Tales We Live By: How Storytelling Shapes Humanity
What stories are we being told? Whose stories are we listening to? Which ones are we believing?
Stories are everywhere. Stories are in our conversations, in the way someone relays the drama happening in their workplace; they are in our movies, TV shows, and, of course, our books. Stories are told by our news channels, history textbooks, and our government. Yes, some are more factual than others, but they are stories nonetheless.
What if I told you stories aren’t just stories, but the literal script our society is based on? The stories we consume determine our values, beliefs, and ideas. They create the society we live in.
From the minute we are born, we are told stories. It all begins with picture books and overhearing conversations between our parents. Later, we move on to children’s adventure books, which morph into history textbooks and classic literature in English class.
When it comes to which stories become the script for our society, it is determined by accessibility. Our stories are told through a variety of different mediums, some requiring more time, money, and energy than others. Daily conversation and social media are on the lowest end—they require little to no barrier to entry—while films and books are on the higher end, often requiring a substantial amount of time, money, and energy to be created and consumed.
While films and TV shows can be expensive to make, they are relatively cheap to consume and require a feasible amount of time and energy to consume. Books, on the other hand, are cheaper to create, but require much more time and energy to consume—time and energy that the typical 9-5 worker doesn’t want to expend. Not to mention the sufficient level of literacy and longer attention span that books require. This, in turn, shapes our society more than we realize. Books are where our power lies, but I’ll get more into that later.
Accessibility of our stories is something I’ve thought off and on about over the years, but it wasn’t until I was reading a chapter of Moving Pictures for my film class that I was forced to confront this topic on a deeper level.
At the beginning of the chapter, Russell Leigh Sharman begins by reminding us that cinema is an expensive medium, which requires it to “appeal to the masses” in order to survive. Because of this, “it tends to avoid offending our collective sensibilities, to make us feel better about who we already think we are”.
Also, due to the costliness of this medium, up until very recently, only a certain demographic has had access to filmmaking. This demographic being “mostly white, and mostly men”. This presents us a dilemma because “when the same kind of people with the same kind of experiences tend to have the most consistent access to the medium, we tend to get the same kinds of stories, reproducing the same, often unexamined, norms, values and ideas."
In other words, when similar people, with similar experiences, are the ones whose stories we are consuming, then we are consuming the same stories over and over again, therefore reenforcing the same ideologies we have lived by for centuries. We continue the cycle.
The scary truth is, if we’re only consuming stories by white men, we are creating a world that only benefits white men.
So, how do we break this cycle?
By reading. Books, while they often require more time and energy to consume compared to other media such as movies, are more accessible to the creators themselves—our beloved writers and authors. This lower barrier to entry allows for a greater diversity of stories.
Books are where our freedom lies. Freedom of speech. Freedom of expression. The freedom to imagine a grander, kinder world for ourselves. This is especially true for books independently published. The fewer gates writers have to pass through, the better.
Literature, in general, has always been our point of power. The power of the people. Literacy is a superpower. We can see it written all over history—those who could read and write were the ones who had the most power in shaping society. When we forget this, we give up our power.
Diversity, empathy, change. By reading books written by all sorts of authors with all sorts of backgrounds, from all around the world, that is where we begin.
While someone may not have the financial means, or even be allowed at all, to create a film in some places, they can certainly write. And through their writing, we can read their stories and expand our own worldviews.
Knowledge and empathy are where we reclaim our power. Something I've realized lately is that often the things we are made to believe are frivolous and silly are actually the most important. Storytelling, imagination, unconditional love—all often thought to be childish luxuries, are actually where our true power lies.
We can’t forget that they want us to be workers, not creators. Workers put their heads down and make them more money. Creators exist for the people, for the Earth. We make the world a better place. And the best news of all: we are all creators at our core, so even if you don’t consider yourself an “artist” or a creative person, you’re still a creator. It is innate.
Truly, I could go on and on about the power of our imagination. But just take a moment to reflect on how nearly everything around us was first imagined. The chairs we sit on, the cars we drive, our refrigerators, our smartphones—they all began as a thought. A thought that materialized into physical reality through action. Pure magic.
This is where the power of storytelling comes into play. Storytelling and imagination create the concoction that we call reality. So, I’ll ask again: What stories are we being told? Whose stories are we listening to? Which ones are we believing?
What world do we want to live in?
The stories we tell matter. Stories, they aren’t just a recollection of the past; they’re also a testament to what we expect, and will accept, in the future.
References:
All quotes are in reference to my film textbook, cited below.
Sharman, Russell Leigh. Moving Pictures. University of Arkansas, CC BY-NC-SA.
This was originally published on my blog.