The success of Marvel superheroes has also proven the appeal of the relatable hero, someone with a great destiny and powers, yet who is also uniquely human. Heroism’s defining characteristic is courage – a singularly human trait – as demi-gods have no need for courage.

The hero’s journey is a story template familiar to most screenwriting classes.  Popularized by Joseph Campbell, the journey, in its most basic form, tracks a hero who undertakes an adventure, confronts obstacles, triumphs over a crisis and is transformed, then returns home changed.

The journey is a pattern that Campbell, a mythologist, unearthed in myths and religions from around the world, and it is one of risk, fear, and trials, requiring great courage. The character embarking on this journey is called a “hero” which has roots in divinity. In French, a hero is “a man of superhuman strength,” in Latin and Greek, “a demi-god.”

In my DePaul University undergraduate directing classes, I ask students on day one what a director is. Answers range from the director’s on-set duties to the director as the visionary of a script, to character traits. They describe the director as a person with confidence, someone who knows their voice, a natural leader, independent, controlled, or calm under pressure.

As a young Black woman, director and professor of filmmaking, I never fit with this image of a director. I am also an introvert; more cautious than bold, a seeker rather than a visionary, a reluctant leader, and someone who thinks darkly of endings.

I did not pursue directing because I was a visionary or had something to say. I direct because I revere stories. The root of my craft is about a relationship to story, not about personal identity. I access the divine, something greater than myself, through story, and it’s a source of courage to face a world of war, nuclear bombs, the revival of brazen white supremacy, destruction of the natural world, the threat of American neo-fascism, mass shootings, murder by police, pandemics, and an uncertain future.

A simple google search of “Hollywood director” yields images of power, confidence, or glamor.  Directors, many of them white men, are flanked by camera gear, sit with purpose in the director’s seat, pose with trophies, or frame shots with their palms while the cast and crew look to them for answers. They are heroes, exhibiting courage, outstanding achievements, and noble qualities.

The Oscar-nominated film, The Fablemans, directed by Steven Spielberg about his own childhood, depicts the acclaimed filmmaker’s venture into cinema. A famous story omitted from the film is when he sneaked into the Universal Studios lot.

Young Spielberg posed as an executive, with a suit and empty briefcase, hoping the Universal security guard would not ask to see his papers. His gamble paid off, and director-to-be freely accessed the studio without a pass.

Despite this admirable chutzpah, the director has talked at length about anxiety and the dread of not being able to pull off a story.

In a TV interview, Spielberg, after directing his 27^th film, Lincoln, confessed to being a nervous wreck when filming. He says, “I own my fear. I don’t want to lose it.”

America’s hero-oriented culture approaches fear as something to be mastered, and relatable heroes, although they feel fear, do what is necessary despite fear.

But what if fear is seen, not as a rite of passage to the heroic, but as a precious possession? Instead of the hero’s journey, perhaps stories could reflect the coward’s journey.

A coward is “a person who lacks courage,” in contrast to the hero who is someone defined by courage. Courage requires fear, as Nelson Mandela famously said, making the coward an integral part of the hero’s journey.

The coward and the hero are two sides to the same coin, emphasizing different things. “Hero” is a title only given in hindsight. It’s an omniscient perspective, from outside of the story, a name given to the character by those who know how the story ends—the character defeated the obstacles and reaped the reward.

The coward, conversely, is defined by fear on the threshold of a journey that requires bravery and no promise of return. It’s a human perspective from a character inside the story who faces the unknown and an uncertain end.

For me, directing is a task, rather than a title. The path I have taken is The Coward’s Journey, one in which I identify primarily with fear of the uncharted adventure that lies before me. The coward’s ending is a mystery. I direct because I believe each film is an important task, undertaken with the hope that it gives life meaning.

A hero demands something of the journey, but the journey demands something of the coward. The brave story is made for the coward, who looks at the road ahead and instead of saying “carpe diem” instead says, “courage, dear heart,” as phrased by C.S. Lewis.

Instead of telling my directing students to “be confident” and “believe in themselves,” I teach them to be afraid, and simply do the task at hand.

My sister Catherine, a classical painter who depicts enchantment in ordinary things, once disclosed an insight to me: “the coward does a task without thinking of the results. It is not about ‘being a hero’ or doing a task because it will reap her glory. The coward hopes only that her task has meaning. It’s simply a purpose to be served.”

It is possible to flip that notion and stop believing that fear makes us inadequate. Fear points us to our own unique adventure and beckons us to undertake the journey. In the face of the unknown end, fear allows us to say as Peter Pan did, that “to die will be an awfully big adventure.”

Perhaps the coward, not the hero, is the source of strength needed to face the uncertainty of our age.

