Story Lab, Week 6
For the story laboratory this week, I decided to watch watch two TED talks about stories and storytelling.
1. The Danger of a Single Story. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie from Nigeria started reading and writing at a very young age. She realized that the stories that she read and wrote were about white people who played in snow, spoke of weather, and drank ginger beer. As a child in Nigeria, she did had not ever been exposed to snow, the people there did not talk about the weather, and she had no idea what ginger beer was, but because these were what appeared in the stories she read, these were what appeared in the stories she wrote. She says that this made her realized that as children, we are so impressionable to the stories we are exposed to. She actually believed that books were supposed to be about foreigners and things she could not relate to, until she discovered African literature. It was then that she started to write about things she recognized, and while she loved the books she had read before, she was grateful to have come to the realization that books could be about people like her, with kinky hair and chocolate brown skin.
She uses this "single story" analogy to relate it towards a house boy she had when she was younger, where she only viewed them as poor and was shocked to realize that there was more to them. She also used this to relate to her roommate who viewed her as a single story, African, and was surprised she listened to modern music as well as African music.
2. Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences: Parasocial Relationships. Jennifer Barnes, a psychology professor (at the University of Oklahoma!! Wow!!) and fiction writer talks about the amount of time people spend watching and/or reading fictional stories and asks two questions: Why do we spend so much time, money, and emotion on something we know is fake? and What effects does this engagement have on us in the real world? She then flips these questions into: Why do we care so much about fictional characters? and What effects do the relationships we form with these characters have on us? The relationship that we have with fictional characters is called parasocial relationships, but we also form these parasocial relationships with real-life people such as celebrities or politicians.
1. The Danger of a Single Story. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie from Nigeria started reading and writing at a very young age. She realized that the stories that she read and wrote were about white people who played in snow, spoke of weather, and drank ginger beer. As a child in Nigeria, she did had not ever been exposed to snow, the people there did not talk about the weather, and she had no idea what ginger beer was, but because these were what appeared in the stories she read, these were what appeared in the stories she wrote. She says that this made her realized that as children, we are so impressionable to the stories we are exposed to. She actually believed that books were supposed to be about foreigners and things she could not relate to, until she discovered African literature. It was then that she started to write about things she recognized, and while she loved the books she had read before, she was grateful to have come to the realization that books could be about people like her, with kinky hair and chocolate brown skin.
She uses this "single story" analogy to relate it towards a house boy she had when she was younger, where she only viewed them as poor and was shocked to realize that there was more to them. She also used this to relate to her roommate who viewed her as a single story, African, and was surprised she listened to modern music as well as African music.
2. Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences: Parasocial Relationships. Jennifer Barnes, a psychology professor (at the University of Oklahoma!! Wow!!) and fiction writer talks about the amount of time people spend watching and/or reading fictional stories and asks two questions: Why do we spend so much time, money, and emotion on something we know is fake? and What effects does this engagement have on us in the real world? She then flips these questions into: Why do we care so much about fictional characters? and What effects do the relationships we form with these characters have on us? The relationship that we have with fictional characters is called parasocial relationships, but we also form these parasocial relationships with real-life people such as celebrities or politicians.
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| Book. Source: Pexels. |
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