# 5 Ways You Don't Realize Movies Are Controlling Your Brain



## Brian G Turner (Dec 14, 2013)

It's a melodramatic title, but the heart of the argument made is that we are primed to understand the world in terms of a story and our role in it, and that films actively try and influence this perception. Quite clever, once you get past the ramble:

5 Ways You Don't Realize Movies Are Controlling Your Brain | Cracked.com


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## Parson (Dec 14, 2013)

Brian,

This is one well thought out piece of journalism. (Did I really say that about Cracked?!) It is one of the reasons why being a Pastor is so hard, and also so scarey. In a sense we are in the business of establishing the narrative of the world. Which is why we have so often been opposed to theater, books, and movies. They write a story often with an illegitimate morality.


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## Brev (Dec 15, 2013)

Interesting piece, and entertaining too. Thanks for sharing.


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## J Riff (Dec 15, 2013)

\and the subliminal stuff is even worser. \the music biz is just as bad


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## Alexa (Dec 15, 2013)

The editor made a point there. I cannot say I do not agree with him.

Unfortunately some people really believe that what they see in a movie must be the true. I had a girl at work a while ago who was one of them. We looked at her like she was not in her mind. I wonder, how many are like her ? After all, the guy who called himself *the Joker* is not the only one who killed innocent people and children under the influence of movies and war games.

We all need something to dream about and movies can help us do it. What I really don't like is that not all those who make movies are good. There are too many copy cats and bad ones. Money can be used for better purposes.


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 16, 2013)

While I agree with the basic thrust of the argument: 'People like stories'.  I really have to argue with the daft assertion that:



> Michael Bay feels a certain way about women, and about the role of women  in the world, and you will leave his movie agreeing with him just a  little bit more than when you came in.


This would imply that we are all so stupid and easily lead that we have no critical faculties at all.  If we are told a story, it says, we must believe it at some level, or at least come away with sympathy for the story teller's perspective.

This is cobblers.

To take an extreme example (and I have no wish to belittle anyone's belief structures here) I am 54 years old and I have been subjected to the Christian 'narrative' for over half a century.  (Not constantly, obviously, though sometimes it has felt like it.)  I'm still as much an atheist as I ever was.  It's a myth.  It's fiction.  It's a story that doesn't interest me.

I really don't want what I'm saying to be construed as an attack on religion.  If it makes you happy....

I think the author of the piece has the whole argument on its head.  Stories weren't invented as a method of imposing order on others. (Bizarrely he seems to think that story-telling starts with the formation of 'civilizations' - and then waffles about 'the tribe across the river' which makes me think he doesn't understand what the word 'civilization' means either.)

Story telling is far older than the onset of civilization; that was just when they started writing them down. People like stories because they make patterns.  People are people because we have the ability to extrapolate.  It's what makes us humans.  We can join the dots.  Our ancestors didn't just chase antelope till they dropped from exhaustion and ate them.  Our ancestors worked out where their prey would be; trapped them; threw pointy sticks in elegant curves at them.   We have an innate ability to do maths, make patterns.  People like patterns. We like resolution. Stories are an expression of that need to impose a pattern on the greater chaotic universe.  Stories come from within us.  They're not imposed on us.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 16, 2013)

JunkMonkey said:


> To take an extreme example (and I have no wish to belittle anyone's belief structures here) I am 54 years old and I have been subjected to the Christian 'narrative' for over half a century.  (Not constantly, obviously, though sometimes it has felt like it.)  I'm still as much an atheist as I ever was.



I'd suggest that that's because you're not constantly receiving the Christian narrative subliminally, in the guise of entertainment. 



> Stories come from within us. They're not imposed on us.



I don't agree with that at all.

They come from within _the storytellers_ and other people -- their audiences, or readers -- soak them up.  Not everyone creates their own stories. I've heard countless people say they haven't the imagination and I think those are the ones most vulnerable to being influenced by the stories of those who do, because they don't understand how the author or movie maker manipulates their emotions and perceptions either for artistic reasons or to get a message across. (Those of us who write stories are more likely to recognize what is happening.) Some narratives are consciously constructed to get an idea or a message across -- and that's not always a bad thing -- but even when the person or persons who create the story don't intend it, something of their world view will naturally seep into the story.  It's inevitable.  And the better the author or the movie maker is at manipulating the readers' or the audience's emotions and perceptions, the more that story and the world view it represents is going to be "imposed from without" on a significant number of people.  Of course those most susceptible to the ideas contained in a particular story -- that is, those who are already half-convinced, or who haven't thought about them much before, or who find those ideas encouraging or comforting -- are the most likely to be influenced.


