Week 6 Story Lab
For Story Lab this week, I decided to watch the Ted Talks videos The Danger of a Single Story and Imaginary friends and real-world consequences. I chose this assignment particularly because I have watched The danger of a single story in a couple of my classes before, and each time I am moved by it.
In The danger of a single story, I am always taken by surprise at the unfortunate reality of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's argument. Our whole lives we are told a variety of different stories about different places and scenarios. However, many of these stories that we hear often end up being slightly different versions of the same thing. Growing up, a common phrase spoken at meal time was "Eat what's on your plate! There are kids starving in Africa!" Similarly to Chimamanda's single story of the boy who worked for her family, that grew to be the only image I had of Africa.
What stuck out to me the most is her quote of "The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem of stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete." There are ~some~ people in Africa that are starving, but that us far from the whole picture with Africa, and I think that Adichie's speech does an incredible job of pointing out the danger of a single story, and the little effort it takes to avoid it.
I also loved the Jennifer Barnes video. It was undeniably relatable. (I even sent the video to my roommates). I have had the thought before that it is strange that we develop relationships with fictional characters, but never thought that there would be a Ted Talk video on it. I have cried during a horribly high amount of episodes of my favorite shows; because I have developed these parasocial relationships with them. I feel like I know them and understand what they have gone through, and am overjoyed when something good happens, and cry when something bad happens. I loved her point at the end of taking that energy that we use to put into a fictional series and apply it into real life. I wonder what would happen if everyone took her advice.
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