Storytelling

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling lately. Now this (the fact of my thinking about it) could be directly related to the fact that I’m taking a few days off work, and whenever I have a chance to do that, I immerse myself in stories… Books, TV shows, movies… the like. Anyway, this line of thought came when I was watching Cold Case from this past Sunday.

You see, early on they showed the basic setup of the cold case in question, abandoned body presumed a suicide; all about gender identity in the rather repressive environment of the early ’60s. Now, regardless of my thoughts about that particular theme (I think it’s been rather overplayed in the past few decades, no doubt due to the fact that the Boomer generation was in its formative years during that time and it impressed itself upon their collective imaginations… and them being the force that they are in our society, the rest of us get to hear a lot about it… but that’s the digression I was trying to avoid taking), they showed a clue early on that played out the rest of the episode for me rather predictably. Of course, it took the on-screen detectives more than half of the allotted hour to pick up the thread from that particular clue, as they rabbit-trailed along several story-worthy but inconsequential other lines of thought.

However, what occurred to me is that this has been happening to me rather often lately. I’ve got an affinity for the crime-solving shows, and watch almost all of them–and have done so, since they were first aired–and I guess you pick up a lot along the way. Unless they throw some complete red herring at you (which isn’t considered good mystery storytelling), it all plays out pretty similarly, especially within each show. This is probably not so much because I’m an efficient detective at this point, as that I’ve picked up enough to predict how the writers of each of these shows are likely to point to their eventual conclusions.

It’s a little like getting into a new class and floundering around for a while, grade-wise, until you figure out what it is that the professor wants from you–and write to him from then on. I always used to have to do this; I can remember a few particularly hard cases who were a little difficult to figure out, but I always got it. And once you write to their preconceptions, sounding as though you’re coming from an assumption base that corresponds with theirs, and as though you draw conclusions through the same process that they do, they think you’re brilliant. (Because anyone who thinks the way that they do must, necessarily, be brilliant.) I’m sure I would not be exempt from this phenomenon–if I were grading papers written from all sorts of angles, I’m sure I’d naturally gravitate to the ones that seemed familiar to me. But it is more of a game than, perhaps, real change that is occurring. (By they way, is this a common phenomenon? Other people who did well at school, did you end up writing for the audience who’d be grading it, intentionally?)

Anyway, the point being, we like stories (or papers, in school) that have some common cohesiveness and flow. This means that when an author–or scriptwriter–is particularly prolific, it gets more predictable over time to tell where they’re going to take a story. Within a genre, the bounds on where you’re “allowed” to take the story grow even tighter, which is why several of the genres I’ve read really do end up seeming like the same story told over and over, with a few cosmetic details altered. When someone breaks from the expected formula, it creates a sense of cognitive dissonance for the reader (viewer), a sense that the story went somehow “wrong”. (I used to hate, on principle, all unhappy endings, for instance, and refused to read books when they were heading in that direction. I still can’t finish books where the main character, through a combination of idiocy and recklessness, throws his or her life and success away pursuing some obviously destructive path of behavior like gambling or pyramid schemes, etc.)

But another key point, I think, is that all of us tend to think of ourselves as the protagonists in a story. Which story varies from person to person, and plenty of people would choose the dark and misunderstood rebel while plenty of others the shining paladin who battles for good (to name a couple rather obvious archetypes). In some sense, I think, figuring out exactly what character a person sees himself or herself as being, in what type of story, gives you a very good handle on who that person is, what decisions they’re likely to make, and why they’re doing it all. I think this is why we place such importance on the idea of “narratives” in philosophical circles…

Anyway, I’ve noticed that when you change up the culture, the storytelling changes. The central myths aren’t familiar, and characters react in seemingly unpredictable, even “wrong” ways. I’ve recently watched a series of Asian films, both from the Far East and some Bollywood type pictures. Personally, I’ve enjoyed the unfamiliar in them. Some of the storytelling is far too over the top, at times, and then at other times a character will seemingly fly off the handle for no reason at all. I like the puzzle-solving aspect that goes into this–what was the provoking action? Why was it such a big deal? Why was something else that (in Western circles) should have been a big deal completely dismissed and unnoticed?

It seems to me that if we were to pay more attention to the storytelling that goes on in other cultures and other societies–maybe even within other subcultures existing under our own cultural umbrella–we might have a better handle on what makes those weird people act–and think–the way that they do. If you know what a person from that country considers an act of heroism versus one of cowardice, and play that against our own notions of the same, you can see very clearly where our value set diverges. Really, if you could get a full understanding of the set of cultural myths–stories–that shape people in a specific culture, you’d be very close to understanding them altogether. But that takes time, and effort, and research. (And a lot of reading.)

Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this… it’s just thoughts that I’ve been having as I immerse myself in stories. I think this may play into my language and culture learning strategies, if/when I get the chance to follow that particular ambition.

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Tags: motivations, philosophy, preconceptions, stories, storytelling, worldviews, writers, Writing

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