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## farntfar (Dec 16, 2013)

You're right, JunkMonkey, that we apply our own judgement to the story but we can still be affected by them emotionally even when we disagree intellectually.

The suggestion is that we are predisposed to take lessons and ideas from the stories that are given to us. Not that we beleive every word of avery story that we hear.

Stories have been used to teach us ethics, morals and life lessons both now and in the past, and from a very early age.

Think of children's fairy tales and the tortoise and the hare type story.
Think of parables.
"The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

And surely the argument is that the less analytical of us may be persuaded to accept the story without thinking about it, especially if the story is well told or well filmed.

A good storyteller can be very persuasive, and make people believe almost anything.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 16, 2013)

JunkMonkey said:


> This would imply that we are all so stupid and easily lead that we have no critical faculties at all.  If we are told a story, it says, we must believe it at some level, or at least come away with sympathy for the story teller's perspective.



Michael Bay treats Megan Fox's first appearance as like a soft-porn shoot in the making. That defines her character and our response to her.

When women are continually objectified in film making, women in real life become (continue to be) objectified. 

Most female support roles exist to merely reward the male hero with sex for 'winning' and Michael Bay emphasises that. And people are influenced by the media they consume.

Someone who has had time to mature may be less susceptible, but Transformers is marketed squarely at young developing males.


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 16, 2013)

I can't argue with the way Bay portrays his female characters I have only seen one of his films, _The Island_, which was so laughably dreadful I've avoided the rest.

I'm not denying story telling has an effect on people but they were not a human invention like the wheel or the knapped flint.  They are a human _need_.  We need to tell stories.  It's our way of making sense of the chaos.


			
				Teresa Edgerton said:
			
		

> They come from within _the storytellers_ and other people -- their audiences, or readers -- soak them up.  Not everyone creates their own stories. I've heard countless people say they haven't the imagination



Yes they do.  We all do. We do it every night.  We dream.  We spend a third of our lives asleep and a great chunk of that time is spent dreaming.  When we wake we try to make sense of the dreams; try to make them coherent.  I'll bet you that every person who has told you they have 'no imagination' has bored their loved ones over the breakfast table telling them about "This crazy dream I had last night...."  

It's the people who can and take the effort to make that process more interesting that we call story-tellers.  

I've watched and played with all three of my kids since they were babies (I'm lucky enough to be a stay at home dad) and, almost as soon as they could talk, they were investing their toys with attributes and telling me about what they were doing, and where they had been, and what was happening in this weird imaginary world that only they could see.  Even my eldest daughter who is autistic has this imaginative urge. Were all born story-tellers.  It's just that some of us are good at it.  Most of us are crap.


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## jastius (Dec 16, 2013)

I said:


> Michael Bay treats Megan Fox's first appearance as like a soft-porn shoot in the making. That defines her character and our response to her.
> 
> When women are continually objectified in film making, women in real life become (continue to be) objectified.
> 
> ...



actually i thought he filmed megan in exactly the same way way that they filmed linda carter as wonderwoman, farrah fawcett as jill on charlies angels, or suzanne summers as christie on three's company.. 
megan fox was idealized as a stereotypical female role as per the original transformers characterizations. in all ways this movie was a idealization of seventies culture.. for example? the agent wearing underoos, the taco bell dog, the camaro, the CB radios, the secretary? who has a steno pool anymore? but in this movie they did... 
all these were style touches not brain braiding efforts to circumvent disco and women's lib. 
if you want to talk about filmmakers attempting to propagandize a film, may i direct this thread to the neo-fascist redirection of Robert Heinlien's Starship-Troopers? and put there deliberately and purposefully by the filmmakers and the book starship troopers was chosen expressly for the purpose of showcasing their statement. this was revealed in an interview of the filmmakers where they stated this objective recently and itemized the parts of the film they had twisted to reflect their mission statement.

like, brian, when megan fox goes around with a marilyn monroe tattoo upon her arm and states in interviews that she wishes to be a sex goddess like marilyn, i don't think it was entirely the producers that sexed up this girl..
that it seems an aberration now is more likely to be the effect of her husband, brian green's jealously vetoing any more glam roles for her, then any actual indication of her stance upon the matter...  (who else here thinks that megan would make a kick-butt wonderwoman if brian green didn't get his panties in a wad about her roles?)


