In trauma therapy yesterday, I quoted Samwise Gamgee.
And it made me cry when I said it out loud.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role stories play in our lives, and how hurtful it is for TV streaming companies to cancel series with no resolution.
I can hear you objecting now. “Hurtful?? A TV series? What?!”
Just give me a sec to make my case.
For a long time, there was this thing people did where they tried to define what makes humans different from animals. You know, given that we are mammals and all. People had a weird need to set ourselves apart, suss out what made us special. First it was using tools, then it was making tools, then it was language, I think music or dancing might have been in there at one point; but one by one we found that animals do all those things. Now I’m not sure what people are saying differentiates us. I’m not sure if people are still trying to do that.
I don’t know that it’s useful to really try to classify our species as “different” from animals somehow. Each animal has its adaptive specialties, but all of us are critters doing our best to survive and reproduce. There’s some overlap in what’s useful to each of us, and some behaviors that set us apart from each other. As Stephen Pinker put it once, paraphrasing, it would be like elephants looking for evidence of trunks in other animals, or saying their trunks set them apart from all other animals. It’s not helpful.
Whether you think of it as something that sets us apart from animals or just something that our particular kind of animal does, I can think of one innate thing our species does that I can’t think of any others doing: tell stories.
It’s instinctive, too. As soon as little kids start talking, they start wanting to tell stories about the world, themselves, their family, their pets, their toys. They start asking for stories, wanting to know more about what’s around them and what’s possible.
Stories are how we tell each other about ideas, things that could be; how we could be; how to think, how to behave, how to act, how to tell when others aren’t acting right; how to ask questions and makes decisions; about what we saw under a microscope or when we dreamed. Stories are how we make ourselves and how we make the world. We use language to do that, sure; but what do we use language for except to tell stories? Other animals have names for themselves, have calls to tell each other if a snake or a hawk is nearby, can give directions to places with good pollen. We tell stories, some true, and some false.
Of course stories got commodified somewhere along the way; everything has. That’s what I’m trying to do, after all. But I think the selling of stories and the downplaying of their importance in our lives as “just entertainment” sells our souls. People look to stories not just for entertainment, but for examples of how to handle situations we may find ourselves in, or how to be people we can be proud of. The best stories both entertain and educate.
And when we use them as money-making devices only — when TV broadcasters or authors put out the first in a series and wait to see if it makes enough money, then pull the plug if it doesn’t, it does a real disservice to the people invested in those stories. And if the people invested in those stories are minorities of some kind, queer or Black or Native, it’s gonna be hard to find a huge audience, but the people who are into it are going to need that story even more. To know that someone gets it. To know what to do. To know that there’s hope, that they’re normal, that they matter.
And then it gets yanked out from under them. Because there’s not enough money in finishing it.
Stories matter. They’re a heck of a lot more than “just entertainment” or “just a TV show.”
I’m dealing with trauma right now. Through the decades and across countries and oceans, a gentleman who fought in World War One, and who wrote a fantasy story about what war was like and what it was about, reached out to me, and gave me some really helpful advice about handling how I feel. Had he told his story as a memoir, I would not have read it. But as a fantasy story, it caught my attention. I needed that. I needed it badly. Not when I read it the first time, but after a while, after some stuff had happened to me. Remembering Samwise’s words bolstered me, gave me comfort, and helped me understand myself better. I’m so glad I had that story to rely on in a dark moment for me. I’m so grateful to J.R.R. Tolkien for telling it.
I think it’s damaging to take them away from people who might need them. I think commodifying them the way we have is crude and inappropriate. Dismissing stories is dismissing emotions and experiences and what it means to be human.
I’m not going to stop it, of course. The huge industry built around selling stories has been around for a long time, and it’s not going to vanish or suddenly grow a conscience because I object. But it makes me want to have more of a conscience myself. I’m just one person with a few books, wanting to write more. I want to make some money at this, but to me, the integrity of the stories will always matter. If I have to work a day job to make enough money to live so I can tell stories that have a small but devoted audience, so be it. I’m in a position that the stories can matter more than the money.
I don’t want to change that, ever.
