Week 4 Lab: Ted Storytelling

Before watching The Danger of a Single Story, I recognized the name. After watching it for about a minute I remembered it from last semester. We had watched the video together in my Native American Music class last semester. I was fascinated by the stories that she told about her time in Nigeria and how the stories that she told were shaped by the stories she read. The more that I think about this phenomenon, the more it makes sense. It can be applied to this class and story telling out of this class because you will naturally employ elements of writing that you have seen before in the stories you have read. Because of this, the stories that you read shape how you tell your own stories. As the presenter started to read different literature, she was able to expand her view of what a story could include and what techniques or ideas that could be used. Reading many different stories from different sources can help you in avoiding a singular belief in how a story should be conveyed. 

Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences: Parasocial Relationships was really interesting. The Harry Potter hook was fascinating and puts into perspective how influential those books are and how influential fiction is. Parasocial relationships are particularly cool because they wouldn't be possibly without the advent of mass media and shows how technology is also shaping our psychology. I can see this interaction with fictional characters is real thing that has affected me when a character that I really enjoyed is killed off or the TV show ends after years of seasons. This end of the character would affect me and others as we don't get to see them anymore. I think that these relationships are very powerful as we can escape our world and go into theirs or find comfort in our fictional relationships. Dr. Barnes discusses fictional grief as I did and looked into the physical impact on people due to this grief. Seeing that people don't care about the real person as much as the fictional one was interesting but also very believable. 

If you can read many different types of storytelling, you can incorporate different elements and give an accurate story. With this accurate story, powerful characters can be created and those characters can create a parasocial relationship with the reader. Then hopefully these characters can have a positive real world effect.

Working in the Lab

Pixabay