I was discussing Campbell's "Hero's Journey" once and someone said: Did you know that some people believe that there's a different, female version of the story? I was intrigued and directed to this book.
Joseph Campbell, supposedly, examined myths, ancient tales, and religious texts all over the world and found that many had something in common. Such bones of plots can be found, with varying success, in the story of Hercules, Job, the three rivaling brothers(impossible tasks? Not really sure what the official fairytale title is but hopefully Lang's readers will get it), Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Lloyd Alexander's tales, and Eragon, etc.
From these tales, myths, and texts, billions of people derive meaning and, if not really religiously adherent to the stories themselves, still pull core principles from those stories to bolster their core beliefs. There's something powerful, to me, about reading a story, true or not, that has been told to your grandfather, and his grandfather and, before that, his grandfather and so on. There's a sort of magic, to me, about the immutability of such things.
The stories that form the focus and the central arguments for this alternate, feminocentric journey are films from the 1930s onward. The idea was something she stumbled on during a film-writing class (hence the examples) and these stories via film do make her ideas more accessible, relatable, and more modernly acceptable(patriarchy, etc). Questions are in order, though:
1: What is a mythology and what is it's purpose?
2: If there is a separate feminine experience, are these a good mythology to base it on?
3: What evidence, statistical or otherwise, is there of either of these theses being good mythologies?
4: If mythology does add meaning to our lives, and there is a separate feminine-lived experience, and these are good mythologies--are they truly as they are represented here? Or will they be perceived differently as watched by different people of differing background?
5: Conversely, if these are not good mythologies, is there something in myths, religious texts, and folktales that differentiates the male from the female experience?
Worth the thoughts.
No rating. Because it's my account and I know I'm biased. But do be warned that it gets a bit boggy in places.