A blog entry I read by Derek Sivers describes a talk he once attended by the late Kurt Vonnegut in which the author detailed common story arcs.
Vonnegut compared Cinderalla stories, common disaster stories, and real life, as seen in the illustrations at the bottom of this entry — from Sivers’ blog:
Vonnegut’s conclusion, Sivers writes, was that because we have always been “surrounded by dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”
During that relatively brief period when that balloon boy was thought to have been floating away in a hot-air balloon, news outlets and consumers were perhaps justified in seeing drama. But once the kid was found to have been hiding in the attic, the drama was over. Except to the media. There’s plenty of real drama going on in the world, but the media obsesses over a nonevent that momentarily resembled the common disaster story arc.
I’m also reminded of this summer’s press conference on health care by President Obama. The president made important points about his healthcare reform plan, but the only part of the press conference that really grabbed the media’s attention was the last few moments when Obama said the Cambridge, MA, cops were “stupid” for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in his own home. Suddenly … drama … and healthcare was quickly forgotten.
What do you think? Are we so steeped in dramatic story arcs in popular culture that the media feel they must keep feeding us drama?
