From Paul Rubillot, The Call to Adventure: Bringing the Hero’s Journey to Daily Life.
A Hero, whether in myth or modern day, is one who hears a call and follows it. This is difficult in our time, because we are constantly receiving pseudo-calls through advertising: to do something, to do it a different way, to buy something, or to go somewhere. If there is within us no natural response to these pseudo-calls, the advertiser’s task is to create a feeling that will prompt us to answer it. [Advertising is] constantly creating calls in this false way. Unfortunately, this constant pressing of the “call button” makes it difficult for us to recognize an authentic call when it comes.
When an authentic call comes―a call that will lead us from one stage of life into another, from one career into another, from one love relationship into another―the response to that call trembles deep within the essential being. But if we are inundated with calls, it becomes easy not to hear the voice of the essential self.
It is crucial that we do hear and listen to this voice, for it calls us to our continuing evolution―not only as individual human beings, but as a planetary species. We are continually being called toward our evolutionary process. If the call mechanism is so muddied up with false calls that we cannot hear the authentic voice, we are in a very dangerous situation. If many human beings are convinced that satisfaction is going to come from soft toilet paper or the detergent that makes your hands soft enough to hold [RH: or a cell phone that does everything but cook breakfast], then we are all in a very sorry state. Preoccupation with these false calls can in fact become a shield against, an avoidance of, the authentic call.
Rubillot, P. 1993. The call to adventure: Bringing the hero’s journey to daily life. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 8-9.
Comment: Exploiting the heroic drive
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 2009 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Except for properly cited quotes and excerpts, this article may not be copied in whole or in part without written permission from the author. (See the bottom of the page for citation information.)
| |
|
|
Follow the fox to
The Hero’s Journey:
A Guide to Literature and Life
|
|
|
When I was studying for my masters in psychology, I was surprised and chagrined
to discover that John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorist psychology, had gone to work for an advertising agency after he left John Hopkins University in 1920. I was bothered that such a powerful tool as behaviorist psychology would be turned to marketing and manipulation.
The truth is that advertisers and marketers probably know more about our psychology and psychological needs than the therapists we see. Companies know that understanding human psychology and how it works can help them create strategies not just to sell their products, but to manipulate human needs and fears to create a need for the product. As a result, advertisers work with sociologists and psychologists to develop approaches that can impact the minds of consumers.
My goal here is not go get into the details of the psychology or advertising, but to emphasize Rubillot’s point that advertising creates false or pseudo calls. Advertisers understand our needs better than we do, and they know how present their products in a way that will make us believe the products will fill those needs.
An example of this is advertising to teenagers. Adolescence is a time of identity development. It is a time when teens build the person they will be for the rest of their lives. It is also a time of uncertainty and self-consciousness as teens experiment with different “selves.” The development of self identity is one of the most critical journeys in our lives. It is a time adults need to respect, support and mentor to help our children grow into confident, responsible adults.
Unfortunately, helping adolescents through this process is a cultural responsibility that, to a great extent, is being exploited. Look carefully at way advertisers use identity development to market their products and create life-time brand loyalty. For the most part, the product and its quality are never the subject of the advertising. What sells is the identity associated with the product. Nike users, for example, may identify with the pragmatic “just do it” slogan. Cell phone companies tap into the adolescent need for peer acceptance (a major factor in how we develop an identity) by convincing teens that they must have constant, instant access to all their friends, the internet and their families. They have exploited this need so well that cell phone use has become virtually an addiction.
Let me develop one example using the archetype of the hero to show how advertisers ability exploit psychological needs and how this exploitation can create a false call and substitute journey.
In 1984, under Ronald Regan, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “overturned a ten-year policy against ‘full-length’ commercials on children’s television. Whereas before the commercial message was clearly marked off from the program, this is no longer true for many children’s programs” (Elkind, 2001, p. 85). This ruling changed advertising on children’s television programs in two ways. First, it ended restrictions of the amount of advertising that could be presented on children’s programs. Second, it allowed “program-length commercials,” so no longer were advertisements clearly set off from the program. The program itself became the advertisement, and “toy-based programming flooded the broadcast schedule” (Strausburger, et. al, 2008. p. 83).
