While Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces has become known as a seminal exploration of myth, it also has a great deal to say about fairy tales and folklore. And while heroes often conjure images of young strapping males, Campbell actually defined heroes much more broadly. “The hero, whether a god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed…Then he finds that he and his opposite are not differing species, but one flesh.” (89) It’s easy to get caught up in Campbell’s 1949 choice of pronouns, and Campbell’s work is far from recent acknowledgements when it comes to issues of gender identity. However, it is important to recognize that when he discusses the hero in the book, he’s looking at a psychological archetype that can be embodied by anyone—even a child. 

While Disney historically relied on more patriarchally defined heroes, heroines, princes, and princesses, Pixar has chosen protagonists that subvert many of those traditional cultural expectations that constitute the heroic, especially regarding children. Brave, Coco, and Onward are just a few of the Pixar stories of children acting as heroic protagonists. Most recently, Pixar has offered Luca, the story of a young boy and his friendship with a sea monster disguised as a human, and Turning Red, a tale about a 13-year-old girl who suddenly “poofs” into a giant red panda when she feels certain emotions. Both films tell stories of children who encounter unusual creatures, one within his community, and the other within herself. Both stories also offer mythic lessons about conditions of “otherness” that we encounter in our world and within ourselves. 

Campbell tells of a myth about a young Arapaho girl from the North American plains who encounters an unusual creature in her world: a porcupine. (45) She desires the animal’s quills, and eventually chases the animal up a tree. The tree, playing the divine role of nature, extends its trunk higher and higher, giving the porcupine more and more distance to run. The girl looks down and sees how high she has climbed. She sees her friends below beckoning her to come down. However, the little girl becomes wonderfully enchanted by the creature and eventually ascends into the sky with the porcupine. She achieved something which was within herself, made possible only by accepting and, eventually, embracing what the “other” had to offer. Without spoiling Luca or Turning Red, these stories offer this same precise theme. Is it any wonder such stories resonate across age differences, gender identities, and cultural geography? As the mythic so often depicts, the mysteries explored in these stories are universal across time and space and we see ourselves in them.

Myth and fairy tales are filled with stories of magic and divine children that teach us a great deal about who we are and who we could be. Marie Louise Von Franz, a Jungian scholar whose voice Joseph Campbell valued, described the child found in mythic stories this way: “The child is thus an apt symbol of the Self—of an inner future totality and, at the same time, of underdeveloped facets of one’s individuality. The child signifies a piece of innocence and wonder surviving in us from the remote past, both that part of our personal childishness which has been by-passed and the new, early form of the future individuality.” (Von Franz, Marie Louise. Interpretation of Fairy Tales, Spring Publications, Dallas, Tx. 1970. pp. 144-145) We see ourselves in the myths of the young Arapaho girl and in the stories of Pixar. We see that which is still developing inside us. We see the potential of the heroic and our relationship to the community. We see the innocence and wonder that survives in us from the most remote reaches of our past—and who we may become in the future.

Yours, John Bucher John Bucher is a renowned strategist, communicator, and cultural mythologist based out of Hollywood, California. Disruptor named him one of the top 25 influencers in Virtual Reality in 2018. He is the author of six books including the best-selling Storytelling for Virtual Reality, and has worked with companies including HBO, DC Comics, The History Channel, A24 Films, The John Maxwell Leadership Foundation and served as a consultant and writer for numerous film, television, and Virtual Reality projects. John has spoken on 5 continents about using the power of story to reframe how products, individuals, organizations, cultures, and nations are viewed. Learn more.