07.《千面英雄》The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The book I'm talking about today has a wonderful place in the screenwriting world and is called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. How fantastic is its place in the screenwriting world?
If you want to provoke two groups of screenwriters into a fight, you can talk to them about two books. One is The Story by Robert McKee. And one, which is this one, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. These two books are definitely the trigger that will get the writers arguing. Let's put The Tale aside for a moment. Let's just talk about this book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Some people hold it up as the truth, others don't think it's worth mentioning. Why are they so extreme? To explain this, we have to start with a brief explanation of what this book actually does.
Simply put, it discovers a set, the simplest paradigm, about storytelling. Almost all mythological stories are based on the same formula. This trope is called the hero's journey. I won't go into the details here. You can go and listen to our interpretation. This hero's journey is one that so many writers feel is particularly right, and many others feel that it is too cheesy and elementary. That's why it's a topic that can get writers up in arms, to say the least.
If you read a review and someone writes a review using the Hero's Journey model to reductively review a film's story. Then, it is advisable not to read it; odds are it is a waste of time. Writing a review using the Hero's Journey is like asking, "How do you succeed? How to be happy? Then someone else answers, you have to work hard, you have to be kind, you have to work hard, it's the same thing. All correct nonsense and no insight whatsoever.
From this perspective, however, we do gain a new perspective on how to look at a book. That is, what exactly is the highest level of writing a book? It's not about delivering a new idea, it's about your ability to get into the consensus of people and become part of it. Once you do this, no one dares to quote easily.
The author of this book, Joseph Campbell, started out as a biology and mathematics major, but was motivated by a childhood interest in the humanities. Campbell transferred from Dartmouth College to Columbia University. The foundations of Campbell's thinking were laid thanks to three men - Krishnamurti, the Indian spiritualist, and Freud and Jung, the masters of psychoanalysis - who became involved with him as a student and influenced him deeply, as is evident in his writings.
In 1943, Campbell taught at a women's college, Sarah Lawrence College, as a professor of literature and worked on comparative mythology and comparative religion. Here Campbell encountered many difficulties, for these two specialities were also unfamiliar to him and amounted to teaching and learning at the same time. Whenever students threw up questions, for example, he had to further refine his own body of knowledge and theory. It was because of this experience that Campbell's theory of mythology was gradually refined.
Where did the title of The Hero with a Thousand Faces come from? In an interview, Campbell does not explicitly give an explanation, but makes a brilliant argument: because there is a specific, typical pattern of heroic behaviour that can be identified in stories from all over the world and from many stages of history. Basically, it can even be described as a mythical hero with only one archetype, whose life has been copied by many peoples in different geographical areas. The founders of all religions underwent a similar journey of seeking. The Buddha went into solitary seclusion before sitting under the Bodhi tree, a symbol of immortal knowledge, where the righteousness he achieved illuminated the whole of Asia for 2,500 years.
You see, from this perspective, all stories originate in purpose, achieve in hardship and, ultimately, end in fulfilment. And how similar this is to our lives.
译文：
今天要说的这本书，在编剧界的地位很奇妙，叫《千面英雄》。它在编剧界的地位有多奇妙呢？
假如你想挑动两伙编剧吵架，你可以跟他们聊两本书。一本是罗伯特·麦基写的《故事》。还有一本，就是这本，《千面英雄》。这两本书，绝对是能让编剧们吵起来的导火索。《故事》咱们先放一放。单说这本《千面英雄》。有人把它奉为真理，有人觉得不值一提。为啥这么极端？要想解释这件事，咱们得先简单说说，这本书到底做了什么？
简单说，它发现了一套，有关故事的，最简单的范式。所有的神话故事，几乎都是同一种套路。这个套路叫做英雄之旅。具体在这不细说。你可以去听我们的解读。这个英雄之旅，好多编剧觉得特别对，也有很多人觉得，太俗套，太初级。这就是为什么说，这是一个能让编剧们吵起来的话题。
假如你看影评的时候，有人用英雄之旅这个模型来写影评，来还原点评一部电影的故事。那么，建议不要看，大概率上这是浪费时间。用英雄之旅写影评，就好比你问，怎么成功？怎么幸福？然后别人回答，你要用功，你要善良，你要努力，是一样一样的。全是正确的废话，没有任何洞察。
不过，从这个角度看，我们倒是获得了一个观察一本书的新视角。那就是，到底什么是写书的最高境界？不是传递一个新观点，而是你能进入人们的共识，成为共识的一部分。一旦你做到这件事，谁都不敢轻易引用。
本书作者约瑟夫·坎贝尔一开始的专业是生物学和数学，但出于从小对人文科学的兴趣。坎贝尔从达特茅斯学院转学去了哥伦比亚大学。坎贝尔思想基础的奠定，要感谢三个人——印度灵修大师克里希那穆提，精神分析学派的大师弗洛伊德和荣格，这三个人在他学生时代就与他结缘，并对他影响至深，这点在他的著作中也可见一二。
1943年，坎贝尔在一所女子学院——沙拉劳伦斯学院教书，当文学教授，并从事比较神话和比较宗教的研究工作。在这里，坎贝尔遇到了很多难题，因为这两个专业他也不熟悉，等于是边教边学。比如每当学生们抛出问题时，他都得进一步完善他自己的知识体系和理论体系。也正是因为这段经历，坎贝尔的神话理论得以逐渐完善。
《千面英雄》书名从何而来？在一次采访中，坎贝尔没有明确给解释，但做了精彩的论述：因为从全世界及许多历史阶段的故事里，可以找出一种特定、典型的英雄行为规律。基本上，它甚至可以被说成是只有一个原型的神话英雄，他的生命被不同地域的许多民族复制了。所有宗教的创建者都经历过类似的寻求历程。佛陀独身隐修，而后坐在象征不朽知识的菩提树下，在那儿，他所成就的正觉照亮了整个亚洲达2500年之久。
你看，从这个角度看，所有的故事，都起源于目标，成就于困境，最终，结束于满足。这跟我们的人生，又何其相似。