This change effectively allowed advertisers to use the characters and heroes (the role models children need to develop strong values) in the programs to sell a product. To understand the import of this change, we need to understand the importance of the hero archetype in our lives.
The hero archetype is the subconscious drive that inspires us to be confidence and self-assertive, willing to stand up for ourselves and what we believe is right and just. As Carol Pearson (1991) writes, the hero myth “is a timeless myth that links us to peoples from all times and places. It is about fearlessly leaping off the edge of the unknown to confront the unknown, and trusting that when the time comes, we will have what we need to face our dragons, discover our treasures, and return to transform the kingdom. It is also about learning to be true to ourselves and live in responsible community with one another” (p. 2).
This archetype is evoked and developed through story: myths and gods in traditional times; films, television and advertising in modern times. We develop our heroic selves by watching, admiring and emulating the heroic images in our lives. I remember watching Superman, Roy Rogers and other heroic figures on television. They embodied the heroic values and attitudes children needed to develop their own heroic selves.
By creating or bending heroic characters in children’s television programming, advertisers were able to take our psychological need to identify and express our heroic archetype and attach it to a product. Buying the product became the way to express the heroic part of ourselves. One could argue that the product still evoked the heroic, but my point is that this need was manipulated for marketing, not for psychological development.
Let me return to Rubillot’s point that advertising creates false calls. For an adolescent (or anyone) to find and follow the journeys in their lives, they must recognize the true nature of the calls as calls to growth and responsibility (respond-ability). If a false call give us a substitute for the growth-inducing challenge of the real journey, we get a false sense of progress and fulfillment that will mask our needs. It is like using pain killers to mask a deeper medical condition. We may feel better temporarily, but the deeper problem will continue to exist and grow.
As Rubillot writes, “Preoccupation with these false calls can in fact become a shield against, an avoidance of, the authentic call.” When a teen (or an adult) feels the pain or discomfort that develops when the story we are no longer fits the story we are living, that call―that need―must be honored and addressed authentically. Advertisers know how to market their products so that the product seems to fill the psychological need. We buy the product, the existential pain is masked, at least temporarily, and we can go blithely on with our lives, ignoring our fundamental need to grow and change.
Technology can have the same effect. German philosopher Martin Heidegger recognized the potential for technology to dehumanize modern society. Heidegger, a central figure in the existential movement, believed that technology altered our existence is fundamental ways, transforming and distorting our actions, goals and needs. He saw technology as having its own existence and and power structure that, in a sense, would make humans resources for the technology.
In the context of the heroic journey, it is possible that technology creates pseudo calls, calls to make the machines work, rather than calls that will carry us through the stages of our lives.
That is, I believe, the crux of Rubillot’s point: true calls and authentic journeys are human calls and human journeys. They are responses to the human needs for growth and discovery. These needs can be diverted and subverted by advertising and, perhaps, technology. The pseudo calls can make it difficult, if not impossible, to hear the authentic calls when they come. What’s more, advertising and technology can provide us with pseudo journeys, shielding us from the challenges we need to become the heroes of our own lives.
References
Elkind, D. 2001. The hurried child: Growing up too fast too soon. Third edition. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Pearson, C. 1991. Awakening the heroes within: Twelve archetypes to help us find ourselves and transform our world. New York: HarperCollins.
Strausberger, V., B. Wilson, and A. Jordan. Children, adolescents, and the Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Article posted: June 18, 2009
Harris, R. (2009). Exploiting the heroic drive. Harris Communications: Educational home of the hero’s journey. Retrieved (insert date), from http://www.yourheroicjourney.com/news/news.htm.
MLA Citation:
Harris, Reg. “Exploiting the heroic drive”. Harris Communications: Educational Home of the Hero’s Journey. June 18, 2009
Advertising, “pseudo calls” and the journey
From Paul Rubillot, The Call to Adventure: Bringing the Hero’s Journey to Daily Life.