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## tinkerdan (Dec 16, 2013)

I'm not going to argue that this is all wrong because it has elements of some reality but it contains its own element of fiction which each person needs to examine before they accept it as some truth of sagacious value.

In other words this article is a perfect example of the very thing that it's trying to expose. He has an agenda and he's assuming his audience will take his word that everything he says it truth. Or maybe he's just trying to make people think; either way in a small or maybe a large way he's become a part of the problem. Unless we examine it before we accept it and in this venue there is a slight more insidiousness happening than in something that we already should know is fiction like tv and movies and books of fiction.

Not withstanding the notion that some people might go away confused because they often do and the whole point is that afterwards it should motivate them to look things up and find out which is fact and which is fiction or just assume it is all fiction. The writer of this article assumes that everyone fails to do this or is doomed to fail even when they try and that we are all mindlessly allowing ourselves to be driven by psuedo-facts based on his own personal experience with either himself or people he has around him. 

This becomes dangerous thinking because it's too easy to step from here to blaming all the movies, myths, tv, books, and other works for all psychological aberration in people despite any number of times one claims they are not being paranoid conspiracy driven when pointing this out.

Make no mistake he has his finger on the pulse of a symptom of a greater problem but putting the blame in this one place is like treating a person only for a headache when they have a concussion.

I would venture a guess that more people are subject to this problem with conversations with their friends and neighbors who they have less reason to disbelieve than they are from the fiction they actively engage in. But that's only a guess based on my own experiences.


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## Parson (Dec 17, 2013)

I think we're mostly missing the point. His argument isn't that everyone buys the story, just that almost all of us accept some of what is said to be true, because we haven't taken the time or lack the resources to do the fact checking work. I thought his point about making a call after being arrested was well taken. 

It is essentially the same argument that Hitler made in Mein Kamph. Paraphrasing here: "If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one because people are always going to discount part of what you say. If your lie is big enough you will still make some of your point." 


Also, I don't think I'd equate dreaming with imaginative story telling. I would place it more as the human response of trying to make sense of what are sometime disparate stimuli that go rolling through the sub-conscious.


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## jastius (Dec 17, 2013)

there was a nice program on the history channel whose host, ann medina, would go over the films shown and expose any historical inaccuracy within it.


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 17, 2013)

Parson said:


> Also, I don't think I'd equate dreaming with imaginative story telling. I would place it more as the human response of trying to make sense of what are sometime disparate stimuli that go rolling through the sub-conscious.



Yes.  The human response disparate stimuli, confusion, unrelated incidents is to try and make a narrative out of it. Our dreams are confusing; we impose narrative on to them to make sense of them.  We tell ourselves stories all the time.  'If I go here and do that then this will happen.', 'If Y is happening to me right now (or something that appears to be similar to Y) then Z (or similar) must have happened before it and X  (or similar) must come afterwards...'

I think the best argument for my case is the fact that we find things funny.  All of us.  From birth humans find incongruity funny. (Well as soon as we have gathered enough data to be able to tell when something_ is_ incongruous.  I'm sure near full term foetuses could find things funny but, given the amount of data they have to extrapolate with is limited I'm not sure how you could - ethically - go about testing this.  Even if you could find the funding.)

Humour isn't an invention.  It is a universal human attribute.  Without the innate ability to understand and create 'story' then humour can't exist.


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## Parson (Dec 17, 2013)

I hesitate to answer a post numbered 666 -- 

I would agree with what you have said. I hadn't really considered humor before, but I would say that it is part and parcel of the same kind of connection making that is there trying to make sense of our dreams. 

I fail to see how this undercuts any of the argument that the article was making about the power of stories in our lives. I think it would be more likely to underline the power of narrative to shape our thinking and thereby our lives.


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 17, 2013)

I'm pretty sure it doesn't undercut any of the arguments.  I agree with most of the arguments (in general, though I'm pretty sure he's sure what he's saying applies to 'other people' more than it does to him).  

