Story Lab: Crash Course Myths

This week I decided to do the Crash Course Myth videos, which are a set of three videos from Crash Course about mythology (of course). There are three videos: the first one talks about mythology in general (how it’s defined, how it can differ from religion [or not], etc.), the second video talks about how myths are studied and interpreted, and the third is about the idea of the hero and how some people characterize the hero.

Screenshot from the first video (source)

The first video is exactly how it sounds: it gives a pretty good breakdown of what exactly mythology is, what influences it, what all can be learned from it, etc. Something they stress is that myths are old, and come from many different sources. They make sure to mention in the video that if they’re discussing a myth the viewer recognizes, but some details don’t seem right, it might just be they’re using a different source than the viewer has.

Notice they quote John Green! (source)

The second video actually gets into the theory of myth. It talks about how to analyze it and the theories about myth that people have developed. Basically people have been analyzing myth and its theory since Plato and his comrades. The idea that myths were created to explain scientific events, and that they were about real, ordinary people whose deeds were exaggerated until they were gods, has been around for centuries. As more was discovered about ancient civilizations, the more the idea of myths was reworked.

I don’t know who the sword belongs to, but I know where the shield and hat come from! (source)

The third video is about the Hero. The person in the myth or story who’s the main focus, the good guy who’s going to save everyone. Joseph Campbell created the theory of the Hero’s Journey, which is highly influential. Campbell noticed that in many stories from many cultures, there are basic events the hero must go through. The hero will journey away from home and towards adventure, then return home at the end, wiser and presumably in the same physical condition they were in when they left.

Reading Notes: Popular Italian Stories, Part B

For my second reading this week, I decided to continue with Thomas Crane’s Italian Popular Tales and summarize The Language of Animals.

Reading Notes

• A father had a son who was in school for ten years, and finally finished.
• The father threw a great banquet in honor of the son, and invited many important people to come.
• At the banquet, someone asked the son what he had learned, and the son responded that he had learned the languages of dogs, frogs, and birds respectively.
• This was met with ridicule, and the father was so upset at the shame the son had brought upon their name that he ordered his son killed.
• However, the servants he ordered to do the deed faked it, and the son fled the country.
• Eventually the son came to the house where the treasurer of the prince lived, and was granted lodging.
• A multitude of dogs gathered outside the castle; when asked, the son, understanding the language of the dogs, explained it meant that a hundred assassins would attack the castle that evening, and that the appropriate cautions should be taken.
• Soldiers were placed around the castle, and sure enough thieves tried to attack, but were defeated.
• The treasurer tried to give the son his daughter in gratitude, but the son refused, saying he would return in a year and three days.
• The son left, and came to a city where the king’s daughter couldn’t rest because the frogs in the fountain croaked so much.
• The son learned that the princess had thrown a cross into the fountain, and as soon as it was removed the girl recovered.
• Again, the king wanted the son to marry the princess in gratitude, but he refused, saying he would return in a year and three days.
• The son left and headed for Rome, making friends with three men along the way.
• One day they all took refuge under a tree to sleep, and a flock of birds flew to rest on the tree and woke the men with their singing.
• When asked, the son said that the birds sang because one of the men was to be the new Pope; a dove landed on his head, and sure enough he was made Pope.
• After he was made Pope, the son sent for his father, the treasurer, and the king to come before him.
• All three were sure they were in trouble for some sin they had committed, but the son had them all discuss their deeds.
• He then turned to his father and told him that he had ordered him killed because he said he understood the languages of a few animals, but the other two men were very grateful that the son had such knowledge.
• His father repented, the son pardoned him, and they lived on.

Source

Reading Notes: Popular Italian Stories, Part A

For my last Reading A, I decided to summarize the story called Water and Salt, from Thomas Crane’s Italian Popular Tales.

Reading Notes

• A king had three daughters, and one day he asked them to prove their love for him.
• One daughter said she loved him as much as her eyes, the second said as much as her heart, and the third said she loved him as much as water and salt.
• The king was angry at this last answer, and ordered her killed.
• The other sisters helped fake the death of their sister, and she was left in a cave.
• A magician who worked for another king found her and took her back to his house;  the king’s son fell in love with her, and they were to be wed.
• The magician told them to kill him before their wedding day, to invite three kings, including the girl’s father, and that all the guests but her father must be given salt and water at the dinner.
• Meanwhile, her father was regretting his decision and initially didn’t want to go, but decided to to avoid any political upsets.
• The day before the wedding, the magician was quartered, and his blood sprinkled all over the place; where his blood was became gold and precious stones.
• At the banquet, the king struggled to eat because he had no water to drink and no salt for flavor.
• They all told stories, and the king talked about his daughter.
• At that point, the bride went and put on the dress she had been wearing when he ordered her killed, and pointed out how important salt and water were after all.
• The king begged her forgiveness, which she gave, and they all lived in contentment after that.

