Social change. Influence. Making a difference. These are the themes that, in my mind, bind all our Week 1 readings and viewings together. Storytelling that affects change.
One of the main purposes of Scribe’s Community Visions project and Precious Places videos is to give voice to people and communities that have not had a voice in traditional media. By choosing organizations and non-profits that have small budgets and are non-hierarchical, they are giving people who are less likely to write history the ability to record their own history and tell their own story, their own way. By ensuring the facilitators do not control the process and that the work is entirely collaborative, they attempt to ensure traditional gender and racial politics play little to no role in the storytelling effort.
While the NAMAC forum was focused on transmedia, each person on the panel works for progressive social change. Films featured prominently, with three of the speakers involved in creating, funding, or producing films that expose inequalities in our nation. The members of The Media Consortium work to expose inequalities in our nation. But the surprise I think for most of us was the idea that games can provide yet another medium for exploring inequalities, not just providing entertainment.
And finally I come to Lee Siegel’s piece, “Burying the Hatchet.” At first, I couldn’t figure out the relationship between Siegel’s piece and the rest of the material. But then I got to this part: “Making a living is nothing; the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference with words.” This was Siegel quoting Elizabeth Hartwick writing in the inaugural edition of New York Review. And I started to consider Siegel’s piece the most profound of the Week 1 assignments.
Siegel’s piece argues that in the literary ghettos that existed decades ago, writers felt disempowered, and writing negative reviews gave them a sense of power.
Now, after the “dissolution of the literary ghettos,” and the rise of the Internet, the power to not only write a negative review but also affect change with words and stories is in nearly anyone’s hands. And because the world moves much more quickly than it did decades ago, and almost everything is viewable on the Internet, sometimes we can see the change our work creates — you can read the comments, hear the backlash and applause, and see the effect your words, stories, and art are having. I don’t think the stories are having more of an effect now. I think it simply happens faster and more visibly.
We are living in the information age. And perhaps Comte would call this a “critical age,” full of “social and political disharmony, when values and traditions are in upheaval, and there is little consensus on what society and culture should be.” Things are changing so rapidly. Much of the information is trash. But it is much more democratic, and democratic processes are always messy. Hopefully through the mess one can see glimmers of change.
(ps – I finally found the place to put in tags).
Natalie-
I really admire the vastness of your closing statement. I think that social change is one of the most important influences that we can hope to make as communicators. I agree that there is little consensus on what society and culture should be, seeing that there are a myriad of differing opinions in todays day and age. That fact makes our jobs as information gatekeepers and communicators that much more difficult, seeing that we are constantly redefining the need for upheaval in the broken aspects of society.