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Media narratives as shared dreams and inspirations
We often think of media consumption as a mundane and meaningless experience. I say it's more than that. I say it's nothing less poetic than humanity collectively processing dreams, nightmares and inspirations.
"Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the annunciation of a truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?"
Spoken by the character "V" in the film V for Vendetta
Remember, Remember the Fifth of November
On November 5, 1605, a very real man named Guy Fawkes staged a protest, attempting to bomb the British Parliament. In the 1980s, writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd based a fantasy story on that history. In the story, a masked avenger plots to overthrow the English government. In 2006, the story was retold in film. Since then, those who cherished or sought to emulate the legend and its compelling dark hero have donned the mask as a symbolic gesture.
The Inspiration of Story and Symbol
The Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta has sold hundreds of thousands of copies every year since the film's release and has been used in protest against Scientology and now in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement [1]. The V mask has become a cultural touchstone, recognized widely to signify populist revolt against governmental and corporate tyranny and oppression.
The Fact of Fiction
How exactly do fictional stories and symbols inspire real life action, belief and emotion? Consider how we think of watching TV or a movie as the most mundane and meaningless of human activities. But are they so meaningless? If they were, why would we spend most of our waking hours watching mostly fictional stories? I think when we see someone passively staring at a screen "just watching TV" we forget why we're addicted and compelled by stories.
V for Vendetta is just a movie. Or is it? When you watch a compelling narrative, you're taken away into that world, becoming part of it. You imagine "what if" this happened to me. You experience the emotions and understand the events that unfold along with the characters. My colleague Melanie Green calls this experience "transportation into narrative worlds." [2] In other words, watching a film or show means experiencing the story from within. With a medium like film, the intensity of the drama is increased by factors like music, cinematography and special effects. And lest we not underestimate the power of good writing, the media stories we enjoy have writers who hone their scripts, making the dialogue much more powerful than ordinary people can usually muster in our daily lives (and let's admit, it's not a fair fight). But the power of great writing drives home the meaning and power of a media story.
Collective Musings
Compelling narratives and characters help us muse collectively. Those who create stories understand the human need for story, and specifically for universal elements like the story arc, the mythic hero and the hero's journey. As my colleagues Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Jason Ohler put it: "In the history of human experience, one of our most pervasive and enduring reference points is our need for story. Stories help us to understand ourselves in terms of who we are, what we need, and why we behave the way we do. The more those narratives stretch across cultures and throughout the ages, the more they become touchstones of the human experience." [3]
In a story like V for Vendetta, history and story are interwoven. This further blurs the boundary between fantasy and reality. The juxtaposition intensifies our experience of the story as meaningful and applicable to our lives. If you doubt this for a moment, look at the Occupy movement and see how the idea of V helped symbolize and animate real political rebellion.
Shared Metaphor
Speaking of media stories, one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (Darmok), spoke of a race called the Tamarians who communicated only through story [4]. The Tamarian people understood their current experience only as it related metaphorically to their shared cultural experience. They repeatedly referred to "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," which the crew of the enterprise (and the audience) later came to understand as a reference to warriors in an epic battle.
I think that like the Tamarians, we understand our experience and our future choices in light of our shared stories. If we think that "there is something terribly wrong with this country" we may decide the way to fix it is to do it just like V in V for Vendetta -- embracing anarchy with the same bravery and audacity.
And what else would you expect us to do? We're social creatures and we're made that way. When we watch other people act, think and feel, we experience some version of what they are going through and we learn from it. And the way we do this in our current world is largely through media - our most pervasive source of shared stories.
Like the Tamarians, we have our own variations of "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra." For example, would you understand if your lover promised to kiss you like "Westley and Buttercup at sunrise" or like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach (in From Here to Eternity)?
When we learn an idea or an ideal through story, it changes how we think, feel and act on that same subject. So, in that spirit, I'll leave you with a kiss. And since the Lancaster/Kerr version would be a bit messy, let's just go with Westley and Buttercup.
References
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta#Cultural_impact
[2] Green, M. C., & Dill, K. E. (in press). Engaging with stories and characters: Learning, persuasion and transportation into narrative worlds. In K. E. Dill (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
[3] Isbouts, J.-P., & Ohler, J. (this volume). Storytelling and Media: Narrative Models from Aristotle to Augmented Reality. In K. E. Dill (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
