Jean Sergent, contributing writer for The Spinoff, explored how Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey is being used and subverted by popular television shows such as Game of Thrones and Gangs of London. Referring to the stages in the Hero's Journey, Sergent says, "These stages can sometimes be easy to spot in a big heroic tale – think Arya Stark’s long journey away from and return to Winterfell in Game of Thrones – but the framework...

[caption id="attachment_2027" align="alignleft" width="300"] Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN[/caption] In an interview with Playbill, Tony winner André De Shields, star of Hadestown, recommended everyone read Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces, during the period of Broadway's shutdown. De Shield's current project, Hadestown, is a retelling of the Orpheus myth. It won numerous Tonys in 2019, including Featured Actor for De Shield and the prestigious Best Musical award. To see the other books De...

Berlin-based musician and producer, Enda Gallery, who writes and records music under the name Delush, Whose work has been featured on the BBC’s popular adaptation of ‘Normal People’ recently cited Joseph Campbell and the concept of the Hero's Journey as inspirations for his latest album. "I was first inspired by ‘The Hero’s Journey’. This is the theory by Joseph Campbell that all human mythology follows a structure, something like: the person is in a...

Darren Hayes, musician and member of the band Savage Garden, cited Joseph Campbell and his concept of the Hero's Journey as being greatly influential in his life. In an interview about his love for Star Wars on StarWars.com, Hayes states, "I really relate a lot of my life to a lot of those George Lucas and Joseph Campbell reassuring tropes about the journey through life, that we were born with the potential for greatness...

[caption id="attachment_2018" align="alignleft" width="300"] Credit: Tutatama/Alamy[/caption] Oxford PhD student, Josh Ettinger cites Joseph Campbell and his book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as powerful resources for storytelling within the sciences. In an article for Nature.com, Ettinger states, "When scientists describe their research to audiences outside their specialism, they often avoid discussing personal trials and tribulations. Instead, they focus only on positive, published results. No one wants to look like a failure, even if such...

Australian writer-director Mirrah Foulkes followed Joseph Campbell’s classic hero journey structure for her latest film, Judy and Punch, starring Mia Wasikowska. “That,” she said, “was intentional: leaning on that hero structure and subverting it. Like showing our relationship to violence as entertainment — that’s why there are moments that are really dark and then slapstick. It’s taking an audience on a journey.” To read more about the film click here.

Excitement around news of director Zack Snyder's cut of the DC film Justice League, brought many back to talking about Joseph Campbell's influence on Snyder. To read more about how Snyder secretly encoded a Campbell quote written in Kryptonian into Superman's costume, click here.

The New York Times paid tribute to Jean Erdman following her death on May 4, 2020. The articles states, "A former principal dancer for Martha Graham, Ms. Erdman first came to wide notice as a choreographer in the 1940s, and she remained in the vanguard of the field for decades. She later created performance pieces for the Theater of the Open Eye, an avant-garde New York stage she founded in 1972 with her husband,...

Nancy Allison, editor of the The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance, part of The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, paid tribute to Jean Erdman, Campbell's wife and partner in Dance Magazine, following Erdman's death on May 4, 2020. In the piece, it is stated, "Erdman was born and raised in Hawaii. She embraced hula and other forms of world dance, along with a lifelong dialogue with her husband, the writer/mythologist Joseph Campbell, as...

Forbes contributor, Dede Henley, shares in her recent article Reframe Quaratine as an Adventure and Become Its Hero, her admiration for Joseph Campbell and his classic work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Applying Campbell and his book to current circumstances, Henley states, "You are a hero. As I say that, I am thinking of one of my heroes, Joseph Campbell, who wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. You are...

In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, medical professionals are being honored for their sacrifice and significance in this season. Some doctors are pointing to Joseph Campbell in order to help others better understand their heroic work and the journey they often find themselves on.  Steven Moffic, MD states in his article "How to Be a Hero in the Coronavirus Generation" for the Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Learning Network, "The most well-known writer on...

Storyteller, author, and folklorist Diane Wolkstein (1942-2013) produced and hosted Stories From Many Lands. Sponsored by the New York City Parks Department, the Saturday morning children's program aired from 1968-1980.  Wolkstein's career as the Parks Department's first full-time storyteller began in 1967. According to WNYC, "The ever passionate Wolkstein, known for her range of performance, became a leading figure in the American national storytelling revival and was reportedly called "one of the greatest storytellers in the Western...