A Hero, whether in myth or modern day, is one who hears a call and follows it. This is difficult in our time, because we are constantly receiving pseudo-calls through advertising: to do something, to do it a different way, to buy something, or to go somewhere. If there is within us no natural response to these pseudo-calls, the advertiser’s task is to create a feeling that will prompt us to answer it. [Advertising is] constantly creating calls in this false way. Unfortunately, this constant pressing of the “call button” makes it difficult for us to recognize an authentic call when it comes.
When an authentic call comes―a call that will lead us from one stage of life into another, from one career into another, from one love relationship into another―the response to that call trembles deep within the essential being. But if we are inundated with calls, it becomes easy not to hear the voice of the essential self.
It is crucial that we do hear and listen to this voice, for it calls us to our continuing evolution―not only as individual human beings, but as a planetary species. We are continually being called toward our evolutionary process. If the call mechanism is so muddied up with false calls that we cannot hear the authentic voice, we are in a very dangerous situation. If many human beings are convinced that satisfaction is going to come from soft toilet paper or the detergent that makes your hands soft enough to hold [RH: or a cell phone that does everything but cook breakfast], then we are all in a very sorry state. Preoccupation with these false calls can in fact become a shield against, an avoidance of, the authentic call.
Rubillot, P. 1993. The call to adventure: Bringing the hero’s journey to daily life. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 8-9.
Comment: Exploiting the heroic drive
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 2009 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Except for properly cited quotes and excerpts, this article may not be copied in whole or in part without written permission from the author. (See the bottom of the page for citation information.)
Follow the fox to
The Hero’s Journey:
A Guide to Literature and Life
When I was studying for my masters in psychology, I was surprised and chagrined
to discover that John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorist psychology, had gone to work for an advertising agency after he left John Hopkins University in 1920. I was bothered that such a powerful tool as behaviorist psychology would be turned to marketing and manipulation.
The truth is that advertisers and marketers probably know more about our psychology and psychological needs than the therapists we see. Companies know that understanding human psychology and how it works can help them create strategies not just to sell their products, but to manipulate human needs and fears to create a need for the product. As a result, advertisers work with sociologists and psychologists to develop approaches that can impact the minds of consumers.
My goal here is not go get into the details of the psychology or advertising, but to emphasize Rubillot’s point that advertising creates false or pseudo calls. Advertisers understand our needs better than we do, and they know how present their products in a way that will make us believe the products will fill those needs.
An example of this is advertising to teenagers. Adolescence is a time of identity development. It is a time when teens build the person they will be for the rest of their lives. It is also a time of uncertainty and self-consciousness as teens experiment with different “selves.” The development of self identity is one of the most critical journeys in our lives. It is a time adults need to respect, support and mentor to help our children grow into confident, responsible adults.
Unfortunately, helping adolescents through this process is a cultural responsibility that, to a great extent, is being exploited. Look carefully at way advertisers use identity development to market their products and create life-time brand loyalty. For the most part, the product and its quality are never the subject of the advertising. What sells is the identity associated with the product. Nike users, for example, may identify with the pragmatic “just do it” slogan. Cell phone companies tap into the adolescent need for peer acceptance (a major factor in how we develop an identity) by convincing teens that they must have constant, instant access to all their friends, the internet and their families. They have exploited this need so well that cell phone use has become virtually an addiction.
Let me develop one example using the archetype of the hero to show how advertisers ability exploit psychological needs and how this exploitation can create a false call and substitute journey.
In 1984, under Ronald Regan, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “overturned a ten-year policy against ‘full-length’ commercials on children’s television. Whereas before the commercial message was clearly marked off from the program, this is no longer true for many children’s programs” (Elkind, 2001, p. 85). This ruling changed advertising on children’s television programs in two ways. First, it ended restrictions of the amount of advertising that could be presented on children’s programs. Second, it allowed “program-length commercials,” so no longer were advertisements clearly set off from the program. The program itself became the advertisement, and “toy-based programming flooded the broadcast schedule” (Strausburger, et. al, 2008. p. 83).
