Professor David Peimer
How Great Stories, True or False, Capture Our Minds
Professor David Peimer | How Great Stories, True or False, Capture Our Minds
- Okay, so thanks very much, Karina. I know we had a little bit of a glitch there. So, hi everybody, and hope everybody is well, everywhere, wherever you are, north, south, east or west, and hope that August is treating you well and let’s… I’m sure we all share thoughts for people we know in Israel. And just to say happy birthday to Ellie who is in Israel, I know, and a very good friend of my sister’s and who I mentioned very often. So happy birthday to you and others who have written into me as well. It’s part of the community spirit that we try to engender. Okay, so we’re going to dive straight into: How Great Stories Capture Our Minds, and Hearts. And what I’m going to do is talk a little bit about stories and how they do this, and then show quite a few clips from movies and show how, just the scenes, how they in themselves tell great stories to capture our mind and hearts and how they themselves are structured in various ways. So they become unforgettable and they become not only unforgettable, but they almost, they take a role in our minds as meanings. And when we talk to our friends and family, we use images and scenes from movies or plays or literature, tell the story in order to communicate some idea or some thought or to share some, some concept that we have to not only to illustrate the concept we have, but to demonstrate it in a way. So we do it through a story, which is quite extraordinary, which is pure imagination in order to capture something which is perhaps factual or literal or intellectual or emotional even. It’s done through a story. And I’m going to show quite a few clips from films that I think demonstrate this, as I said in the scene itself, and talk about a couple of other great stories from the Bible and elsewhere.
And I wanted to start with two short stories, which I think and notice I’m focusing on great stories, not focusing on those that are not great, which are profoundly boring. The plot is too long or character. Anyway, all sorts of things where it just, you know, want to fall asleep. But the great stories and how they last over millennia at times. But really capture and take over our head space, or at least enrich and enhance our mind space in the way that we share thoughts and feelings with friends, families, at work, wherever. So the first one I’m showing intentionally here is a picture, which you all know so well, Salvador Dali. And you know, of the melting clocks. And I’m doing this so that we don’t, so we don’t forget it, okay? One of the great surrealist pictures of all time, not only the fact that it’s surrealist, but the story of others came about, demonstrates to me what surrealism is. So I want to use the story of how Dali came up with these paintings. All of them, the melting clocks, so that we never forget to show how memorable the story is making the idea for us. Dali and his wife and friends are sitting late at night having dinner, whole lot of friends, seven, eight friends having dinner and candles and you can imagine the dinner spread. They’re all talking and you know, et cetera, et cetera. And this is a true story, by the way. And it’s going on and on and on. It’s getting late at night and then all adds, he’s got these blue canvases, just blue and nothing on them, and he doesn’t have a clue what to paint on those blue canvases. He’s just prepared them.
So his friends and family, they’re all talking and drinking as one would on a weekend night and, you know, sharing the food. And you can imagine lots of wit and conversation going on like we all have with friends and family. But he’s obsessed with the one thing in the back of his mind. Then gets a bit later, and in the great tradition, Spanish tradition, anyway, they decide to go out, paint the town red and go out to have fun and said, come on Salvador, I’m not going to do the accent. Come on Salvador, just, you know, come, let’s go, let’s go and have fun. Let’s get out into the town. And he says, no, no, no, I have to. I’m obsessed. I have to find what I’m going to put in these blue canvases. And he says he’s staying and the rest go. So he stays surrounded with a table. All the chairs are empty and the food is all there, bread and food. And you can imagine fish, paella, you know everything and the candles are burning, you know, all of that they’ve done. Bit of music in the background and he looks, and he looks at these canvases and he is going crazy. His wife and friends are all out and they, until very, very late anyway, it gets one o'clock, he looks at his watch, it’s one o'clock now. I still dunno what to paint. Carries on thinking, what am I going to do? Let me see. Try rather says, no, looks at his watch, God, it’s already 2:15 AM, dunno what to do. Goes on, gets to three o'clock, four o'clock, 4:00 AM Finally, his friends and family still haven’t come back.
They’re out having fun in the town. Suddenly he realizes in a moment he’s been looking, what has he been doing? He’s been looking at his watch and the candles have been burning all the time. And the candles are getting smaller and smaller, a little flame, but lots of wax. And in the surrealist, in the great surrealist tradition, he puts together two completely unrelated ideas. The candle wax and the candles slowly sinking into more and more wax and getting smaller with a flame. And he’s been looking at his watch the whole time to check the time; he puts the two together, melting wax, looking at his watch. And the result is one of the most remarkable series, in my opinion, of paintings ever done. And he called it, and Apollinaire came up with the word, the French poet, who came up with the word surrealism, called it one of the great acts of, one of the great imaginative acts of surrealism. However, surrealism works in the imagination, putting together things we might not have made connections with before. Suddenly there’s a new connection, something emerges. I tell this story so that hopefully we will never forget when we look at these paintings of Dali, how on Earth this guy really came up with these paintings. And it’s the true story. So I share that to show one of the power of storytelling, instead of being literal and telling you the factual events and the sequence of facts, you know, which I could have done in maybe three sentences. You might have celebrated that I’m only doing in three sentences, but we would lose what I call the charm, the wonder, the imaginative journey of the story to help make it more memorable and go deeper in us.
