The most popular games include games not even mentioned as a problem: Tetris, Wii Sports, Minecraft, Mario Kart Wii.

Even Grand Theft Auto V, one of the most controversial games concerning sexism, sold 34 million copies.

That means that the above listed strong female characters in television reached more eyes in 1 year/season than Mario did in almost 30 years and Grant Theft Auto did in 1 year by a factor of almost 2 in both cases.

If the cultural narrative is that women are weak, we must conclude that the most prolific form of media could be the cause. Video games are a $66 billion industry, but the television industry made $171 billion in 2012. Additionally, more people consume television media with 99% having at least 1 TV than play games, 59%.

One must wonder why McIntosh and Sarkeesian have decided to tackle video games instead of television as television characters are more readily viewed with a lower entry point and a greater proliferation and impact than video games.

Hero Myth myth

McIntosh and Sarkeesian, in the video, cite the “hero myth.” There is no such myth in narrative literature.

However, searching Google for the term returns an article on the Monomyth also known as the Hero’s Journey. This concept, discussed by Joseph Campbell, has nothing to do with the gender of the hero. It is about the 17 stages of the journey of a hero as detailed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces as yet another metanarrative examination of literature. I will link to film and TV examples of these.

In it, Campbell identifies that the hero undergoes 17 stages during his or her journey to resolution. They are separated from normalcy and refuse to answer the call until supernatural aid comes. When it does, the hero adventures until s/he meets a point of no return and faces trials and tribulations as s/he adventures. While doing so, the adventurer meets many people including someone of power and significance worth protecting, someone attempting to tempt the hero away from the trial, and eventual atonement for being tempted. This builds the tension.

The hero, in atonement, dies either literally or figuratively. They are reborn past their tribulation and eventually come to the item they journeyed for. However, their journey is not over. The hero must return, but doing so means leaving the bliss of achievement. However, escape will not be easy as the hero must fight and possibly lose only to be rescued from defeat. This rescue serves a reintegration into previous life with the wisdom of the quest that allows the hero to become a master of two worlds — the world of the start and the world of the trial. They are now smarter for having journeyed and wiser in their world. They are thus free to live in resolution.

There is, however, a Hero Myth in Jungian psychology analysis. This archetype of mythology says that myths share a common string of storytelling and images which, when explored, can lead to some understanding of the self. The symbology of the myth, in essence, can reveal knowledge of development and the self.

The identified myth is that life begins at creation in an embryonic state. At this state, life is helpless. It is dependent. It requires a nurturing presence. This is often represented by a female goddess nurturing life. She is the great mother. Rhea, the Venus von Willendorf, Gaia, Toci, and many others represent this notion.

There is then tension in creation. Something causes an upset in the nurturing womb. This can be war, rape, destruction, or evil from eating an apple. Paradise as afforded by the great mother is disrupted and life is summarily born through separation from the great mother. Life, in all its harshness, floods into being and existence is made into being.

During our birth and infancy, we continue to need the nurturing, loving arms of mother who often gives birth through humility and bravery. Existence passes by as the protagonist is given some special calling or duty from a god. Their existence is meaningful through the nature of this call which requires us to journey through existence, grow, and fight against the world that would consider one duly with the world and as another entity due to special calling.

This special calling leads to the road to tribulations and eventually a monster to slay. The battle is often epic and supernatural. The journey tends to lead to the depths of reality and an eventual return to normalcy as the hero defeats the darkness and has grown for it. In the course of the journey, the hero is given an idea, love, or meaningful person worth fighting for. Worth protecting. Worth going into the depths.

And when arising from the darkness, the hero is stronger, braver, more equipped than ever before.

This Hero Myth from Jungian analysis should have sounded incredibly familiar. If not, read the Hero Myth.