Week 4 Lab

This week, I chose to do a story laboratory. I watched two TED Talks about stories and storytelling.

The first TED Ted talk I watched was The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This TED Talk focused on the dangers of falling for the stereotypes often displayed in stories and by the media, giving examples of the oversaturation of white people in literature and the Mexican Immigrant narrative that was portrayed by the U.S. media at the time. A single-story is when a person, group of people or a place is portrayed as one thing and one thing only. This emphasizes the differences between people, rather than the ways in which people are the same. This can harbor prejudice and can manifest in the form of belittlement and patronization, no matter how well-meaning. If we look past the ways in which we are different, searching for opposition to the single-story, it is then that we can truly regain a kind of paradise.

The second TED Talk I watched was Imaginary friends and real-world consequences by Jennifer Barnes. This TED Talk explored the relationships we as readers develop with fictional characters and often times politicians and famous people. She discusses why we develop these feelings, due to the fact that we feel like we're glimpsing into their life and that we know them. She then compares the despair we would feel if a fictional character dies versus an acquaintance we don't know very well, revealing the results of a study conducted on the topic. The results reveal that there is an overwhelming lack of care for the real-life person in comparison to the fictional one. The discussion then transitions into ways we can channel this love for fictional characters towards charitable acts. 

(Angels Reading, 1932, Marianopolis College by colros)