The other quick story that I want to tell you at the beginning is from, you know, I’m sure people know I love the ancient Greeks and Romans and many others. ‘Cause you know, the ancients is a reason why they’ve lasted, including the Bible. And how on earth did the Oracle of Delphi come about? Where does that actually come from? That one little island, one little place like a cave and rocks and so on. What became known as Delphi and became known as the oracle, the front of wisdom and prophecy and insight for ancient Greeks such that, you know, we use it in our times today all the time, or often. And it came because Zeus, as we know, the great, the most powerful god of all, everyone knows the story of how he came about. But Zeus decided to send two eagles up into the vast blue sky and the two eagles searched the earth and flying these huge eagles flying through the vast blue sky. And they finally come together on the island of Delphi, and they settle on the little cave, which becomes known as the Oracle of Delphi. And that’s the origin of the story of where the phrase, the Oracle of Delphi comes from. I share this quick story, it’s brief so that we hopefully maybe never forget that, to share the idea of where did this idea of wisdom come from? Eagles soaring, looking all over.
We can get the metaphor, obviously, you know, these are eagles looking intellectual eagles for wisdom. Not just intelligence, but wisdom and the source of it and how it moves into ancient Greek culture and then into our culture, but becomes such an important value in our culture in western and eastern culture in its own way separately. Okay, two quick stories to begin to show the power of hope of storytelling. We can go on to the next, the next slide, please. Thanks. This one I want to use purposely, This is the modern approach as many of us know for the 8-16 year olds to 28-30 year olds. And you know, anybody older or younger, 10 year olds; using animation technique on digital format as a way of communicating stories today is so powerful. And here it is, using the little speech bubble. All comes from comics, of course. We construct internal narratives to help make sense of the world. And I want you to show this in a different way. So it hopefully, perhaps becomes another little story, showing it through a little young girl comic image. Stories, ultimately for me to make meaning, to make sense of our personal lives and we live day to day and the larger the sense of community. And of course, maybe the city or the urban or the rural area we live in, wherever in the world. And then the nation or the state, the religion, we are part of the ethnicity. And then of course, globally, you know, ultimately, of course geopolitics anything we want. But it’s to make internal narratives to make sense of what could be a pretty meaningless, haphazard, jagged world, to put it mildly. What on earth time means. Space means, nevermind, holding back on Einstein for the moment.
But you know, what on earth it means to live from day to day at what we do with the families, children, work, anything that happens to us as we just walk down the street, we’ll go shopping or you know, any of the apparent banalities of ordinary daily life. But how we construct a bit of meaning I want to suggest is through storytelling and telling the story of what happened. Once upon a time, dot, dot, dot. What happened? Little red riding . Why do little children love stories? We are helping our little children make sense of something in the world, whether it’s an idea, a moral, a principle, a dilemma, whatever. How do we as adults or as we grow through the different phases of life, we are making sense all the time, not as all to use contemporary language, all the data coming in, data, information, knowledge, and bombarded with images. And so many things, especially in our modern digital times with so much, so many technological devices of communication, you know, that we, it’s endless how earth do reconstruct some sense of meaning, some sense of structure, goals, aims, whatever we want; stories to help us go step by step. Okay, we’re going to move on from this to the next slide, please. Stories also helped; and I’m using again, intentionally the very modern, young generation approach, which is this kind of semi animated approach, just to give a bit of difference, not to be sorry, that’s like Dali, but a little bit of a difference. Stories help build connections.
We tell a story to each other, you know, this happened and can you believe it? And then, you know, he said this, she said this and whatever, et cetera. And then somebody says, yeah, actually that happened to me like a few months ago. Or, yeah, that reminds me of something else. And suddenly we discover a connection and we find a connection through storytelling. Just ordinary stories. Not theater, not plays, films, anything, just through ordinary storytelling. A connection between A and B, whatever age or generation, wherever we live. And suddenly we feel a bit more of an emotional connection with the person, or if we disagree with a story, a bit of emotional disconnection. But an emotional bond is created, a connection is made through sharing simple, banal or non banal stories. And thus, to expand out from either personal one-on-one or two, three individuals to community. So the community tells the story, remember, this happened and then that happened. And remember that when the terrible rainfall or the, you know, the fire over there or you know, he or she left the tap running or you know, we ate this food, which was unbelievable the holiday we had. Whatever it is, the ordinariness of everyday storytelling not only builds connections on a personal level, but on a larger community level. And I think this is so powerful and it may seem simple and obvious, but once we start to think about it, we see how central it is enact in daily life and being human. I don’t only love stories because of drama and literature and good writing and film 'cause of good visuals or musicals, the music, I love them all, of course passionately.