I was taking issue with this:



> *#4. Stories Were Invented to Control You
> 
> * This isn't some paranoid conspiracy theory -- it's a fundamental part  of how human culture came about. Ask yourself: Why do we go watch  superhero movies? After all, variations of these stories about brave,  superhuman heroes predate recorded history. We used to tell them around campfires before written language even existed.
> 
> They were created as a way to teach you how to behave.


This maybe bad phrasing; he might have meant that _individual stories _were constructed to instruct and mould opinions - but the way it is at the moment, he's saying that the whole _idea _of stories is a human construct.  To my mind it's the other way round;  we are human _because_ we tell stories.


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## Parson (Dec 18, 2013)

Okay, I'm with you now. I would agree that if we didn't tell stories we wouldn't be human (or at least not fully human). But I would also agree that stories were told not only to entertain, but also to train, to recruit, and to socialize humans into human society.


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## Phyrebrat (Dec 18, 2013)

I can't really add on to what has been an eloquent and enjoyable discussion to follow on here, but I wanted to say this.

_Cracked.com_ is one of my guilty procrastination pleasures. It helps me relax in my breaks at work, or even when the kids are in exams and I have to invigilate some interminably long maths exam (maths: yuk! Dance teachers only need to be able to count up to 8 ) and laugh at the irreverent captions to their pictures.

However, they're often like the Daily Mail of the internet in terms of scaremongering sometimes. A few days prior to *IBrian* posting this, I had read an equally emotive article on their site about how videogames and movies DO NOT have an quantitive effect on us. 

<sigh>

pH


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## Parson (Dec 19, 2013)

Phyrebrat said:


> However, they're often like the Daily Mail of the internet in terms of scaremongering sometimes. A few days prior to *IBrian* posting this, I had read an equally emotive article on their site about how videogames and movies DO NOT have an quantitive effect on us.
> 
> <sigh>
> 
> pH



That idea is just stupid! If there were no quantitative effect from exposure to media advertising would be useless. But clearly that is not true. The effect that it has on us can quite easily be overstated. But there is a demonstrable effect to exposure to anything over a period of time.


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 19, 2013)

Parson said:


> The effect that it has on us can quite easily be overstated. But there is a demonstrable effect to exposure to anything over a period of time.



Even if that effect is an aversion to whatever you are exposed to.  

At the moment I am suffering a violent reaction against bloody Christmas music - or mare particularly the same fifteen or so that get endlessly repeated over  every shop's PA system every year from the middle of November onward.  I avoid shops that play music at this time of year.  Though I did score a piddling victory against it the other day.  I was in my local coffee shop "...and so this is Christmas...". 

When the only other patrons left and the staff were busy out the back I went over to the CD player and turned it all the way down to 0.  Then went back to my coffee, my bun, and my book. 

The staff didn't notice.


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## Parson (Dec 20, 2013)

JunkMonkey said:


> Even if that effect is an aversion to whatever you are exposed to.
> 
> At the moment I am suffering a violent reaction against bloody Christmas music - or mare particularly the same fifteen or so that get endlessly repeated over  every shop's PA system every year from the middle of November onward.  I avoid shops that play music at this time of year.  Though I did score a piddling victory against it the other day.  I was in my local coffee shop "...and so this is Christmas...".
> 
> ...



Exactly!!!  I just have to believe one of those songs was the never to be condemned enough "Rocking Around the Christmas."


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## JoanDrake (Dec 20, 2013)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I'd suggest that that's because you're not constantly receiving the Christian narrative subliminally, in the guise of entertainment.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I think maybe you're in danger of falling into one of the traps the article discusses, remember:_ there is no conspiracy. _Or to put it another way the writer's only REAL agenda is almost always to get you to keep reading and turn the page, (or not leave the theatre, computer, etc)



tinkerdan said:


> I'm not going to argue that this is all wrong because it has elements of some reality but it contains its own element of fiction which each person needs to examine before they accept it as some truth of sagacious value.
> 
> In other words this article is a perfect example of the very thing that it's trying to expose. He has an agenda and he's assuming his audience will take his word that everything he says it truth. Or maybe he's just trying to make people think; either way in a small or maybe a large way he's become a part of the problem. Unless we examine it before we accept it and in this venue there is a slight more insidiousness happening than in something that we already should know is fiction like tv and movies and books of fiction.
> 
> ...




