Tall Tales
“Out of feeling comes structure, and out of structure communication.” Yorke.
If telling stories is a way to seek control then it would make sense that people write more when they are searching for meaning and control. The more torn a country becomes the more the authors writing about politics are read, the more struggle you have growing up the more you can relate to stories of struggle and overcoming odds. Everyone loves an underdog story, to the point that there’s even a film called ‘Underdog’ and we as viewers all go into that film knowing that the underdogs will win. They have to because that’s the troupe, that’s the point.
Do we tell each other stories that just backs up what we already think, is our choice of tale creating further bias?
A problem with how often we tell stories is narrative fallacy, there is even a story about telling stories and, much like ‘The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf,’ the biggest problem journalists and media outlets who are meant to be reporting facts seem to have, is debating what the truth actually is. Throughout our history we’ve made up so many stories that we no longer have any complete truths “All contain truths peculiar to the knowledge available to their authors”
Truth is a relative concept and much like the other stories we tell each other, can be told from many different points of view. Which is what makes film making so fabulous of course. A good story can reinforce your opinion, a great story can change your opinion.
It’s where we get the Western tale of political parties from, I can see a modern day Romeo and Juliet as being opposing Prime Ministers strongly believing in their party and yet finding some solace and impartiality between them and eventually bringing a broken Britain back together.
I find that often I write as therapy. I always have. When I was an angst ridden teen I wrote miserable poems, when I had a bad break up I’d listen to songs, the words resonating with me. The best way I know to deal with difficult situations is to think of my favourite TV character and what they would do. A ‘WWJD’ for the modern age. I’ve always found that writing down my thoughts gave them order and helped me organise them in a way that made sense.
T.S Elliot spoke about ‘order from chaos’ and I always felt as a child that the word around me didn’t make sense, or I didn’t fit in it. I found solace in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to me it was a revolutionary concept on TV, a young woman who kicked ass and kept going no matter how many battles she faced and no matter how mean the monsters. When professors discuss the dramatization of knowledge assimilation, I think of Buffy. It brought together the life of a teenage girl with the horror of being a teenage girl!
I’ve shown people episodes I watched as an eight year old and they’ve said it’s quite scary for a child, but I found it was exactly on my level. People underestimate children, they have a huge capacity for understanding and acceptance, more so than some jaded adults.
Pretending the world isn’t cruel can be more damaging for children. This could be why homeschooled and private schooled children find it so hard to fit back into state schools. Lots of stories about rich people becoming poor and realising there are more important things than money.