But because inside they are making meaning of the world through stories and it’s living through stories almost that suggest ideas, concepts, dilemmas, moral debates, political, emotional conflicts, the world of being human experienced through the world of stories and storytelling. Okay, if we go on to the next one, please.
[Karina] David, I’m actually going to stop sharing and switch so that I can put in the one with the enhanced sound. So gimme a second.
Okay, thank you.
Here we go.
Okay. Okay. This is just how storytelling, I’m not going to, we won’t play the sound here, but this is just for those who are interested and much more knowledgeable than I am. Scientists, especially neurologists or neuroscientists or biochemists, whoever, everybody out there obviously how storytelling affects the brain of dopamine and many, many other parts of the cortex and the brain, et cetera. And it fascinating, contemporary research has been done and is being done, which show the different parts of the brain and how the neurons light up when storytelling happens as opposed to when storytelling doesn’t happen. And I’m going to come back to this briefly, but this would be a whole talk on its own separate to today. But just to show how fascinating these scientists of today and recently are putting together the two, the one seeming artistic, the other seeming a scientific medium. But the two; we finding out the links between the two in a biochemical and neurological way and physiological. Okay, but I’m not going to go into this detail today. We go on. The next one is a short clip. I’m going to show from, as I said, I’m going to show quite a few as we go along, but this is from Charlie Chaplin, it’s the opening scene from City Lights, one of the great scenes of film and let’s watch it first. Okay, I can play it please, Karina. If we can hold it there please, just freeze it. Thank you. So I want to show this first because it may be of course, sentimental for us today and you know, all of that, et cetera.
But it is one of the great scenes of filmmaking in terms of storytelling. Right at the beginning here we have a flower girl selling flowers to make a few pennies. And along comes the tramp. First, everybody’s just walking past, nobody cares. The homeless, the tramps, who cares, you know, we just walk past the flower girl, typical, we see it so often in any city in the world. And then suddenly he stops, comes back and her, it’s her hand that goes out. And from that he starts to, Chaplin starts to character, starts to realize she’s blind. Something is different here. And that little story happens and it then moves into an evocation of emotional empathy for us. Because suddenly we discover together with the Chaplin character, of course, that she’s blind. And immediately our empathy goes up, as does his character. Then along comes the other guy who is a businessman, is just walking across, gets in the car, slams the car, and the car door shuts. That’s it. And she thinks he has your change, but says it because she’s saying it to the sound of the car door. She’s not saying it to Chaplin 'cause she can’t see, obviously. So she can only respond to sound. So she must have heard the sound of the car door and, “But you forgot your change, Sir.” Thinking, you know, as we think you know, but that’s the person who didn’t give a damn about her. Chaplin’s, the character who does care and have empathy, the other one doesn’t. So we have immediately, we have moral dilemma, we have dramatic conflict, we have emotional conflict set up, and there’s one very short few second scene. The other thing that we have set up is, what Aristotle called the character or the person in life, we feel the most for, the most empathy for, and I use that word thoughtfully, not just as a cliche word, which is bandied around so much today, or the most we identify with them is those who have undeserved misfortune, who don’t deserve something that’s happened to them, October the seventh, that obviously didn’t deserve anything.
So we feel so much more, we feel so much more for, you know, Poland being invaded by Germany. It didn’t deserve, nothing is deserved there. Going from huge geopolitics and politics to the very personal here. She doesn’t deserve to be born blind or become blind. So we feel much more, and this is two and a half thousand years ago that he wrote, this guy wrote it, where the misfortune is not deserved. And we think of films, we think of movies, we think of so many things where the person in life or character has undeserved misfortune. We would always feel some kind of identification and better. We will feel empathy to some degree for that person far more than the person who has misfortune, but deserved it in a way ;who committed a big crime and is on the run or, you know, shot somebody not by accident, and then just trying to outwit and out, et cetera. They finally caught well, interesting story, but we don’t feel as much. So again, it’s through the storytelling that the idea of who human beings can actually feel the most for can be captured, not just me explaining the ideas, but through this little snapshot of a semi, partly sentimental, but profound scene in a Chaplin, in a silent movie. Okay, thanks. If we can go onto the next one, please.
And this is Mr. Harari, one of my favorites as we know. And this is from he, Harari has made a couple of minutes animated story of his first book, A Brief History of Sapiens, and to try and capture the main idea. And he is made it for very young children, obviously, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 11 years old. And it’s purposely geared using contemporary digital animation format for that. If I can show it, please.
