Twitter has been telling tales - fables, to be more precise - and apart from the funny factor, it turns out they tell us a lot about us, our stories and how we see the world.
Barlow's Aesop
Crowd sourced information gathering and storytelling is a fairly new phenomenon, made possible by the age of social media. Twitter in particular, encourages people to distill meaning down to 140 (or less) characters, which is excellent practice for writers and storytellers, and for spreading the word very, very quickly. It's even become a wide-spread tool for distilling themes (ie. "elevator pitches" which are useful in a wide variety of fields) but there are other applications storytellers and folklorists can use them for as well. Memes, with their unique form of social commentary (yes, cat memes, DO say something about society), spread ideas, create context and bridge facts with fiction, often blurring the lines between the two to create a new "thinking space" for issues.
A few years ago fairy tale scholar Donald Haase* proposed a "communal catalogue" of #TwitterTypes, which were to be new summaries of traditional tales in 140 characters or less, to be used as a modern projection of the tale types classifications. Why Twitter? In Haase's words (from his personal Facebook page):
Because the discipline of 140 characters composed on a computer or smartphone forces creative choices about a tale’s “essence,” and those choices reveal, to the Tweeter, the alternatives — the “Tweets-not-taken.”
(Note: we did actually collect as many of these #twittertypes as we could find at the time and are considering adding a page for them to be stored here, perhaps added to if folk are inspired.)
While the project started well, and proved fascinating, it didn't last long and was not very extensive, which was unfortunate, as the potential for study using this tool and tack is wonderful and very reflective of how people today think. It also reflects the methods and thinking process for how we often tell stories in this social media and visual era. The experiment, though not proving successful as a modern alternative to the Aa-Th classification system as planned, did, however, make the point of showing that tales can be told, distilled, summarized, from various cultural and personal viewpoints via this social media medium.
God creating the animals ‘The Taymouth Hours’, England 14th century.
The "creation fables" shown below, though created purely for humorous intent, tell their own silly stories, not unlike many ancestral creation tales in which gods and goddesses were seen to be just as fallible and emotional as man, deciding and acting according to their personal agendas.
Described mostly via a brief dialogue exchange with God and an angel "sidekick" (or creation-technician), there isn't a lot of narrative detail, but each imply a situation and a result, and collectively - as they were written by multiple Twitter-users in a collective "brainstorm" - they provide a snapshot of modern humor and fable. They also wonderfully illustrate storytelling via memes (or memetics).
We're sure there are folklorists out there who could easily expand this into a fascinating lecture on storytelling and sociology but for today: the lecture is over. ;)
We've decided to call these, "Five Second Fables".
The Lion reads to the Animals (Aesop's Fables), 1869, Ernest Griset
Warning:While the content included in this post is generally considered humorous, we are aware that some people may feel offended as it uses casual references to God, and describes God (and angels) using colloquial humor and some bad language. As a result, we are putting these "tweet-fables", under the jump. Please consider yourself warned and read at your own risk. We do hope though, that it will add some smiles to your Sunday.
✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ♛ (click the "Read more" link below this line) ♛ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑
Easy to dismiss as a fad, nerdist quirk or a sad commentary on the lack of literacy in today's youth, there's actually a lot more to this storytelling form that's been hitting the internet for the past 12-18 months, than initially meets the eye, and the tale released today, September 7th, Beauty and the Beast, is a good example of why.
It's essentially storytelling via symbols and motifs, not unlike how the first stories were recorded back in the golden age of cave painters. (Makes me wonder if cave folk wouldn't adapt to cell phones faster than some of our older population...)
It's easy to scoff and roll your eyes because the cute is turned up to 11, which can be difficult to take seriously, but try to consider symbology as you watch these and note, not only the character icons but all the various transition symbols that are used in texting everyday, being employed here as vehicles to move the action forward. It's quite fascinating.
Take a look:
I will admit my first reaction, as a dedicated logophile and bibliophile, was closer to being aghast than fascinated on seeing the concept applied to an entire story. But as I grudgingly watched the first few seconds it dawned on me that there was more to this than meets the eye, and there's a big reason it's so effective in this age of the infographic, social media memes and visual information sorting.
