“They probably haven’t figured out yet that what they’ve put in motion is a tale as old as time, one that resonates in each of us down to our bones, passed on through the generations, told by campfire light in the worst of times. It’s a story we need to hear again and again because it helps us keep hope alive.”
Sasha Stone / Trump and the Hero’s Journey
Horace Silver / The Aztec Sun God
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John Fraim
President Trump is a Hero to many and a Villain to many. But beyond this, there is the interesting question whether the Democrats inadvertently created a Hero in placing Trump on the journey of the classic Hero in mythology. One of the most interesting arguments that they have done this is by LA-based film blogger Sasha Stone. She is the founder and editor of the film/awards discussion website Awards Daily where she blogs about current movies and streamers. Stone studied film at New York and Columbia University and graduated from UCLA. In 1993 she won third place in the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards competition at UCLA. She has written for various entertainment industry magazines, including Variety, Hollywood Reporter and The Wrap and was film critic for The Santa Monica Mirror.
I’m a subscriber to her substack and podcast Freethinking Through the Fourth Turning (referencing the cyclic theories of American generations proposed by Neil Howe and William Straus in their book The Fourth Turning). On 5/27 she posted an interesting blog titled “Trump and The Hero’s Journey: How the Democrats Became the Bad Guys and Made Trump the Hero” that shows how the Democrats have (inadvertently) made Trump a Hero figure in the current drama being acted out during his various trials and “lawfare” directed against him.
Joseph Campbell’s Famous Book
Stone argues that the persecution of Trump has placed him in the position of Hero as expressed by Joseph Campbell in his famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces which served as the dramatic structure for many leading blockbuster films and franchises such as Star Wars. According to Campbell the steps in the Hero’s journey go through the major steps of Departure from the normal world, Initiation into the new world and Return to the normal world bringing back to this world what the Hero has learned in the new world he/she traveled to. Campbell breaks down the seventeen steps of this journey in his Hero With a Thousand Faces the following way.
DEPARTURE
Call to Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Supernatural Aid
Crossing First Threshold
Belly of the Whale
INITIATION
Road of Trials
Meeting With Goddess
Woman as Temptress
Atonement With Father
Apotheosis
Ultimate Boon
RETURN
Refusal of Return
Magic Flight
Rescue From Without
Crossing Return Threshold
Master of Two Worlds
Freedom to Live
Campbell’s seventeen steps were translated into Hollywood dramatic format by Chris Vogler in his book The Writers Journey which notes translates Campbells seventeen steps into twelve steps.
1.The Ordinary World: the hero is seen in their everyday life
2.The Call to Adventure: the initiating incident of the story
3.Refusal of the Call: the hero experiences some hesitation to answer the call
4.Meeting with the Mentor: the hero gains the supplies, knowledge, and confidence needed to commence the adventure
5.Crossing the First Threshold: the hero commits wholeheartedly to the adventure
6.Tests, Allies, and Enemies: the hero explores the special world, faces trial, and makes friends and enemies
7.Approach to the Innermost Cave: the hero nears the center of the story and the special world
8.The Ordeal: the hero faces the greatest challenge yet and experiences death and rebirth
9.Reward: the hero experiences the consequences of surviving death
10.The Road Back: the hero returns to the ordinary world or continues to an ultimate destination
11.The Resurrection: the hero experiences a final moment of death and rebirth, so they are pure when they reenter the ordinary world
12.Return with the Elixir: the hero returns with something to improve the ordinary world
Stone argues that Trump has been made a Hero by the current lawfare persecution on him. The below are selected quotes from her interesting substack article with a link to the entire article below the quotes. Parts of the Hero’s journey he has traveled through are underlined.
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They (Democrats) probably haven’t figured out yet that what they’ve put in motion is a tale as old as time, one that resonates in each of us down to our bones, passed on through the generations, told by campfire light in the worst of times. It’s a story we need to hear again and again because it helps us keep hope alive.
The Hero’s Journey is a trope, to be sure, but it’s also the basis for some of the best movies ever made. We respond to characters put through their paces who come out the other side transformed. We need these stories because without them, what else is there but hopelessness.
The Democrats and Never Trumpers might have been able to convince the American people that Trump is the greatest threat they face. But after four years of Joe Biden, who has used most of his time in office demonizing Trump and his supporters, more Americans are waking up to the real threat to Democracy.
Without even realizing it, the Democrats have cast Trump as the hero in the Hero’s Journey and themselves as the villains. They’re Voldemort in Harry Potter, Darth Vader, and Governor Tarkin in Star Wars. It won’t matter what else they do to Trump; this story will end the same way.
