Week 12 Story Lab - Two Ted Talks

Ted Talk Logo. Source: Wikimedia

     For my story lab project, I chose to watch two Ted Talk videos: The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences: Parasocial Relationships by Jennifer Barnes (who's from OU). Both talks talked about some incredibly interesting topics, but I think the more profound one was The Danger of a Single Story. Dr. Barne's Ted Talk discusses the significance of relationships between people and fictional characters. Even though they aren't real, people often form attachments to these characters that can have an effect on the real world. For instance, one study conducted by Dr. Barnes and a graduate student studying under her had participants rate the amount of grief they would feel if their favorite fictional character were to die versus a real-world acquaintance. Interestingly enough, the study revealed that on average men will feel no difference in grief while women rated they would feel more grief for the fictional character than the real-world acquaintance. She goes on to talk about what kinds of emotional effects fictional relationships can have on people, which was rather interesting.

    Adichie, in her Ted Talk, focuses on the power of a single story of people. She defines a single story to in a way be the image people have of a single people as a whole. For instance, one shocking revelation she shared was her experience with her roommate upon moving to The US from Nigeria to study. Her roommate was shocked to find she was just like her as she, like many others no doubt, had the image in their head that Africans, in general, were poor, dying of sickness, uneducated, etc. Here, the single story was the one the media and western authors painted of Africa, what with the media coverage of the struggling villages and epidemics raging through Africa. This story showed only part of Africa, and not the whole picture. In reality, Africans are not too different from any other people. She generalizes this argument to mean that people form a single image in their heads about a given people, whether they're Americans, Mexicans, immigrants, Middle-Easterns, etc. when in reality it's much more complex. I thought her talk was incredibly interesting and now I am wondering what kind of single stories I might have of certain people.