To make this form of storytelling work, the creators must boil down the tale to its essential details, and anything added after is simply stylistic - very much like the innate method storytellers use all over the world. Storytellers have their "story frame", which contains the essential touchstone elements of the story they are telling, on which they embellish using their own unique language style and additional plot details, all designed to appeal as a whole to the audience in front of them at that time. Although simple, it's far more difficult to do well than it sounds.
These new Disney "As Told By Emoji" series are more effective and on point than I expected. While I would have been surprised to find a study on symbols and motifs to have been a key part of this process, it's clear the creators were looking shrewdly at the methods of communication used in social media, in particular, today, and are using this contemporary "shorthand" as a new form of storytelling.
I particularly like the transformation of Beast to Prince. It's exactly spot-on for today's everyday "vocabulary".
In this digital day and age, folks often prefer texting over making a phone call. It’s quicker, sure—but you also have the option of getting your message across with, well, symbols. They’re called emoji, which means “picture character” in Japanese. Open the texting app in your smartphone of choice and you have hundreds of adorable, hilarious, and sometimes unusual emoji right at your fingertips. Over the years, folks have tried their hand at recreating song lyrics, or telling long-form stories, just through emoji… and that’s where the idea for Disney’s latest short video series was born.
...The inspiration behind the series? “That’s a big question!” says Gino Guzzardo, the series director and producer, who also leads the video content team at Disney Interactive (DI) Media. “It was a trend we saw on the Internet. People would try to translate stories using static emoji, just through the Unicode [text] set that you have on your phone… We saw the opportunity of translating that into animation. So we thought, ‘What would that look like? Would it work?’ We hadn’t seen anyone use emoji to tell an animated story, like in an actual narrative, two-minute piece…
So simplified tale telling went back up a few notches in adding back the animation-factor, but the bare bones of story are still very visible.
See? More interesting than you thought. ;)
You can read a little more about the process and the creator's thinking HEREand can watch other Disney fairy tales from the As Told by Emoji series as well (each are linked below in their titles).
This is a completely different take on Aesop's fable. Usually you see it with portrayed with (essentially) a laugh track - this... notsomuch.
This is a sobering modern retelling, released in March this year (2015).
And it's very effective.
Here's the double-up poster - hare one way with a warning and a tortoise the other with an affirmation
A not very healthy-looking hare
A happy looking tortoise
In case you hadn't guessed, the campaign is, indeed, marketed at teens, with the idea of #ThinkSlow.
I hate that we seem to need these sorts of PSAs at all, but I'd rather put up with PSAs, knowing they might even save one life, than have the alternative.
Pippa MacSherry, head of marketing operational at TfL, said the work is a natural extension of the long-running ‘Don’t let your friendship die on the road’ campaign.
“By encouraging a more considered approach to crossing the road, we hope to reduce the number of pedestrian road related collisions. The campaign updates and re-imagines the classic tale of the hare and the tortoise – to show how ‘slow’ wins out,” she said.
Ed Palmer, managing partner at M&C Saatchi, commented: “It’s perilously easy to patronise and finger wag with this audience. Putting a modern twist on a well-known fable allows us to land our message without resorting to the more well-trodden type of cautionary tale to which this audience has become inured. The creative approach was to make safe roadside behaviour more appealing and aspirational for this audience.”
The campaign will run across video-on-demand, cinema and social from early March and builds on neuro-scientific research which suggests the target age range is less likely to exercise restraint.
I saw this entry on Tumblr this week and found it hilarious so had to share. All the images are from the comic series by Charles Vess that was eventually released in the GORGEOUS book, shown at the top of the post.
