Everything you know about how to act in life, what will happen in life, and what the possibilities are in life, you got from stories. Books, comics, films, pop videos, television, adverts. All the interactions, all the characterisations, all the ways of speaking looking and posturing — all written and imagined by writers. True, they’re often observed from life, and often not, but such scenes to play, actions to perform and attitudes to strike are also abstracted and distorted for dramatic effect. All the behavioural transactions we exhibit are inherited from those we’ve seen other people perform, otherwise it’s not a valid currency. The most memorable and vivid examples of such transactions are often those transmitted through mass media.
The boring sections of life, any interstitial inconsequential ‘glue’ in-between the notable parts, is edited out while dramatic situations are exaggerated. This is then passed on via contemporary culture through generations until the original direction or observation is lost. These snippets and expressions and communications become normalised as “the” way to do things. But we can’t actually invent any of these things ourselves in isolation without being heavily influenced by what we see and experience around us and most of what we experience in volume is stories. In todays terms, this means stories transmitted in mass media. Everything we know about how to act in life we learned from films and television, comics, books, etc.
You might be doubting me right now, ready to deny this and ready to argue back but consider the way in which you are picturing yourself retorting in your mind. You got that catalogue of moves and facial expressions and ways of speaking from somewhere. Maybe some children’s cartoon series, maybe a graphic novel, maybe a film you once saw. Maybe not. Maybe someone down the pub or at a party or club, who in turn got it from a cartoon or film or an advert on telly. Your lexicon of expressions and attitudes and actions are a validated mashup of the most vivid transactional moments in your media consumption.
