(no subject)
Sep. 8th, 2006 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutAnd yet, narrative still has its own almost irrestistable momentum.
Narrative will out. Narrative still triumphs in the end.
"Where were you on 9/11? How did it change you?" the ads ask.
What if there's no story there? What if you were essentially unchanged? No
matter. Worse: impossible. The necessity of narrative warps the
experience. You'll dig up an anecdote, a moment, something. Something to
weave into the story. The story's the thing.
(decryptifying N.B.: This isn't about 9/11, this is about the storytelling
impulse, the drive to give everything a place in an overarching, um, well,
narrative. Despite what I just said about spectacle. Maybe narrative and
spectacle are more of a pushme-pullyou? Or, maybe, people are now telling
their own stories to themselves rather than relying on other people to
tell it for them -- and they are using spectacle to fuel those stories.
Or, anyway.)
Narrative will out. Narrative still triumphs in the end.
"Where were you on 9/11? How did it change you?" the ads ask.
What if there's no story there? What if you were essentially unchanged? No
matter. Worse: impossible. The necessity of narrative warps the
experience. You'll dig up an anecdote, a moment, something. Something to
weave into the story. The story's the thing.
(decryptifying N.B.: This isn't about 9/11, this is about the storytelling
impulse, the drive to give everything a place in an overarching, um, well,
narrative. Despite what I just said about spectacle. Maybe narrative and
spectacle are more of a pushme-pullyou? Or, maybe, people are now telling
their own stories to themselves rather than relying on other people to
tell it for them -- and they are using spectacle to fuel those stories.
Or, anyway.)
