Stories we tell (July 23-29)

This week’s snapshots:

Happy Saturday, friends!

Thank you to everyone who helped make my 28th birthday a memorable one - I have often found a big, stupid grin on my face this week because of the loving gestures people like you have made. Thank you for reminding me how lovely it is to be alive!

I was invited to watch the Barbie Movie this week, and after reading The Way of Kings, it was a rather jarring experience. The movie is satire thinly-veiled by story, with monologues pointed at other characters rather than dialogues between characters. These monologues paint exaggerated expressions of masculinity, femininity, and what it means to carry power to enforce a laser-focused moral: “it’s okay to be yourself.” The book, on the other hand… well. It’s a novel!

As the credits rolled, the movie-goer next to me exclaimed, “That movie was so good!” and I couldn’t find it in me to agree. Hilariously, it’s not the movie’s fault; it’s mine.

Allow me to offer you a short passage from The Way of Kings to illustrate. Kaladin, a main protagonist, has come across Hoid, a storyteller playing a flute at a fire on the edge of the desert - Hoid has just told Kaladin a very strange tale.

“What did you put in the fire?” Kaladin said. “To make that special smoke?” 

“Nothing. It was just an ordinary fire.” 

“But, I saw—” 

“What you saw belongs to you. A story doesn’t live until it is imagined in someone’s mind.”

“What does the story mean, then?” 

“It means what you want it to mean,” Hoid said. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.” Kaladin frowned, looking westward, back toward the warcamps. They were alight now with spheres, lanterns, and candles.

“[The story] means taking responsibility,” Kaladin said. “The Uvara, they were happy to kill and murder, so long as they could blame the emperor. It wasn’t until they realized there was nobody to take the responsibility that they showed grief.” 

“That’s one interpretation,” Hoid said. “A fine one, actually. So what is it you don’t want to take responsibility for?” Kaladin started. 

“What?”

“People see in stories what they’re looking for, my young friend.” [Hoid] reached behind his boulder, pulling out a pack and slinging it on his shoulder. “I have no answers for you. Most days, I feel I never have had any answers.”

I struggled as the credits rolled because the movie felt like it was telling me how to think rather than posing questions to think about. But that’s not actually what it was doing, that’s just what I was looking for it to do. Barbie poses a lot of problematic questions and immediately pokes fun at society’s answers: why would only men be in charge of creating a doll company that aims to “liberate” women? Why is it that the ways Barbie “liberates” women is or isn’t freeing? Is a world where only women have power actually any better than a world where “only men” have power?

Is Barbie a fascist?

And why is it that the moral I found is, “it’s okay to be yourself”? Another way to interpret the moral is that, “It’s okay to be alone.” Or “It’s okay to pursue what you want and not what someone else wants for you.” These are all fine interpretations, but I suppose I’ve revealed my hand by telling you what I heard first~

This, I think, is one of the main things I find so compelling about stories. The story itself is one thing, but what it tells me about me - and about other people who are willing to talk about the story - is why I never get tired of stories. And even though The Way of Kings inadvertently told me how to read it by telling me it’s a question to ponder and not a way to think, that it will tell me more about me than I will about it, I am compelled. 

The more I’ve contemplated the questions posed by Barbie and reflected on my immediate Ken-clusions about the story, the more I find myself agreeing with the movie-goer. The Barbie movie is so good. Not perhaps because the movie itself is re-watchable for plot, character, or moral, but because the questions are important to me, the delivery is oddball enough that my over-intellectualized brain will accept it, and there are multiple lines that I need to evaluate as satire or serious.

I’d be happy to tell you more but I’d rather you tell me a story you found compelling recently, and what about it was compelling to you. Did you watch the Barbie movie? What did you think?

Peace be with you,

—Beth