This is beginning to remind me more and more of the recent (at least to me) *Through the Wormhole* episode "Is Reality Real?" Isn't reality _itself_  just a big story we're all making up in our heads as we go along? I know that's not a terribly original idea  but it seems interesting.


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## Eli Grey (Nov 25, 2016)

The question is can we free ourselves from this matrix, and if so, how?


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## MWagner (Dec 20, 2016)

Just getting around to reading the article. It's a bit superficial. Also contradictory. The author cites Joseph Campbell, but then goes on to say these stories are socially constructed. Campbell was a Jungian, and believed the core stories of human myth are imprinted in the human psyche. That's why they're universal. The author also overstates his case with the extent to which pop culture stories inform us. Some people consume little pop culture, and they aren't wandering the streets like lost naifs. As a Canadian, I'm accustomed to the real world - my world - rarely being presented in pop culture, and 95 per cent of what it does show as false.

But the general point stands - we are shaped by stories. And to be honest, it troubles me. We live in a staggeringly complex world. Yet we crave simplicity. Our habit of putting everything into a narrative means we want our politics to fit the model of heroes and villains. Oppressors, victims, and saviours. That's emotionally satisfying delusion. The world is complex, not simple. Most of the harm in the world is not due to villainy, but is the unintended or unforeseen consequences of actions in that interconnected and complex world. We're often faced with unavoidable trade-offs where there are winners and losers. A hundred people all of goodwill interacting together can create awful catastrophes. And yet we rarely see that shown in our pop culture.

I have reservations about being a storyteller. One of the reasons I left journalism is because I grew frustrated with simplifying complex realities.  But isn't that what popular fiction is - comforting simplicities that provide an emotional antidote to frustration and alienation? Isn't peddling these narratives a kind of deception? The alternative is a literary approach to fiction, where you evoke intellectual dilemmas, anomie, and existential anxiety. But I don't enjoy reading that kind of fiction anymore. So it's not an easy choice. It's like sailing between scylla and charybdis.


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 20, 2016)

MWagner said:


> A hundred people all of goodwill interacting together can create awful catastrophes. And yet we rarely see that shown in our pop culture.



That's your story!  Write it.


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## Theophania Elliott (Dec 20, 2016)

MWagner said:


> But the general point stands - we are shaped by stories. And to be honest, it troubles me. We live in a staggeringly complex world. Yet we crave simplicity. Our habit of putting everything into a narrative means we want our politics to fit the model of heroes and villains. Oppressors, victims, and saviours. That's emotionally satisfying delusion. The world is complex, not simple. Most of the harm in the world is not due to villainy, but is the unintended or unforeseen consequences of actions in that interconnected and complex world. We're often faced with unavoidable trade-offs where there are winners and losers. A hundred people all of goodwill interacting together can create awful catastrophes. And yet we rarely see that shown in our pop culture.
> 
> I have reservations about being a storyteller. ... But isn't that what popular fiction is - comforting simplicities that provide an emotional antidote to frustration and alienation? ... The alternative is a literary approach to fiction, where you evoke intellectual dilemmas, anomie, and existential anxiety. But I don't enjoy reading that kind of fiction anymore. So it's not an easy choice. It's like sailing between scylla and charybdis.



I agree with what you say about people wanting simplicity, heroes and villains, these are the good guys over _here _and those are the bad guys over _there. _But I'm a bit more optimistic about storytelling.

Terry Pratchett (who has, admittedly, been accused of literature, although I never heard whether he was actually convicted) was brilliant at exposing some of the social and moral complexities that modern journalism - and other internet commentary - ignores or hides. Take the Battle of Koom valley: the only battle in (Discworld) history where both sides ambushed each other, leading to generations of interspecies hatred, each side casting themselves in the role of victim.

Or Granny Weatherwax, who stands on the line between light and dark, turns her face to the light... and steps backwards.

Or the Patrician, who carries a small box (very carefully) which contains something he says will end a war...

I think it's possible to do some very interesting and pointed things with popular fiction - you just have to be good at storytelling as well, because you can't get away with saying, "Well, I'm writing Literature here: you're not supposed to _enjoy _it."


