- Joseph Campbell advanced the idea that all hero myths, including the life of Buddha, folk tales from across the world, and Biblical stories, follow a common narrative pattern.
- At the beginning of our lives, we are often driven by self-inter
- Joseph Campbell advanced the idea that all hero myths, including the life of Buddha, folk tales from across the world, and Biblical stories, follow a common narrative pattern.
- At the beginning of our lives, we are often driven by self-interested desires for power and freedom, but as we age, these tend to be replaced by more communal goals.
- In Journey to the West, the Monkey King’s character transformation follows this same narrative.
In her thought-provoking article about why she believes a new Sino-American film adaptation of Journey to the West will fail to connect with Western audiences, Nina Huang argues that the cultural gap between East and West is too great for this Chinese classic to become an international box office success.
However, I would like to question whether this is really the case. Will Western audiences fail to engage with a story that celebrates Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist values? Or instead, could it be that Journey to the West is based on the same underlying narrative as the typical Hollywood blockbuster? And if so, does that mean that this latest adaptation is poised for global box office success?
In his 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, American anthropologist Joseph Campbell advanced the idea that all hero myths, including the life of Buddha, folk tales from across the world, and Biblical stories, follow a common narrative pattern. This template was seized upon by Hollywood in an attempt to create films with universal appeal, and it remains one of the most prevalent story models used in the development of Western screenplays.
At the beginning of this 