Recently I mentioned in some of my classes that, psychologically, we are the stars of our own movies.\u00a0\u00a0By this I meant that we first of all see ourselves as the protagonists of a story, the main characters, the ones we imagine must win or succeed in the end.\u00a0\u00a0This is a function of ego, entirely to be expected.\u00a0\u00a0With that, however, come a few cautionary notes. . . .<\/p>\n
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First, in a metaphor like this one\u2014and we must remember it to be metaphor\u2014everyone else, the \u201cnot-I\u201d characters, must be extras, co-stars at best.\u00a0\u00a0In this sense, our ego often works to convince us of our own right behavior and that others are supporters of us or obstacles, villains in the play.\u00a0\u00a0We invent ourselves to live a story or a series of them.<\/p>\n
Clearly, however, these villains\u2014if they are of healthy mind (or perhaps not)\u2014also see themselves as the hero-protagonists.\u00a0\u00a0And of such convergences are conflicts wrought.<\/p>\n
Kenneth Burke called it a dramaturgical framework, logological.\u00a0\u00a0By this he meant that language (logos<\/em>\u00a0= the word and reason) creates for us the structure of dramatic thinking, of thinking in terms of\u00a0story<\/em>.<\/p>\n But here we arrive at our second caution, the fine line between story as fiction and story as a prejudiced or distorted reality.\u00a0\u00a0If we\u2019re not careful, we end up casting ourselves into the drama we wish to live instead of the relationships in our lives we are dealt.<\/p>\n This is harmless, perhaps, if these are brief escapist fantasies of online role play or daydreaming. (Perhaps a little over-the-top is the Society for Creative Anachronism which has divided the US into duchies and baronies in a sort of medieval replication of the planet.) It becomes much more complicated when we re-write our lives to create new drama or rewrite the lives of others to do the same.<\/p>\n Enter the reality show.\u00a0\u00a0I had the misfortune of watching an episode of one of the latest,\u00a0Estate of Panic<\/em>. In it a half dozen or so contestants are placed in various spooky settings to grab money while confronted by electrical wires, snakes, or falling ceilings.\u00a0\u00a0The show makes no pretense of actually being reality, of course, unlike\u00a0Big Brother<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Ghost Hunters<\/em>. But in it contestants openly participate with a corny host in a fantasy setting, almost as if they have no idea that it\u2019s staged.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Much harder to distinguish for some is\u00a0Ghost Hunters, Cops,<\/em>\u00a0or the\u00a0WWE<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Frustratingly, as the plots are wound and crafted, the suspense is built to reach climaxes before commercial breaks, and all the while the actors are trained to seemingly \u201cbreak script\u201d and the story appears to us to be . . . all the more real. (More than a few students have told me in the past few years that there is nothing fictional about these programs.)<\/p>\n This intentional blurring of fact and fiction caters specifically to our own belief that we can live these fantasies ourselves (witness backyard wrestling,\u00a0Jackass<\/em>\u00a0wannabes, and amateur ghost-busting groups). It is entertaining.\u00a0\u00a0It makes money.\u00a0\u00a0It builds allegiances and ratings.<\/p>\n No wonder President-Elect Obama has done well: he\u2014or his party\u2014has written a mythological reality story, complete with the historical drama of Grant Park climaxes, Lincoln-style challenges, and utopic endings.\u00a0Today the\u00a0Detroit Free Press<\/em>\u00a0spent an entire page urging Michelle Obama to wear a \u201cregal\u201d gown as it compared her to Jackie Kennedy.<\/p>\n Again, no surprises here, nothing that has not been done to countless decades of celebrities and politicians.\u00a0\u00a0But now will the millions of allies, followers, and devotees who found themselves mesmerized by the \u201cObama story\u201d expect the \u201chappily ever after?\u201d<\/p>\n History is not story, though we cast and write it so.\u00a0\u00a0I worry that we will spend our media time writing Obama as a hero or villain to suit our own dramatistic whims rather than confront the problems before us as they really are.\u00a0\u00a0Real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently I mentioned in some of my classes that, psychologically, we are the stars of our own movies.\u00a0\u00a0By this I meant that we first of all see ourselves as the protagonists of a story, the main characters, the ones we imagine must win or succeed in the end.\u00a0\u00a0This is a function of ego, entirely to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,248,385],"tags":[563,565,328,564,553,560,566],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chizblog","category-culture-criticism","category-mythology","tag-film","tag-heroes","tag-media","tag-movie","tag-mythology","tag-obama","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/08\/mythusa.jpg?fit=533%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1749,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/the-mythology-of-violence\/","url_meta":{"origin":1674,"position":0},"title":"The Mythology of Violence","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2010 Feb 7","format":false,"excerpt":"No matter how many layers of language and manners we paint over our selves, at our centers, implies Joseph Conrad, is a desperate selfish hunger, a need to account for ourselves by defining the \"I\" against the \"Other,\" to lash out in violence. At some levels, our proclivity towards violence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/08\/War_in_The_Apotheosis_of_Washington.jpg?fit=415%2C301&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2003,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/frodo-lives\/","url_meta":{"origin":1674,"position":1},"title":"Frodo Lives","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2019 Jan 26","format":false,"excerpt":"It's true that Frodo is given gifts beyond what any ordinary person could expect (swords, rings, chain mail, lights of Galadriel), but in the end it is his sheer act of will that gets him to the chasms of Mount Doom. And there he fails.","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/frodo.jpg?fit=592%2C421&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/frodo.jpg?fit=592%2C421&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/frodo.jpg?fit=592%2C421&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1973,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/the-magick-of-love\/","url_meta":{"origin":1674,"position":2},"title":"The Magick of Love","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2017 Sep 27","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet even with a literature replete with warning, we find ourselves enacting weird efforts to attract the opposite sex on our own with Axe body sprays, faux perms and balayage, Forever 21 sales, and Tinder profiles. Call them \u201cLove Potion Lite,\u201d protection against our own insecurities. It\u2019s a kind of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/tone-loc-love.jpg?fit=640%2C472&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/tone-loc-love.jpg?fit=640%2C472&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/tone-loc-love.jpg?fit=640%2C472&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1497,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/those-who-know-not-the-sea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1674,"position":3},"title":"Those Who Know Not the Sea","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2017 Sep 4","format":false,"excerpt":"Most of us understand the term \u201codyssey\u201d to be a time of adventurous journey, patterned after the classical quest of the Odyssey, the epic by the Greek Homer. Such a definition is hardly revealing, however, and it potentially misses a level of significance for all of us.","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/ship-odyssey.jpg?fit=624%2C352&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/ship-odyssey.jpg?fit=624%2C352&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/ship-odyssey.jpg?fit=624%2C352&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1922,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/alien-thoughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1674,"position":4},"title":"Alien Thoughts","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2017 Sep 19","format":false,"excerpt":"It struck me that part of the wonder from the story is the absence of alien antagonism. Abductions are mysterious, not malevolent, It\u2019s a story of a search, not a triumph over evil. We have, in this story, really nothing to fear.","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/closeencountersfeat.jpg?fit=406%2C302&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":812,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/on-thor-tsunamis-and-daikaiju\/","url_meta":{"origin":1674,"position":5},"title":"On Thor, Tsunamis, and Daikaiju","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2011 Mar 20","format":false,"excerpt":"In just a few weeks, Hollywood will release the latest in its parade of superhero films,\u00a0Thor. As the trailer suggests, there is a returning thunder hammer, a Loki trickster figure\u00a0and, in the Marvel superhero universe, references to other superheroes and Stan Lee. 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