Anything that begins “as I was a-walking” is probably not going to end well, which is at least a good two-thirds of the ones I know
366 days is the right length of time to wait before you give up on anything
If you’re going to drown somebody, for God’s sake weigh the body down with rocks or something so nobody comes along and MAKES A F-ING HARP OUT OF IT ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS because that harp is going to drop the dime on you so fast
April is National Poetry Month and fairy tales seem to encourage a lot of poetry in response. While I cannot begin to keep up with the offerings out there, here's something that caught my eye a while back that I thought would be good to share.
Please note: I have NOT seen this book in person, nor read much more than what I could scour online, so this is really more of an announcement rather than a review.
"Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty" (released in September 2014) says exactly what's it's about in the title. Author Christine Heppermann expresses the world of young adults trying to deal with body image, self love, media messages, who they really are as opposed to whom they believe they should be and relationships of all kinds. In other words, it has something for everyone.
The book contains fifty poems (very easy to read if you're not a poetry person too), along with photography that is sometimes modern, sometimes symbolic, created for the volume, providing another window into these ideas, or a reflection on the same. While girls will clearly identify with many of the issues and sentiments explored here, most of those apply to boys too. It's just that we forget that when the image is a girl with a red hood...
Description:
Christine Heppermann's collection of fifty poems puts the ideals of fairy tales right beside the life of the modern teenage girl. With piercing truths reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins, this is a powerful and provocative book for every young woman. E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars, calls it "a bloody poetic attack on the beauty myth that's caustic, funny, and heartbreaking."
Cruelties come not just from wicked stepmothers, but also from ourselves. There are expectations, pressures, judgment, and criticism. Self-doubt and self-confidence. But there are also friends, and sisters, and a whole hell of a lot of power there for the taking. In fifty poems, Christine Heppermann confronts society head on. Using fairy tale characters and tropes, Poisoned Apples explores how girls are taught to think about themselves, their bodies, and their friends. The poems range from contemporary retellings to first-person accounts set within the original tales, and from deadly funny to deadly serious. Complemented throughout with black-and-white photographs from up-and-coming artists, this is a stunning and sophisticated book to be treasured, shared, and paged through again and again.
The book has been labeled 'feminist', as well as 'caustic' and emotive'. From a review by cecildaily:
One poem reflects on the modern day version of a love charm: “Such spells call for ingredients / missing from my cupboard” it laments. Modern love charms, it explains, do not require “eye of newt” or “tongue of toad,” but instead “plump lips” and “smooth skin.”Another poem shows that once Sleeping Beauty realizes all the things that go into being a girl, “showering, shaving, shampooing, conditioning,” she thinks how much easier it was to be asleep. The poems all illustrate how humans are often told to strive for perfection and how damaging that can be for our self-esteem.
I'm also adding some reviews that reflect my impressions on reading the little I did, and am including screenshots of the Author's Note. I think the latter will be of special interest to fairy tale folk here who've done more than average reading of fairy tales and texts, and know whom she's referring to when she mentions Marina Warner:
“It’s a bit of a mystery how a slender, subversive book of flayed fairy tale poetry can chronicle how the world tries to rob young women of power, while at the same time handing them back that power. Teen girls should read this—so should their mothers, their aunts, their grandmothers…” (Gayle Forman, author of the New York Times-bestselling Just One Day/Just One Year duet)
“A bloody poetic attack on the beauty myth that’s caustic, funny, and heartbreaking.” (-- E. Lockhart, author of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and We Were Liars)
“Many of the poems read like something you might find on a smart, funny contemporary women’s website, probably going viral. . . . They each pack their own literary punch; she is, after all, a poet riffing on fairy tales.” (Elle.com)
Have you read "Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty"?
I saw a wonderful scene this week. Bear with me as I share it and hopefully I'll explain what I believe it has to do with fairy tales:
The scene was from the show The Americans*. While I'd be hard pressed to relate this show to fairy tales generally, it makes interesting observations about the human condition, love, despair and choices. The following scene is of the main male character, Philip, with his KGB handler, playing scrabble. Philip, at this point in his journey, is questioning the wisdom of orders given to him and his wife, feeling that it is compromising him as a basic human being - as a father and husband:
[Scene: Philip and his Handler playing scrabble.]