As many around the globe find themselves working from home and in self-quarantine from COVID-19, Ed Siegel, critic for public radio WBUR (90.9), points to the wisdom of Joseph Campbell as a path through such uncharted territory. Instead of  mindlessly binge-watching television, Siegel suggests, "I’d like, though, to propose something a little more purposeful and, ultimately, more rewarding. The idea dates back to the great 1988 interview series, 'The Power of Myth,' that Bill...

Vulture writer, Olivia Crandall, recently made her case that hit TV show, The Bachelor, closely follows Joseph Campbell's monomyth. "Simba, Harry Potter, Peter Weber. What do these young pups have in common? No, it’s not battling nefarious scars but rather existing as the “chosen one” in their own hero’s journey. Coined by Joseph Campbell in 1949, the hero’s journey, or monomyth, is a multipart narrative structure in which a character goes on a great adventure, faces...

Giancarlo Esposito, who portrays Moff Gideon on Disney+'s The Mandalorian, recently discussed Joseph Campbell and the mythic roots of the hit show. "Originally George Lucas had a mentor and friend in Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell was all about the power of myth and the journey of the hero. Isn’t every one of our journeys the journey of the hero?," Esposito said. To read more about what the actor had say, click here.

Acclaimed Jeweler and creator of Bee Goddess, Ece Sirin points to Joseph Campbell, and specifically his book, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine as inspiration for her celebrated work. She told Vanity Fair, "He gave more than 20 lectures and workshops on goddesses and their symbols, in which he traced the evolution of the feminine divine from one great goddess to many, shed new light on classical motifs, and revealed how the feminine divine...

The title of the current exhibition showing at Heide Museum of Modern Art is an apt one as Terminus alludes to a finishing point or the attaining of a final goal. This notion of a quest, popularized by researcher of comparative mythologies Joseph Campbell and his idea of the hero’s journey, is individual in practice but universal in nature. For Campbell, it was here that the artist plays a vital role by capturing the potency of...

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." Ryan Wilcox, a reporter for The Daily Tar Heel, uses these words from Joseph Campbell and the larger concept of Campbell's monomyth to explore whether the UNC-Duke basketball team...

NBA legend, Kobe Bryant, who died on January 26, had been vocal about his study of Joseph Campbell, and specifically The Hero's Journey. Ramona Shelburne, a reporter for ESPN, recounted her conversations with Bryant about Campbell and his work. "We talked often that year about Joseph Campbell and "The Hero's Journey." Kobe had read it cover to cover. Studied it deeply as both the author of his own legend throughout his 20-year career and...

Musician, Vernon Reid, front man for the legendary rock band Living Color, recently invoked Joseph Campbell when talking about the influence of Jimi Hendrix on music. "Hendrix is like a Joseph Campbell character, a hero with a thousand faces,'" Reid said. "He went on a hero's journey. He heard things that weren't available to him or anyone else, then took his instrument to incredibly far dimensions. To read more about Reid's current work, click...

"It’s no secret that Star Wars director George Lucas was profoundly influenced by comparative mythologist and literature professor Joseph Campbell and his seminal work The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949). In case you don’t know what that book contains, here’s a very brief summary of his argument..." To read the summary of Campbell's argument and more about writer, Hannah Searson's take on why Joseph Campbell's influence on Star Wars matters, click here.

Gloria Kisch had a different outlook from most of her peers, however, which, along with her gender and California provenance, made her entry into the New York art scene a challenge. In college she had studied with the mythologist Joseph Campbell and through him discovered Carl Jung. She thought of her sculptures as archetypal, representing the male and female principles, and declared that she aimed to create ‘a magical presence, which has curing properties’....

Star Wars has operated in concert with Campbell’s work since the days of George Lucas and Luke Skywalker and The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It’s baked into the archetypal hero’s journey of Rey in the sequel trilogy, and one key moment in the trailer for the ninth and final movie in the saga, The Rise of Skywalker, shows the continuation of Rey’s transition from desert-dwelling nobody to the hero of her generation. To read more, click here