The Christ character, played by actor Jonathan Roumie, is framed against a vast sky which takes up most of the frame. It is yet another expression of Christ as light-skinned and dominant, God-in-flesh.

This representation of Christ brings to mind the “Game of Thrones” character of Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, who claims a top-10 spot in most rankings of greatest female characters in television.

While the Hollywood lens has widened to include more women behind and in front of the camera, there is a disturbing phenomenon in film and television: in racially diverse stories, the white woman occupies the space of the white male deity.  Despite women’s gains, this is not really progress for all women.

Many people were appalled recently when Jennifer Lawrence claimed she played the first woman in the lead of an action movie, an uninformed opinion perhaps more embarrassing than malicious.

While Lawrence backtracked on what she meant, she also shared being told that, while everyone can identify with a male lead, boys cannot identify with a female lead.  At the core of “identification” is seeing oneself in the other. As more female characters drive stories, avoiding the pitfalls of deifying whiteness must be at the forefront of our efforts for gender inclusion.

Cut to Daenerys who is a prime example of occupying this deified position through omnipotence, her ability to move the viewer to worship her, and by inhabiting a space at the center of the world.

Daenerys embodies omnipotent whiteness. While she is a woman who suffers at the hands of men, the power of her whiteness becomes clear when she is flanked by her Black female slave, Missandei.

In a telling encounter in Season 3 Episode 3, Daeneryus, who has just purchased Missandei, tells her: “You belong to me now. It is your duty to tell me the truth.”

A bizarre exchange occurs, and Missandei says, “All men must die,” pledging her life to  Daeneryus.

In a feminist moment, Daeneryus returns,“Yes…but we are not men.”

Daeneryus wants Missandei to know she is a slave, yet ultimately, also believe that they are both “women first.” And because they are both women, the audience is asked to forget that Daeneryus owns her.  The pervasive whiteness of this point of view is telling.

At the recent Hollywood Reporter’s annual Women in Entertainment Gala, Charlize Theron received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, for her work—a white woman honored with an award named for a white woman.

Also winning an award at the event was actor and creator Issa Rae, honored with the Equity in Entertainment Award, commenting, “I usually say something about how we don’t often get chances and what a huge difference a chance can make, or I talk about just wanting to actively create space for our stories.”

While it is undeniable there is more diversity and inclusion attempted in Hollywood spaces and content, the pattern of white female characters being visually inscribed as the feminine archetype in contrast to women of color (especially Black women) in popular gender-progressive films and shows is pervasive.

Examples of this include the Game of Thrones spinoff, House of Dragon, Euphoria, Bridgerton, Yellowjackets, Cursed, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Devil in Ohio, Wonder Woman, and The School for Good and Evil.

It is no longer enough for discussions on “representation” to address a white female lead’s whiteness, however; it must address her godhood as much as the white male’s. Films can put BIPOC about her, but make sure she’s worshipped.

This is evident in the “Game of Thrones” Season 3 finale, where cinematic tools engrave Daenerys as a deity on a subconscious level for her Jesus moment. After liberating a city of slaves– all of whom are brown–Daeneryus stands on a high rock, looks down upon them, and begins to preach like Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount, declaring, more or less, that her Kingdom is at hand.

Daenerys is coded as the spiritual “ideal.”  The concept of an “ideal” originally referred to an “archetype,” which contains the Greek word “arkhē” meaning “origin.”  The last shot of the scene shows us this ritual from the sky, in a dragon’s eye view.

In an extreme wide-shot, we see an unbounded brown expanse, with Daenerys centered, a white fixed point. The visual of the sacred center, or “Axis Mundi,” appears in religious paintings.  Also known as “Radial Symmetry,” it arranges all points to illuminate outward from a central fixed point.  Daenerys, within this framework of seeing, is Divine Whiteness itself, the Center in profane chaos.

The deification of Daeneryus has broader, more sinister implications beyond the screen.  Not only is she a cultural icon for the “strong, empowered woman,” she has emerged as a political symbol, inspiring Jessica Chastain’s 2016 viral meme of Hillary Clinton.

In the documentary, Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, which is in theaters this month around the country, director Nina Menkes brilliantly tracks the construct of shot design and point of view in A-List films, demonstrating their rootedness in the objectifying white male gaze.

“All of these techniques, they’re definitely deliberate. We don’t know if they’re conscious or unconscious, but they’re deliberate…Someone made a decision how to shoot that person,” Menkes says.

 These deliberate decisions shape our perceived relationships with others in society, and for white women, this “sacred” whiteness and “profane” non-whiteness results in injustices like “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” and Karens who call the police crying, “Threat!” when a Black man asks her to leash her dog per the rules of omnipotence, as she is entitled to this space.

It is not solving the diversity problem in Hollywood and beyond to replace white male saviors with white women saviors.  We all need to be saved from seeing this trope.