H: Stuck between a geode and a hard place. (shuffles tiles)"Amatory" -(counts points) 24 yes, - 24 -loving , devoted,adoring.
Philip: Where do you come up with this stuff?
H: I love words. They leave a trail. For example, amatory is from the Latin word for 'love'. While wedlock - the condition of being married - is Norse, Norwegian: wed, lock. Which means perpetual battle.
Philip: Your point being?
H: Love and marriage in many ways are antithetical: one is a bolt of lightning, an epiphany, and the other is planting, tilling, tending. It's hard work.
Philip: (glares at H) I'm trying to concentrate here.
H: Oh sorry.
Philip: (puts down scrabble letters)
H:(reads) "sphinx" - excellent. 59 - bravo.**
Such a great exchange.
He's right. Words leave a trail.
At Myth & Moor yesterday (Terri Windling's wonderfully mythic and inspirational blog) Terri talked about the sense that our stories are disappearing, like many of the world's forests. She was quoting the book Tales Of Faerie and I have started discussing (From the Forest by Sara Maitland) and began by referencing a passage that caught my attention too - about the frustration parents have with the lack of response when they ask their children what happened in their day, ie. "Nothing." My reaction when reading this was so strong I went and grabbed a pencil, underlined it and bookmarked it to read to my husband later.
It finishes by explaining: "... but the 'nothing' is a cover for "I don't know how to tell a good story about it, how to impose a story shape on the events.' "
by Banksy (one of my favorites!)
Using words to tell stories is hard now. We're not only out of the habit, most people don't grow up with this; it's not as common a developmental skill as it used to be. For many, there just isn't time. At least, not to tell stories in that form. For others the gap between everyday expression and "word "smithing is just overwhelming and intimidating. Since oral stories (and general yarns and tale telling) have fallen out of everyday use, being able to tell tales is no longer a common-man thing to do. Whether or not it is true, to many it feels like telling stories are the territory of "true writers" only, so people just... don't. (Using myself as an example, Myth & Moor is full of beautiful, inspirational and thought provoking writing - I highly recommend it - and the comments on Terri's posts range from articulate to poetic - so much so, I often feel unable to comment, certain that I have nothing to add, even though I've always been made welcome there. And this is from someone who does write every day, adores words and has a rudimentary understanding of Latin and other base languages.) As a result, the people who understand those trails of history and stories within the words seem to be fewer and fewer every day. When it comes to tales, people not only get tongue-tied, the stories they stumbling-ly tell, lack vitality, the tales become muddied and, in some ways, they start to die.
The Grimms were motivated to write down fairy tales because they felt their language and tales were disappearing rapidly in the cultural clime. And they were right. Their work in stopping this from happening altogether is often underestimated but we owe them much.
Today we have the same sense, that stories and tales are disappearing, along with our language. Forget correct grammar, people don't even use full sentences anymore. (See? Just like that.) We resort to catch phrases, memes and emojis to communicate and express sentiments. We summarize in infographics. It's alarming in many ways but the lack of words doesn't mean language and stories are disappearing. It means they're changing shape. In an age of the internet, in which we need to navigate the constant press of information overload, we've turned the bulk of the words off altogether and begun processing everything the fastest way possible - visually. And it works. After all, visuals are processed 60 000 times faster in the brain than text. We now live in a visual culture and there's no escaping it.
What tends to happen as a result though, is that WE DO LOSE STORIES through the gaps. And tales, and those word shapes with their trails. So what do we do?
This is something I've been looking at seriously for a good couple of years now - the impact of visual communication and visual consumerism on storytelling. In many ways, this new form of language has opened up new forms of stories to people who weren't interested in telling tales before (for whatever reason). People who always responded with "Nothing" now fill their Tumblr accounts and Pinterest boards with fan-made images and quotes, blending ideas and sentiments, suggesting avenues of thought and inspiring conversation.