- In our original discussions about co-authoring the graphic novel series, one of the first things David and Daniel suggested was that I star as a character in the books. I initially resisted this idea because I usually prefer to keep myself out of my books. And in the graphic novel, I definitely didn’t want to appear as this all knowing wiseman that explains everything. In the end, I agreed to appear as a character, but on condition that I wouldn’t be the only scientist there. So we added a few more scientists. Some of them are real people like Professor Robin Dunbar. Others are fictional characters like Professor Saraswati. Adding these other scientists was very important because science is never the work of a single individual. It’s always a collaborative effort. Most of what I know about archeology, genetics, and history is based on the work of many of my colleagues. For example, how do I know that 50,000 years ago, some Homo sapiens had sex with Neanderthals. I’ve never conducted an archeological excavation and I don’t know how to date ancient bones or how to map ancient DNA, but I’ve read the work of archeologists and geneticists that proves beyond reasonable doubt that yes, 50,000 years ago at least some sapiens had sex with some Neanderthals. So in the graphic novel, the person who explains what we know about stone age sex is not me, it is Professor Saraswati. Seeing myself in a cartoon format is actually quite a fun experience. The fictional Yuval is based on me, but he takes on a life of his own, dressing up in all kinds of crazy customs and getting hotheaded in ways that, well, I rarely do. Of the main characters that appear in both volume one and volume two in the series, my favorite is Dr. Fiction. Dr. Fiction is a superhero who has a central role in the books because she represents the human superpower that has allowed our species to conquer the planet. Humans control the world because we are the only mammal that can cooperate in very large numbers.
And we can do that because we can invent and believe fiction. All large scale human cooperation is based on fictional stories. Religions are based on mythological stories, nations and states are also stories that exist only in our collective imagination. Corporations are what lawyers call legal fictions. Money too is just a story. Take a dollar bill, It has no value in itself. You cannot eat it or drink it or wear it. The value of the dollar comes only from the stories that bankers tell us and that we all believe. How to convey this crucial idea in the graphic novel? We had all kinds of suggestions. We talked about it and wrote emails and made phone calls and rejected one possibility after another. Eventually, we were inspired by the superhero genre to create a new superhero. Dr. Fiction, she flies around in a cape like a traditional comic superhero, and she personifies the human superpower to invent and believe fictional stories. In many ways, she is the most important character in the whole book.
- Okay, so I wanted to show this because in a couple of minutes he’s trying to capture interestingly stories on a couple of different levels. Of course, there’s himself, then there’s all the animated images, there’s the cartoon genre coming from the past, and there’s storytelling about storytelling. Hmm, which is fascinating in itself. So obviously whether it’s been for a younger or a more adult audience, whichever, this particular piece fascinates me because it’s a couple of layers and levels of storytelling that Harari is tapping into because he believes stories are so crucial to our human existence. You know, it’s through creating what he calls collective fictions, whether about religions, whether they’re about legal structures, whether they’re about societies, nations, whatever, money, anything all come from believing, enough people believing in the story. Then we go along with it. So ironically, the human imagination, creating stories that enable us as a society to get on and more or less cooperate and develop and evolve as a society. But it’s through stories, which whether we believe in Zeus and we believe two eagles created the Oracle of Delphi, or whether we believe something else, or you know, whether the bank or the legal fictions that he mentions, or the comic Superhero Y, Superman or you know, whoever, it’s through the story, the legend of, you know, or the story of the Exodus, the story of the 10 Commandments, the burning bush, whether literal, real, mythological, combinations, whatever. It’s through the stories that captivate our imagination and therefore our minds and hearts and the great stories do that exactly.
And we live according to the beliefs they tell us. The 10 Commandments, did it actually happen? Do we found them? Have we found them? No, archeologically or anything, but we all, we commit, most of us in the western world commit to living those as well as best we can. You know, and we believe the burning bush, you know, the Exodus, all of those. So as an example, it becomes through the story. Imagine how it would be if we just said God gave Moses 10 Commandments, he wrote them in the sand, or he wrote them on a stone, and that’s it, onto the next. But we have the whole story around it and the whole story of Exodus around it, heading up Mount Sinai, the burning bush, everything. Imagine without that. how dry it would be. Factual and possibly accurate or not, but dry and far less memorable. Power of storytelling to capture which facts alone cannot reach. Interesting research has shown that recent research that stories are remembered 22 times more than facts alone. What an extraordinary research. This is quite recent research. Stories, remember, I’m going to say it again. Stories are repeated to 20 times or remembered up to 20 times more than facts alone. So if we give a shopping list of 10 facts right now, I would forget after two or three, four or five, but through the stories, we would have 22 times the chance more of remembering. Fascinating research going on. So when people think of ideas, convincing arguments based on data, but put it into a story, much more likely to be persuaded. Let’s go back to Julius Caesar of Shakespeare. You know, Caesar is assassinated by Brutus, Cassius and the others. And you know, there’s a military coup takeover happening.
Along comes Mark Antony, “Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears. I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him.” And then he turns us through the rhetoric of the story of Caesar. This great man. Yes, yes, he was killed and it was right to kill him and everything. But there’s another side to the story of Caesar. Was he too ambitious? Did he just want to become a dictator, you know, and a malevolent dictator. No, he was going to leave all his money to everybody in Rome. Look, it says so in his will, which he reveals at towards the end of that speech. It’s a story, it’s a remarkable piece of rhetoric. A story capturing, a set of ideas to persuade an audience in the most political of contexts. The greater the story, the greater the persuasion and the political or personal effect. So the rules of storytelling, grab the audience’s attention. “Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears.” Well immediately. What? Okay, I’m a friend. I’m a Roman, I’m a con- Yeah, okay, let me your ears? You know, it is like different ways of putting words. “I come not to bury, I come not to praise either, but to bury the guy, okay?” Grab the audience’s attention like he tries to do or like Chaplin.
