ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ideological underpinnings of three-act screenplay structure, as contained in the transformation imperative of the hero’s journey and its connection to white supremacy and masculinity. The perceived neutrality of structure is interrogated to refute the idea of form without meaning, which contributes to a paradigm of non-relational individualism, aspirational striving, and “mind over matter” at the expense of the body and the natural world. Virtually all screenwriting paradigms are iterations of three-act structure, designed for efficiency and escalation to culminate in transformation, whereupon a character claims their essence in an ultimate climax that demands resolution. Over the course of an aspirational journey, the three-act structure perpetuates invisible whiteness and masculinity through settler-colonial enterprise, and the forcible imposition of will over people and the environment alike. Similarly, the ultimate goal of transformation is the product of the Western “mind-body split” that lofts the rationality and purity of the mind over the emotionality and excess of the body, which enforces a social order of “civilized” whiteness and the potential for transformation over “uncivilized” and untransformable marginalized bodies. Therefore, all characters are subject to a structural whiteness to be made compatible with change.
