2018 AFL Draft, Deep Fantasy, and the Hero Journey
There are certain TV programs, often classified as light entertainment, which quietly and powerfully keep the hero’s psychological journey, as outlined by Joseph Campbell, well and truly alive. They do all the things good Deep Fantasy does: they create an engaging narrative that meets expectations for the genre, but ensures it resonates with the viewer/reader at a deeper psychological level.
The Voice and the Hero Journey
I have blogged previously about the talent show called The Voice. The contestants are introduced with footage about their previous lives, which often reveals some trauma they have suffered or some on-going challenge they are struggling to overcome. From this emerges their dream to be a singer (the Call to Adventure). We then see them approach the studios of The Voice, flanked by family/supporters.
They enter the studio and wait. Selected family and friends wait with them. This is the point immediately before Separation or Departure, the jumping off point. They have already entered a strange realm, they are on the cusp of the liminal, the place between their old selves, and their new selves to come. It is here, in the liminal, that the Trials of Initiation take place.
In The Voice, this jumping off point is the studio; in The Lord of the Rings it is The Prancing Pony, the Inn at Bree; in Star Wars, it is Mos Eisley, the spaceport town on Tatooine. In The Voice, the doors open and they walk on alone to the stage, leaving the known behind them, to face the Trials of Initiation.
Sometimes getting through the song is transformational, sometimes getting through round after round of the competition is, sometimes mastering a new style of singing gives birth to the new self, so that the singer who exits the stage, or exits the competition, Returns to their previous existence in a new state.
Campbell’s Hero Journey
Campbell’s 17 part Hero Journey, at its simplest, consists of Separation or Departure, Trials of Initiation, and Return, but these stages are not necessarily discrete; they can overlap, or loop back on themselves, and in some senses, contestants on The Voice may have passed through the three stages multiple times just to reach the studio doors.
Campbell argues the Hero Journey is relevant to both male and female heroes (something I tested in my Ph.D), but I find it is more often replicated in popular media with a male hero, and this was very evident during the 2018 Australian Football League (AFL) draft, televised on November 22. It is particularly powerful when it forms part of a culture’s initiation rites intended to transform a boy to a man.
Boy to Man – The AFL Draft
Would-be draftees, nominate earlier in the year and attend the AFL Draft Combine, a camp where their physical skills are tested, so they have already replicated Separation or Departure, and Trials of Initiation by attending this event, but the actual Draft, is imbued with a lot more ceremony, and therefore ritual power and significance.
The would-be draftees/initiates enter the aptly named Marvel Stadium with their families, with whom they sit. This is the jumping off point. Various machinations go on by the Elders of each club, who sit apart from the initiates, dressed in their clubs’ ceremonial colors and exchanging mysterious information denied the viewer and initiate.
The highest-place Elder (CEO of the AFL – Gillon McLachlan), appears from behind a screen, reads out the Draftee’s name, and disappears. The Draftee rises from his seat and embraces each member of his family in turn. In essence, this is a farewell to his old state/life. He then leaves them, and the other initiates and their families, and walks up on stage (Separation or Departure).
An Elder from his new club appears and welcomes him (to the liminal). He then offers the initiate the colors of his new life (the team jumper). They stand for a moment and hold it between them. The Draftee is ‘between’ neither boy nor man. Then the initiate takes full possession of the jumper (symbolic of his new state) and disappears behind the screen with the Elder. The next time we see the initiate, he is wearing the jumper. He Returns in his new state, but of course, the journey isn’t over. It starts again with his new club.
From the Female to the Male Domain
Many of the mothers cried to see their sons go. These were tears of pride, but also tears generated from the understanding that the babe they had carried in utero; the little boy they had birthed, raised and nurtured; the sweet, gangly adolescent they had craned their necks to look up at, was gone, replaced with the man. Some of these boys would indeed be physically gone in the next few days, drafted by inter-state clubs.
The movement of the male initiate from the female domain of the mother, to the male domain of the father, is common in many initiation rites, particularly those of Australia’s First Nations, but that is a blog for another occasion.