And then of course, the second rule of storytelling, once you grab the attention in the beginning, make them care. Make the audience care, whoever the characters are, like the flower girl, the victim maybe, or maybe another character, but make us care because if we don’t care pretty early on, we are going to switch off, turn off and go and read something else. So first rule, always grab the attention of the audience. Second, make us care at some level. Otherwise, who cares? Why listen? Why read the book, go to the movie, whatever it is. Okay? The first two great rules. Then we can elicit a little bit of empathy or a little bit of identification to use the two of the words that are used so much, where we can start to actually care for character, care for them a little bit. Even Stalin understood the phrase. Even Stalin understood this. One of his great phrases was, you know, “A million deaths is a mere statistic, but one death that is a tragedy.” That’s Stalin, not me. That’s his line. He even understood, well, the fact of a million, it’s so hard to comprehend. It’s so difficult. And I don’t want to get into the details of, you know, how deep it is in cultural history and Jewish history, of course, obviously the Holocaust and many others. But one death in our lives, one death of someone we know or hear or whatever has some such emotional impact compared to a million, two, 10, 20 million or whatever. You know, it’s entirely different type of response, I would suggest. Stories have been handed down, generation after generation. They elicit curiosity, emotion, they work through the imagination. Children, once upon a time, Finding Nemo, the story of Dumbo, the elephants. The ancient fairy tales and legends, oral, written or both.
The Red Riding Hood again and again. Why do children want to hear? We know it so well. We read them at night. And when you hear the same story again and again and again, they know the beginning, middle, and end. Because it evokes an emotion. It evokes some meaning of the world. Maybe some moral principle, some moral debate, dilemma, learning about how to live. ultimately, gain, how to make sense of the world with a little child of three or, you know, somebody of, in their nineties, whoever, for all of us. Rather than a list of facts stories have characters, narratives. And they have the power to allow us to see the world in a completely different way. And I want to show if we can go straight onto the next clip, which is from Polanski’s masterpiece, The Pianist. And this is a clip I’m sure we all know, and how it forces the German, the Nazi officer character to see the world in a different way. This scene, one of the greatest scenes in all films as we know it. If you can play it, please.
- [David] The Nazi officer has just found him. And for those who don’t know the story, and instead of killing him, tells him, well, you say you’re a pianist, play. He’s been hiding out for a long time. Desperate, hasn’t played for ages, was a pianist before the war in Warsaw. Now he plays Bach. His life depends on it. Okay, we can hold it there, please. Thanks. We can freeze it there. So I wanted to show just this clip because the whole film pivots on this remarkable scene. And it’s a story of itself in the scene of the whole story of the movie. There he is, the Jewish character, starving, half alive. So many terrible experiences have been happening as he is just tried to survive the Holocaust, you know, hanging out in different ways in the shattered city. And, you know, he’s found a can, he’s been caught, et cetera. And we get to know, of course, he’s a pianist, the Nazi officer, he’s a pianist. Okay, so play. He’s playing for his life. 'Cause a character he doesn’t know he’s going to be shot or killed at any second. And that he hasn’t played since the, you know, since the beginning of the war before that.
And there’s a truth based on the true story as we all know. And Polanski’s brilliance in showing the face and then making the Nazi character officers sit down, sit and listen. All through storytelling, we try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and an emotion is evoked. Through the Jewish character playing a bit of Bach, a bit of the music, flower to see the world in another way. The power to see other people’s experiences in another way through storytelling. The brilliance of Polanski is he understands it completely. And in this scene we see that in itself being performed, you know, and every gesture that the Nazi officer character makes is geared towards the shift, in putting himself in the Jewish character’s, starving heart and shoes, trying to understand another way of being, a little bit just through music. Very powerful way of showing another aspect of storytelling, which helps us in the, what I said earlier, to connect with another human. Okay. Very, very differently. We’re going to go onto a very different kind of scene. And this is first two people narrative. I want you to show storytelling in a completely different genre and completely different world from Singin’ in the Rain. We can show it, please.
♪ I am singing and in the rain ♪ ♪ Just sing and in the rain ♪ ♪ What a glorious feel ♪ ♪ And I’m happy again ♪ ♪ I’m laughing at clouds so dark up above ♪ ♪ The sun’s in my heart and I’m ready for love ♪ ♪ Let the stormy clouds chase ♪ ♪ Everyone from the place ♪ ♪ Come on with the rain ♪ ♪ I’ve a smile on my face ♪ ♪ I walk down the lane ♪ ♪ With a happy refrain ♪ ♪ Just singing ♪ ♪ Singing in the rain ♪
We can freeze it there, please. Okay, so I want to show this clip because this in itself also captures such an amazing element of storytelling. Coming off from The Pianist and same here as in The Pianist, he’s forced to see not just a Jew who is the inferior, the untermensch, et cetera, et cetera. All the words that we know. In a way then contemporary language, we’d say this is a, you know, I’m not referring to The Pianist now, but we call people by the category. Patients, the homeless, the beggars, the refugees, the masses on the storming the shore, whatever. It’s individualized. Stories individualized and personalized. And that’s what we see happening to the Nazi officer with the Jewish character in The Pianist. And I believe we see here in Singin’ in the Rain, it could be the most banal, utterly sentimental and forgettable image. Guy falls in love and he’s happy and he’s walking down the street. Okay? It’s completely banal, heard it, read it so many times. But what makes the storytelling so brilliant is that he’s dancing, he’s singing gently and it’s raining. So we don’t just see a guy, you know, saying hi everybody.