"The hyper-visualisation age is now upon us, where any visual media object can act as a portal to other media." (source) A truly interesting thing (and hidden treasure) is this: the best forms of these new "stories" (however fractured and incomplete they are) lead to words. And more words. The image shorthand is being used like a filtering system in an age of information overload. And the best, most useful "filter caught" images, usually use words too. Sometimes trying to find what you want is like opening a Matroyshka doll - layers within layers within layers... and sometimes it seems more like hunting Koschei's soul which was hidden inside of a needle, inside of an egg, inside of a duck, inside of a hare, inside of an iron chest,buried under an oak tree, on a island, in the middle of the ocean... but ultimately, the words - and the tales - they're in there.
(There are hundreds of articles explaining to business people and marketers just how important the use of images with the right phrase is.) But it can't be just any words. They specifically use 'the right ones', the succinct ones, the ones that, in conjunction with the image, tell a spare story with a lot of resonance; very much like fairy tales always have.
People are drawn to the life in words (and trees), to the history in them but it's hard to know, when there is so much in front of us demanding our attention, what we should pay attention to. (Why should we care about this tree here when there are so many more?) Images help filter. Not too surprisingly, when you figure out it's not really 'words' people don't like, it's the tidal wave of text that feels impossible to process, people can start to sort out just what it is they want to pay attention to - and they go word hunting. Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and many other publications still do exceptionally well publishing multiple page essays. Novels are devoured in print and ebook form alike - perhaps more than ever. People want to read. They want words, and stories and forests and tales. They just want to choose their path so they don't feel so lost. But how do we get people to the start of these paths and tales so they choose to walk them, themselves and, in doing so, keep them alive?
More specifically, what is a writer to do? How do we preserve our beloved fairy tales from becoming distant memories, footnotes in essays or forgotten tales in out of print books?
The answer is simple. We have to find new ways to tell them.
That also feels exceptionally difficult to figure out how to do. (The reason this post has taken as long to get up as it has is due to my search for appropriate visuals to include - and I'll be the first to admit, this whole post would have been better received had I been able to present it in a much more visual manner. I wish I had the skills to pull together reaction gifs and create "visual poems" to capture the essence of what I'm trying to communicate but I didn't grow up that way and don't have those skills... yet.)
Interestingly, dealing with this exact issue in their own times is, I believe, exactly why the Grimms, Andersen, Perrault and Wilde are still known today. (I have a post on this coming on this shortly - how these fairy tale writers made their tales truly live.)
We know, in principle, that fairy tales are very much a living thing. It's ironic that writing them down to preserve them serves to help them stagnate, almost as if they "solidify" in their written form. Often, it requires these coma-like story forms to get a jolt, usually from another media source, to wake up these 'sleeping beauties' and have people notice and love them again. And perhaps some savvy use of available tools in this "visual era" can help. I know. It sounds exhausting and I'm right there with you. Can't we just sit in our corners and write our words and have them there ready for when people want them? I wish we could. But if we want to be part of making sure tales stay alive we need to be active as they're being redefined and retold.We need to be part of the 'telling'. The best historians don't just dig into the dusty past and tell us what happened, they explain why things happened the way they did and show us the direct connection to ourselves, how we can learn from history to learn about the world as it is now and to make a better future. Otherwise why bother with history at all? Eventually, when the noise of the world is sorted and people know what they want to focus on, words become even more precious than before. It's then that they ask for more words, more tales. People will continue to come back to words. The trick is to keep the trail visible.
* It's one of the few shows I think is brilliantly done in every aspect and which I do my best to keep up with, even if I can only see 10 minutes of a show at a time. It's very brutal at times but I love the juxtaposition of a couple working on their relationship and raising an American family against the background of being KGB spies in America.
** I thought the riddle response was a great touch too.
It doesn't matter if you don't play video games, don't like video games or don't care about video games. None of that is relevant when you understand what is really happening with Never Alone. (If it bugs you, just call it an educational tool". That's also a correct description.)
"What good are the old stories... if their wisdom is not shared with anyone?"