In the meantime, the 2018 AFL Draft provided an interesting spectacle and a powerful one, when considered in the context of Deep Fantasy.
The Voice and the Hero Journey
I have blogged previously about the talent show called The Voice. The contestants are introduced with footage about their previous lives, which often reveals some trauma they have suffered or some on-going challenge they are struggling to overcome. From this emerges their dream to be a singer (the Call to Adventure). We then see them approach the studios of The Voice, flanked by family/supporters.
They enter the studio and wait. Selected family and friends wait with them. This is the point immediately before Separation or Departure, the jumping off point. They have already entered a strange realm, they are on the cusp of the liminal, the place between their old selves, and their new selves to come. It is here, in the liminal, that the Trials of Initiation take place.
In The Voice, this jumping off point is the studio; in The Lord of the Rings it is The Prancing Pony, the Inn at Bree; in Star Wars, it is Mos Eisley, the spaceport town on Tatooine. In The Voice, the doors open and they walk on alone to the stage, leaving the known behind them, to face the Trials of Initiation.
Sometimes getting through the song is transformational, sometimes getting through round after round of the competition is, sometimes mastering a new style of singing gives birth to the new self, so that the singer who exits the stage, or exits the competition, Returns to their previous existence in a new state.
Campbell’s Hero Journey
Campbell’s 17 part Hero Journey, at its simplest, consists of Separation or Departure, Trials of Initiation, and Return, but these stages are not necessarily discrete; they can overlap, or loop back on themselves, and in some senses, contestants on The Voice may have passed through the three stages multiple times just to reach the studio doors.
Campbell argues the Hero Journey is relevant to both male and female heroes (something I tested in my Ph.D), but I find it is more often replicated in popular media with a male hero, and this was very evident during the 2018 Australian Football League (AFL) draft, televised on November 22. It is particularly powerful when it forms part of a culture’s initiation rites intended to transform a boy to a man.
Boy to Man – The AFL Draft
Would-be draftees, nominate earlier in the year and attend the AFL Draft Combine, a camp where their physical skills are tested, so they have already replicated Separation or Departure, and Trials of Initiation by attending this event, but the actual Draft, is imbued with a lot more ceremony, and therefore ritual power and significance.
The would-be draftees/initiates enter the aptly named Marvel Stadium with their families, with whom they sit. This is the jumping off point. Various machinations go on by the Elders of each club, who sit apart from the initiates, dressed in their clubs’ ceremonial colors and exchanging mysterious information denied the viewer and initiate.
The highest-place Elder (CEO of the AFL – Gillon McLachlan), appears from behind a screen, reads out the Draftee’s name, and disappears. The Draftee rises from his seat and embraces each member of his family in turn. In essence, this is a farewell to his old state/life. He then leaves them, and the other initiates and their families, and walks up on stage (Separation or Departure).
An Elder from his new club appears and welcomes him (to the liminal). He then offers the initiate the colors of his new life (the team jumper). They stand for a moment and hold it between them. The Draftee is ‘between’ neither boy nor man. Then the initiate takes full possession of the jumper (symbolic of his new state) and disappears behind the screen with the Elder. The next time we see the initiate, he is wearing the jumper. He Returns in his new state, but of course, the journey isn’t over. It starts again with his new club.
From the Female to the Male Domain
Many of the mothers cried to see their sons go. These were tears of pride, but also tears generated from the understanding that the babe they had carried in utero; the little boy they had birthed, raised and nurtured; the sweet, gangly adolescent they had craned their necks to look up at, was gone, replaced with the man. Some of these boys would indeed be physically gone in the next few days, drafted by inter-state clubs.
The movement of the male initiate from the female domain of the mother, to the male domain of the father, is common in many initiation rites, particularly those of Australia’s First Nations, but that is a blog for another occasion.
In the meantime, the 2018 AFL Draft provided an interesting spectacle and a powerful one, when considered in the context of Deep Fantasy.
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