Learning from masters in other fields: What a concept! 16

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1. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 11:33 am
   09 Aug 2007

   Actually, the Left also has villains and a story.....the upper classes/bourgeoisie/corporations/elites are stealing/explointing/oppressing the public/citizens/masses, and we must take away their power.  And if you look in ridiculous places, like Disney's movie Bug's Life, you will see this played out.  At the risk of pushing my luck, in Bug's Life the grasshoppers are making the ants give them about half of their labor output, for no other reason than they will beat up and kill and terrify the ants if they don't.  Warning: Ending revealed in next sentence!
   At the end of the movie, the hero figures out that, in his words "we don't need you, you need us!", and the ants rise up to overthrow their overelords.  All from the Disney Liberation Front.

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2. 

   JMG Posted 11:44 am
   09 Aug 2007

   DLFWhich is pretty hysterical if you've read anything about the Disney empire and how it treats its serfs (I mean, employees).
   
   Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

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3. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 12:11 pm
   09 Aug 2007

   Disney knows their audience......is being kicked around at work all day.  But there's also Happy Feet, about penguins dying from overfishing, Over the Hedge, about the absurdity of suburbia (can you guess I have small children?)
   but the most relevant genre, it seems to me, is the horror flick, or monster flick.  It's just like global warming/peak oil/etc.: an individual/group of people find out that there is a threat, nobody believes it for the first half of the movie, then people finally believe the heroes, and the rest of the movie is about defeating the monsters.  Except we are all in the first part of the movie, and instead of a way cool monster, there is the banality of unconscious economic growth.

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4. 

   Peter Madden Posted 9:29 pm
   09 Aug 2007

   storiesJMG - I agree that we need to get much better at telling stories and painting pictures. We greens too often come across as having a managerial answer to every problem. All too often, all I hear is dry technocratic solutions to recondite problems. The public are bombarded with percentages, facts and figures. So, enough about carbon quotas, contraction and convergence and cross-compliance. Instead, we should try to give people some flesh and blood stories, some passion, some real examples.
   I can't say I've mastered this yet, but three resources that I've found very  useful are:
   Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots. A long read, so dip in or read the reviews. He argues that there are basic archetypal stories - rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; the hero as monster; rebirth and so on - which fulfil psychological needs and which form the basis of much of our literature, films etc.
   Steve Denning's stuff on storytelling in organisations or see a related UK site  
   
   http://www.storytellinginorganisations.org.uk/
   And the work of Chris Rose, who used to be Director of Campaigns at Greenpeace UK and now advises on communication and campaigning. He stresses the need to tell stories of good and evil, with heroes and villains. He has a website http://www.campaignstrategy.org/ which is full of good tips.
   
   

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5. 

   ac5p Posted 12:27 am
   10 Aug 2007

   An Assault on ReasonGore goes into this some in his book.
   He argues that the emotion-heavy soft touch campaign commercials are able to gain support from voters based on appeals outside of reason.  The goal is not to emulate these commercials, but to have the dialog (needs to be two way) between candidates/issues and the public to be carried out in a different medium.  He argues that the newspapers worked better because it was in print and people could write back.  Radio was not so good.  TV is horrible.  But the internet, and blogs, in particular, are a big step in the right direction.

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6. 

   David Roberts Posted 2:40 am
   10 Aug 2007

   This blog ...... is filled with people who agree on the need to tell stories rather than offering white paper policy proposals ... but who nonetheless offer virtually nothing but white paper policy proposals. And yes, I count myself among the guilty.
   Not sure what to do about it.
   
   grist.org

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7. 

   JMG Posted 2:56 am
   10 Aug 2007

   This blog ...obviously doesn't lend itself to a narrative format, at least as presently organized (unless you were to consider one of those joint science-fiction novels where each author writes a chapter and sends it to the next one).  No reason that it should necessarily--not every format works for the device of telling stories.
   But Grist could certainly run a pro-environment story contest, providing space for short-short stories (under 1000 words), short stories of up to X000 words, and longer works (short novels).  Provide the server space, arrange for some of the many gifted Seattle-based authors to make the picks, give away some prized (how about some BIKES and electric scooters this time, not damn hybrid SUVs).
   
   Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

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8. 

   trock Posted 3:13 am
   10 Aug 2007

   Al Gore at the March? senate hearingOne of the Senators that was against Gore held up a picture of a girl who looked cold and the Senator asked Gore if he was going to take away the fossil fuels so this girl would stay cold.   Al Gore really didn't say much to that.   I would have thought he could have come back with, "must be in G. Bushs economy" or "with a program to insulate houses, we wouldn't need to use and run out of all those Fossil Fuels" or something like that.

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9. 

   David Roberts Posted 3:20 am
   10 Aug 2007

   JMG,I don't think "telling stories," in the sense we're discussing here means literally telling stories, i.e., writing fiction.
   It just means fitting political reality into a coherent narrative with a recognizable arc and recognizable characters. For instance, the Bush administration sold the Iraq war by telling a story: a bad man was amassing weapons, getting ready to share them with our enemies, but by acting quickly we could defeat him and replace his empire of evil with a democracy of freedom.
   It was nonsense, of course, but the point is, it was a compelling story. It's something that resonates with everyone, even people with no understanding whatsoever of the empirical details or policy implications.
   We ought to be able to tell a compelling story about how humanity can free itself from dumb, brute force industry and learn to live smarter, cleaner, more pleasant lives, lives that enrich rather than depleting the earth's web of life.
   Obviously I suck at this stuff, but somebody needs to do it.
   
   grist.org

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10. 

    JMG Posted 3:25 am
    10 Aug 2007

    Getting to Carnegie Hall"Hey, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?"
    "Practice, practice, practice."
    DR, I get the difference between telling stories and creating compelling meta-narratives.  But perhaps rather than throwing up your hands and saying "somebody really oughta" you could use the platform to provide people with opportunities to practice the arts.  Storytellers are made, not born.
    
    Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

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11. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 3:35 am
    10 Aug 2007

    er...can I plug here?My first post tried to paint a picture of the happy ending.  Harvey Wasserman tried to do something similar with "Solartopia".  We need happy endings, and I think there is plenty of material available, although I suppose they don't have to be as radical as mine...I guess.

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12. 

    sunflower Posted 4:01 am
    10 Aug 2007

    The story is about coalThe ending is unknown.
    It could be green oxygen supporting all life or purple hydrogen sulfide suffocating all life.

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13. 

    GreenMom Posted 4:29 am
    10 Aug 2007

    The story has two halves
    
    The first half is coal and oil, and the narrative is along the lines of The Lorax (beautiful abundance, then overconsumption, then devastation).  Maybe it features endangered snowmen, like in the debate.
    But the happy ending is the second half -- wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars.  Forests and polar bears.  The snowmen survive.
    Think we could flesh it out and plug it to Disney or Pixar?

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14. 

    PermieWriter Posted 5:40 am
    10 Aug 2007

    StoryStory is a complex idea. There are stories, that come out in films and books and novellas and video clips, etc.
    Then there is Story, as in the story we are telling ourselves as we do what we do. Daniel Quinn has a lot to say about that. So does George Lakoff.
    Our stories shore up our Story. We listen to the stories that support what we are telling ourselves as our Story. But stories can also shift the Story, I believe, if it's done right. That's an epic task, and one that needs doing greatly. I only have the vaguest notion about how to go about it.
    
    Eat what you grow, grow what you eat

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15. 

    jex Posted 10:19 pm
    13 Jan 2008

    Green stories are not green enoughHi, I know this is an old thread but I just HAVE to say: the language and grammar that we use, let alone the narratives, are not great as far as enviro stuff goes. basically, if you try to present an eco story, a lot of capitalist, speciesist, human-versus-nature ideologies will be deeply embedded within it. See John Stephens, particularly his 2006 article 'From Eden to suburbia: perspectives on the natural world in children's literature'. It's very difficult to write 'true' green - even The Lorax falls flat on a multitude of fronts.

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16. 

    maladapted Posted 3:38 am
    14 Jan 2008

    Storytellers are paid, not bornJMG, you're onto something here.  Polluting corporations pay top dollar for PR experts to tell their stories for them.  The most skilled experts (or talented artists) charge all the traffic will bear.  Environmentalists, by and large, can't bear the cost of getting our story told.
    
    

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