Trump’s rise fits the Hero’s Journey almost too perfectly. He came from the ordinary world of Reality TV and entered the special world of politics, knowing almost nothing. Trump’s power was always concentrated on his willingness to say what couldn’t be said. It made him a well-known contrarian back in the 1980s, and no doubt had much to do with high ratings for Celebrity Apprentice.
In a different time or place, no one would think twice about Trump dabbling in politics. But at a time of extreme thought and language policing, and at a time when the Democrats had more power than they’d had since before the Civil War, with Silicon Valley handing them the keys to the New “special” World online, they became intoxicated by the idea that this was their country now.
Whatever Trump’s reasons for getting into politics, it can best be described as a “call to adventure” that would set him on the hero’s path.
Trump’s mentor might have been Steve Bannon, among others, who helped guide him from the world of television into the shark-infested waters of winning elections, and helped orchestrate his shocking win in 2016, otherwise known as crossing the threshold.
After that, Trump realized that becoming president meant being attacked by his own government the minute he was sworn in. Almost immediately, he was thrust into Tests, Allies and Enemies, which would eventually grow into MAGA.
Who knows what Trump’s fate might have been had he decided not to run again in 2024. But with Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan which trashed his approval ratings, Trump once again decides to run, and here we have The Approach, and eventually, as Joe Biden and maybe Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton help coordinate a multi-pronged attack on a former president, Trump is now headlong into the Ordeal.
But Trump, like every hero tested this way, rises to the challenge, and somehow deflects their attacks against him. Every minute he has he holds rallies to greet his supporters. He understands innately as he fights this battle that he’s fighting for something bigger and more important than even himself.
Despite what the media says, despite what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris say, Trump has changed. He is more grateful, less arrogant. He is more humble, less hostile. He has learned how to be a real leader and is better at the game now than he was in 2020. And this is what we call the Rebirth.
We don’t yet know the outcome or what the rebirth will be. The story could play out in one of two ways. Trump could win in a landslide in November, Ronald Reagan-style. Or, the system could win the election for Joe Biden as it did in 2020.
But whether Trump wins or not, he still walks away the hero transformed, leaving a country that will never be the same —the reality TV star who fought for reality and truth in a country that had forsaken it.
Trump’s rally in the Bronx shows that his reach is expanding. There is only so much hiding the media can do as the people wake up to this Hero’s Journey that resonates with so many of them. (Note: a photo from mainstream media did show a relatively small number of people at the rally but even this photo is accurate, this small rally in “enemy territory” is larger than any rally Biden gets even in dark blue states).
If Trump somehow survives all of this and wins a second term and maybe finds a formidable Vice President, like JD Vance or Vivek Ramaswamy, then we really are talking about a transformed country by the end of this.
It might end up costing Trump everything, but the one thing he gives the people that they really need, that Joe Biden can’t give them, is hope. Hope for a better America. Hope for the land of opportunity. Hope for girls and women in sports. Hope for a better economy. Hope for a united country.
Hope.
(The entire blog can be read or listened to on her substack blog.)
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Being a film critic and screenwriter, Stone is aware of the application of Campbell’s structural steps in the Hero’s voyage to the lawfare persecution of Trump. While the lawyers fight over the intricacies of the Trump prosecution and defense, the larger drama is that Trump is viewed as a Hero in the dramatic story of our times.
The question of whether Trump is a Hero or not misses the point. The question is not whether he is a Hero but whether the Democrats have been inadvertently creating a Hero by making Trump pass through the stages of Campbell’s hero commonalities through time and all cultures.
This might be the reason behind the increasing polls in favor of Trump for President during his prosecution. The image of a Hero grows during the prosecution of him in the Manhattan trial. Conviction could even make him more a Hero.
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The Democrats might be successful in convicting Trump. Yet in the process, they might have created a new type of modern Hero by passing him through the steps a Hero passes through during the journey of a hero in mythology. In effect, by making him pass through the same steps used by many screenwriters in creating blockbuster films. They are similar steps Lucas used to create the Hero of his Star Wars franchise.
Will the Magic Elixir of Hope Be Brought Back to America?
A Hero is a creation of Hollywood using formulas of a legendary mythologist. Might a Hero also be a creation of a political party? During a time when neither party possesses any true heroes. At a time when the nation needs a Hero, will Trump’s persecution bring back what Campbell calls the “magic elixir” to improve the ordinary world. The elixir of hope? Bring it back after his journey to a world much in need of it.
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John Fraim wrote a regular column for Script Magazine titled “Script Symbology.” He is author of the book Battle of Symbols: Global Dynamics of Advertising, Entertainment and Media (Daimon Verlag, Zurich, 2003) as well as the yet-to-be-published Hollywood Safari: Navigating Screenwriting Theory, 2024.