> While it captures something profound about human needs and wants, it can be subtly conservative and its dominance is symptomatic of a worrying turn against analysis and critique.

I was surprised at how this part is presented in the conclusion. This is a lot more obvious to my eyes, I wonder if people really see it as subtle.

To back my point: art was initially commanded by rich and powerful people/entities. Even if you had original popular stories, are those being formated into art required a skilled person being kept afloat by a patron. Nowadays I'd argue it's not that different, a movie studio backing a multi-million project has specific constraints.

Subversive art only existed for the pleasure of the higher class (thinking Voltaire for instance) or in closed socieities, with limited diffusion and was extremely risky for the author. That's not what would stay in history as classics or see wider adoption.

In comparison a government will helpfully propagate tales that promote social harmony and align the population with the nation's values. Classic hero tales and storytelling structure converging on tropes and the same messages hammered again and again is exactly how it is supposed to work.

This is also why foreign tales have different structures and landing points: they don't promote the same values nor need to anchor the same points. But they also have their tropes and carcan.

I don't deny creativity and authorship, but if we're looking at wide public entertainment that typically require wide distribution, these aspects cannot be overstated.

PS: outside of the narrative structure, the very fact that a story is centered around a set of protagonists, making decisions and being responsible for what happens in the plot is itself deeply cultural and polarized.

For instance showing a revolution as something triggered and lead by heroes, instead of a phenomenon that raises from a social situation, and would happen in some way regardless of who lead it, is a very specific and coded social choice.