The Power and Grandiose Nature of Living in a World of Storytelling
We are surrounded by propaganda like the air of every grocery store is permeated with muzak and classic rock. Deciphering what is narrative versus what is true is the challenge of our days.
If the story you're telling positions you as either the hero or the victim, you're not telling an honest story.
This is the advice I give to new storytellers as they embark upon a road of getting up in front of people to spin yarns of their lives or the lives of others. None of us is entirely heroic. None of us is entirely victimized. The best stories present a gray area in between that provides a context for the listener to parse out.
Anything less complicated becomes a narrative designed to manipulate the listener or reader. With the massive amount of digital manipulation via social media, bots, and contact-level intent data used to sell us shit we don't need, the urgency to tell honest stories is more crucial than perhaps at any time in history.
Here's how narrative works.
One night, a young man is walking to his girlfriend's home in a gated community. A neighbor, part of the local neighborhood watch, sees him and decides that he looks suspicious. He calls the law, the law tells him to stay out of it and that they are on their way.
He decides to follow the man, you know, to keep an eye on him in case he does something illegal. The man notices just a few yards shy of arriving at his destination, turns around, walks over to the neighborhood watch guy and proceeds to beat him up.
He's younger and fit and is pretty much kicking the shit out of him but the neighborhood watch guy has a concealed pistol. As he gets punched again in the face, he pulls out the gun and shoots the man wailing on him and the shot is fatal.
That's one version of the story. That's the one that positions the neighborhood watch guy as the hero.
The other version goes like this:
On Feb. 26, 2012, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, spotted Trayvon Martin in a hoodie walking through a gated townhouse community not far from Orlando.
Suspicious, Zimmerman called 911 and followed Martin. Dispatch told him, “We don’t need you to do that.” There was an encounter between the two before Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest at close range.
Martin was just 17 years old, a boy, and he was where he was supposed to be.
He was unarmed. He was carrying Skittles and a can of iced tea.
This version makes the young man the victim.
On the tenth anniversary (if that marker is even appropriate for such a stupid tragedy) I wondered where the documentary was about Trayvon Martin (aside from the book written by his parents). Where was the Netflix film? Where was the book?
Nowhere. Never written, never filmed. Why? Because the version overwhelmingly accepted is the second one. And that isn't entirely truth. Yes, Martin was seventeen, black, had every right to be where he was and where he was headed. He had Skittles and iced tea. No, Zimmerman was not a cop, not white, not looking to gun anyone down (or he wouldn't have called the police in the first place).
The timeline belies the narrative of a chase:
7:12:08: Zimmerman tells the police dispatcher, “He ran,” referring to Martin. Shortly after this, sounds on the recording that indicated Zimmerman himself was running or moving quickly cease and his voice evens out.
7:13:14: Zimmerman reports to the police dispatcher that he’s lost sight of the person he’d reported.
7:13:41: Zimmerman’s phone call with the police ends almost exactly two minutes from the time he got out of his vehicle.
Approximately 7:15:30 to 45, roughly two minutes later: Zimmerman and Martin’s fatal encounter begins, about 80 yards from his vehicle where he’d been standing, about 100 yards from Martin’s father’s fiancee’s house.
This tick-tock makes it clear that Martin, who could have easily made it safely home, doubled back to confront Zimmerman and beat him up, presumably for profiling and following him. The only other scenario that fits the timeline and the location of the shooting is that the pudgy Zimmerman chased the taller, lean Martin round and round before finally catching and shooting him.
Zimmerman’s account — that Martin came back to confront him and was getting the better of him in a fistfight when Zimmerman drew his gun and shot — fits the known facts pretty well. Jurors decided that Zimmerman was in legitimate fear of death or great bodily harm when Martin had him pinned to the ground during that fight, and therefore had the right to use deadly force to defend himself.
Ask almost anyone about Trayvon Martin and his death at the hands of George Zimmerman and almost everyone will get a few facts right (Skittles, hoodie, iced tea), a few facts wrong (Zimmerman was unprovoked in the shooting, was white) and, unlike the jury who listened to all the testimony and observed all the evidence, believe without a question the mainstream narrative. Not this could've been avoided on multiple moments on both individual's parts. That Martin would likely still be alive had he chosen to just go into his girlfriend's house, that Zimmerman could've been given more thorough instructions by the police dispatch, that despite Zimmerman's stupid and possibly bigoted suspicions, a fight between two men on the street at night did not have to happen nor did a shot need to be fired.
Skittles. Iced Tea. Seventeen.
Dylann Roof was only twenty-one when he committed racist mass murder so the age thing paints a picture of childlike innocence as does the candy.
It's a good narrative. So good, in fact, that this singular event that sparked the beginnings of the most significant civil rights movement since the 60s has no movie or book to document it because it is not entirely honest.
I don't know if there was ever a time in history when the spin was less important than the truth. The systematic erasure of black achievements when studying our history is a narrative, not the truth. The erasure of the near genocide of the Indigenous population of North America is a narrative, not the truth. So much of what we read, watch, consume, and determine comes from propaganda rather than honest telling.
GOEBBELS' PRINCIPLES OF PROPAGANDA
Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.
Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.
Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign
To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.
Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.
The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.
Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.
Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.
Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.
Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.
Propaganda must be carefully timed.
Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.
Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.
We are surrounded by propaganda like the air of every grocery store is permeated with muzak and classic rock. Deciphering what is narrative versus what is true is the challenge of our days.
Personally, I'm finding that if the story causes me to be outraged, it's probably heavily spun. That's what black and white tales do—a villain, a victim, a hero. Clean. Easy. Infuriating.
Fundamentally dishonest.