I am thinking about story–capital S–and what a profound part of the human experience it is. At a meeting of strangers I attended this week, the connections broke open when we started telling one another our stories: the woman who is the hand therapist, the man who is a melanoma survivor, the woman who–as near as I can tell–has no job except serving her community.
Contrast this with primetime television. It is sweeps week, I presume, based on the degree of gore on the cop shows and the whipsawing of plotlines in everything else. Oh, and the improbable deaths of characters belonging to actors who have gotten a better contract elsewhere. Story as dictated by corporate profits and Nielsen ratings.
Contrast this with literature–or Literature–which is handcrafted from the heart, defiantly independent of the market (alas) but answerable mainly to the soul.
So I wonder about the future of Story. What happens when successive generations of young people are retaught the nature of story as constructed for corporate profit rather than the profit of the soul?
I would just like to say that everything affects the future of that area. For example, Blues -> Rock and Roll -> Rap. As this we see this progression, each tangent takes us farther away from the original. I think that this truly relates to literature. As we started out with classical works like Oedipus and other Sophocles works, and have worked our way up to Harry Potter and the like, i can’t help but wonder where we shall end up, and how far from the original we will have traveled.
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I am thinking about story–capital S–and what a profound part of the human experience it is. At a meeting of strangers I attended this week, the connections broke open when we started telling one another our stories: the woman who is the hand therapist, the man who is a melanoma survivor, the woman who–as near as I can tell–has no job except serving her community.
Contrast this with primetime television. It is sweeps week, I presume, based on the degree of gore on the cop shows and the whipsawing of plotlines in everything else. Oh, and the improbable deaths of characters belonging to actors who have gotten a better contract elsewhere. Story as dictated by corporate profits and Nielsen ratings.
Contrast this with literature–or Literature–which is handcrafted from the heart, defiantly independent of the market (alas) but answerable mainly to the soul.
So I wonder about the future of Story. What happens when successive generations of young people are retaught the nature of story as constructed for corporate profit rather than the profit of the soul?
We may be about to find out.
iBeeste - May 15, 2009 at 9:15 am |
I would just like to say that everything affects the future of that area. For example, Blues -> Rock and Roll -> Rap. As this we see this progression, each tangent takes us farther away from the original. I think that this truly relates to literature. As we started out with classical works like Oedipus and other Sophocles works, and have worked our way up to Harry Potter and the like, i can’t help but wonder where we shall end up, and how far from the original we will have traveled.
Mariah McGarvey - October 5, 2009 at 2:18 pm |