The Storytelling Animal Chapter 7

I have always held a strict belief that storytelling is powerful. Gotschall’s believes in the power of storytelling to an extent that I had not before thought much about. He writes that one episode of television can greatly impact the way people view an issue such as race. This is a big claim, but it does make sense. In one section, he questions what people would know about the police without procedural shows like CSI. Humans derive a lot of information from television, so it is plausible that many of the views we have are related to the media we have engaged in.

I take pride in my ability to critically analyze the media I engage in. I do not want to blindly watch and be impacted without knowing that I am being changed. When a show questions my morals, I tend to stop watching it. However, if I really enjoy the show, I might keep watching and try to look past the moral dilemma. One example of a show I stopped watching is Glee. There is an episode in which the character Rachel is thinking about having sex with her boyfriend. She is talking to the other girls for advice. The cheerleaders, who up until this point have been established as the less moral characters, take the position that Rachel should wait to have sex. Meanwhile, Tina, who up until this point has been portrayed as the good girl, tells Rachel that she had sex with her own boyfriend and it was a positive experience. I was amazed at the message this show was sending and chose to discontinue my viewership.

Art is a form of expression and a good artist is generally trying to portray a message. I had never thought about the similarities of using at to portray a message and propaganda before, but there are similarities. However, propaganda tends to bend the truth more than expressive art. Propaganda claims to be true, but artists generally do not claim to be telling truth. They simply put their ideas into the world. An author of fiction does not try to pass his book off as truth, but they will promote the moral ideals portrayed in their work. Propaganda is more assertive and claims to be a truth that must be followed.