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 20, 2016)

Parson said:


> the never to be condemned enough "Rocking Around the Christmas."



I always feel like throwing something when I hear "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree" or other songs of similar vintage.  But I love older Christmas music, and particularly orchestral arrangements of Christmas carols, which I think are lovely.

The other day my daughter and I were shopping for presents at the Disney Store at our local mall (we have _many_ relatives who are Star Wars addicts, or who visit Disneyland several times a year, so we can always pick up a few gifts at the store -- it feels strange to me to be buying so much SW merchandise at Christmas, but the idea _is_ to give people things they'll enjoy and with some of them it's a safe bet) and it was the day that Rogue One was released.  They have these big closed circuit TV screens at the store, which were running Star Wars trailers etc.  Most of the whole time we were there they were blasting out the March of the Stormtroopers.  Not what I would call festive!  But I turned to Megan and said, "At least it's a change from the Christmas music we've been hearing in other stores."


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## J Riff (Dec 20, 2016)

Play this version instead and see if anyone notices anything.





one can also search for : 'Carols from the Dark Side',


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## JunkMonkey (Dec 21, 2016)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> (we have _many_ relatives who are Star Wars addicts, or who visit Disneyland several times a year,



They can be helped.  There are probably 12 step programmes out there for them.


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## Toby Frost (Dec 21, 2016)

MWagner said:


> But the general point stands - we are shaped by stories. And to be honest, it troubles me. We live in a staggeringly complex world. Yet we crave simplicity. Our habit of putting everything into a narrative means we want our politics to fit the model of heroes and villains.



I agree. There are - in the West, at least - two main stories that are the root of a lot of trouble, namely Us Good, Them Bad, and Us Bad, Them Good. They are spouted with absolute conviction by a lot of intelligent people. But both of these come out of some sort of truth, so perhaps the trouble isn't the existence of such stories, but the lack of nuance with which they're told. Tell the same story enough times and it will become either twisted, oversimplified or both. The trouble is that the dumb, inaccurate version is the easier one to tell, and to swallow - just ask a certain sex pest and reality TV star.

As well as liking simple narratives because they are simple, people like discovering stories that tie all the loose ends together, which is probably why conspiracy theories are so popular. They actually make a sort of sense. To realise that there is a simple answer to complex problems (The lizard-people did it!) is actually pretty reassuring.

I think the question of whether the stories reinforce the reader's thoughts, or the reader's thoughts create the next story, is a bit chicken-and-egg. Is Michael Bay dragged down by the public, or does he drag them down? I'm not sure it matters as long as you can recognise the badness of his work and pull yourself out of that loop, which it seems a lot of people won't do.



MWagner said:


> As a Canadian, I'm accustomed to the real world - my world - rarely being presented in pop culture, and 95 per cent of what it does show as false.



Next thing you'll be telling me that your heads don't flap. It occurred to me a few days ago that it is very easy to live in a world totally dominated by pop culture. Even the "intelligent" stuff becomes pop culture (Is Trump like Lex Luthor? How is feminism reflected in the works of Joss Whedon?). I can't help thinking that the best stories get away from the "rules" not by playing with them in a self-aware fashion, as seems popular at the moment, but by doing something totally different or ignoring them completely.


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## Parson (Dec 21, 2016)

When you are telling truth in the terms of a Biblical Story nuance is where the interesting bits are. Otherwise your story just recites the increasingly over told moral which having been diluted through the ages turn into trite tripe.


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## J Riff (Dec 21, 2016)

Yeah but the Bible weren't innerested in making people dumb-downed now were it? It was a good book, most o' these here movies are just junk.

'As a Canadian, I'm accustomed to the real world'  Great comedy writers in here./... * ) - 51st on th' F of A act.... an extreme exaggeration but whatever, eh?


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## Parson (Dec 22, 2016)

J Riff said:


> Yeah but the Bible weren't innerested in making people dumb-downed now were it? It was a good book, most o' these here movies are just junk.
> 
> 'As a Canadian, I'm accustomed to the real world'  Great comedy writers in here./... * ) - 51st on th' F of A act.... an extreme exaggeration but whatever, eh?


Eh, no, not dumbed down. Even as literature the stories of Jesus are stories with real depth and nuance. ---- I know nothing of the above show, eh?


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