The Untold Aspects of the Heroine’s Journey

While I was examining a few different films with Schmidt’s version of the heroine’s journey I noticed two patterns between the stories that were not mentioned in the explanation of the heroine’s journey. The first pattern is the vastness of the journey. It is not just the main character understanding themselves in a new light, but also their community learning alongside them. The second pattern is a moment of feeling like a fraud the character experiences that leads them to their “death”.

In the three films I looked at (Moana, Legally Blonde, and Zootopia) during the characters journey to understanding their relationship to the stereotype they are put in; they teach their peers to reevaluate their biases. For example, in Legally blonde Elle is characterized by her peers as a dumb blond. No one believes she could become a lawyer, but as she progresses through school there are signs of people noticing her potential, like praise from teacher and encouraging words from Emmet. By the end, she was even able to change Vivian’s mind about her. 

In some cases, correcting the community's flawed view is a necessary step for the character to finish their heroine’s journey. In Moana and Zootopia the heroines have a friend who originally discourages them from reaching their goals, but later on supports them along their journey. In the movie Moana, Maui tries to convince Moana she has no chance of reaching her goal and she should go back where she came from, but Moana doesn’t listen. Eventually she shows Maui her strength and is able to gain his respect. Later in the story when Moana gave up on herself Maui gives her words of encouragement to continue her journey. Similar to Moana, Judy Hopps, from Zootopia, teaches Nick (once her biggest criticizer) she’s more than her stereotype and in a moment of failure, Nick comes in and boosts her morale to help her back on track. Without changing the minds of Maui and Nick, it doesn’t seem possible that Moana and Judy have been able to accomplish their journey. 

The second pattern throughout these films is the heroine feeling like a fraud which leads to the step death in the heroine's journey. At the end of the eye of the storm some action or realization makes the character think their success was fake. For Elle that was the moment in the office with the professor where she believes the only reason, she got on the case was her looks. In Zootopia Judy realizes that her success was built on the stereotype of predators being evil and doesn’t think she deserves her job. Lastly Moana caused Maui to lose some of his shapeshifting abilities and he abandons her making her believe that she wasn’t the right (chosen) one for the adventure. 

When they see themselves as a fraud they give into the stereotypes, accepting that they can’t become anything other than what people told them they could do. For Elle and Judy, they buy into the dumb blond or dumb bunny persona because they thought their success was not genuine. For Moana she believes that she was just supposed to be an island girl.