The fact is, hi everybody, I’m happy, I’m in love. Now let’s have a cup of coffee. No, we see a drawn out scene of a little bit of walking, a little bit of singing about what’s actually going on. I’m singing in the rain, I’m happy again ‘cause I’ve just fallen in love. But it’s a love story. But the love story’s almost secondary. It’s about the moment of happiness. Yes, it’s linked with love, but it’s singing in the rain, something we don’t always or not very often associate with rain. And he is walking down the pavement down the street. He starts dancing and playing with the umbrella. So much has written about the scene. I don’t want to go on about it. All I want to say is the art of powerful storytelling is such a skill, but it can be developed. How do we capture the audience or the people’s attention, make us care, grab their attention. Scene for scene, moment for moment. It’s pivotal, it’s crucial. It’s emotionally identify with a conflict, a resolution of a conflict, a change in the character. Like in the Nazi scene in The Pianist.
Here we see it through the combination of spectacle, rain, dance, song, you know, even ancient Greeks knew, you know, use mīmēsis, beginning, middle, and end. It’s there. There’s a plot, there’s a character, there’s spectacle, there’s song, all of it pulled together in one scene, which becomes unforgettable. It’s simply an actor singing and dancing, but it’s raining, without that rain, totally different forgettable image. Okay, I’m going to go onto the next piece. We can cancel the next one, please. From Taxi Driver. Let’s go straight onto the last scene. Sorry, the next one. This is the last scene in Casablanca, which I’m sure we all know very well, also.
Louis, have your man go with Mr. Laszlo and take care of his luggage.
Certainly Rick, anything you say.
Find Mr. Laszlo’s luggage and put it on the plane.
Yes, sir. This way please.
If you don’t mind, you fill in the names. That will make it even more official.
You think of everything, don’t you?
And the names are Mr. and Mrs. Victor Laszlo.
But why my name, Richard?
Because you’re getting on that plane.
I don’t understand. What about you?
I’m staying here with him 'til the plane gets safely away.
No, Richard, no. What has happened to you? Last night we said-
Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.
But Richard, no, I, I -
Now you’ve got to listen to me. Do you have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louis?
I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.
You’re saying this only to make me go.
I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it.
No.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
But what about us?
We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we’d lost it, until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.
When I said I would never leave you.
And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do you can’t be any part of.
If you could freeze it here please.
Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble.
So the great scene at the end, which of course we all know the details of how they came about at the writers and, you know, hassled for ages until they finally came up with it. But we’ll always have Paris. We’ll always have the memory, we’ll always have our love, we’ll always have our passion. So in the moment of great tragic, end of romance, end of love, there will not see each other again. They’ll not live together, but they love each other, but they can’t be together. One of the great essences of storytelling, conflict. It’s not an obvious conflict between two armies or, you know, a goodie and a baddie, you know, Hamlet versus the baddie Uncle Claudius, who’s become a dictator, killed his father and married his mommy. It’s a conflict move. Fascinating because it’s a conflict that the situation, the broad situation is forced on them. They cannot live together. She must go with Laszlo, save her life, save his life. The resistance, the bigger picture is more important. It’s a moral conflict and dilemma that they face in the drama.
They’ll always have Paris, they’ll always have their love in other words, but they can’t be together. End of Antony and Cleopatra always have their love, but they can’t be together. Romeo and Juliet always have their love, but they can’t be. It’s irony at the end of a story. When we have irony, we have such power at the end of a story, and this is one of the most ironic, brilliant moments captured in all storytelling, where the love is so strong and powerful and obvious and passion, but it can’t be for external reasons. Again, undeserved misfortune, which is delivered by the geopolitics of the second World War going on. So we feel so much for their shattered broken dream, their shattered love. Even though it is so strong and powerful together. Pity and fear is elicited in us. We feel, identify for the character so much, and we cathart, we all know the feeling of wanting something so much, whether it’s love or a job or work, or just get that commission or get that whatever, help the patient, whatever it is. But we just can’t have it. It’s the ancient human feeling and it’s not deserved, it’s not fair, it’s not right. But we have no choice. We have to give it up and move on in life. As he says, I’m going somewhere, but you can’t. So it’s brilliant part of storytelling in the scene itself that the writers are so aware of. If it was just, to give you an example in another way, if we just heard the facts, let’s say for example, the king died and then the queen died.
