The hero’s journey and many of the characteristics associated with it are being demonized and eradicated from the contemporary scene due to either malice, or a desire to push the envelope towards what is thought to be a distinct direction. At its best, it subverts the viewers expectations in ways that are satisfying, creative, and new. But at its worst, which is very often, protagonists and sometimes even entire worlds are sanitized and stripped of all things interesting for the sake of being more accessible.

There are two big reasons why someone would want to shift away from this structure and its values, one of which concerns the story structure, and the other has to do with protagonist archetypes. There’s a discontent and growing hatred of the traditional monomyth and everything it represents. Its individualistic, patriarchal focus, and its treatment of women are looked down on as archaic. The hatred is with the hero saving the day and getting his praise...the hatred is with the man that works hard to not only achieve his goals, but to become the one true master of himself and the universe.It has spawned action to erase any semblance of these traditional qualities of the masculine hero as a means of empowering the women of these stories, or to sideline this emasculated hero and giving the title and qualities of these protagonist to the women instead. The problem is not with heroines in place of the hero, it’s the approach in implementing them. They feel they must tear the hero down so that the female protagonist can shine. Or they think they can just paste the traits of male characters onto female ones and it’s just going to work.

They also feel the need to eradicate the gravitas of stories by dispersing importance throughout a wide range of characters as if it strengthens the plot and characters instead of making it weaker and more unfocused; its biggest link to Postmodernism.

This is all becoming increasingly evident in Comics and cartoons.