Once upon a time…

McLuhan’s ghost is at work again.

There is an oddly disturbing yet fascinating emergence in storyland "The Proppian Fairy Tale Generator" - based on the work of Russian structuralist Vladimir Propp…(thanks Paul and others)

His idea, and the idea behind the generator is that all fairytales have basic elements - so this generator lets you select them and you get a computer generated fairytale that is spat out. That isn’t actually the disturbing bit (well not the most) - it is that people still like reading them / are engaged, even though the tales don’t complete sense ‘characters appear and disappear…’ etc.

The idea is that it is the ‘form’ the medium, rather than the content, the inside, that matters, or at least matters more…[fyi this is apparently the opposite of how www works - content is king...but then that may because the form is text]

My own musings:

On one hand, I agree - it is in a lot of texts and stories about, for instance, you being the way - be the change type stuff (you yourself as a medium…). Another good example is ‘it’s not what you say but how you say it’, an art mastered by my cousin, Jonathan. He is 13 and calls everyone "schnitzel" as a term of endearment. You know that has nothing to do with being endearing and yet somehow being called ‘my little schnitzel’ works… And of course when I make up stories I am for sure borrowing from other stories I’ve heard or read, or things I’ve lived or felt…And fairytales are a great form in their ability to take you to another world, like a little side world. So the content doesn’t need to be too fixed…it is normal in a fairy tale for things to pop in and out / you to be taken somewhere you’ve always been, but not quite…Like the little pixie that just came and sat on your mouse - be careful not to squash her.

On the other, well, of course what you say matters! and words matter…in storyland, stories are multi-forms…multimedia. At least in my own work and dabbles with them. And they actually seem to be a form that house something…essential? (I am never clear what word to use here, and I am a bit averse to using one definition for what a story is!)

Also I am not clear that you can transpose what might happen from hearing someone tell a story orally to what occurs from taking all the basic elemets of story and making a ‘form’ irrespective of content…though of course I suspect that is how a lot of Presidents and Prime Ministers get elected today, and why we are buying things we don’t really need…I am mindful that though stories are amazing, and beautiful, they are also powerful and dangerous - it is also good to know what story is operating on you/being told to you…what stories you are part of…

whew - quite a little rant over a fairytale.

…I just hope we learn to live happily ever after - actually given what we are doing to the earth - that we live…(don’t worry I still have hope…) 

images:  image I Tinkerbell ,(image source II Goldilocks; image source III Mother Goose

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 4:42 am and is filed under musings, quotes, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.