That’s the fact, let’s say in any other situation, not this film. But if we say the king died, then the queen died of her grief for him. We have a completely different feeling. We have the beginning of a story, not just a plot, not just a set of factual events, but an emotion built in a motivation. And the same here. They must, they love, they’ll always have Paris. They love each other, but they cannot be together. That’s the fact, I hear that. Okay, fine, I carry on, you know, with my life. But if I hear they love each other, but they can’t stay together because she must help the resistance fight the Nazis, and he has to go help and fight the Nazis another way, and we start to develop a story out of it, we start to elicit more pity and more emotion and fear for it. We start to elicit more empathy for the characters, undeserved misfortune again. Okay. I want to show a very different piece quickly, which is a little clip from Fiddler on the Roof. We can tradition.
A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask, why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous? Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in a word?… Tradition. ♪ Tradition ♪ ♪ Tradition ♪
hold it there, please. Thanks Karina. So I wanted to get, we all know the rest of the song, but I wanted to show this because it’s such a pivotal scene of obviously tradition versus modernity in the whole, one of the great musicals. But let’s look how it begins. It begins with the image of a fiddler on the roof. If again, he just told the fact. Well, we sat together as a community because of tradition. If it was told as a fact to somebody in a school room or wherever, classroom, et cetera, et cetera. Different entirely. But it starts visually, artistically with a fiddler on the roof, life is a fiddler on the roof. It’s as uncertain and unstable. So what keeps it stable other than being a fiddle on the roof is tradition. And then we get into the horse and the cart and everything feels much more solid and strong. In other words, the story is being told not only of tradition versus modernity, but the ancient art of storytelling is about sharing in a community. Community coming together, community shares these stories. Community has common similar stories which represent similar values. And that’s the real power of this scene in the ancient art of storytelling for me.
The top Bible stories that, oh, if you Google, which are the top Bible stories looked at, I’m not going to list one, two, three, or four, but I’m just going to give you some of the top; the Birth of Jesus Christ, Noah’s Ark, interestingly, it’s the second most researched story on Google. The Good Samaritan, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Exodus, David and Goliath, the 10 Commandments. These are some of the most Googled. They have millions and millions, billions, millions, you know, who Google these stories again and again and again through, Google. The stories that hold from ancient times. 10 Commandments I’ve mentioned, what was it? Just, you know, two pieces of stone or what, but the whole thing around the Exodus and the parting of the city and Moses and the burning bush. It’s a story inside which are 10 moral and legal precepts. The basis of Western civilization. In so many ways, it’s the story. Noah’s Ark. It’s not just, okay, you know, there’s been a massive earthquake or a massive tsunami or flood or something and all the species was wiped out. No, it’s told about a guy who builds an ark and then all the animals come and they come two by two and da, dah, dah, dah, dah da. It becomes unforgettable and memorable, forever. Cultural memory and it goes into historical memory, but it’s a fact turned into a story. It’s the art of storytelling through all the details as we go, as with David and Goliath, many, many others. And how often do we use these as examples of sharing values, which is inside these stories sharing to show that we are all part of a similar community. And that for me is the real power of this scene here. Not just the obvious theme we are taught at school or university. It’s tradition versus modernity.
It’s about the power of storytelling and sharing community that a community shares stories and values. Okay, I’m going to hold on the last one, the last film clip. And if we can go into just the last two slides, please, Karina. I’m going to hold on this, hold on this one. So I’ve mentioned quite a few from the Bible, the Bible series of remarkable stories. We all know legends. Harari calls them collective fictions. Did they happen? Didn’t they happen? Did some of them happen? Some of them not happen? I’m not going to get into those debates, but it’s through the storytelling, you know, that it all happens. Joseph, you know, the story of Abraham sacrificing or so many, so many go on and on and on. It’s again, I want to suggest in the beginning was the word, et cetera, stories. Let’s go on to the last one, please. So coming back to the animation world. A story’s most important function is to remind us we are not alone in the world. Not only about community, not only about sharing values, caring, eliciting empathy, seeing the world as if we in another person’s shoes, but remind us that the world can have some meaning. The world can have some sense, and we are not alone through all of these things. When we tell stories and when we share the stories, we build community. We have a communal experience.
As a Scottish saying goes, “The story is told eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart.” It’s a beautiful old phrase from Scottish folklore. It’s a personal direct commitment to it. So the people feel, oh, I’m not the only one who feels like this. You feel like this, Tevye or you feel like this, you know, playing the piano or whoever playing like this, you know, doing like this. And so we get the stories, the sharing. And we also have the evocation, which I want to end with, of wonder. The remarkable feeling of not being alone, but also being alive. Not alone, but being alive. When a character goes beyond what the character thought was possible, the end of Casablanca, Bogart’s character goes beyond what even the character thought was possible and what we the audience thought was possible. He sacrifices love for the greater cause, another cause. So it evokes wonder and sudden astonishment in us and storytelling at its best, usually with irony at the end can do that. And in that way remind us whatever choices and ways we live, we are not alone. We have all these different things that bind us and it’s through for me, is through the art of storytelling. And having told the story of storytelling, now I’m going to hold it. So thanks Karina. Let’s go for questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Barbara, Delphi is not an island. Sorry. You’re right. It’s the place on the island. Correction. And thank you for that, Barbara.