This change effectively allowed advertisers to use the characters and heroes (the role models children need to develop strong values) in the programs to sell a product. To understand the import of this change, we need to understand the importance of the hero archetype in our lives.
The hero archetype is the subconscious drive that inspires us to be confidence and self-assertive, willing to stand up for ourselves and what we believe is right and just. As Carol Pearson (1991) writes, the hero myth “is a timeless myth that links us to peoples from all times and places. It is about fearlessly leaping off the edge of the unknown to confront the unknown, and trusting that when the time comes, we will have what we need to face our dragons, discover our treasures, and return to transform the kingdom. It is also about learning to be true to ourselves and live in responsible community with one another” (p. 2).
This archetype is evoked and developed through story: myths and gods in traditional times; films, television and advertising in modern times. We develop our heroic selves by watching, admiring and emulating the heroic images in our lives. I remember watching Superman, Roy Rogers and other heroic figures on television. They embodied the heroic values and attitudes children needed to develop their own heroic selves.
By creating or bending heroic characters in children’s television programming, advertisers were able to take our psychological need to identify and express our heroic archetype and attach it to a product. Buying the product became the way to express the heroic part of ourselves. One could argue that the product still evoked the heroic, but my point is that this need was manipulated for marketing, not for psychological development.
Let me return to Rubillot’s point that advertising creates false calls. For an adolescent (or anyone) to find and follow the journeys in their lives, they must recognize the true nature of the calls as calls to growth and responsibility (respond-ability). If a false call give us a substitute for the growth-inducing challenge of the real journey, we get a false sense of progress and fulfillment that will mask our needs. It is like using pain killers to mask a deeper medical condition. We may feel better temporarily, but the deeper problem will continue to exist and grow.
As Rubillot writes, “Preoccupation with these false calls can in fact become a shield against, an avoidance of, the authentic call.” When a teen (or an adult) feels the pain or discomfort that develops when the story we are no longer fits the story we are living, that call―that need―must be honored and addressed authentically. Advertisers know how to market their products so that the product seems to fill the psychological need. We buy the product, the existential pain is masked, at least temporarily, and we can go blithely on with our lives, ignoring our fundamental need to grow and change.
Technology can have the same effect. German philosopher Martin Heidegger recognized the potential for technology to dehumanize modern society. Heidegger, a central figure in the existential movement, believed that technology altered our existence is fundamental ways, transforming and distorting our actions, goals and needs. He saw technology as having its own existence and and power structure that, in a sense, would make humans resources for the technology.
In the context of the heroic journey, it is possible that technology creates pseudo calls, calls to make the machines work, rather than calls that will carry us through the stages of our lives.
That is, I believe, the crux of Rubillot’s point: true calls and authentic journeys are human calls and human journeys. They are responses to the human needs for growth and discovery. These needs can be diverted and subverted by advertising and, perhaps, technology. The pseudo calls can make it difficult, if not impossible, to hear the authentic calls when they come. What’s more, advertising and technology can provide us with pseudo journeys, shielding us from the challenges we need to become the heroes of our own lives.
References
Elkind, D. 2001. The hurried child: Growing up too fast too soon. Third edition. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Pearson, C. 1991. Awakening the heroes within: Twelve archetypes to help us find ourselves and transform our world. New York: HarperCollins.
Strausberger, V., B. Wilson, and A. Jordan. Children, adolescents, and the Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Article posted: June 18, 2009
Harris, R. (2009). Exploiting the heroic drive. Harris Communications: Educational home of the hero’s journey. Retrieved (insert date), from http://www.yourheroicjourney.com/news/news.htm.
MLA Citation:
Harris, Reg. “Exploiting the heroic drive”. Harris Communications: Educational Home of the Hero’s Journey. June 18, 2009