Source

Famous Last Words: The last class day before Dead Week

So, it’s the second-to-last week of this class, and here I am, scrambling to get extra credit. (Story of my life it feels like.) I decided to do the “Famous Last Words” post because it seemed like a good way to just write.

Outside of this class, I don’t exactly do a lot of writing. I do no writing at work (apart from emails), and while I do need to write some things for my language classes, it’s more about my ability to translate them than to focus on the writing. I think my best writing this week was definitely finishing up my Storybook with the epilogue. It might have run a little long, but I’ll make my revision project for next week to go over it and shorten it a little. I think it came out pretty well. I’ve had the idea on how to end my Storybook for a while, but I didn’t want to write it out before I finished the other stories, so I didn’t have it fully fleshed out until I sat down to write. I’m fairly happy with it.

I feel the need to mention something Dr. Barnes said last week as well, since it’s relevant. As I’ve mentioned, she’s a psychology professor at OU, but she’s also a published author, and teaches some writing classes in the Gaylord College of Journalism. During a lab meeting last week, someone asked her if she formed parasocial relationships (one-sided relationships) with the characters she writes in her books. Her immediate response was, “No, I am their god.” After we all finished laughing, she explained that writing a novel is more revision than actual writing, and it’s hard to form a relationship with a character who you can make disappear at a moment’s notice. Whether or not the character makes it to the final version of the book depends on what Dr. Barnes (and her editor) decide. 

I’m not saying this is how Dr. Barnes looked when she said that, but it kinda is. (Source)

Now that it’s the last class day before Dead Week, the familiar panic is starting to set in. Hopefully this is the last time I have a Dead Week as an undergrad (Dear god please let this be the last), but I feel a lot of pressure from myself to study, especially for my science class, since I really need to pass that one. (I may or may not be procrastinating preparing for that final by working on stuff for this class...)

Let the Dead Week panic begin!

Because I’m suppressing all feelings of panic. Zoidberg understands. (Source)

Story Lab: Fiction and its Influence on Real Life

This week, I decided for my last Story Lab that I would be doing the Stories and Friends activity. This consists of two TED Talks: 

The danger of a single story, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

(screenshot from the source)

And Imaginary friends and real-world consequences, by Dr. Jennifer Barnes

(screenshot from the source)

Both of these TED Talks look at how stories influence real life beliefs and attitudes, but they approach it in different ways: Adichie from her personal experience, and Barnes from a scientific standpoint.

Adichie explains her experience of growing up in Nigeria, and how reading stories by European authors influenced her early beliefs in childhood. She also discusses how, now that she’s an adult and an author, people will often generalize the stories they hear about one culture to the entire culture. For example, she talks about how a character in her book is a male who is an abusive father. She had someone come up to her after a discussion who said he had read her book and thought it was a shame that all Nigerian men were abusive fathers. (Her response was that she had just read American Psycho, and she thought it a shame that all American men were psychopaths). 

Adichie’s overall point is that people will take the single story they hear about something and will assume that anything they encounter in real life fits that story. Essentially, she is describing how stereotypes work. At the end of her talk, she emphasizes that it’s important for people to have more than just the “single story,” so that they can broaden their views and not base things on the assumption of one story.

Barnes, as I said earlier, approaches things from a scientific view. In her TED talk, she explains how the relationships people form with fictional characters work, and how this affects someone’s feelings and behavior. Essentially, with both fictional characters and celebrities, we see them in situations we wouldn’t see real-life people in (vulnerable moments, private moments, etc.). People form strong attachments because of this, but it’s a one-sided relationship (to paraphrase Barnes, I know a lot about Taylor Swift, but she doesn’t know I exist). To show this, Barnes and her grad student Jessica Black conducted an online survey. To summarize, they found that people cared more if a fictional person they strongly connected with died than they would if someone they knew casually in real life died. This is because of the one-sided relationship, called a parasocial relationship.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I actually work in Barnes’ research lab. There are several different experiments being done, but the idea of the parasocial relationship tends to be a topic in many of the experiments. As a psychology student I find this area fascinating. I knew Barnes as a writer before I knew her as a psychology professor, and this was one of the first TED Talks that introduced me to her as a professor. It’s all very exciting research, and I’m hoping I’ll get to contribute in the future.