The heroic character, the neo-liberal productive citizen, and the feminist filmmaker

ABSTRACT

I recut an observational documentary about a woman called Bekti into a more conventional hero’s journey for a broadcaster. The hero’s journey narrative requires large obstacles to be overcome by the hero in their search for their ego. In this documentary the obstacle is connecting experimental science with communities with the aim to reduce dengue fever, and the hero’s ‘ego’ is to be an effective communicator. Using the hero’s journey style of narrative reduced the importance of the domestic aspects of Bekti’s life because these scenes did not contribute to overcoming obstacles or finding ego. To explore these changes use feminist critique of the influence of the hero’s journey on narrative structure and character creation. Alongside this, I use a decolonising lens to challenge the universality of the monomyth. I then bring into this debate work on value in the economy to explore how the hero’s journey used in the recut documentary corresponds to neoliberal values. This critique adds to the current debates around heroic characters and story structures in non-fiction films via rethinking story in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Character
• story
• feminism
• documentary
• value
• action

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The documentary sold to ABC TV, and so I did not release the earlier observational cut.

2 For instance, in her 2019 book The Value of Everything: Making and taking in the global economy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catherine Gough-Brady

Catherine Gough-Brady is an award-winning documentary producer and director who publishes on the relational nature of documentary production processes in journals including Media Practice and Education, Screenworks, [in]Transition, The International Journal of Creative Media Research, and Cultural Geographies. She is co-editor of an edited collection exploring the intersection of theory and practice, Constructing the Real (2023). Catherine produced and directed six ABC TV documentary series, including Legal Briefs (2016) and Ethics Matters (2017). Catherine created 11 radio features for ABC Radio National. Her most recent TV half-hour for ABC TV is called The Communicator (2022). Catherine is a senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University in Australia and is an associate editor of Screenworks.