Thursday, December 4, 2014

Everyday Stories

On the Digital Storytelling 106 site, the students created a page of inspirations:  http://inspire.ds106.us/  which in turn inspired me to think about what stories had impressed me through the years:

In Search of Lake Wobegon - At the time this came out in 2000, I found it to be a compelling and innovative multi-media presentation. Unlike the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), this story was produced by a well-known media organization, National Geographic, and told by a respected author, Garrison Keillor using professional photographs created specifically for the story.However, like CDS stories, this is a personal story and reveals the author's 'truth' behind his fictional town of Lake Wobegon.

This American Life, around the same time that I watched In Search of Lake Wobegon, I also was introduced to This American Life. I remember reading statements by Ira Glass explaining how his radio show was about ordinary, common American people and themes. Each show would be centered on a theme told in several 'acts' or stories, like the Babysitting episode. He also encouraged the journalists to share their personal reactions--of laughter, surprise, doubt. I like this quote from the website because it highlights what is different about radio stories: "This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page"  Unlike CDSThis American Life stories are primarily told through professional writers and journalists, a much different approach than the Radio Diaries movement. which sees the power in giving everyday people a microphone. Like CDS this movement is about DIY stories. The audio technology is fairly simple, and allows a certain amount of anonymity that visual story telling -- whether through photos or video lacks. Years later, I still remember listening to diary of a 21-year old women suffering from cystic fibrosis, "My so called Lungs," by Laura Rothenberg.

Similar to the raw emotions and ever-present mortality found in Laura's story, I was  touched by the YouTube video produced by Ben Breedlove telling about his near death experiences using not audio, but words written on cards. I was impacted by his serenity and how simple he told a profound story. A few other films worth mentioning include a short I saw at the Full Frame film fesival, Love Supreme (2001), the filmmaker depicted his mother preparing samosas (a common, everyday meal) without any narration or words. I was surprised to learn that the stylistic inspiration for this personal and loving film was Raging Bull. Another power festival film is Melba William's short story about her father and his experiences in the Vietnam War, A Thousand Words.

1 comment:

  1. There's something intensely phenomenological about simplest act of someone talking-- or even just writing. Your attention to this in each of these examples really drew me in to thinking about this. In particular, the Garrison Keillor piece has a lot of points of contrast with the radio story by Laura Rothenberg and the notecard narration by Ben Breedlove. Subjectivity and context in relation to these things makes them really interesting.

    Keillor's broadcasts on NPR have always been very much about telling stories around context, and Keillor himself has always-- for me at least-- been embodied by his voice. I could cheat, and go look him up on Wikipedia or something right now, but I really don't know anything about him. But when I hear him, I know it's him.

    Rothenberg's voice takes on a very different type of quality at first, when NPR puts her forward as a woman living with Cystic fibrosis. Her disease gets attached as a part of her subjectivity through her voice. It's something you hear. Which carries a lot of complicated problematics with it-- but which ultimately ends up forcing you to listen to her in a way that is very different than listening to the sort of homey narratives of Keillor or Ira Glass. Rothenberg carries a quotidien quality that Keillor does not possess.

    And then the Ben Breedlove stuff has no vocal auditory components to it. But there it still contains voice. And he is also visible in a way that, again Keillor is not. And his video has a very different type of syntax because of the way he presents the story through the note cards.

    I love radio broadcasts. I don't know if you're interested. But there's a really cool book that just came out, maybe a month ago. It is composed of the surviving written records of Walter Benjamin's radio broadcasts on everyday subjects in Germany leading up to world war 2. Cool stuff.

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