Story Lab: Ted Talks on Storytelling

I took the opportunity to work on a story lab this week and more specifically, I watched the videos that discussed stories and storytelling. The two videos that were provided were incredibly interesting and offered points of view that I had not ever thought about. They discussed conceptions I had experienced and brought up excellent reasons as to why I had them.

The Danger of a Single Story

• this Ted talk was presented by Chimamanda Adichie, a novelist from Nigeria. She discussed the issue of telling, or hearing, a single story. 
• The single story phenomena refers to when we are only presented with one piece of information about an individual or group of people and we use that small bit of knowledge to generalize the group
• Adichie talked about how when she was growing up, one of the people that worked in their home was a young man. All her mother ever told her about him was that his family was very poor, and if she ever refused to finish her dinner she would say something about how much someone like the man's family would appreciate that food. Consequently, she developed the perception that this man and his family had nothing and could make nothing.
• One day her family visited the man's and they showed her a beautiful, intricately woven basket that the man's brother had created.
• This opened a new door in her mind, for she had previously only believed that if you were destitute you could not create or be creative and solely lived for survival.
• This video talked about how powerful a single story could be and  the importance of telling multiple stories
• A story can show how good or bad a people can be so it is important to tell many stories so we can develop a well-rounded perception of the subject of the story

Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences

• This talk brings up two questions: Why does anyone spend so much time reading fiction, and what effect does this have on us?
• Specifically, this video delves into a subset of these questions and discusses the relationships people form with these fictional characters.
• Why do we care so much about fictional characters and what effects do the relationships we form with them have on us?
• Parasocial relationships are relationships you form with someone you don't know by consuming media about that person.
• We know that fictional characters are fictional, but we alief that they're real.
• Alief - a gut-level belief-like attitude that may contradict an explicitly held belief
• We care so much about fictional characters because we alief that we truly know them, even though we believe and realistically know that they don't exist
• as a side note, this video used Harry Potter as an example frequently and that really hit home for me since it was my favorite childhood memory

The Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter.

Bibliography

The Danger of a Single Story --> video

Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences --> video

Image Information: Deathly Hallows found on deviantart

Reading Notes: Myths and Legends of the Great Plains (Part B)

Of the stories in Part B, I much preferred the ones about ghosts and spirits. Even though I felt like the other stories weren't as entertaining, I found it interesting that the rabbit was the trickster character for the Native Americans. Perhaps that is why some tribes, like the Choctaw,  hold rabbit hunting events and pieces of the animal in high regard.

The Man Who Shot a Ghost

• a man traveled alone through the woods and killed several rabbits in the forrest
• perhaps the amount of game he collected attracted the spirits near by
• the ghosts can physically interact with humans, as a ghost comes by and kicks the man in the back while he is hiding
• before the ghost escapes, the man fires a shot through his leg
• the man hears the ghost mention to another spirit that he had been shot in the head even though the man clearly shot him in the leg
• the next day the man walked over to where he last heard the ghosts speak and found that one of the graves was disturbed and that the bone that was visible showed there was a wound to the skull
• many ghost stories stem from someone trying to disturb the resting place of a deceased individual
• tribes take burial sites very seriously and believe that the spirits of those who have passed away still may linger there so it is best not to disturb anything lest you be haunted

The Indian Who Wrestled With a Ghost

• a man goes on the warpath and must stay in the woods overnight
• he hears the sound of a woman wailing for her son but pretends to be asleep
• a woman walks into the light of his fire and picks up his foot and drops it repeatedly to determine if he is dead
• she almost cuts it, but the man springs up from his spot and shoots her and she runs off into the night
• once the light of day arrived, he released he had camped near a burial scaffold from long ago
• even female spirits are dangerous
• once again the man sleeps on burial ground teeming with spirits
• the next night a stranger appears and requests pipe tobacco
• stranger turns out to be a skeleton and challenges the man to a duel
• perhaps this symbolizes the reaper
• if the man wins then he will conquer his foes and take a prize of horses back home
• the closer the skeleton is to the light of the fire, the weaker he becomes
• he grows stronger the darker it is

Defeating the skeleton at the fire.

Bibliography

Great Plains Unit

Image Information: found on pixabay

Reading Notes: Myths and Legends of the Great Plains (Part A)

From reading these stories it became very clear that the Native Americans were a very spiritual group of people. They were a people who were deeply connected to everything in nature, from the animals to the weather. They believed that everything had a purpose, and that any act of nature was an indication of the will of greater beings. Many tribes also believed that gods and spirits played a very active role in their lives, influencing many day to day activities and seasonal rituals.

Arapaho Ghost Dance from around 1900.

Tattooed Ghosts

• Once a man dies he becomes a spirit that must travel the earth to reach his final destination known as Many Lodges
• while living, a person must tattoo their forehead or wrists so that the spiritual judge will allow them to pass on to Many Lodges
• if no tattoos are present, they are sent back down to earth out of the sky to walk the world forever.
• smoke of the cedar is sacred and will ward away spirits
• if a ghost calls to someone living and they answer, they will die soon after

Forked Roads

• The night stars light up the earth for spirits
• spirits are in the sky walking among the stars, the milky way acts as a road
• this story contains a list of actions that will prevent a spirit from entering the land of good spirits

The Eagle's Revenge

• An Eagle is a highly revered animal in native american culture
• one day a hunter killed an eagle for feasting on a deer he had slain
• that night a stranger appeared at their pow-wow and danced
• every-time he told a story, at the end of a song, a member of the tribe would die
• the spirit of the eagle's brother took human form and enacted revenge on the tribe for the death of his brother
• think about using animal-human transformations in a story

The Ghost's Resentment

• native tribes hold their deceased in high regard
• a group of men go to steal some cloth from a death lodge so they could make clothes from it
• a young man paints himself as a ghost and goes to the lodge ahead of them to scare them away
• a potential story could be to have all the men go one night and be scared by the young man, but then they go a second night
• the second night they are met by a real ghost, and suffer some sort of fate

Bibliography

Great Plains Unit

Image Information: Ghost Dance on wikimedia.