Note: If you only look at one thing in this post, please watch the video below. It will amaze you with regard to the tales being used, how they're used and how beautifully it has all come together. You can scroll down to view.... (and if you want to read more the text will still be here afterward. ;)
I posted on Never Alone initially when it was released (you can read that HERE, along with lots of beautiful pictures and many more resources about the tales, which I won't repeat in this post), but this week, they've just come out with a host of game improvements/upgrades, are releasing a soundtrack this week (yes, it's become that popular!) and are expanding the systems you can play it on, to include Macs (Apple computers), starting this Thursday, February 26th (currently available for XBOX ONE, PS4 and Steam),The soundtrack will be available through the Steam store at the same link.
Never Alone's mission is to bring the old and fading indigenous tales (of the Iñupiatpeople) back into circulation and popularity among current and future generations. That sounds ridiculously lofty - like an idea that would ultimately gather dust in some enthusiastic, but sadly naive paper somewhere, but here it's actually happened.
Correction: IS HAPPENING.
Not only has this video game educational tool been created, it has been done in the best way possible, with the combination of young, intelligent, technologically-savvy young people who among the best in their field, in conjunction and under continuous consultation with tribal elders. Yes. 70, 80+ year old traditional tribal elders are not just talking with, but working with hip (and geeky) youngsters who think in RAM, terrabytes and all things digital. Not only that, it draws on old traditions to inform the design style and the development of the storytelling!
We paired world class game makers with Alaska Native storytellers and elders to create a game which delves deeply into the traditional lore of the Iñupiat people to present an experience like no other. Never Alone is our first title in an exciting new genre of “World Games” that draw fully upon the richness of unique cultures to create complex and fascinating game worlds for a global audience.
The best of the old meets the best of the new. And it's a beautiful thing.
The result is a stunning, gorgeous and unique interactive storytelling-puzzle-and-platform game that leads the player through discovery of characters from tales, challenges from stories and triumphs via ingenuity and putting learned principles (and game skills) to good use.
Contrary to what you might think, this little indie game isn't just waiting to be noticed. It's out there making waves with it's approach, style and beauty of both storytelling and game design, as the developers confidently take it to all the leading game conventions and meetings. As a result, it's quickly earning worldwide recognition AND garnering some coveted awards along the way.
Before I write any more, take a look at the behind-the-scenes video and see behind some of the tales (and the people and process) of Never Alone:
I feel like this is exactly the sort of thing we need to be aiming to do to get old stories back in circulation. We need to meet the influential (often young) people (the trend setters, the most influential demographics) on "their" territory, speaking their language (technology, social media and video games) and give them reasons to want to tell and retell these tales themselves.
That's the only surefire way old tales will make it back into common knowledge and that's the way the wisdom and knowledge in these tales will be passed on to benefit people now and in the future.
Creating a widely respected and loved video game is a wonderful way of doing exactly that.
I'm so moved that the vision for Never Alone has been made real and is proving to be exactly what they set out to be: influential. Not only that, it's enriching the lives of the developers, the creation team, the communities supporting them AND the gamers and the industry professionals that are coming into contact with it (ie. inward and outward).
It's nothing short of magic.
It's the sort of difference I want to make, to be a part of - where the tales are alive and vital in ways that connect us to our past and pave the way for a (hopefully better) future.
The best thing? This is just the first game. They've only just begun...
Congratulations to the unique and wonderful team at both E-Line Media and the Alaskan Native Cook Inlet Tribal Council! We cannot wait to see what you do next.
Wishing my fellow Aussies a wonderful beginning for what will undoubtedly be "an awfully big adventure!"
Congratulations to Reilly McCarron and Jo Henwood, and to all who helped make the dream of the Australian Fairy Tale Society become reality.
We're looking forward to reports from today's first conference (of many conferences and events to come...).
For those who see this post in time today and wish to follow along from afar, (or would like to catch up later), AFTS will be tweeting updates using the #AFTSConf hashtag on Twitter.
Here's the program again (remember to allow for the time difference if you're checking in from anywhere not in the same time zone as Sydney, Australia if you want to follow along live):