Ron, hope you well. It’s on the slope of Mount Parnassus. Yes, exactly. On the Greek mainland. Okay. Absolutely. Thanks for that Ron. Hope you well and thanks Barbara. I got it. Yeah, for reminding me there, it’s on the slope of the mountain. It’s not the island itself.
Mitzi, there are other elements in the Chaplin, blind government. Absolutely. So many others. I’m just choosing these here, Mitzi, so as to illustrate some ideas about storytelling.
Okay, Rita, that’s great. Thank you, Sandy. Okay.
Oh, sorry, Chopin, I said Bach, my apologies to everybody, Alan.
Gail, hope you well in Joburg. My apologies to everybody.
Of course, of course. It’s not Bach. God, I’ve had Bach in my mind for the last few days. It’s Chopin, obviously. Okay, thanks for reminding me and my apology for making that little mistake.
Yana. Well we thanks a lot again. And Rita. Okay, I can’t run circles around everybody, that’s for sure. Okay. I can only say what I think the collective voice is spoken, Delphi. You see Delphi, it become the story now. It’s brilliant. The story of my mistake with Delphi. My mistake was Chopin versus Bach becomes the story of today. I love it. thank you.
Was very kind, Hilary talking about life in ways that are memorable. Absolutely. It’s also, and it is also about an ambivalence and no, anticipation without knowing the result. That is one of the wonders of storytelling, I think. Anticipation with an uncertain resolution. I mean, Moses could have gone up the mounts, you know, be burnt by the bush, could’ve dropped the tablets again and again and again. Till God got fed up and not, you know, give him, give him the 10 command, give him another set or whatever made it 12.
Daphne, thank you. Aretta, also kind. Thank you. Myrna. Okay, thank you. Dean. Thanks a lot. Stewart you’re also kind. Thank you.
Gail. Ian Forster, aspects of the novel. Yep. The king died when the queen died. Exactly. That’s where it comes from as you say. Gail, thanks for reminding me.
Okay, thank you Lorna. Thanks. You’re very, very kind. Actual stories fables, rather than film clips. Oh, okay. That would be an entirely different one. That’s fascinating idea that Lorna, I’ll suggest it to the team. Thank you. Ronald.
Q: Can nonfiction tell a story?
A: Ah, now that’s fantastic. That’s a great lovely question, Ronald and yes it can absolutely. But using the art of storytelling, some of these elements of storytelling, we can tell something which is not fictional. Absolutely. You know, the story of Caesar’s assassination is based on fact, but it’s told in a nonfiction way, it’s told using elements of the art of storytelling, you know, and a lot of others.
Erica, not so much a question, but a tune during the Chaplin comes from the Spanish, yes. Sung by. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Called the , the same name. We call it from a childhood. Very, very popular. Ah, that’s great. That’s fascinating. Erica, thanks for that help.
Sandra, thank you. Thank you for your enthusiasm and for everybody’s enthusiasm. Appreciate, Zoom user thank you from Canada and Judy, really helpful. Morecambe and Wise, Singin’ in the Rain, of course. Diana, thank you.
Dali is the real story, the persistence of memory. Exactly. Johanna, spot on. The persistence of memory. And that’s, I just wanted to tell you the story of how he actually came up with it. Sally. Much appreciated. Norman, you are very kind.
Delphi again, Delphi’s the story of the day. Okay. And David getting it completely wrong. Absolutely. Sandra. David, great question, David.
Q: What about the detective novel?
A: The detective novel, the crime novels, all those of are remarkable genres from, oh gosh, so many mafia stories and you know, Damon Runyon type stories. Gamblers, grafters, grifters, conman, David Mamet plays. Agatha Christie. You know, so many detective genre stories are, they’re fantastic, but you’ll find they follow a similar set of ideas as to the ones that I’m mentioning and others of course.
Thank you, Judith. Very kind. Annette. Dali’s, persistence of memory painting is only nine and a half by the… Yeah, I know exactly. Tiny. But we don’t forget. The Mona Lisa, you know, regarded by some as the greatest painting of all time. It’s a tiny little painting. Remember we’ve all, I’m sure many of us have seen it in the Louvre or know the actual size is so tiny and again, size doesn’t matter. It’s the quality of the painting or the story.
Okay, Alice, you are all very kind. Thank you. Celine, story show how we play. Yeah, this is whole. Thank you, Celine. This is a fascinating area I wanted to go into, but no time for today, but just play and how we play; children learn through playing and through stories and how play and stories. I’m not talking about theater, but as you say, just playing and stories go together. Absolutely. Okay, great. So thank you very much everybody and have a great rest of the weekend. And Karina, thank you so much for all your help for today as always, and during the week and every week. Thanks so much.